The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero Review – Top Tier Gaming

Anyone who has been in The Legend of Heroes space has heard of the game Trails from Zero. It introduces our main team from Crossbell that we see in the Trails of Cold Steel III and IV games. It has never reached the west before, and some were doubting it would ever make it outside Japan. This has resulted in a lot of work being done to create English patches for the Trails from Zero. One of the teams working and finalizing it was known as Geofront. This team created a successful patcher that would replace the Japanese text with English text. A year after they released it we got word from NIS America that Trails from Zero was going to arrive in the West, with the help of the people who worked on Geofront.

Game Name: Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero
Platform(s): PS4, PC(Reviewed), Nintendo Switch
Publisher(s): NIS America
Developer(s): Nihon Falcom
Release Date: September 27th, 2022
Price: $49.99

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero is an absolute masterpiece of JRPG narratives. I will say that this game is mostly a starting point in understanding the Crossbell region of The Legend of Heroes series, but it also serves as a way to tie up some loose ends from the Trails in the Sky series. If you haven’t played those games, certain characters and plot events won’t make as much sense as they should. With that said, it isn’t necessary to understand the journey of the four main characters in Trails from Zero. This game is focused on developing and understanding the characters of Lloyd Bannings, Elie MacDowell, Tio Plato, and Randy Orlando.

Beginning from Zero 

I can’t explain everything in the gameplay of Trails from Zero without giving some context to the story. You play as Lloyd Bannings and the rest of the officers in the Special Support Section. The Special Support Section is created from the Crossbell Police Department to get some more positive publicity for the Police Department in general. Currently, the Bracers guild is the go-to for everything in the region of Crossbell and it makes things difficult for the Police Department to get a lot of information for some of their cases as well as the support of the city itself. Lloyd is hired on as the leader for the Special Support Section and it is up to him and the rest of the cast to help the town with some of their issues in a more authorized way than the Bracers guild can provide.

You spend the game getting requests from people all over town. The requests range from Killing monsters to finding overdue library books. You get to experience understanding moving throughout the city and trying to navigate the layout of the Crossbell itself. Throughout Trails from Zero you also get to go to regions outside the main city to finish these requests. Every day you get a set amount quests. Usually, one is required to further the story with a bunch of others that are side quests to gain experience or items. You can also find hidden side quests as you talk to NPCs throughout the city.

Combat is very unique to turn-based JRPGs but familiar to those who have played any of the other entries of The Legend of Heroes series. You can gain an advantage by attacking enemies in the open field, which then takes you to a battle screen. In battle, you have multiple bars to pay attention to. You have an HP bar that monitors your health, MP that manages your magic points, and CP, which manages Craft Points. HP and MP is pretty standard. If you have a character go down to 0 HP, they are unconscious until you can revive them with an item or an Art. Arts cost MP to cast and can deal damage, apply buffs or debuffs, and can heal characters. Craft Points, however are different. When you attack characters or get dealt damage back, you increase your CP meter. You can do special moves or Crafts that cost Craft Points. These can heal, deal damage, or even deal damage and apply debuffs to enemies. The variety of these is unique to each individual character.

The arts you have access to is based on your characters’ Enigma where you can place what is known as a Quarts into. These Quarts give you Arts, or passive buffs to your character. If you have certain combinations of colors of Quarts you can gain access to special Arts. These special Arts have some extra effects like being able to hide yourself from enemies mid battle. In battle you have the option to move to a different location in the battle field, which helps during boss fights when they are about to do giant attacks. You can also use items, or attempt to run. You usually have a percentage of success when you run from enemies during battle. This percentage goes higher with each attempt unless you are at a serious disadvantage in the fight or it is a fight you can not run from. I love the spatial awareness in fights, however. You can see it in a sort of grid-like design when you select your character and see the entirety of their movement and attack range. Characters with guns will usually have less movement but more range. Characters with melee weapons have a high speed with low range. It is important to see which enemies you can attack at which location the character is at.

Special Support Section

If you have taken a look at any of the screenshots of The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and was immediately turned off by the art style, then I can’t really say you would like how it looks. This is a unique 3D sprite pixel art style with chi-bi-like characters as the main device of the art. I personally think it is a very charming style that adds a modern layer to the SNES JRPGS of sprites with 3D backgrounds and animations. It honestly looks really good, and the fighting animations and battle scenes are fantastic.

Bracers 

Every song and musical backdrop, Trails from Zero, is honestly a peak of sound design. Everything in this game makes you feel the mood of the situation you are in. I literally just let myself stay on the Title screen some days with how I just love how it sounds. It is such a unique and engaging type of music that Trails from Zero has in store for you. This is definitely a game you want the soundtrack for.

Crossbell

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero top to bottom is a meticulous masterpiece and deserves your attention. The sound design, the story, and the characters are all written and orchestrated extremely well. The only sad thing about this whole experience for me was the performance in the PC version that I played. There would be frame stutters that happened in areas that had a lot of characters roaming around, whether enemies or NPCs who would move around. Sadly this is in a lot of places since Crossbell is a pretty big city. It makes having something that goes 144 fps to then a jarring 100 fps to then go back up to that same amount. Oh yeah, did I mention that they put a frame limit of 144 fps? They did, and it is amazing that they did! It is so much more responsive that way.

Though playing with a set of 60fps might be the best way to experience it since it doesn’t have as much issue as trying to do the 144 fps setting. It might be just my PC, but with an RTX 3060 Graphics card that has 12GB of VRAM, I doubt that is the case. I can play games like Overwatch, and Borderlands at a solid 200fps if I really want to go overboard with my refresh rate settings. Sadly I can’t have this one stay at the 144 fps route, but I am still really happy that we have that option and it makes the turbo mode super fast.

Overall the PC and Nintendo Switch versions have a lot of updated sprite work and performance work that, for the most part, pays off. I may have a few performance hiccups, but I firmly believe that they can probably be patched up. This game is a must-play, but so is the entirety of the Trails in the Sky series, and the Trails of Cold Steel series, so that doesn’t surprise me. I am hoping that Trails to Azure is just as good!

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero will be released on September 27th, 2022, on PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Note that the PS4 version was reported to not have the enhanced sprite and performance work.

 

Review Disclosure Statement: The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero was provided to us by NIS America for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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