The Legends of Heroes series may perhaps be among the most underrated JRPG franchises in Western gaming at the moment. That has changed somewhat with the Trails of Cold Steel games, but those games miss some crucial context. Not all the Legends of Heroes games were properly brought to the West, and because of that, there are parts of Cold Steel that may confuse an uninitiated player. Up until now, the two games comprising the Crossbell arc were never ported—Trails From Zero and its sequel, Trails to Azure. Without those games, it becomes more difficult to understand the larger conflict surrounding the city-state of Crossbell and major characters like the Special Support Section that appear in Cold Steel. Falcom has built a deeply layered and textured world with Zemuria, but the continuity in those games is also complex and interconnected, and so the loss of these games misses a crucial piece of the puzzle.
Fortunately, it is now possible to play Trails From Zero in the West, as it has finally been ported to PC and modern consoles. Though Falcom produces some amazing JRPGs, NIS America has somewhat of a mixed record when it comes to translations of unreleased Falcom content. On the one hand, NIS America recently cracked down on fan translations of Kuro No Kiseki, a game that is not likely to come out in English within at least three years and is currently available on PC in untranslated form. But in the case of Trails From Zero, NIS America took a much better approach; they brought in fan translators from the Geofront team that had previously done translation work on the game. This translation work by Geofront made it possible for these games to finally be ported to the West, finally completing the Crossbell story for Western Trails fans.
The story of Trails From Zero is popular among Trails fans who have played it, and upon experiencing it for myself, I fully understand that position. The story centers around Lloyd Bannings, a recently graduated Crossbell detective who joined the police force following the mysterious death of his brother Guy. Lloyd is assigned to a new division within the Crossbell Police Department called the Special Support Section, which was created to compete with the more popular Bracer Guild. Assisting Lloyd on his cases include Elie MacDowell, the granddaughter of the city’s mayor, Tio Plato, a young researcher from the country of Leman State, and Randy Orlando, a ladies’ man with a complicated past. The game wisely maintains its focus on these main four characters, as well as on the setting of Crossbell itself. Because it doesn’t introduce any unnecessary or extraneous characters, you get to know each of the SSS members, and all of them are enjoyable characters to spend time with. The group is additionally well balanced in terms of personalities and abilities, and the game gives you plenty of room to customize them to your liking. Also, the game does an excellent job of blending mystery, fantasy, and SF elements to create an entertaining story. The translation does well at conveying the characters appropriately and maintaining consistency with the English version of Cold Steel.
Mechanically, you shouldn’t be too out of place if you’ve played either the Cold Steel or Sky games. Trails From Zero serves as the missing link between the two series and the gameplay will feel recognizable if you’re familiar with either of them. If you’re coming in as a new player, the tutorials give you enough of a grounding with the system that you shouldn’t be lost. The new translations make the combat easy to understand, and they keep names of weapons and items consistent with the Cold Steel series, which helps for fans of those games. The combat itself is turn-based, and like the Sky games, your characters are arranged on a grid. But like Cold Steel, you get advantages for sneak attacks (a tactic that you should be using constantly in this game for best results), including team rush attacks. It’s an exploitable system depending on your skill in getting sneak attacks on enemies in the field, because benefits like delaying enemies, critical hits for several turns, and a high chance of a Team Rush make battles in Zero much easier. Additionally, the game gives you a variety of abilities to work with, including Arts (the Trails version of magic), Crafts (special character-specific attacks), Combo Crafts (allowing Lloyd and one other character to perform a special attack) and S-Crafts (ultimate moves that expend all a character’s CP). This is a game where positioning requires careful thought, however, so it does reward good strategy in positioning your heroes and in planning your strikes. Overall, this is a game that is versatile and generally not too difficult to learn, especially if you’re an experienced Trails player.
While the game itself is excellent and Zero is perhaps among Falcom’s best games, there are some drawbacks here and there. The port is well made on many levels, especially on the graphical front, which is extremely sharp and polished. However, it’s unfortunate that the same isn’t true of the voice acting, which utilizes the Japanese voice actors but none of the English ones. This is regrettable, because given the amount of time it took to make this game, effort could have been made to bring in the English voices for the same characters that were used in Cold Steel, especially Robbie Daymond as Lloyd. This is a missed opportunity that could have made an already enjoyable game that much better. Additionally, one aspect of the magic system is not sufficiently explained, and that is the way that the Quartz system grants Arts. It’s never clearly explained that equipping a high elemental value of each type of quartz gives each character high-level spells without resorting to a guide. This is especially an issue because one notable sidequest requires you to equip a specific high-level spell to complete the mission, and the game gives no clues about how to do this. In the end, though, these are minor blemishes in an otherwise excellent port.
If you happen to be a Trails fan who has been waiting to play the Crossbell arc, Trails From Zero will not disappoint. This game will fill in many necessary blanks and address questions that the other games only hint at. On the other hand, it’s also a good entry point into the Legends of Heroes series if you’re a new player. The gameplay is older than what modern players may be used to, but it’s not insurmountable, and the story gives you generally what you need to know to understand what’s happening. Moreover, Crossbell is a fascinating setting, and this game gives a deeper look at that location than any of the later games that are set there. I’m looking forward to seeing what Trails to Azure has to offer and finally reaching the conclusion of this very promising epic tale.
Score: 4.5/5
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Falcom/NIS America