The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero

Overview

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero (Zero no Kiseki in Japan) is the ninth entry in Nihon Falcom's storied Legend of Heroes role-playing franchise and the fourth title in the Trails sub-series. The game takes place in the same world as the Trails in the Sky games, with the events of this game taking place only a few months after Trails in the Sky the 3rd, but stars a new cast of police investigators working in the country of Crossbell. Falcom released Zero in Japan on September 30, 2010 for the PlayStation Portable and a direct sequel, called Trails to Azure, was later released in 2011 that concluded the Crossbell story arc.

A PC port of Zero would eventually be released in 2013 by Falcom and an upgraded port featuring full voice acting was also published in 2012 for the PlayStation Vita by Kadokawa Games, titled Zero no Kiseki Evolution. Years later, an enhanced edition of Zero was released by Falcom in 2020 for the PlayStation 4 called Zero no Kiseki Kai which contained remastered visuals, additional story elements and some of the voice acting featured in the Evolution version. NIS America later announced that the Kai version of Zero would receive an English release in 2022 along with Azure in 2023 for the PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC.

English Release History

During the 2010s, the Trails franchise was being localized by XSEED Games as part of a partnership with Nihon Falcom. As they were preparing to release Trails in the Sky SC in 2015, XSEED also announced that they would be jumping ahead in the series to translate the first two Cold Steel games. Brittany Avery, XSEED Production Coordinator at the time, explained in a blog post that translating the games preceding Cold Steel, specifically the Crossbell duology, was not financially viable [1]. The reason was that the PSP would be an exceedingly old platform by the time they finished translating both games, with even XSEED's 2015 PSP release of Trails in the Sky SC being a "labor of love, not profit" [1]. In fact, Nihon Falcom themselves were the ones that approached XSEED with the idea of translating the Cold Steel games first since the duologies were designed to be played in either order [1]. However, Avery did suggest at the time that the Crossbell games could eventually see a release in the US on the PC if the Trails series continued to be profitable [1].

In the meantime, a group of fans on the GBAtemp forums began their own project to unofficially translate the PSP and PC versions of Zero no Kiseki in 2014 [2]. However, due to various circumstances, progress on the effort was halted and the project's leader left the group in 2016. Later that same year, other fans in the Falcom community announced that they would be taking over the project and eventually formed a group called The Geofront [3][4]. The team used the previous group's script as the basis for their project but planed to polish and edit the text to be of professional quality. Not long after, a beta version of the original group's incomplete PSP translation was leaked online in 2017 [5][6]. The beta version was rough, unpolished and contained many technical problems but remained the only avenue for fans to experience Zero no Kiseki for many years and its script was eventually ported to the PC version of the game.

Meanwhile, the lead translator and programmer for Zero's old translation, Guren and Flame, began another project to translate the PSP version of Ao no Kiseki. Similar to Zero, Ao's translation was also leaked when Version 10 of the team's patch (which was created on February 18, 2018) was posted on Rom Hacking Dot Net in July 2018 without the team's consent under Guren's name [7][8]. The patch later received an update to Version 15 in August by Flame who did an editing pass on the game's script [8]. Back at Geofront, the team continued working on their translation patch for the PC version of Zero until it was finally released in March 2020 under the name "Trails from Zero" [9]. The following year, Geofront also released a polished version of Guren and Flame's translation of Ao no Kiseki under the name "Trails to Azure" in May 2021 [10].

While all this was going on, the partnership between XSEED Games and Nihon Falcom had ended. Starting with their release of Ys VIII in 2017, NIS America became Falcom's new English localization partner and the company took over the reins of the Trails series in 2019 with the release of Cold Steel III. Hours before its announcement on June 24, 2021, news that NISA would be localizing the Kai versions of the Crossbell duology was leaked by the Epic Games Store [13]. Later the news was confirm during Falcom's 40th Anniversary live-stream and it was revealed that NISA would be teaming up with Geofront to officially release Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure in 2022 and 2023 [11][14]. The work done by the Geofront team would be used as the basis for the official localizations and the team would even be helping to translate the new content featured in the Kai versions [12].

References

1. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Series – Localization Blog #1 by Brittany (XSEED Games, 2015).
2. Legend of Heroes Translation (GBAtemp, 2014).
3. I'm taking over that Zero fan translation of yours (Hero of Legend, 2016).
4. Welcome to the Geofront! by Omgfloofy (Geofront, 2017).
5. Boy, Isn’t Being Misrepresented Great? Setting out the Facts by Omgfloofy (Geofront, 2017).
6. (BETA) Zero no Kiseki English Patched?! (GBAtemp, 2017).
7. Game Translation Projects (Guren no heya kara, 2018) - Guren mentions how the Ao no Keseki patch was leaked in the comments (July 7, 2018 at 9:30 AM).
8. Eiyuu Densetsu: Ao no Kiseki (Rom Hacking Dot Net).
9. Trails from Zero Out Now! by Omgfloofy (Geofront, 2020).
10. Trails to Azure Out Now! by Scott (Geofront, 2021).
11. From Fantasy to Reality: Our Partnership With NIS America by Supremezerker (Geofront, 2021).
12. Tweet about Geofront also working on Kai's New Story Content (@KillScottKill, 2021)
13. Epic Games Store leaks The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, Trails to Azure, Trails into Reverie, and The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails for the west (Gematsu, 2021).
14. Nihon Falcom 40th Anniversary - Concert Video (06.24.2021) (NIS America, 2021).