(Originally posted on December 10.)
This was gonna happen sooner or later. One of these days I was gonna talk about a Trails game, and that day has in fact come.
There's something about this series that just...calls to me in a way not a whole lot of games do. If I had to guess what it is, it'd have to be their sheer ambition. I am fond of games that at least try to go the extra mile, after all. And the fact that Trails sticks the landing more often than not certainly helps.
Trails from Zero is the fourth part of what is to date a twelve-part serial sci-fantasy epic that's been going on for nearly 20 years now, which is honestly amazing to think about. I genuinely can't think of a lot of game series that have had continuous narratives lasting that long or longer, pretty much the only ones I can name off the top of my head would have to be fellow Falcom series Ys and Rance of all things.
Anyway, Zero's story takes us to Crossbell State, a small but extremely important city-state nestled in a mountain pass right between the two biggest players in western Zemuria: the Erebonian Empire and the Republic of Calvard. There are...several reasons why this is a less than ideal circumstance. Both the Empire and Republic claim Crossbell as their own territory, but Crossbell itself claims independence, and politicians in both the major powers are willing to entertain these claims to some extent because it's such an effective buffer state for facilitating trade between two countries that are otherwise enemies—and because the state government accepts informal agreements with both of them to not interfere with this status quo. Which effectively means the Empire and Republic get to dictate Crossbell's laws to serve their interests, and the resulting corruption bleeds down into local affairs since their representatives inevitably end up hating each other and throwing the whole political system into deadlock. And you'd better believe there's a problem with organized crime, since the system's full of corruption that's extremely easy to take advantage of by, say, allying with a few key players who happen to have enough power to stop any investigations into what you're doing.
This is the state of the city in which our hero, Lloyd Bannings, lives. Lloyd begins the story as a new recruit to Crossbell's police department (one of the few civilian police departments in Zemuria, as it turns out), trying to follow in the footsteps of his departed brother. He's immediately assigned to the Special Support Section, a division so new the receptionist he meets initially thinks someone must be hazing him. The Special Support Section turns out to be extremely unusual, consisting entirely of Lloyd and three others: wealthy aristocrat Elie MacDowell, fourteen-year-old genius Tio Plato, and ex-military loose cannon Randy Orlando. They're also given the unusual duty of accepting requests for assistance directly from the citizens that might not even have anything to do with solving crimes.
The fact that this duty puts them in direct competition with the Bracer Guild, the international society of do-gooders who can presumably be credited with removing most reasons to establish non-military police (hell, Crossbell only has 'em because they can't set up a real military without the Empire and Republic yelling at them) is not lost on anyone. In fact, it's part of why they founded the SSS in the first place—absolutely nobody has any confidence in the CPD, not even people who'd normally be expected to trust the police. The sheer amount of political pressure and corruption everywhere means that they can't do much in the way of serious investigative work at all, and even the elite First Division is stuck basically just solving high-profile prestige crimes rather than anything that would make things safer for anyone. It doesn't help that Crossbell's Bracer Guild has some particularly impressive people involved, particularly local Sword Dad and all-around badass Arios MacLaine. The purpose (well, one of the purposes, at least) of the SSS, then, is to be a police unit that actually can do the things that need doing, in order to turn the CPD into something people actually trust to any degree whatsoever.
And so the Special Support Section's uphill battle to be respected or even recognized as a force capable of helping people and resolving crimes begins. A lot of their work ends up involving investigations into the local mafia, whose close ties with key government officials protect them from the main police force, and everything seems disconnected at first but naturally there's a bigger picture that emerges over time, and there just might be more tying the SSS to their cases than their professional duties. There's a lot of darkness lying beneath Crossbell's streets, and the question of whether they can overcome the barriers in their way and bring it to light needs to be answered.
(Better get used to people talking about barriers, by the way. This is a story about fighting to overcome corruption at every level and that's very much the metaphor they go with. Hell, they even called the normal battle theme "Get Over the Barrier!" And you'd better believe you'll be doing a lot of that.)
Trails from Zero does a lot to demonstrate just how much characterization and character interaction is the biggest strength of Trails writing. You will get attached to the SSS and the people around them, and in true Trails fashion even the minor non-player characters are given enough characterization to be interesting. The fact that you're spending the whole game in one place instead of running around to a bunch of different regions like in the Sky games just emphasizes that even more.
Then there's the aesthetics. The Trails games take place at the height of a massive technological revolution, and Crossbell does a very good job of showing that off. Cars and guns that look like they'd be at home in a period gangster movie exist alongside more modern vending machines, emerging mobile phone technology, an experimental Internet-like, and the ridiculously overengineered underground utility network that is the Geofront. All of this is presented within a city that looks like it came out of the '50s, aside from a couple of very modern-looking glass buildings. It really shows how rapidly technology is advancing in these games, with all of this stuff coexisting.
There's also a neat trick they do with this if you played the Sky games, which is that Liberl, where those games are set, is a relative backwater where a lot of technological innovations just didn't take hold at all while Crossbell is at the forefront of the technological revolution, so there's this huge culture shock going into Zero and seeing how much more high-tech stuff there is everywhere.
Each district of Crossbell also manages to have more life to it than a lot of entire towns you might see in other RPGs. The affluent Residential District, where all the richest families gather, feels extremely different from the Asian-styled East Street and the slums of the Downtown District, and yet they all still feel like part of the same city. It's seriously impressive how they managed to pull all this off, and it does a lot to make Crossbell feel like somewhere that could exist in real life.
Of course, I also need to mention the issue every Trails game has, which is that this is an ongoing series that expects you to have been following every part of it from the start. That does in fact apply to Zero, which will talk about the events of the Sky trilogy under the assumption that you've played those games. The main plot still makes sense without them, but there's quite a bit that you'll want to at least have a working knowledge of in order to have context for, for instance, who this purple-haired girl who keeps showing up is and why she's a big deal. I guarantee you it's at least worth knowing what went down in those games.
And then there's the game, which is an extremely well-built RPG.
Battles play out on a grid, with characters getting individual turns based on how fast they are. Movement and positioning is important for minimizing the effects of enemy AoE attacks and maximizing the effects of your own, in addition to just being able to get to enemies—unlike in the Cold Steel games it's not uncommon even in the endgame to find yourself out of range to attack what you want to attack. Magic, referred to Arts, runs off of a different meter than physical skills, or Crafts—the latter meter builds up when you deal or take damage. Characters also have supermoves known as S-Crafts, which use at least 100 Craft Points to activate—they get stronger if you have the maximum of 200 but will always drain the whole meter, so it can be beneficial to hold off on using them. Arts, meanwhile, have a casting time for you to worry about.
So far it sounds pretty basic, right? It is in a lot of ways—you'll note that the basic "you have different meters for magic and physical skills and the physical one builds up as you fight" conceit is very similar to the default battle system in modern RPG Maker versions, for instance—but there are a few places where they shake it up.
Twist number one: Individual turns can have bonuses on them, that apply to whoever takes that turn. If you act on a turn with a critical icon, whatever you're doing does a critical hit even if it wouldn't normally be able to. If your turn has an HP recovery icon, you heal some HP. And so forth.
Twist number two: When you have an S-Craft ready to use, you can use it whenever you want, even if it's an enemy's turn. This is called an S-Break, and if you have more than one S-Craft on a character you can choose which one they use. Combined with the previous twist, you can steal turn icons from enemies. It seems like a little thing, but in practice this is does a lot to make the combat more dynamic.
Arts are interesting in their own way, because the way you learn them is mostly disconnected from your leveling up. Arts are tied to your characters' orbments, which are devices that the characters carry to enhance their strength and let them do magic
1. Your orbments have seven slots—one in the center, with six surrounding it—into which you place quartz, which you make from sepith, a material that drops from monsters. Each quartz has a passive effect of some sort, but it also provides elemental values, which are where your Arts come from. The trick here is that the slots are connected to each other in lines that extend from the center slot, and the elemental values of every quartz on the line are combined to determine what Arts that line will give you. Longer lines also grant you more EP, which is what you use to cast Arts in the first place.
There's a lot I like about the orbment system here. You have to arrange quartz carefully to get something that works instead of it just being a "put these gems in some sockets" thing, and there's a direct logical connection between how characters' lines are set up and what their roles end up being—if you've got someone with a bunch of smaller lines they're obviously not gonna be doing a lot of casting so you may as well just focus on making their physical attacks better, while a single unbroken line means you've got a character who should obviously be built as a mage because they're inevitably going to be better at it than anyone else. And those roles logically follow from how the quartz system works, unlike the system they introduced in Cold Steel where Arts are directly granted by quartz and lines are more or less vestigial as a concept.
Also worth noting: If you're at all familiar with the Trails games you know they love their missables. Zero is no stranger to this, of course. At one point to get one of the books you need to get an ultimate weapon you need to turn around immediately after being sent into a dungeon, leave the dungeon, and head to a nearby cafe, with absolutely no warning that there's anything hidden there. There's also plenty of secret sidequests, and recipes hidden in all sorts of places. There's a lot to find in general, really.
There's also the soundtrack, which is one of the best from a really strong era for Falcom soundtracks. There's no less than four songs for just walking around Crossbell, for instance, and all of them show the city's character in their own way. Also,
this song that sounds like something you'd expect for the really big fights? That's the normal boss theme, and in the endgame it plays in all regular encounters. The actual major boss theme is even better.
I'd definitely say Zero is one of the stronger Trails games on the whole. It's got everything these games have at their best, and it's just good in general. I know I'm gonna be rejoining the Special Support Section for their continuing adventures in Azure, probably very shortly after posting this
1. In-universe orbments are what power almost all technology because they're more efficient than anything else, but the word used on its own generally refers to the kind people use in combat.