The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure have finally landed on the Switch 2 this week. These ports bring a host of upgrades (and, unfortunately, no upgrade path).
We’ve already covered the Crossbell duology extensively with our original reviews (and I highly suggest checking them out). This article looks at the state of the Switch 2 ports and the lack of an upgrade path.
The Legend Of Heroes: Trails From Zero & The Legend Of Heroes: Trails To Azure Arrives on Switch 2 and PlayStation 5
What you do get is upscaled textures, 4 K resolution, and 120 FPS. The two games are sold separately as digital downloads or together as a physical package. The Switch 2 versions support a mouse if you want to use it.
These are two of the best entries in the Trails saga, focusing on the Special Support Section (SSS) in the small city-state of Crossbell, an area besieged by war and strife. Zero is a fantastic entry point to the franchise, and its sequel, Azure, is one of the best JRPGs ever. Both finally made their way to the West in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and are now getting upgraded for the current generation.
In Trails from Zero, you play as Lloyd Bannings, who returns home to work at the Crossbell Police Department. However, he’s assigned to the Special Support Section, a new division created to handle odd jobs and requests. There, he meets Elie MacDowell, the granddaughter of the city’s mayor; Randy Orlando, a womanizing ex-soldier; and Tio Plato, a young tech genius.
The Crossbell Duology Is One Of The Series’ Best
Trails to Azure picks up months later, after a temporary peace keeps Crossbell safe, and the Special Support Section squad are local heroes. However, things quickly devolve as tensions grow between the Erebonian Empire and the Republic of Calvard.
Both games finally share content parity too, a problem the PlayStation 4 version faced. At the time, the PS4 port was an upscaled version of the Vita port, while the Switch and PC versions had better translation and graphics. It was considered an inferior duology, using the original Japanese release with no enhancements. If you played it, you could see how dated it looked with pixelated character models and CG scenes.
Thankfully, all of these issues disappear if you go the PlayStation route. On Switch 2, it’s got some improvements, as I mentioned earlier, like updated resolution, framerate, and mouse controls. Using the mouse is interesting, but I don’t see the use case for it. Thankfully, the game controls well otherwise, so it feels a bit gimmicky. You’ve also got high-speed mode, which comes in clutch for text-heavy games like the Crossbell duology.
I touched on the upgrade path before, but again, Nintendo Switch 2 upgrades are a touchy subject. Some developers simply don’t offer them, while others throw them at their customers. Whether it’s a technical decision or a monetary one remains to be seen, but no matter how you spin it, what bugs me is losing save files you can’t transfer. In some cases, I’ve triple-dipped on games, but in those instances I couldn’t bring forward my 100+ hour save file.
That alone makes it harder to want to spend my money when I can’t transfer a file I’ve put a lot of work into. If there’s anything I can say with this review, I hope NIS America (and other developers) stop gatekeeping their Switch 2 upgrades.
Verdict
Both The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure are both excellent games that greatly expand the Zemurian continent.
