The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero

Really fcking good trails game, one of my fav of the series so far along with cold steel 1 and SC. really love the chemistry between the cast

[h1] Four Games and in and Still Peak [/h1] If you haven't played the three Trails in the Sky games yet, play those first. They're just as good, are cheaper and mark the beginning of the series. If you have played the Sky trilogy, I suggest playing this before moving on to Coldsteel. The series really is better when played in release order. Set a year after the events of Trails in the Sky 3rd, Trails from Zero shifts the focus of the action to the Crossbell Autonomous State, a buffer state between the Empire and the Republic, whose prosperity and rapid technological advancement masks a seedy underbelly of crime and corruption. Our hero is Lloyd Bannings, an idealistic young cop seeking to follow in his murdered brother's footsteps. Joining up with four other young hotshots as part of the CPD's Special Support Section, he and his comrades take up arms against the rot at the heart of Crossbell, earning the respect of the citizens and working their way up from the bottom (from Zero, as it were). As with the Liberl trilogy, Zero is an incredibly solid, well-thought-out and detail-rich JRPG that uses its limited setting to imbue the world with an incredible level of depth and humanity. Main story elements weave together with side quests and even random NPC dialogue to give you a rich sense of the setting and its inhabitants. The game features a lot of dialogue and cutscenes, with a story-to-combat ratio of about 50-50, so it's maybe not ideal for people just wanting a simple monster bash. Combat is not particularly complex, but is still very satisfying and a lot of fun. Falcom remain the hidden GOATs of the JRPG genre and I can't recommend this game highly enough, although if you have already stepped into the Trails series, you already know how good this is. Zero complaints, excellent game. If I had a nickel for every JRPG with a dual-wielding protagonist called Lloyd, I'd have two nickels etc. etc.