Unlike many other games, the biggest draw to the Trails franchise is its world. The entire franchise is divided several story arcs. One arc can come to a close, but then it becomes a part of the story for every game that follows. New protagonists may find themselves interacting with older protagonists, antagonists that had a minor role in one arc will have a major role in another… The story can keep going as long as you’re willing to start the next arc in the series.

If anyone is interested in getting into a JRPG series that isn’t Final Fantasy, this is a superb candidate. Trails in the Sky is where it all kicks off.

So let’s get down to it.

Tutorial: Trails in the Sky (FC) on M-series Macs

  • Download & Install Whisky (A wine wrapper thing that works with apple’s translation stuff.)
  • Download Steam (Grab the windows ver)

Mac Settings > Privacy & Security > App Management

  • Add Whiskey (Doing this helps prevent game installations in Steam from freezing later on.)

Whiskey

  1. Add new bottle (I named it “Steam”)
  2. When finished: Bottle Configuration > Enhanced Sync = Off (Having this disabled also helps prevent game installations in Steam from freezing later on.)
  3. Select Winetricks > DLLs, find and run amstream, quartz, and Lavfilters. (This will provide codecs to allow videos to play.)
  4. Click the “Run” button, select SteamSetup.exe, give it a moment to launch.
  5. Go through the install process, login, sign in, the whole shebang.

Steam

  1. Purchase/Install The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky.
  2. Launch the game by selecting “Play”, then select “Launch Configuration Tool”. Give it a moment.
  3. Display > Resolution = set whatever you prefer (M1 MBP = 3024 x 1964)
  4. Display > Windowed Mode = Off (In Windowed Mode at native resolution, mouse & keyboard tracking doesn’t work right for some reason. It might not be an issue if you use a gamepad. With Windowed Mode disabled, cmd+tab can minimize the game.)
  5. Input > Field Turbo Rate = 6x, Battle Turbo Rate = 6x; Default = “Run”
  6. Select “OK” to close the configuration tool.
  7. Select “Play”, “Play Legend of Heroes Trail in the Sky”

Enjoy the game.

Hope this works for you. Good luck.