Trails games

Some RPGs are lesser known in the gaming world, but you still find many who recognize them by name. And then there are RPGs that fly under the radar and live in obscurity within their small niche of fans, waiting for that one breakout game to launch them into stardom.

But I am not here to tell you the story of those games; I am here to tell you about an RPG series many have been missing out on since , and of course, I am talking about the Trails series. Now I love to talk about Trails as much as the next fan of the series, but I realize it may be easier if we have something down in writing so that people can refer back to it. So in this article, I will go over the origins of the series, why you might want to play it, and then give you an idea of what order to play the games in.

It was meant to piggyback on the semi-success of the previous Legend of Heroes games that Falcom had developed, while also starting something fresh and new that would later take on a life of its own and span eleven games and counting.

For the record, the previous Legend of Heroes games before Trails in the Sky have no plot or character connection to the current games and thus can be safely ignored if you want to play this series.

However, the game would not hit the Western market until as the other big issue with localizing Trails in the Sky was the massive amount of text that needed to be translated. It is a monster of a game in terms of text as there is a ton of story dialogue and almost all NPCs have different things to say as the story progresses.

By , however, the fifth game in the series was already being released in Japan and the West was way behind on the series. Plenty of RPGs took many years to get over to the West and skipped games in the series! Yes, you read that correctly. Every game in the series takes place one right after the other in a connected timeline, with certain games overlapping and happening at the same time.

Some games end on huge cliffhangers that can leave players practically pulling their hair out to find out what happens next. Some games end on huge cliffhangers and the next game picks up the next day or maybe a month or two later.

So far, the games all take place within four years of each other on the continent of Zemuria. To make it easier to follow, the series is separated into four distinct arcs, which I will now briefly explain. These are the first games in the series and follow the adventures of Estelle and Joshua Bright as they travel the country of Liberl while pursuing their dream of becoming Bracers basically adventurers that do odd jobs for people.

As they go from town to town, they predictably get caught up in the issues that plague the country and the impending crisis that is about to befall it. It may have taken a while, but fans in the West will soon be able to get over the barrier that has long kept them from playing these games. Cold Steel I and II take place concurrently with the Crossbell games but are instead set in the neighboring country of Erebonia.

Cold Steel III and IV take place roughly a year and a half after the events of Cold Steel II and still follow the life of Rean Schwarzer, this time not as a student of Thors, but as an instructor with his own class to guide through the turmoil within the Erebonian empire.

Set to release sometime in after the Crossbell games get localized, this will be the latest game in the series to head West. Without spoiling things, Trails into Reverie , much like Trails in the Sky the 3rd, is a transitional game that ties up a lot of loose ends that both the Crossbell and Cold Steel arcs left hanging.

Kuro no Kiseki is the latest game in the series that is soon to be released in Japan, and it is the first game in a new arc set in the Calvard Republic. With the outbreak of Civil War in Erebonia, Rean and the rest of Class VII now have to find each other scattered across the country and figure out what their role in everything will be. Cold Steel II really doubles down on emotional storytelling, using the meticulous world-building the first game did to drive home some emotional gut punches.

There are some really smart systems at play here too, as a big part of the game has your roaming Erebonia to recruit scattered Thors students to your airship, the Courageous. This not only has a story purpose, but can also open up new shops or features aboard the airship.

Combat also gets some changes with the overdrive system that lets two characters get a boost of three turns immediately during battle. There are also Divine Knight Battles that play out as giant mech fights, with some unique mechanics. Much like Trails of Cold Steel II, Trails in the Sky SC simply improves on everything the first game did, and it easily has the best story out of the whole series, although admittedly it feels more like an extension of the first game rather than a whole new thing.

Picking up right after the end of the first game, SC sees Joshua striking out on his own to leave his life behind, and Estelle setting out after to him to drag him back, whether he wants to or not. While gameplay remains mostly the same there are a few enhancements, like Chain Attacks that let all four party members attack simultaneously. It can be quite a challenging game too, especially in the later stages. Trails in the Sky SC is the series at its very best, and evidence of why it has such enduring popularity.

Connect with us. Nayuta No Kiseki Trails of Nayuta. Trails in the Sky the 3rd. Trails of Cold Steel. With the release of Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky , the sixth Legend of Heroes game, the developer began their most ambitious work, and the series received renewed attention in the West.

These were followed by Trails Into Reverie , a game that serves as a conclusion to both the Crossbell and Erebonia Arcs, and features characters from both sub-series, which is planned for a U.

Though Trails of Cold Steel 4 provided a satisfying ending to the decade-long sub-series, its follow-up title Trails Into Reverie marks roughly the halfway point for Trails as a whole, according to the developers. From the first Trails of Cold Steel game, Erebonia is depicted as a complex nation, with internal power struggles between the nobles who wish to maintain the tradition and authority of their households, the imperial government, and progressive non-noble factions.

The nation is embroiled in civil war in the second Cold Steel title which offers hints at a darker conspiracy behind it all that unfolds in the following chapters.

Erebonia itself is already more richly developed than many other JRPG worlds as a whole and with Trails' other sub-series offering perspectives from Crossbell, Liberyl, and beyond, this makes the continent of Zemuria an impressively well fleshed-out fictional setting.

Nihon Falcom plans for decades more with the Trails series, as it intends to explore the eastern half of Zemuria further. Typically, a JRPG setting only requires enough development to provide context for the story at hand, which usually consists of a single game.

Events in the Crossbell Arc take place nearly concurrently with the Erebonian Arc of Trails , and Reverie promises to serve as a direct sequel and epilogue to both sub-series.