NIS America today announced localizations for four games in Nihon Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes series, and it is turning to a dedicated group of fans to officially bring a couple of these titles to the U.S. for the first time.
You may have heard of the Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel subseries. Well, there are two games that released between them in Japan, together known as the Crossbell duology. Trails from Zero first came out for the PSP in 2010. Trails to Azure followed in 2011. Frustrated fans came together as a group called The Geofront and created their own translations for this duology. Now NIS America is using their work as the basis for the official localizations.
“Each and every member of our team is thrilled about this opportunity because it’s the culmination of our driving motivation: To ensure Crossbell gets the localizations it deserves so that people can experience these engaging, touching, wonderful games,” Geofront notes on its site. As part of this move, it has removed its fan patches from the site, encouraging people to support the official releases instead.
The localization for Trails from Zero is coming out in fall 2022, with Trails to Azure following in 2023. NIS America is also bringing the franchise’s latest entry, 2020’s Trails into Reverie, to the U.S. in 2023, along with the 2012 action-RPG The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails. All four games will be available on Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC.
The Legend of Heroes games are famous for their large amounts of dialogue and text, which makes localizing them a gargantuan task. Even if it is going to be a bit of a wait, it’s exciting news for JRPG fans to know that these titles are coming, and it’s cool to see the work of dedicated fans recognized like this.