Trails From Zero, Trails from Zero Updates

Trails of Zeroing in on Zero: Imminent Release is All But Azured

Posted on Author Ribose5

Hello, soon-to-be detectives! Ribose here. It’s time for an update! It’s been a while, but things have NOT calmed down here. In fact, they have ramped up as we ready for a release, soon.

On My Way, Listen You Have to Obey, Magic Is Mine to Command, I’m The…

Now that it’s time for a new update, it’s time for us to say what has happened since the last one. The first reveal is that our friend, Sorcerian, is the one editing graphics for us! While omgfloofy did some graphics such as the location intro text, chapter title cards, and quartz/arts notebook pages, Sorcerian has filled in to give us the rest!

This includes a long checklist of notebook help pages, battle status and AT icon redraws, and 40+ textures of signs that needed to be adjusted for one reason or another. Addaberry, who provided the cursors, also edited a few sign textures.

Here are a few of the beautiful notebook help pages that Sorcerian has made for us.

And here are a few shots of various parts of the game. If you’re familiar with the game, see if you can spot all of the small adjustments.

Advancing Bravery

In past installments, we have revealed our Options replacement menu and Save List replacement menu, I’d like to show off how they look now with a bit of polish and iteration.

A shout out is due, once again, to the almighty Dear ImGui library powering these user interfaces. By simulating the game’s behavior with text shadow and a background made out of the game engine’s window backgrounds, it should convincingly feel like part of the game! Mouse, keyboard, and controller support is, of course, still present, and should be better than before.

Now, it’s time to show off three core features of our patch that I may or may not have said were impossible in the past. These all rely on the incredible Dear ImGui library in some part.

#1: Individualizing Your Soundtrack

The first feature is one that was brewing for probably years now. We used a little-known (and not very great) UI library for a short time before finding and switching to ImGui for our UI needs. This “OST switch” existed as a (non-functioning) dropdown menu on THAT interface. So that pins it down to at least a year and a half ago.

With my work on replacing SOUNDARC with an emulation thread (a story for another day…) and JoseJL’s continuing work disassembling and finding out more about the game’s systems, and specifically its “t_bgm” table, JoseJL was able to complete this feature. I provided some much-needed UI work to make the selector easy to use and work with our Options overlay.

I also gave it one last touch: each item can be played on the fly! So, with that addition, this became more of a combination Sound Test and OST selection popup. The game will return to the track for the area you are in when the popup is closed.

I also edited the English translations of the song titles to align with our edited project. For song titles that were already in English, such as the famous Get Over the Barrier!, no change was made. If you want the original song titles (the mix of Japanese and English titles found on the official track list), then please check out our release in Japanese display mode.

#2: Button Prompt Icons For Everyone

If you look back at the notebook help pages I posted first, you may notice something. In fact, early experiments of this idea have been going on for at least a year. Old updates posted to this website contained button prompt icons hidden in them.

Now, this feature could require an explanation that could hog one or a few full-length blog posts! So for now, I’ll just state what it is, and leave the how it works for another day…

Button prompt icons are the icons that appear in the top left of the screen during battle and certain menus, as well as the “L” and “R” icons displayed on tabs, and, unique to our release, embedded in the scenario, non-scenario text, and on top of notebook help pages that need them.

Why are they so special? Well, on PSP, PS Vita, PS4, and practically any console out there, button prompts are hardcoded (technically, PS Vita and PS4 let you remap at the OS level, but games frequently do not even change to accommodate this remapping). By hardcoded, I mean that you only have one set of icons and their meaning is exactly what it shows. For example, the Circle button on the PSP was hardcoded to always mean “Accept” and this is irrefutable in that version of this game. It also always would use the Circle glyph and that was fine.

Then, Joyoland ported Zero no Kiseki to the PC platform and did absolutely the bare minimum to work with the platform. They changed the icons to generic DirectInput icons, but the icons did not change when rebound.

We can finally unveil that in this patch, we have fully-rebindable button prompt icons! Under Options > Display, you can choose an icon set (Xbox, DualShock, Switch Pro, and Default). Then you can rebind to your heart’s content! By default, the patch is configured to expect the default layout for each of the three controllers listed.

The other part to this feature is keyboard button prompt icons.

This feature will be expanded upon in a future deep-dive blog post. For now, know that you can select your icon set in the Display tab, and select your binding preset (or set your own) in the Controller, Keyboard, and Mouse tabs, and the game should display sane icons for most regular configurations. This should also provide parity with the existing Trails of Cold Steel PC ports!

#3: The Message Log

And for the final big feature reveal, let’s compare this game to the newest English release in the series, Trails of Cold Steel III. One day while that release was hot on our minds, Arvin asked the impossible question: I had an idea. How about a backlog for text? JoseJL looked into it, and ended up making it possible! He came up with the proof-of-concept, and then we refined it. I provided some UI programming work and improved the scenario parsing to include everything from color to embedded icons. Now introducing: the message log.

This message log of course saves text far into the past just as the game displays it, supports Japanese or English text (depending on your display mode), and displays text with full color and any icons. It also lets you replay scenario voices, if they are installed, and shows the speaker title and speaker portrait if present. It is also saved and loaded with the save file (in a JSON file stored in the save’s folder).

Is That All?

Of course not! There’s always more to this amazing project and it has been an absolute blast to work with the other Geofront team members as we continually make the impossible possible on this game that has become so important to us.

So what’s more? Well, a few shout outs first.

Shout out to all of our amazing testers! They are the real heroes, finding typos, finding strange bugs with the default input sensitivity of the Switch Pro controller in DirectInput mode, finding connections to things we missed from Trails in the Sky FC through Trails of Cold Steel III that they’ll never let us live down for missing, and just generally being collectively comprehensive and thorough like our limited number of eyes could never be. They will be fully listed in our credits on the project’s release day.

Shout out to the previous team’s translation work (that is, translators Guren and Yangxu and others). While we can say with absolute certainty that this project needed an editing pass, and we can also say that we have probably checked the original Japanese on literally thousands of lines, terms, and names, we wouldn’t be here without their first step.

And obligatory shout out to Nihon Falcom for such an incredible game. The story told in this game must be told to you guys. It’s worth the wait to see the humor, the intensity, the characters, the machinations…

Please, just wait about one month longer, for we hope to get this patch in your hands soon. Remember, it’s done when it’s done. We have a few bugs to sort out, but at the rate things are being completed, testing is progressing, and issues are being resolved, I don’t expect it to take much longer. We’ll have you know, we will probably be hard at work on this until that very last moment. There are so many parts to the project, it’s kind of unbelievable that a finish line is in sight.

Supplemental Material

We would like to remind you once more of the treasure chest messages form. Since that will be implemented into the game last, I expect to close that form in a couple weeks. Do get your submissions in!

We will be opening a channel on the Falcom Discord specifically for the discussion of our patch called #trails-from-zero-geofront.

We have a few other supplemental projects to detail and provide related to the game. Please look forward to them!

Now I would like to hand this over to Arvin.

Hello!

Hey guys, Arvin here. I haven’t had the opportunity to write in one of these yet, so I wanted to start by saying hello. So… Hello…

Cool. It’s been about five months since I first started working on this project, and I have to say, whew, it’s been a heck of a ride. I dove into the game with almost no experience in any form of editing, so it was a bit of a struggle at first. However, I’m pleased to say that I’m in my comfort zone at this point, and any of my older, awkward writing was completely banished during the second pass.

On the topic of passes: The first pass essentially served as a means of rearranging the original script into more legible English. The second pass was initially meant to be our proofreading phase, but I felt that all of the writing could have used a bit of an upgrade. I spent a solid two months giving every single NPC a voice, so that they sounded like an actual ‘character,’ as opposed to just a translation. There were a few NPCs I had a ton of fun with, especially in Neinvalli Exchange, Guillaume Factory, and the Fisherman’s Guild. Part of me thinks I was actually born to write fishermen dialog. I also spent time getting down the voices of all the SSS characters, and I think I’ve done a great job of matching Zerker’s writing style to help give everyone a seamless experience. I am especially fond of Randy, if my avatar hadn’t already made it obvious.

P.S. Give me full credit for all of the funny lines, and blame Zerk for any bad lines!

P.P.S. Ouch! I’m funny sometimes! – Zerker

Beta Testing Phase

As you may have seen on Twitter or Discord a few times, we are now more than a month into the beta testing phase! What does that entail, exactly? Well, KillScottKill, Addabery, Zerker, Cata, and myself have been hard at work cleaning up the script. Scott and Adda are currently playing the game and combing through every single piece of dialog to find any spelling mistake, punctuation error, poorly written line, or anything that reeks of a mistranslation and/or inconsistency. Zerk and myself are correcting any mistakes, or rewriting any lines that call for it, while Cata retranslates any lines that seem off. It’d be safe to say the game’s script wouldn’t be nearly as good without Scott and Adda’s efforts, so thank you!

Often times, our discussions can revolve around a single snippet of text, sending us down a massive rabbit hole to confirm its accuracy. One of our more recent examples includes this line:

Could there really be just one Bracer Guild branch in all of Remiferia? Scott found that hard to believe, so we dove into every available script on trailsinthedatabase.com, as well as tried to reference Akatsuki (we know it’s not canon, don’t worry!) After painstaking research, we were able to determine that there are, in fact, at least two branches in Remiferia. Given that Arios is in contact with the Prince of Remiferia fairly often, it was safe to make the assumption that the Ardent branch of Remiferia was contacting them, as it is their capital city. Ardent is also mentioned by name later in Azure. The line now reads: “You see, I was just contacted by the Ardent branch in Remiferia.” You can imagine how easily this can become a time sink when it happens on multiple occasions.

So again, thank you to our testers and the rest of the team for putting in so much work to ensure this localization becomes one worthy of comparison to the official releases. I see measurable improvements to the script every single day, and I have full confidence it will be spectacular by the end. 

I plan to play the game in its entirety once Scott and Adda have finished their current playthrough. I probably won’t adjust much, but I hope to add better quips. I’ve actually gone back and added in a few these last couple of weeks.

And Sign Off

Zerker here. It’s been a hell of a ride, but one I’ll never forget. We’re all extremely proud of the work we’ve done, and we hope you enjoy playing it as much as we’ve enjoyed working on it. You don’t have too much longer to go. Thank you for sticking with us. Thank you for everything.

174 Replies to “Trails of Zeroing in on Zero: Imminent Release is All But Azured”

  1. Aaaaand everyone’s hyped for Azure now 😁
    Seriously guys job well done or even up and beyond! I’m sure XSeed is going to be impressed with all the work that you did by living up to their level of standard/quality!

    Take all the time you need, I just hope the PSP version will be just as smooth as the PC version.

  3. Absolutely amazing update, and the QoL features you are adding to this continue to blow me away. I am especially impressed how much focus you guys and gals seem to give to each individual line, given the example above. I am sure the quality of this can reach what XSEED did for the Sky games and CS1 and CS2, if this is representative of how much you care about the accuracy of the script.

    Can’t wait to be playing this

  6. Holy crap thanks for all the work, guys. I look forward to release as well as whatever info I need to install this patch.

    I also hope that the title means you’ll be working on Trails to Azure, but I guess I won’t hound you about that too much. For now, I hope you enjoyed your Holidays and that you’ll have a Happy New Year as well.

  7. Two thoughts:

    1) I love you guys.

    2) I really love you guys.

    Seriously, you are all incredible. I’ve always thought of the Trails games as labours of love, from developers to artists to localisationers… er… localisers(?). To come through with a fan translation of this scale can only be as much a labour of love as any of the official work. And not only that, to make substantial programming QoL features such as these… Words fail.

    (Luckily I don’t have to do any madly intensive editing and localisation efforts on my effusive praise of you!)

    You guys are utterly mad, wonderful people.

  9. I was wondering: i have the ppsspp emulator on my Iphone 11, with zero no kiseki working perfectly fine, but it’s in jp. Am i able to download Geofront’s patch and play it from my mobile? Or is it just on pc?

  10. Amazing work. Seems like you have covering all bases.

    I’m eargerly waiting for the release. Thanks to all of you and i also wish you a great holiday season.

    Next decade is upon us. I hope it’s a great new start to all of us.

  11. I just recently got myself hooked into the Trails series (starting with FC of course), and I’m super glad to see that you lovely people are doing the good work so I can experience this one as well! I was worried I wouldn’t be able to play the Crossbell arc when it came time, but you guys are on the scene!

    Thanks for all of your efforts! Looking forward to it.

  15. Guys, you are incredible! I followed this project from 70% and now… Wow, i can’t wait!

    p.s.
    If anyone are interested, i buy the PC version from DLSITE. It’s on 50% discount untill 6 january.
    For the first purchase you have a 300 yen coupon. In conclusion, 10$ for the game.

  16. Does anyone know if you can use this patch to patch an already English-patched PC version?
    And how many patches could you patch if a patcher could patch patches?

  18. So excited to see this come out! I blew through Sky SC and the 3rd just in time for this amazing project to finish up. Making my Rean Schwarzer cosplay especially makes me wanna just blast through all the games asap!

  19. I started playing the series when I saw that your team was working on bringing these two games to NA/English. I just finished playing CS2(PC) now. I’m debating on getting CS3 on PS4 or waiting for this release / CS3 release on PC. Ugh, I haven’t wanted something that I couldn’t have in so long ~~

    Thanks for the work btw 🙂

  20. Can’t express my thanks to you guys! I hope I can learn the stuffs you do here someday and probably help in future translations! It’s so amazing how you work things out and I want to learn how you guys do it cause it seems so fun finding out how things work and also making ideas be implemented nicely.

    Keep up the good work! And thank you from the bottom of my heart!

  21. logic : I love trail series , I should wait for the best translation to enjoy it more
    instinct : alas, screw it , I’m too curious about the stories..let’s just use the leaked translation
    ***Internal screaming***

    I assume it won’t be much longer ?
    as always , I appreciate the hard work
    thank you very much for all of your hard works on this amazing translation

    1. While this may be true, it’s no attitude to adopt towards people who have invested huge amount of time and effort into something they’re going to give us for free.

  27. C’mon, for a project of this type one or two month can be considered “inminent”. That said, if u read the post its says “just wait one month or so”. Since its have been published had pased less than one and half month, take in consideration that this is a fan group project, not a paid work, and if something happen in they work/personal lifes they have to prioritize that, not this project.

          1. I think it’ll be sooner than that. It was at 40 yesterday apparently. I think they’re messing with us.

          2. I dunno, 34 days was the same amount of time until Cold Steel 3 releases on PC. Also the number went from 40 to 35 to 34 to 35 apparently

  30. I couldn’t help but notice if you google Geofront Esterior Download there is indeed a downloads page on this site that is not linked on the home page or anywhere I can find. I may have just missed this before, but does this mean we can expect something soon? I’m literally sitting here forcing myself to not play the previous English patch and it’s killing me because I want to continue my quest to play the games in release order.

    1. https://geofront.esterior.net/downloads/

      Here’s the page, I don’t know if this has been around this whole time and I’m just crazy, or if it means something…. If someone knows please let me know so I can chill out lol.

      I just finished my first playthrough of the Liberl arc and am super excited to dive into the Crossbell arc… Just gotta keep myself held back so I don’t start playing the old translation…

      1. I’m pretty sure that site was there before, then it disappeared, but maybe i’m wrong.
        Concerning the wait or play dilemma, i’m definetily waiting for the patch, just look at this work, we are talking about XSEED translation quality whit a lot of technical improvements, so i’m waiting for sure.

        That said, i’m gonna finish Zero and inmediatily jump to Ao with the current translation, no way i’m waiting 5 yeas more to finish the Crosbell arc haha.

        2. The reason I found it is I simply googled Geofront 34/0 trying to figure out your little numbers game you’ve got going on lol. It was the first thing that popped up one time I searched so it threw me off.

    1. well, I’m glad for Japanese fans, they will get a new release of zero an ao on ps4.
      As for us,if I read that article right, we “might” get a western release, but with no date or even western publisher determined as of yet …
      And even then, only for PS4 users.
      This fan-made English version will still be the best we can have probably for years to come, if not the only we ever get…

      1. It is pretty much confirmed that there will be western releases of both Zero and Azure. However the originals was only made for PSP so they require quite a bit of work to be ported to modern consoles and PC. That’s what the Japanese remasters releasing in 2020 means to do. That version would then be used as a base for the english version. They might have already started the translation work, or the might not. However, it’s unlikely that we will see it in the west before 2021 or even 2022 for that matter. So I think there’s still value in this fan translation!

        1. Even if we get an official Western release, there’s no guarantee of translation quality. Depending on how things work out, the fan translation might end up being objectively the best version.

          Also, Zero and Azure already have PC ports. This very patch is for the PC version. They also have Vita ports, which is where you can get the voices.

    2. This has been in the works for years, how is it “bad timing”? Also, that article kinda drops a spoiler midway through with implications I wasn’t prepared for :/

      Some of us haven’t played the Crossbell arc yet because we’ve been waiting for this mod to launch, I’m not mad at you, but I’m surprised the article would drop a spoiler in there for something most English speakers wouldn’t know yet.

    3. It’s still going to be a while before the West’ll get the translated remasters, so I’m sure I’ll be playing Geofront’s translations first. Also, although Cold Steel III looks good I still like the character models of Trails in the Sky and Trails from Zero/Azure more because of nostalgia.

      That being said, chances are good I’ll still buy the remasters to support the original creators.

      Thanks for the info, by the way!

      1. Same here, although I’m salty we didn’t get a translation before I always make sure to purchase a copy of a game I enjoyed to support the Company. Even if I end up never playing their translation.

        I wish Geofront could get a cut or that Falcom would purchase their translation but I also don’t want for a contract to be written out and have to wait longer !

        If you read this Falcom, just give Geofront an offer they can’t refuse and release the game immediately ! If you make a cease and desist letter or something similar I’m definitely bailing on every single one of your games even if it pains me to lose out on the great adventures.

    1. C’mon man, you know that’s not true. They’ve put way too much time and work into this to just abandon it at this point. I’m as anxious for this release for absolutely anyone (I’ll be taking PTO for it); but for all the hard and absolutely-amazing work they’ve put in, we can only be gratefully patient. I’m happy in my confidence that we’re going to get a seriously quality product when the time (finally) comes.

  38. As a die-hard trails fan who has been following this project closely for two years now, I finally made an account to log in and thank this team for what you’re doing. Like many others, I’m hoping you guys are at the home-stretch! But in any case, just seriously thank you for giving my favorite video game series of all-time the love and attention it deserves.

  42. I don’t get the point of the counter. A counter should count up or down but this one keeps going up and down. Absolutely no one understands what it means which defeats the whole purpose of having it? Also the release was “imminent” 2 months ago and no updates whatsoever. I’m starting to doubt we’ll see this released any time soon…

    1. Don’t worry, there’s a perfectly good and logical reason for it. However since I swore to secrecy I think you’ll just have to figure it out yourself. It’s pretty straightforward surprisingly.

    2. omgfloofy (aka the woman behind the counter) has said that a few did end up guessing correctly. Of course, we don’t know which people those are, but that means it’s definitely decipherable.

      No official update since 12/26 is definitely rough, but some of the testers have been replying to questions on Reddit and Twitter a bit more lately and one of them made it sound like it could come out in the next couple of weeks. At this point though I think it’s best to just keep expectations in check. Hopefully the next official update details a bit of what happened that made things take as long as they did.

      1. Regardless if the counter is decipherable, it’s still a very weird decision to put it there. Why not just give some upfront updates on Twitter or Reddit? Why do we have to solve this lil mystery to know when the patch will release?

        I’m sure this delay is being much harder on the people working on the project than us, but it’s still irritating to have to wait in confusion after they promised the release is “imminent” and “it would only take another month to finish” ＿ﾉ乙(､ﾝ､)＿

          1. If the counter represents the number of things they need to address like you said, I wouldn’t bet so sure since it keeps going up and down（ ´థ౪థ）

            Well, even if I figured it out the only option is to wait anyway. Everyone’s saying it’s gonna be soon so I’ll just stop getting antsy and be excited

  43. My assumption is the numbers are a division equation. For example 41/0 = 0 or 44/0 = 0. Since this is the translation for Tales from Zero the release will probably be ready super soon.

        1. Well, yeah that part was incorrect as well, but I meant the general direction your assumption is going is wrong. Some people up above figured it out, and are right, but it has nothing to do with any number-based puzzles like some seem to believe. I thought it was something deep for a while until it clicked what actually is going on here.

  44. The numbers are definitely meant to confuse us, or to be deciphered. If you Inspect the page code and ctrl-F to find 41/0, it says “Whaaat?” next to it…

      1. Hmm, then I will lean toward it’s the number of issues that need addressing before there are none left and it’s ready to release. I’ll wait patiently; getting annoyed by the comments complaining about it not being “imminent.” Let them go at their own pace you ungrateful bastards!

        1. 😉

          Yeah I really am excited, but what I’ve been doing is playing alongside Scott’s videos with the not so amazing translation… That way I can appreciate the translation and when it comes out I’ll be all good to go.

  45. It looks like we’re running with the theory that the counter is number of issues that need to be resolved until release. Which is cool, but also daunting seeing as though it was in the mid-30’s two weeks ago. 🙁

    1. Things definitely seem to be speeding up! And I’m getting *very* excited. I cannot wait to finally get to experience the Crossbell Arc. It’s been a long 6-year wait…

          1. That’s exactly what I’ve heard too. I’ve heard Azure’s translation is better than Zero’s (barring this project, of course). My plan is: This patch for zero, the existing patch for azure, then Cold Steel III (whose copy has been taunting me, unopened now for 4 months -_-). It’s going to be a great spring / summer though!

    1. I played up to Chapter One after playing alongside Scott’s videos (so I can see/hear the better translation while playing) and stopped since I noticed the number is finally going down. 🙂

      1. I think I finished chapter one too, and started a little of the second chapter and then I stopped. I didn’t want to watch Scott’s videos just to enjoy the better translation first hand x)

  48. So the counter really was this straightforward, huh? I was really out here thinking they were on some Blueblanc shit and we needed to decode these string of numbers somehow lol. Hopefully it continues to steadily go down the slope, especially with P5R coming next month

    And sorry for all the nagging. I appreciate you guys putting this extra time to deliver a translation on the same level of the Sky Trilogy!

  51. Oh wow we’re down into the 20’s! Stand strong brothers and sisters, the release might soon be upon us~ And thank you as always for the hard work Geofront Team. <3

  54. I’m guessing the team was waiting for all the testers to be done before heavily cracking down on these issues? Because suddenly it’s dropping like a stone. Really cool to see! I knew renewing my FFXIV sub was a mistake! Lol.

  57. Really hoping this comes out before ff7 remake I’m dying to play it but I know my full focus will be on that some April. I been holding out on my cold steel games until I play this one

    1. I’m 99.99% sure it will be out before FFVII Remake, based on what I’ve seen following this project and the team. Now, whether we can finish it before FFVII Remake is out is all a matter of how much free time we have, lol.

  58. I can’t begin to express my respect and appreciation for you guys on bringing us such a top quality translation and game upgrades. I’m excited to go through a proper release of Zero and into Azure. Just got to chapter 3 of my second playthrough of Cold Steel III and seeing Crossbell makes me want to play this game so badly. Again, you guys are superstars for doing this for us all.

  59. I’m dying to play this! I’ve played Traiils in the Sky and just finished Cold Steel 1 and 2. I read in several places that you really SHOULD play Zero and Azure before Cold Steel 3 (and 4) so I’m really trying to restrain myself from continuing with CS3 at this point…

    1. yeah , you should restrain it as long as you can
      I played only prologue and beginning of chapter 1 of CS3
      But I can tell that at least there was 10 ++ important references to Crossbell Event which we won’t be able to relate without playing zero and ao
      Like when bleublanc and McBurn talk about a certain someone for example at CS II
      that kind of references which we won’t be able to relate without playing trails in the sky

  60. Wrote a small python monitor that makes a win32 messagebox when the issue tracker value in the upper right corner changes value. Checks every 20 minutes and only downloads a few k of html to keep server load low. Could easily be made to open the webpage or use tkinkter dialogs for cross platform, but this is good enough for me.

    https://pastebin.com/YSdv3QVy

    1. By the way feel free to share this wherever. I quit reddit years ago, stopped using discord when it asked for a phone number, and don’t really use social media. Since this only has a limited lifespan, I figured it would be better than refreshing the page 200x a day obsessively and wanted to share it.

  61. I’ve been circling this launch date hard as I’ve been waiting for this to be my “thing” for the next week of PTO. My boss twisted my arm to take some time off (I’m sitting on 6 weeks worth at the moment). I love you guys no matter what, but if you could hook a brother up and launch this bad-boy by 3/23, I’d be a very happy chap indeed. 😉

    We’re rooting for you Geofront team!

  62. On the 24th of February the counter was at 41/0. Five days later and it’s dropped to 20/0. If this trend continues, we could see the patch by next weekend! Get hyped!

  64. I’m very grateful there’s a team of dedicated people working on something of this scale using their own free time — but why the weird secrecy with the numbers? Is it just that you guys are unsure of how long these (assumed) issues will take and thus don’t want to give a solid date until it’s done? As someone who’s finally getting around to the Legend of Heroes series and working on the third game now, I’m a little nervous I could potentially have a longer-than-expected wait to start the next game which I have installed and ready to go. I know, boohoo for me, but I’d be very happy with a little more info on when to expect this! I was just going to finish Trails 3rd and go straight to Trails of Cold Steel, but it’s clear the Crossbell series has too much info to just casually skip over. Although I’m still concerned about the script for the game after this… guess that one’ll have to be played with a less carefully constructed script. Or maybe I’ll skip it for a while? Ugh, the release schedule for these games in the West has made this whole affair pretty weird!

    1. it was okay to play CS I and II first
      both of events there happen at the same time and no matter what , there will be some interlinked event
      I mean , I play CS I and II first and I did not have idea what the heck happen at Crossbell except the public news and event at the game which was really only a little glimpse of their affair
      that’s why i really look forward to them finishing it , though
      CS III in the other hand was the real spoiler if you did not play zero and ao

    2. The meaning of the numbers has actually been unveiled for several days now. It’s how many issues are left in the issue tracker.

      Some of these things are like building the installer and game breaking issues that impact the .exe file.

  66. I’ve heard that there’s a decent translation already out for Trails to Azure. Is this true? I recently finished the Sky trilogy and I would prefer to play every game in order. I don’t mind waiting for this patch to come out, I just don’t want to start the Crossbell arc without being able to play the games back-to-back.

    2. Ye there’s already a patch available done by a previous team. Looks like we are all going to rush into that one as soon as we’re done with Zero lol

      Falcom seems to be planning on releasing the remastered versions of Zero and Azure on America later into the future, but who knows when that might be. Especially since CS4’s translation might take priority

      1. Ok, thanks for the confirmation. I’ve been very cautious about approaching the series since I want to experience it in the best way I can. And yeah, I’m not counting on being able to play the new remastered versions, especially since I don’t even have a PS4. Not entirely sure how I’m going to play CS4, but I’ll figure it out when I get there lol. Hopefully it comes out on PC or Switch quickly after the PS4 release.

      2. I’m crazy excited for that they are releasing it in Japan this summer I believe but no news on the united states yet or on cold steel 4 release date either 😥😥

  67. I’m crazy excited for that they are releasing it in Japan this summer I believe but no news on the united states yet or on cold steel 4 release date either 😥😥

      1. I saw a post on the Falcom subreddit today where someone was talking about the soon to be released PC version of CS3 and how they were just going to use the old English patch for Zero so they could finish Crossbell in time. The queen herself omgfloofy responded with “The patch may be releasing sooner than you expect.” So I’d be willing to bet we’re pretty freakin’ close.

        I say queen unironically by the way. We love ya, omgfloofy!

  73. I get so hype every time that number drops, I can’t even imagine my reaction when it drops lol
    Really excited to finally know what goes down in Crossbell (even though I already kinda know how it ends cuz of CS2)

  74. Does everybody already have the Japanese version purchased from DLsite or are you all hoping to be able to patch an existing english patched version? I don’t want to get stuck once this releases.

      2. I hope you are right. Although the wait has spurred me to do all the post-game stuff in Valkyria Chronicles 4! I haven’t tried to get all of a game’s achievements in a long time.

      3. Actually, I heard something about them planning to reveal a date before it actually becomes available. That’s some next level trickery if this turns out to be true.

  79. Aargh, I don’t care what those 6 issues are, release it now! I have the next two days off from work, and I’m just repeatedly checking the counter. This is torture!

    2. I’m just hoping it’s ready in the next week, which seems pretty likely at this point! Although it seems like progress isn’t going quite as well as it was a couple days ago.

  81. The geofront team is talking directly to use in the crossbell channel of the falcom discord, theyre now at 8 issues (it went up) but about half of them are not very demanding to go through so hype

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