The Legend Of Heroes: Trails From Zero is getting a fancy English PC port 12 years later

The Legend Of Heroes: Trails From Zero is heading to PC with an English language release, 12 years after its initial launch. The port is being helmed by Peter “Durante” Thoman – known for JRPG ports and Dark Souls fixes, mainly – and a new developer blog post goes into detail about the ways in which Trails From Zero is being modernised.

This is called a “story trailer”, but I had to watch it three times because the music and disconnected imagery kept prompting me to slip into a pure vibe state. All I had were disconnected thoughts: that’s a big train; the little people are always walking; why is that girl underwater; am I spinning around inside the… cyberverse?

What I think the trailer is trying to communicate is: in Trails From Zero you, Lloyd Bannings, return to your bustling home city of Crossbell and join the police department, where you are assigned to the Special Support Section to handle oddjobs. You quickly discover there’s more crime and corruption within the city than you realised, and you have to work together with your pals Elie MacDoweell, Randy Oralndo and Tio Plato to put an end to it. What great names.

I haven’t played any of the The Legend of Heroes games or its Trails subseries, though there’s a billion of ’em. Trails From Zero was first released in 2010 for PSP in Japan, though a fan-created English translation didn’t appear for ten years. Shortly thereafter, the creators of that fan translation agreed to work with publishers NIS America on this official release.

The PC port is getting better-than-average attention too, if a recent Steam post by developers PH3 is any indication. The PC release will include support for different aspect ratios, a flexible UI, full mouse support, a message log, improved draw distance, high frames-per-second support, and anti-aliasing. The post goes into details about these features, and also the previous modern console ports and modders who implemented them first. PH3 have handed the PC ports for previous Trails games, including the modern Trails Of Cold Steel IV in 2020.

The Legend Of Heroes: Tails From Zero will launch on PC via Steam on September 27th.