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
- Add new bottle (I named it “Steam”)
- When finished: Bottle Configuration > Enhanced Sync = Off (Having this disabled also helps prevent game installations in Steam from freezing later on.)
- Select Winetricks > DLLs, find and run amstream, quartz, and Lavfilters. (This will provide codecs to allow videos to play.)
- Click the “Run” button, select SteamSetup.exe, give it a moment to launch.
- Go through the install process, login, sign in, the whole shebang.
Steam
- Purchase/Install The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky.
- Launch the game by selecting “Play”, then select “Launch Configuration Tool”. Give it a moment.
- Display > Resolution = set whatever you prefer (M1 MBP = 3024 x 1964)
- 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.)
- Input > Field Turbo Rate = 6x, Battle Turbo Rate = 6x; Default = “Run”
- Select “OK” to close the configuration tool.
- Select “Play”, “Play Legend of Heroes Trail in the Sky”
Enjoy the game.
Hope this works for you. Good luck.
Is this the only game you’ve tried it with or do these settings seem to generally be a good starting point with Windows games?
Do you also have the Mac version of Steam installed on your computer? I’m wondering if having the two versions on the same account causes any issues, like if I should install the Whisky version under a different account on my Mac than the main account I use.
I’d say it’s a good staring point for windows games in general. No guarantees they all work, or if mods work. I tried modding Sky to include the japanese voice acting and it didn’t take. Also, when i uninstalled the game, the files i added to the games folder remained there. That might just be a steam thing though.
Im actually installing Fallouts 3 and NV on my mac now to see if the Tale of Two Wastelands installer works with Whiskey as well. If so, I can try using those files to get TTW running on deck as well. Apparently a windows PC is required to make that happen, and it would be nice to offer a route for mac users as well.