So the detective work begins. In place of the simple multiple-choice dialogues from Blade of Destiny, possible informants are now questioned via keywords. And a possible informant is just about everyone; shop owners, priests, healers - even some of the commoners can be harassed in their houses. And quite a lot of them have to be interrogated, as Star Trail is the heaviest offender for obfuscated design out of the trilogy. The only valuable piece of information for the search after Star Trail is the fact that it is missing. Or maybe even worse is the city where a special way to get out is needed, but the player is given no hint whatsoever where to look for it. Sometimes logical thinking helps - it makes sense to ask for a divine throwing axe at places where people know a lot about weapons, for example - but at other times there's no other way as to systematically comb through all the houses in a given town. The fact that most correspondents end the dialogue after two or three questions, so that their house needs to be entered again, doesn't help either. This makes for a lot of tough, realistic investigative work, but those used to modern games holding their hands on every step should brace themselves for for frustration.
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Less reliance on combat doesn't mean that the quest is going to be a walk in the park, though. On the contrary, Star Trail features more instant deaths and possible dead ends than any other game in the series, and not even towns are an exception here, so it is pretty much mandatory to keep a number of backup saves, in case something goes wrong and isn't noticed until much later.
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Bugs are once again a problem, just as much as they were in Blade of Destiny. Some old bugs were fixed, but others weren't, and there's a share of new ones as well. Most are just annoying, like the aforementioned kids' faces bug, but there's also a few almost game breaking ones as well. The English version got "updated" again with unique bugs that weren't present in the original German game, the worst of which renders the game almost non-completable when not knowing it, but can be easily fixed/avoided with the right hints.
Star Trail is often considered the best game in the series, and was crowned RPG of the year 1994 all over the place, by magazines and players alike. However, nowadays it can only be seen as somewhat of an acquired taste, and interested players have to put up with a lot of hardships before they can truly appreciate the game for its merits. For fans of classical hardcore RPGs, it can prove a true revelation, though, especially for those that prefer simulation-heavy experiences.
