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1 year agoI have played the original, and will be playing the remaster, though not on Switch, I already own the Japanese version on Steam which will be patched with the localization upon release in the West.
It’s quite a fun, fast-paced game, as Falcom action RPGs tend to be. Being a PSP title originally, I think the game format works well for shorter, pick-up-and-play sessions, making it ideal on devices like the Switch and Steam Deck. No context or experience with the wider Trails series necessary, all connections to the mainline series are just simple references and the game has a standalone story (unless you’re deep in the rabbit hole of lore crack theories).
I think this game definitely has the hardest shinespark “puzzles”, but the actual execution of shinespark is much easier than in previous games which balances it out. Super Metroid had items where figuring out what shinespark maneuver to do was easy, but actually executing it was difficult, while Zero Mission and Fusion had easier-to-pull-off shinesparks with harder puzzles.
With Dread, the challenge is almost entirely in figuring out what to do, once you know exactly where/when to shinespark the actual execution is very intuitive and feels amazing when you land a complex sequence of shinesparks/speed booster runs/wall jumps.