Paths of Zero (opens in new tab) begins near the end, taking players straight into an exciting in media res segment without any warning or explanation. The main cast is all there: the only problem is that no one playing will know who these people are, where they are or what they should be doing. Among all the mentions of unvisited places and references to events that have not yet been seen, anyone who picks up Trails from Zero will be able to see at best that the four party members are close friends who are willing to dive into dangerous and unfamiliar places for each other’s interests. It seems that everything ahead is certainly as awe-inspiring as it is deadly.
And then protagonist Lloyd wakes up on the train to Crossbell City, with no idea what that weird dream he just had was about.
This opening is beloved JRPG developer Falcom at the height of his power, completely comfortable with his setting, story style and the tools he used to create this story…over a decade ago. There’s no point in denying it – the English side of the internet is now made up of several Trails of Cold Steels (opens in new tab) too late to experience Zero in his intended slot in the increasingly complex Trails series. While those more recent RPGs were released in English between 2017 and 2021, it took 12 years for Trails from Zero to finally be localized.
Fortunately, this delay does not matter.
Not understanding exactly what is going on in Trails from Zero means that the player is in exactly the same boat as his main character. This shocking intro is a sign – even a gift – from Falcom himself: Zero may not be a completely clean escape from the famously dense Trails in the Sky games (opens in new tab) that preceded it (or the Cold Steel games that came after it), but the focus of this game is Lloyd Bannings, his friends and family, and the small city-state of Crossbell. In a series that is often sprawling, this one really is focused. There are references to past events, and plot threads started here may stretch into the future, but Zero is primarily written as Zero. It’s an interesting story in itself.
The tight-knit cast of four is quickly thrown together and from then on, each interaction adds depth to their personal relationships. The series’ uniquely unhurried pace allows plenty of time for lengthy conversations filled with Trails’ unique terminology, and quiet chats that seem to exist at this point purely to showcase just how well-developed Zero’s cast is. These are characters who are more than strong enough to stand on their own merits – none of them feel like they exist to fill a trope.
It’s not just imitations of past Trails heroes, either. Your party is not Bracers, the ever-present group of handymen from the Sky trilogy available for hire. They are Special Support Police officers – and more importantly: they don’t want to be bracers, which was the dream of the first protagonist of the Trails series. Zero still includes old organizations and some of the people who work for them, but it never wallows blindly in navel-gazing nostalgia for its past heroes, and it never portrays Crossbell or the people who live in it as anything less than the most important part of their business. own story.
This commitment to feeling fresh extends to the city itself. It is a place of shiny department stores and dark alleys, of obscene wealth and abject poverty, a place where mobile phones and magic can coexist peacefully. Crossbell City is a character unto itself, an endlessly fascinating location with its own rich web of intrigue where multiple less-than-hearty factions work for their own interests and conspire to bring down their enemies, all at the cost of the peaceful lives of ordinary people. citizens.
It’s almost impossible not to love the city as much as the people who live in it when you play Zero – this is a place that fondly reminds me of his bus stops, for God sake. When a few chapters send the party further afield, back to Crossbell really does feel like coming home.
Despite this onslaught of novelty, much of Zero’s core gameplay will still feel very familiar to anyone who has played a Falcom RPG. Falcom’s ability to create a soundtrack that is guaranteed to make everyone’s heart pound with excitement is still there and correct. The combat system builds on the already beautiful turn-based grid that preceded it without rushing to “fix” anything that wasn’t broken. The materia-like Orbment system is another welcome return, giving your team’s spells some flexibility without turning everyone’s skill lists into copies of each other. But having previous experience with any of these features or knowing how they’ve been subtly enhanced is not required.
Zero never assumes that his players just wrapped up a Trails in the Sky trilogy marathon. Total newcomers are always part of the conversation, supported by accessible tutorials and stacks of explanatory text that guide players through key features as they’re introduced.
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There’s no escaping the fact that the Trails series is an intimidating jumble of interconnected mini-arches with the oddly confusing one-off just thrown in for good measure (like the upcoming The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails). Each game seems to take longer than the last to clear – even the world’s most devoted Falcom fan would still have about 15 40-hour weeks to play them all, from Trails in the Sky to the end of the currently untranslated Kuro no Kiseki 2. With that length comes the understandable fear of missing out on an important plot point, that some details aren’t appreciated if you don’t start at the very beginning and then patiently work your way through everything in a strict order.
But I’m here to tell you that you really, really don’t have to. And so is Trails from Zero.
The message Falcom sends with Zero is this: don’t worry about how many games there are, or where Calvard is in relation to Erebonia, or what mysterious individual is planting what in the shadows. This carefully crafted world is big enough for more than one story, for more than one thing that matters. Old faces may meet new ones, and the dramatic events in one region may eventually have an impact on another, but there is more than enough text in this series for everyone to have their own story. It’s okay to jump in at the beginning of an arc and enjoy the story being told there, isolated from the rest.
This is the often unsung strength of the Trails series: being willing to meaningfully move on from the past, allowing new faces and even whole new lands to evolve into places with more depth than most RPGs ever have. dare to propose, let it be realized. This is as true for Zero as it is for any other game in the series: the past and future are both very important, but they never matter as much as the present.
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