Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter Tier List: All 8 Characters Ranked (2026)

Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter launched September 16, 2026 on PC, PS5, Switch and Switch 2. It's a full ground-up remake of the JRPG plenty of fans will tell you has the best story in the entire Trails series. All eight party members are back, and unlike the first game, SC's roster runs deep enough that who you bench decides whether a boss fight is a victory lap or a twenty-minute war.

Below: every playable character ranked, the party comps that carry you, and the orbment setup that matters more than any single character pick.

A quick word on timing: treat this as a launch-day baseline. The remake rebuilds SC's combat on the 1st Chapter engine, so you get the same orbment logic and the same Crafts and S-Crafts, plus the new Brave Rush linked-attack system. That means these rankings rest on party mechanics SC players have been leaning on for a decade, not guesswork. We'll re-test every tier once we have the final build and update this page in the first week. If a balance patch moves anything, you'll see it here.

Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter Tier List: At a Glance

The one-line answer: run Estelle + Kloe + Agate and fill the fourth slot however you like. Between them you've got healing, CP generation and burst damage, and you're never stuck without an answer.

The thing most tier lists get wrong about SC: availability is a stat. People rotate in and out by chapter, and the plot has a habit of yanking your best units right when you need them. A character who's S-tier on a spreadsheet is C-tier for every chapter they sit out. I've weighted that in, and it's the reason Joshua isn't at the top even though his raw numbers are terrifying.

S-Tier — The Ones You Build Around

Estelle Bright — S-Tier

Estelle is the most flexible unit in the game, and she's always there. In a game that keeps reshuffling your roster, that alone is worth a tier. The staff gives her reach. Her stat spread lets her run an attack or a support orbment without falling off, and she can hold the healing slot in a pinch, so you're never hard-locked out of a comp.

Build her as a hybrid: attack quartz for damage, plus one healing line to cover emergencies. Give her a proper attack orbment and the right gems and she stops being the protagonist who heals. By the late bosses she's putting up serious numbers.

Kloe Rinz — S-Tier

Kloe is the best arts user in SC, and the reasons are boring and decisive. High ATS. The game's best quick-heal S-Craft. Orbment lines that let her run offensive arts and healing side by side without giving up anything on either.

Her one real cost is slots that are more restrictive than most, so there's less room to get clever. Live with it. Action and cast quartz first, EP-cut second, then Mind, and she answers "who heals?" and "who nukes?" from a single party slot.

Agate Crosner — S-Tier

Agate earns his spot on CP economy, not raw damage. Wild Rage fills his CP bar fast, so his S-Craft keeps coming back around in one long fight. Final Break and Draguna Edge turn that CP into the kind of burst that ends boss phases early.

A bunch of SC's nastiest fights get noticeably easier with him in the party, and that's why. A guy who refills his own ultimate gets better the longer a fight drags on. Pure attack quartz, zero defense quartz. He isn't there to survive. He's there to delete things.

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A-Tier — Excellent, With an Asterisk

Tita Russell — A-Tier

Tita's orbal cannon reaches the back line, and she never eats a melee counter doing it. That quietly saves you from a whole category of wipes. She's a support-damage hybrid: never a mistake to bring, rarely the reason you win. She's also a lot better than the "little engineer girl" framing lets on.

Scherazard Harvey — A-Tier

Schera is a multiplier, and a multiplier is only as good as whatever it's multiplying. In a strong party her buffs and debuffs make things oppressive. In a party that isn't killing fast enough to cash them in, they barely register. Bring her alongside Agate, not instead of him. And don't sleep on the whip's range, which is a real perk people overlook.

Joshua Bright — A-Tier

On raw numbers Joshua is S-tier. He's fast, his Crafts are excellent, and when he's around he trivialises fights that would otherwise hurt.

But this is SC, and the whole premise of SC is that Joshua is missing. You can't plan a party around someone the story keeps taking away from you. His A-tier spot reflects what you can actually count on over a full playthrough, not how high he can go. Build a comp that works without him, then enjoy the stretches when you get him back.

B-Tier — Usable, Not Optimal

Olivier Lenheim — B-Tier

Olivier has one of the highest magic ceilings in the game and hits it less often than you'd hope. His orbment is restrictive, he's fragile, and SC's harder fights punish slow casts. He's a blast to play and a liability in the chapters that count. If you love him (and he's very easy to love), pour everything into cast speed and EP reduction, and never let him take a hit.

Zin Vathek — B-Tier

Zin is tanky, he sustains well, and SC mostly doesn't care. The game rewards killing enemies before they get a turn, and a pure defensive body loses value in that kind of system by design. On a first playthrough he's a comfort pick. On an optimised run he's on the bench. Either is fine.

Best Party Comps in Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter

Orbment & Quartz Priorities (This Matters More Than Your Tier List)

Here's the part people skip. Your quartz setup swings SC's difficulty far more than which A-tier character you bring along, and three rules cover most of it.

• Speed first, universally. Aim for Action 4 or 5 plus Cast 2, ideally on the same line, so a character can open a fight by buffing their own speed by roughly 50%. Going first is the whole game.
• Melee: attack quartz, no defense quartz. Agate, Joshua and Zin want offense, and defense quartz on a melee unit is a wasted slot. Once you hit the harder late chapters, pull Cast 2 off your melee units and swap in move, hit, impede or status effects.
• Arts users: action + cast + EP-cut first. After that, Mind for a damage dealer, HP for a support. Kloe and Olivier both live or die on cast speed.

Nail those and a B-tier party will clear content that an S-tier party with lazy quartz loses to.

Do You Need to Play 1st Chapter First?

Yes. I'm not hedging the way sequel guides usually do. SC opens right on the fallout of 1st Chapter's ending, then spends its entire runtime paying off relationships the first game took 40 hours to build. Starting here is like opening a trilogy at book two, except in this case the emotional payoffs are the main reason to play.

Good news, though. The 1st Chapter remake became Falcom's most successful Steam launch to date, so it's current and polished, and the two games now share a look and a combat engine. Play 1st, then come straight here.

Where to Play Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter

Out September 16, 2026, simultaneous worldwide, on:

• PC: Steam
• PlayStation 5
• Nintendo Switch and Switch 2

The Verdict

Run Estelle, Kloe and Agate, sort out your speed quartz, and treat the fourth slot as situational. SC's roster is deep enough that you can't really build a bad party. You can only build one that makes bosses take three times as long. And when Joshua comes back, enjoy him while it lasts.

We'll re-test all eight against the final build during launch week and update this page. If Brave Rush shakes up the link math in a meaningful way, you'll read about it here first.

More ranked JRPG breakdowns: Best JRPGs of All Time · Final Fantasy VI Character Tier List · Sea of Stars Tier List

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Image credits: character art and screenshots © Nihon Falcom Corporation, used editorially.