The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is a direct sequel to Trails from Zero and continues Lloyd’s tale in a brand new adventure involving the Special Support Section. The original The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure was never localised and released in the West and kudos have to be given to Nihon Falcom, PH3 GmbH and NIS America for finally bringing this over and releasing it here with a full translation.
The story kicks off with the Special Support Section investigating a mysterious cave. This just isn’t any mysterious cave though, it’s one that was directly involved with a lot of shady happenings in the original The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero.
Trails to Azure
Players will be taught the games mechanics here and will also be sucked into the story of The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure. If you haven’t played the first game, I’d highly suggest doing that before diving into this one. There is a recap which can be read through before starting the game but it doesn’t do the story justice. It’s better if you track down the original game and play through it in its entirety first before diving into The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure focuses heavily on the geopolitics of the world of Zemuria at large. Crossbell, being in its unique position has to contend with both the Erebonian Empire and the Republic of Calvard and their respective grievances.
The group of heroes that you’ll be in control of each have their own personalities and problems to deal with. Players will learn more about them throughout the game and the immense amount of lore and backstory explored here is quite a lot to soak up. If you’ve played The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, a lot of the information will be known to you but if you’ve decided to just skip out on that and dive into this title, you may feel a bit lost.
Gameplay in The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is similar to its predecessor with the addition of “Master Quartz” which enhances your characters with stat boosts and more. Also seeing as this game is a direct continuation of the story, it’s great to see that the high level attacks and skills from Trails from Zero are already available from the get go. S-Crafts and S-Breaks can be pulled off quite easily and combo crafts are available too. In fact the game lets you know all about this in the introductory battle sequences.
Being a turn-based game, The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is quite fast paced and this can be sped up even more since you can simply press a button to fast-forward gameplay. This is honestly an excellent quality of life feature since it means you can cut through weaker enemies in no time and explore the game world at a much faster pace.
Given the sheer amount of content present in the game, the fast-forward feature really helps with getting through the more tedious aspects such as grinding out Sepiths (Gems that are used in-game) or traversing an area when looking for treasure chests or specific objectives. As with its predecessor, this title also features a lot of mini-games throughout which will also captivate you.
The story of The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure will keep you entertained for upwards of 60 hours if not more. At the time of writing this review, I haven’t completed everything there is to offer in the game and there’s just so much content available here it’s great to see. The character interactions, the enemy designs, the writing and the music all work in tandem to make The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure another must-play Trails title.
Speaking of the music, the soundtrack featured in the game is excellent with each area’s theme being well-suited to them. The battle music is also extremely good and really gets you hyped up. The game unfortunately does not have an English dub but does feature prominent Japanese voice actors that have been around for ages working in the industry. As such, the voice acting is great but it would have been nice to hear an English dub too.
Graphically, The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure looks fantastic with the art style really helping the game to shine. The battle animations and flashy effects are ridiculously good and you’ll want to view the Team Rush and Craft attacks in full every time because of how beautiful they look in action.
Final Verdict
The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is a great sequel to The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. It builds upon the already established successes of the first game and expands upon everything a lot more. The character interactions, rich lore and very in-depth storytelling will keep you gripped and you’ll want to sink as many hours as possible into this game doing everything available. If you’re a newcomer to the franchise, dive into Trails from Zero first before picking this title up but rest assured that both games are excellent JRPGs and are definitely worth playing.
Grab your copy here https://thelegendofheroes.com/crossbell/azure/
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