Review: The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero

I don’t know when it happened, but Falcom became at some point one of my favorite RPG studios. I can’t tell exactly when I put their output in the same thoughts as studios like Atlus, and Square-Enix, but it happened, and now here I am, just wanting to dive into the lore of Zemuria and the events that take place therein. Finally, another piece of the Trails puzzle comes to America, the first piece of the Crossbell Arc, The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. This game originally came out in Japan for the PSP in 2010, making it downright ancient, given how many titles we see coming out every week now in America. Remember the PSP? Depending on your age, you may not. In any case, was it worth it for Falcom to have this older title localized and sold in America?

2021 was a shitty year for sure, and I am not heading into 2022 with much confidence. However, while society falls apart, video games have been pretty great. That was a depressing, yet also probably trite sentence to write at the end of this year. While society continues to grapple with sickness on unprecedented scales, it becomes more the role of video games to make our lives feel more normal, more fun. In a year where I had only recently been to a movie theater, and where I don’t feel comfortable at things like bars, the stories and experiences we take in come increasingly through a screen at home. Whether that be a television, computer screen, tablet, or phone, we need to have fun, and be able to remind ourselves not everything is doom and gloom all of the time. That being said, maybe don’t use the television to watch the news…