We don't blame you if you’re intimidated by Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails series. This massive saga is now up to its twelfth mainline game in Japan, with the West falling behind at an alarming rate. However, one piece of the puzzle has been missing for years – Crossbell. After years of begging, fans are finally getting these “missing” games, starting with The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. And, it turns out, there’s a reason people have been desperate to see these games get an official English localisation – Trails from Zero makes a pretty strong case for being one of the best entries in the entire series.
As with every Trails game, there’s always a caveat when trying to get into the series: Where do you start? The Switch, in particular, doesn’t make this easy, with only Trails of Cold Steel III and IV available on the platform in the West. But Trails from Zero is nowhere near as impenetrable as these future entries, with a plot and cast of characters that feel pretty self-contained. Of course, some characters from the Trails in the Sky games (which are currently only on PSP or PC here) make an appearance, references to past events slip in, and one primary plot thread is resolved from the Liberl arc, so it’s hard to deny that Trails from Zero is at its most rewarding if you’ve played Sky. But it’s much more accessible than the other two Switch offerings in the series.
Part of this is because of the setup, with fresh new protagonist Lloyd Bannings and the new location, Crossbell. Lloyd, a rookie police detective, is recruited into Crossbell Police Department’s Special Support Section (SSS), a new experimental team meant to act as a sort of odd-jobs department. Joining Lloyd in the SSS is Elie MacDowell, an intelligent, well-mannered woman; Tio Plato, a young and reserved teenager; and Randy Orlando, a laid-back man who loves a party and a drink.
Things begin as a pretty humble affair as you work at restoring Crossbell’s faith in the police department. You’ll deliver packages, find lost library books, and exterminate the odd monster. But the Trails games are slow burns, and with every page turn, something small – sometimes unassuming – gets unveiled. Trails from Zero does have similar pacing issues as other games in the series, but the smaller cast and tighter setting make it all feel much more bearable.
The game’s excellent writing – with a localisation based on The Geofront’s famous fan translation – does so much to elevate the game’s more intimate setting and cast. The game’s much smaller core cast benefits them greatly, with each member getting their time to shine. Watching Tio warm up to the group and begin to tease the other members is a delight, and Lloyd’s speeches about friendship and “overcoming barriers” are cheesy, sure, but they’re also immensely charming and encouraging. You’ll also be yearning for the side to get even more screen time. Leader of the Testaments Wazy Hemisphere, SSS chief Sergei, and star A-rank Bracer Arios MacLaine are just a handful of highlights, all with intriguing teases and personalities that will have you cheering, laughing, and sometimes even tearing up. An excellent Japanese dub only helps to enhance the emotion.
However, Trails from Zero's real star is Crossbell itself. Crossbell City acts as your base of sorts, while the game confines the action to the relatively small state where there are multiple named NPCs you get to know intimately through this 40-50-hour story. The Trails series has always been known for its intricate dialogue, where NPC lines change over time to match the situation, but the tight-knit nature of Crossbell state means it feels more personal, more intense. As a result, Crossbell itself feels like a character; as more individuals get involved with it – both the city and the state – and plot threads begin to unravel, you start to perceive Crossbell differently. This small city-state underdog sandwiched between two political powers soon becomes a fractured cauldron bubbling with shadowy secrets, sincere people struggling, and corrupt authorities clashing.
With Crossbell as your hub, you’ll get to visit the various locales within the city-state throughout the game’s five main chapters (plus a prologue). There’s a lot of walking early on, with fast travel and bus routes only opening up once you’ve visited each location. You’ll become very familiar with the surrounding paths, especially if you’re tackling the game’s many sidequests. We’ve already touched on the variety of these, and they can sometimes feel a little tedious. There are only so many times we can tolerate going back and forth between Crossbell, the city, and the mining town of Mainz. Thank goodness for that fast-forward feature that’s become a staple in the Trails series.
This handy little feature also comes in clutch during combat, which would otherwise feel a little slow. If you’ve only played Cold Steel before, then Trails from Zero’s battle system might feel like a bit of a step back, but it makes sense, given that this is a game from 2010. You encounter enemies on the field, and battles take place on a grid-based field, but it’s not a strategy RPG. Characters can move a certain distance depending on their Move stat, and various spells (Arts) and skills (Crafts) cause damage and effects in a small area, such as a line, an area around the character, or a circular spot from a distance. S-Crafts also make their return as super-charged moves that deal high amounts of damage to either one or a group of enemies or provide tremendous support to the party.
Unique to Trails from Zero is Team Rush; this can occur randomly during a fight or if you manage to stun the enemy on a field and cause a Pre-Emptive Encounter. Your character will then be able to command a team attack in a large circular area around a field. Team Rushes help make combat feel that extra bit snappier, as you can sometimes wipe out entire mobs of enemies in one hit or whittle down more formidable foes significantly while barely lifting a finger. Working out the best enemy to target with these AOE skills is one of our favourite aspects of combat, which, while it isn’t revolutionary, makes for a solid system.
One returning aspect is the series’ traditional Orbment system. In Trails from Zero, equipping quartz – gems that give your characters access to magic and boost stats – requires a bit more care. Each character’s ENIGMA combat orbment has a line, or various lines, that link all quartz to an orbment in the centre. Every single quartz has a different elemental value(s), and the total elemental value of your ENIGMA affects what spells your characters can use.
Blue quartz, for example, will give them access to healing arts, but you’ll only get higher level spells with higher values of the Water element, and some Mirage spells are reliant on having multiple elemental values. It takes a minute to get used to, but we enjoyed working out what elements gave you access to certain spells and building characters to our advantage.
With some of these older elements, Trails from Zero can take a minute to adjust to. Its visuals are another area that, even when it came out in Japan in 2010, looked a little dated. We think the little clay-like character models are pretty charming, and the character portraits and animations do a lot to build upon the already stellar characterisation the writing provides. But lots of similar-looking environments don’t help to alleviate the sometimes-tedious backtracking. Fortunately, the Switch version has been polished up nicely, so the backgrounds look smooth and the character models are more detailed. Plus, the game runs like a dream on Switch, with only occasional slowdown when transitioning quickly between areas. Its length, coupled with its cute look, makes for the perfect handheld RPG in our minds.
One thing Falcom never disappoints with is music, and Falcom Sound Team jdk delivers another banger of a soundtrack in Trails from Zero. Crossbell’s various themes range from chirpy and cheerful, to energetic, to severe and sombre. At the same time, almost every battle track is phenomenal and rank highly among an incredible variety of tunes throughout the series.
Trails will forever be one of those series that reward the patient, and there will be no changing that. Even Trails from Zero is mainly laying the table for what looks to be an explosive entry in next year's Trails to Azure. Falcom is meticulous with its characters and plotting, sewing seeds that sometimes take hours – even games – to fully blossom, and it’s almost always worth the payoff. But Trails from Zero, even in setting up for a sequel, has a quaint, self-contained feel that both rewards fans who’ve explored Liberl in Trails in the Sky and grasps the hands of newcomers in a gentle enough way to make them not feel overwhelmed.
Conclusion
In a series renowned for its stellar writing, twisting plots, and wonderful characters, The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero is a stand-out RPG. Narrowing the focus of its story to one state, and honing in on a smaller cast of characters, makes for a fantastic and engrossing adventure that is about both intimate relationships and huge, secretive scandals. The fact that this is just one half of a duology means that, while the story wraps up nicely here, we have tons of questions that we’re itching to get answers to in Trails to Azure. If you haven't played Trails, it's time to overcome that barrier, because there’s no better place to zero in on this fantastic series than in Crossbell.
Comments 56
I loved this game but it’s not recommended if you haven’t played the Sky trilogy. This is a direct sequel to those games, with crucial plot points followed up on and massive spoilers for the other games.
Starting here whether it's recommended or not. I don't own a PC and even if I did, I wouldn't commit to three 50-70 hour RPGs before finally playing this one.
"Slow burn plot won't be for everyone"
Apparently it's too much to ask for a Trails game that doesn't feature molasses-slow storytelling.
Well, can't be worse than the first Trails in the Sky game in that regard.
Still amuses me this version has better graphics than the PS4 version.
@nessisonett I'm willing to bet the majority of people who play this will have next to no experience with the Sky trilogy on PC, and still end up doing fine with it. Most of the people who played the Cold Steel games on PS4 probably haven't touched the Sky games, either.
Nice review! I think every first entry of the franchise is a good starting point. Yes, there's some spoilers, but it won't really take away your enjoyment if you decide to go back and play the older entries.
Just my opinion.
@Ralizah Cold Steel is several games in before outright serving as a sequel to Sky though. Estelle and Joshua are the other two party members in this game. The Renne storyline gets wrapped up in this one continuing from Sky 2nd and 3rd. It’s beyond just having callbacks to previous characters, this is like starting on the 4th season of a TV show, you might muddle along with the new storylines but you’re arriving slap bang in the middle of a solid 70% of the other storylines.
@Ralizah Is trails in the sky actually that slow? I keep wanting to give the series a go but I've always heard that trails in the sky takes a long time to get off the ground. I'm not a stranger to games with a slow start but I think hearing this beforehand has caused me to put it off 😅.
I've got the LE on order from the NISA store. Very excited.
Dis gon be gud.
@nessisonett A lot of people know the risk when jumping into an entry that isn't Sky. It's just that not everyone has the time, means, or money to jump into several other games before getting to the one they're interested in. The fact that the English localized entries are spread out over different consoles doesn't make it easier either. Trails is intimidating for newcomers and a duology with little baggage is much more appealing than a trilogy or quadrilogy
Played this on PC with the fan translation, but I might go through it again on switch. The sequel, trails to Azure is even better in my opinion.
Looking forward to this one, will be my first Trails game!
@nessisonett People played and appreciated the last two Cold Steel games just fine without experiencing the Sky or Crossbell arcs first. They'll do the same here. Saying: "You need to play three 50+ hour PC/PSP-exclusive JRPGs for full context first" might be reasonable for hardcore fans, but for most people, it's just going to put them off the series altogether.
@Vortexeo The first game in the trilogy is, without exception, the most boring JRPG I've ever played. The second game, which I'm currently on, is still extremely slow, but stuff actually seems to be happening in the plot, finally.
@Vortexeo Yes, it's a very slow game.
I saw Lloyd in the Cold Steel games and thought he was pretty funny! Can't wait to see what he's like in the games that he originated from.
Also proud to say that The Legend of Heroes actually pulled me back into the JRPG scene; Both Xenoblade 2 and DQ11 nearly made me quit the genre all together..
@nessisonett
Well, too bad. They said this about Cold Steel too and I could just dive in with no problems. I do have Sky 1 and 2.. but I don't like playing on PC so there's no way I'll be playing them before Zero and Azure.
Slightly confused by this review as 'slow burn plot' in a heavily story dominated game and 'backtracking and repetitive sidequests' in a game that has a lot of side quests and exploration. I've seen reviews on this website get knocked down to a 7 or an 8 for even just one of those flaws.
I know the author is a 'huge lover of JRPGs', but it's important to acknowledge flaws properly and not have biased articles. Trails From Zero averages about 6th or 7th in many people's rankings of the Trails games, checked a few polls and ratings from various sites.
Trails is an awesome series and I look forward to playing this one as I haven't previously but these do seem like flaws big enough to knock the game down to at least an 8/10.
The gatekeeping perpetrated by fans and falcom itself is what's keeping the series so niche tbh
This will be my first Trails and I don't care what everyone is saying, I'm gonna play it like any other jrpg, unrevolved obscures plot points from 20yo games stuck on discontinued consoles won't stop me from enjoying it, I'll check a wiki or watch a walkthrough
@Impoh
Some of the best games I've played are also quite flawed. Ultimately you have to make a decision about the overall value of the game. It's not a math equation.
As for this review, thanks for it, Alana. This game's now on my playlist, though I have a number of RPGs first on the queue, including classics from the SNES era. So it might take me a while to get to this one.
@Beaucine As a player, yes. Not as a reviewer. There is a huge difference. I think Romancing Saga 2 and 3 are great, I love them but I wouldn't review them for a big website and give them 9/10 because they have obvious flaws. I know the journalists on here are just students doing it for fun but if I was striving to be professional and asked to review a game with 2 reasonable flaws to its USPs I probably wouldn't give a 9.
Any good plot summary videos for the Trails in the Sky that people looking to jump into the series with Trails from Zero can watch?
@Beaucine I mean it IS a math equation. Just a complex and personal math equation
@contractcooker
Or it's just not a math equation.
@Beaucine Generally you start at 10 then mark it down wherever the flaws come in. But just for you, no equations - random scores only.
Day one buy for sure.
@Impoh
That sounds like the worst possible way to go about it. What is this, gymnastics?
I'm into anything Trails. Gonna need to add this to the ol' library asap. I was intrigued by all the mention of Crossbell in the Cold Steel games and I'm looking forward to getting to know what happened.
@Ralizah Man that is insane...The fact that it takes a whole game to get the plot going is a really tall order...do you think it would be better to just watch an explanation video or story recap for the first trails in the sky game? I don't normally watch story recaps but in this case, I might make an exception lol.
Cant wait for this - played the 2 first Sky games and then earlier this years Cold Steel 1. I’m excited to see some of the events in this game which I believe are referenced in Cold Steel 1.
@Vortexeo I played the first two Sky games, and I agree that you should skip the first one. It's aggressively average. The second game is much better.
One of the biggest issues I had with Sky 1 is that you spend massive portions of the game without a full party (maybe 70% of the game if I remember correctly), and the enemy encounters are not tuned based on the size of your party, so battles end up being a slog.
Regarding the story being slow, that part didn't actually bother me as much, simply because it was fun to spend time with these characters.
@Beaucine Well, you could look at things practically or you could give a biased review with two big flaws and still give a 9/10. This is Nintendolife though, the people on here try their best I'm sure.
@Vortexeo In general, where possible, I always think it's preferable to actually play a game and gain first-hand experience of it. If nothing else, an LP would probably be a better idea than a recap video, given how character-oriented these games are.
But, you know, do what works best for you. That might end up just being a set of recap videos before you start the newer games in the series.
@nessisonett I started Star Wars at Eposode 4! I think I'm ok with 'in media res'.
I'll be buying this day one to show my support for the continued localisation of the series, but I won't be playing until I've played Trails in the Sky 2 and 3.
Amazing game. Yes, the experience will be better if you have played the Sky trilogy (which I recommend) but playing this game will probably work better to persuade people into playing the previous arc then taking my word for it =)
I've been umm-ing and ahh-ing about which version of this to order for months. On the one hand, I'm annoyed this saga situation hasn't been sorted and I'm going to end up owning bits of the saga on 4 different platforms, so in that respect I was inclined to snub the Limited Edition, but 9n the other hand, I wanted to make a small statement towards Nintendo and their over-priced Fire Emblem editions. So I've gone and ordered the LE now.
Yes!! I wanted this to be a good game and a good start point for the series, and it's indeed both things!
Even though there are many great JRPGs all around, this will be mine asap!
@Ralizah trails into reverie and kuro no kiseki fix that. They both start right away with action. I played them on pc with a eng patch
Just watch a YouTube recap of the Sky trilogy. You aren't missing much by not playing them anyway. I enjoyed the story of those games but the actual gameplay segments were nothing special.
I don't get it, why are people saying that trails of sky is bad? I thought Cold steel was the bad one.
@fenlix
Cold Steel is the best one, imo. Estelle is quite annoying and Joshua is just.. Joshua. I didn't even finish Sky 1 because of how boring it was. While CS1 does tend to drag on a bit too the main cast of characters and locations that you visit are just so charming that I kept playing for hours. It's amazing.
However, I do think I need to give Sky 1 another shot soon, but only after Zero and Azure
I was low-key hoping this would suck so I wouldn't have to buy it and add to my backlog....😮💨 damn you Switch library, you win again
@Mauzuri
Big disagree there - Estelle's one of the best female protagonists in all of gaming, the development she goes through over the course of FC and SC is awesome. Joshua's pretty boring, yes, but the rest of the supporting cast (like Olivier and Tita) are all great. Kevin is incredible as well, but that mostly comes from the 3rd.
Cold Steel's cast suffers immensely from being way, way too big. Sky and Crossbell have fairly small casts so everyone gets their time to shine (plus in Sky, characters get rotated in and out so the game can focus on a few at a time). In Cold Steel everyone gets introduced right at the start and in every game after the first, every single party member you have feels the need to chime in on every single conversation even when they've got nothing interesting to add, just to make you remember they're even there. Over the course of all three Sky games there's about 16 playable characters - by the end of Cold Steel 4 you've got nearly FOURTY. And over half of their arcs were essentially already concluded in CS1 and 2 so they've got barely any reason to be there.
The plot also gets way too convoluted and out there by the third and fourth games, I personally was incredibly glad it was over just so we could hopefully move on to a better arc (and from the sound of it, Kuro is much better).
What I will gladly say is that the combat in CS feels the best of all arcs (even if it's incredibly easy to break to pieces with overpowered moves), and it has some of the best random town NPCs to talk to. But most of its important story characters are incredibly one note and pale in comparison to those in Sky and Crossbell. Rean himself is such an incredibly Marty Stu-esque character, it gets really tiresome.
Greatly enjoyed ToCS 1-4. Been looking forward to this, and really pleased to see that the reviews are so positive. I’m probably going to play through the Sky games first though. I was disappointed when playing ToCS 3 and 4 about just how much I was missing out because I hadn’t played the earlier (pre-ToCS) games.
Need to finish XC3 first though!
Decided to buy this one, and that of course lead me on just preordering the rest and thinking about buying the Trials of Cold Steel but... is there even a chance that we might get Cold Steel 1 and 2 on switch? ever?
Regarding review scores, subtractive game criticism assumes that all games are created equal and then you subtract points from some theoretical concept of perfection. Which is, of course, a superbly flawed system. I would rather hear a reviewer's feelings than a forced approximation of a robot.
@Tharsman I was actually just looking into this myself. It seems like such a great series but apparently, you need to start from the start to truly enjoy it.
That said, unfortunately it seems like the 1st two titles are not going to be ported to Switch...but who knows, maybe in the future...
Would be way more interested in an Ys VI remaster, personally. Never got into the Trails series.
@wanghosom It's not gatekeeping. This series is the closest that the JRPG genre has to a Marvel Cinematic Universe. You can certainly play different games in the series in a bubble and comprehend what's going on just fine, but the impact of certain plot events won't be felt as fully if you haven't experienced certain things firsthand.
Azure is my favorite Trails game so looking forward to everyone finally getting to play that next year.
@Bizzyb
I don't understand why they haven't been. I bought a PS Vita last year just so I could play them.
I hopped into Trails of Cold Steel III as my first game, read the story recap in the menu, and loved it so much I went back and started playing the first Trails of Cold Steel on PC.
Ordered the collector edition for this.
@DrewBA77 I mean, even as someone who's overall enjoyed the MCU, I'd admit there are plenty of easily skippable Marvel films (arguably, a majority of Phase 1 and 2 aren't strictly needed, and a newcomer should probably avoid a couple of them...)
@Impoh Well, it does beat the alternative of sites like "eye gee in", that take a person who has never liked a genre and have them review a game. My guess, based solely on some characteristic that has nothing to do with games, at all. True story.
PH3, the dev porting the Steam version, also did the Switch release. They did a couple developer update posts on Steam it's worth checking out to see all the changes from the previous PS4 Kai release.
Here's a question - any ideas why the UK e-shop still won't let me pre-order it, please? I'm off on a lads holiday whereby a lot of people will be sleeping off hangovers and I will need entertainment. Hoped I could pre-load it in advance, but not to be thus far.
@scyjro I'm hoping PH3 get to work on more switch ports in the future.
Though I'm also curious what team will be porting the upcoming Reverie.
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