Title: Trails from Zero
System: Nintendo Switch (PS4/PC)
Playtime: 74 hours
After several years away from Crossbell, Lloyd Bannings has returned, detective license in hand, to take up a job at the CSPD. Only he never expected that, instead of the illustrious First Division he was expecting, he’d be assigned to a brand-new division: the Special Support Section. Along with three others who barely have any qualifications as police officers, Lloyd and his crew set out on the truly monumental task of making the police look like less of a joke to the populace they serve.
Trails from Zero is the fourth game in the Trails series, and the first game of the Crossbell duology (to be later completed by Trails to Azure). As such, the previous games in the series (the Sky trilogy) aren’t exactly required, but they do add some really nice context to a few of the characters or events.
I really like this game. Lloyd and his group have their own talents and gifts, but this is by no means a superpowered crew. Lloyd basically got a college certification as a detective, Elie has social connections and can talk well with people, Tio has sharper-than-usual senses (nothing supernatural, just extremely good hearing and a sense for magic), and Randy is a bit of a bruiser thanks to his previous job history. That’s it. These are basically normal people, and to Lloyd’s frustration, he’s the ONLY one of them even remotely qualified to actually be a cop.
Then, to add to the insult, Lloyd doesn’t even get his coveted First Division posting, and is instead basically told to join a PR team expected to rescue kittens and find people’s lost items. Nobody has any expectations for them.
The small party size gives a lot of time to develop each of them, although I can tell they’re holding out on some of the character development for later. Randy, for example, has a lot of his best scenes locked behind his final bonding event (only one of the three can be chosen for this). But if the story isn’t long enough here to fully explore everyone new, it DOES wrap up something important that was left hanging at the end of Sky 3rd: Renne.
Renne is one of the several returning characters, and if you follow around Estelle and Joshua when they show up (most of their scenes are optional; use the shift schedule in the Bracer Guild to locate where any of the bracers are at any given day), you can see both Estelle and Joshua’s hunt as well as Renne’s investigation into her own past. I wasn’t sold on Renne’s redemption at the end of Sky 3rd, but this game had me agreeing with Estelle that Renne had simply been subject to far more than a child could ever handle, and what she desperately needed was a family that could accept her for who she was.
Lloyd has his own issues. His brother cast a large shadow, and Lloyd has spent so much time and effort trying to live up to the image he remembers that he fails to realize most of what he’s accomplished for himself. Because Guy would have done it better. He can’t even see he’s hung a chain around his own neck with that line of thinking. But Lloyd has his own strengths. Primarily his ability to keep cool under pressure, ask the right questions, pick apart his assumptions, and connect the dots. It’s easy to see why the group gravitates around him as their core.
The story is excellent. It can feel a bit slow at the start, as everyone dumps on the SSS, and the group mostly has “busywork” style requests, but I love how exasperated everyone gets as their little band of newbies keeps getting thrown at things that in no way should be their responsibility. Like the prologue, where Lloyd’s boss calls them to report the downtown gangs are fighting, and go break it up. When Lloyd protests they haven’t been trained for this, his boss just hangs up. Things just keep escalating from there.
Like other Trails games, there’s a wealth of detail present if you choose to talk to the NPCs. There are mini scenes, or just ongoing stories of people’s everyday lives. Sometimes this will give deeper insight into a character or plot, or sometimes it’s just hiding a good joke. Most of my playtime was due to running around obsessively talking to everyone whenever I thought they would have anything new to say.
Trails games take place in a world I would call low-fantasy, as magic is more or less a form of electricity, until the big supernatural things start happening much further on. Lloyd trying to arrest demons with “We have a warrant!” about killed me.
Gameplay wise, this is very similar to the Sky games. I wish it was easier to set up quartz to not have to make so many compromises to get access to the bigger spells (your two mages both having two element-locked slots really hurts—there just aren’t any good water quartz with multiple elements, and wind really only has Scent, but Scent can only be equipped once). But it’s manageable, although not super exciting. I mostly spent the whole game casting Dark Matter on everything, since grouping up enemies has benefits beyond the damage, and very few enemies resist time, space, or mirage arts.
I did play this on the Switch, because it has much sharper graphics than the PS4. The sprite work here is beautiful. It’s an older game that got ported, so there really aren’t any performance issues to worry about. Turbo mode continues to be a really nice feature. Hold down cancel + turbo mode to effectively skip cutscenes.
Overall, if you like JRPGs this is a very solid game to add to your collection. The characters are charming, the story has a lot of heart, and the worldbuilding has a ton of depth. I rate this game Highly Recommended.
Off the Shelf 