Various bonuses (and sometimes detrimental effects) randomly appear on certain turns, so manipulating turn order can be advantageous. Battles take place on an isometric grid, with allies and enemies trading blows according to a turn order that appears in the top left corner of the screen. The combat system will feel very familiar to anyone who has played the Trails in the Sky games, and it comes with many of the same strengths and weaknesses. While you spend most of your time in Trails from Zero running around the city, completing quests, and watching cutscenes, you also have to fight a ton of monsters and baddies. It’s worth noting, however, that while the vast majority of the script is error-free, I did notice occasional typos. I’m happy to report that overall, the script reads well and feels mostly natural, outside of a few awkward sentences here and there. Given the unique circumstances of the game’s release, fans are probably especially curious about how this localization has turned out. Of course, as one would expect for a Trails game, there is a lot of reading to do in Trails from Zero between chatting with NPCs and watching story cutscenes. On the other hand, this does mean that location fatigue can set in toward the end of the game, even though most chapters send you to at least one new location. On the plus side, you really get to know the city and its denizens, many of whom have little mini-arcs you can follow over the course of the game. There are positives and negatives to this approach. But unlike the Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel games, which generally send you to a different location with each chapter, you’ll spend a lot of your time retreading the same areas and talking to the same NPCs. Crossbell City itself is massive, with a bunch of different districts, and there are also a few villages and dungeons outside the city that you travel to throughout the game. Just like the core cast is on the smaller side, the locales of Trails from Zero are a bit more static than in other games in the series. Each of these main characters gets ample time to shine, and aside from some tropes that Falcom just can’t seem to give up - like the gifted male lead unknowingly attracting all the ladies - they’re all great characters that players will find endearing. After finding myself exhausted by the bloated cast from Trails of Cold Steel IV, trust me, less is more. This smaller main cast is arguably one of the game’s greatest strengths, as it allows for more character development and interaction. For the vast majority of the game, your party consists solely of the four SSS members: Lloyd Bannings, a rookie detective Elie MacDowell, a prim and proper sharpshooter Tio Plato, a soft-spoken and gifted engineer and Randy Orlando, a womanizing former member of the Crossbell Guardian Force. Unlike other games in the Trails series, the playable cast of Trails from Zero is quite small. Still, the question looms: are these games worth the wait? Throw in other bonuses, like the voice acting from the Evolution versions of the games and the extra content from the Kai versions released in Japan on PS4, and these releases are not just serendipitous but damn near definitive. And sure enough, news broke last year that NIS America had reached an agreement with Geofront to officially bring Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure to the West, and on multiple platforms to boot! The partnership uses Geofront’s English script as the basis for the official localization, and many of the quality-of-life additions that the fan team implemented in their patches - including turbo mode and a message log - are included. This was a huge boon for fans who had been waiting patiently to play this duology, but buying legal copies of the games was still a bit of a hassle, particularly for Trails to Azure, which had only been released on PC in China at that point.Īs protagonist Lloyd says, however, the possibility of overcoming seemingly insurmountable barriers is never zero. Calling themselves Geofront, after the in-game location, they eventually released localization patches for the PC versions of both games in 20, respectively. After years without word from Falcom or its localization partners, a group of extremely dedicated fans took it upon themselves to translate these two massive games. After all, it’s been over a decade since the Crossbell games, as they are jointly known, were released in Japan on PSP, and many fans had lost hope that there would ever be official English versions for them to play. Okay, not really, but when it comes to The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and its sequel, Trails to Azure, it certainly feels like it’s taken forever for these titles to see a Western release.
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