First released for PlayStation Portable in 2010, The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero is coming to Nintendo Switch next week. If you’ve played The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III and IV, Trails from Zero does a great job filling in some of those story gaps. If you’ve never played the Legend of Heroes game, it’s a great place to start.
Mind you, it’s not number one where to start, and it won’t fill all of those story gaps. It is a big series that will appear only now for Nintendo fans in Europe and the United States. But Trails From Zero, unlike the Switch owner’s Trails of Cold Steel, which kicked off his 3rd game, is at least the starting point of his own story and arc.
Characters familiar to series fans. The story centers on Lloyd Bannings, who has returned to his hometown of Crossbell. He was assigned to the Special Support Section (SSS), a new division of the City Police Department created to compete with the more effective (and more popular) Bracer Guild.
Lloyd will be joined by other familiar characters from the series: Ellie McDowell, Randy Orlando and Tio Plato. Each character brings his own POV and weapon set to the game, even if the personality traits are already a little too familiar. Lloyd has a heart of gold, Randy is perpetually horny, Ellie is uptight but vulnerable, and Tio wants to stop being treated like a child. They’re a fun group to adventure with, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s ever played a game of Legend of Heroes.
Gameplay doesn’t change much. Remember, we are stepping back here. As such, you’ll lose some of Trails of Cold Steel’s functionality, both in the combat system and inventory management. For example, there are no breakpoints in combat. You still manage a mixture of physical attacks (immediate use) and gifted arts (delayed), and can occasionally use team attacks that see all four characters swoop in and deal massive damage at once. , develop quartz abilities and assign them to characters to enhance their abilities, compensate for their shortcomings, or exploit their enemies’ weaknesses. Those who are overwhelmed by ugly party/ability management should feel more comfortable here.
Gameplay is a familiar loop. Our heroes travel from town to town, taking on quests and eventually encountering a greater conspiracy that can seriously harm the good citizens of Crossbell. It’s big and has plenty of things to do and items to collect. This is where the game slows down as you explore the town, meet people, pick up various items needed to complete your tasks, and aim for 100% completion. Trails From Zero makes it so easy to miss an item that I can’t imagine it being possible without a walkthrough.
Most of the fighting takes place between towns. The first move from location A to location B is always on foot, and there are many monsters to fight along the way. Of course, you’ll need to do this to level up your characters for the bigger battles to come, but the battles are fun. need to do it. Positioning is also important, but moving around on the grid-based battlefield makes it impossible to attack. However, the next turn will be earlier in the timeline.
Standard enemy fights are usually simple enough (numbers can be an issue), but boss fights can be time consuming. Party optimization and (hopefully) accumulated crafting points (for signatures and the most powerful attacks) will be important in these battles. Provides an option to retry on a simpler level.
This loop is greatly aided by the constant change of scenery. Each location has the same basic feel, but there are always new characters to fight and partner with. With each new location, you can learn about and defeat different beasts. Some side quests require you to spend a little time in specific locations, but the more interesting missions are always a few job requests ahead.
But what impressed me most about The Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki is how great the game is at 12 years old. It clearly doesn’t have the visual flair of recent games in the series, but its detailed and colorful sprites make for a fun world to dive into, certainly better looking than any of his 3DS ports we’ve seen in this era. increase.
And given that the game was originally released for the PSP, it’s a perfect fit for the handheld mode Switch. The UI is easy to read and the animations and battle sequences work really well.
I also enjoyed the familiarity of the game. Even with early-gen graphics and simplified combat and inventory management, Trails From Zero felt pretty much like the recent Legend of Heroes games I’ve played, down to the overall tone. It’s not as rowdy as the Trails of Cold Steel games, but there are fewer public bath scenes and innuendos, but you can tell the series was headed in that direction.
No matter what you expect or want to avoid in a JRPG, The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero is a very good game. It’s the perfect size for the Nintendo Switch and provided us with a complex yet light adventure that serves as a perfect drop-off from the epic scale of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which we completed just before we started. Legends is quickly becoming one of my favorite franchises, and I’m very much looking forward to the sequel to the Crossbell arc, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Azure, coming to Switch next year.
