Trails to Azure‘s soundtrack is as outstanding as its predecessor. Many of the town and exploration BGMs make their return, and there are some other tracks that make their return as arranged versions, but there are also brand new tracks for battles and important events. The new battle theme “Seize the Truth!” is a banger, though I did prefer “Get Over the Barrier.” One of the later boss themes, “Unfathomed Force” is synonymous with one of the toughest bosses you’ll face. I love the theme, but it also gives me flashbacks to how difficult the fight was. Some more tracks I’d like to point out are “Steel Roar -Threat-,” “To be continued,” and “Aoki Shizuku.” “Steel Roar -Threat-” really evokes this sense of hopelessness and impending doom when it’s played. “To be continued” is incredible. This theme plays during some of the tensest, most epic scenes in the entire game. I seriously went searching for the song’s title after I heard it in-game, that’s how much it stuck with me. “Aoki Shizuku” is the game’s title screen music, and it is beautiful and sounds so elegant. The piano is wonderfully played, and it’s so calm and soothing, much like the character Shizuku in-game. Nihon Falcom really knocked it out of the park with this soundtrack, they should be very proud. The majority of story scenes are fully voiced in Japanese, just like in Trails from Zero, and that’s something I really appreciate. The voice actors did an excellent job bringing the main and supporting cast to life. I will admit, the less important NPCs did not receive as much care in their voicing based on what I heard in-game, but that’s something I can look over with how great the rest sounded.
Now we get to the portion many fans care about, how is Trails to Azure’s localization? Overall, the translation of Trails to Azure is decent. I will say it didn’t have anything egregious, such as untranslated text, like Trails from Zero had. There were some misspelled words, punctuation missing sometimes like a period, and at times words were placed in the wrong area of a sentence. There weren’t too many of these issues listed, but I did find a couple. There were also a couple puns inserted into the dialog, but these were mostly in side events. There was one instance I remember where a pun was used in a serious main story scene, but because of the character who said it, that may actually fit in with their personality. I also found a strange translation issue which involved receiving an item. I got an item called the Moon Spirit Gem, but when I went to the menu to look for it, it had a completely different name. It was instead called the Lunar Spirit Bead. I’m assuming Lunar Spirit Bead was what they wanted to call the item in the end, but it’s strange that a different translation was left in the game. The final thing I would like to bring up is a questionable word choice for one of the NPC’s dialogs. In Chapter 3, Lenalee talks about not being “woke enough” to vote for something. I think they should’ve used a different phrase here as using “woke” really dates the translation. The term also wasn’t really used when the game was originally released back in 2011.
Trails to Azure runs very smoothly on my PC, and it shouldn’t have a problem running well on lower end systems either. I did run into two issues while playing the game though, in addition to the few I mentioned earlier, but again, nothing game breaking. The first involved the SSS’ car. If you’re outside Crossbell City and enter the car menu, there is an option to “Leave.” However, when you press the option, you’re just brought back to the menu you tried to leave. It just keeps looping. You can just cancel out of the menu to get around this, but it was still a head scratcher. The second small issue involved Sealy in the Ash Tree Inn. When you initiate an event for the Gourmet Article request, Sealy just stays frozen in place after it is over. You can still talk to her, but she just stays in place. She goes back to normal if you leave and come back, but it was pretty strange to see. Other than those issues, this is another outstanding PC port.
It took me around 86 hours to complete Trails to Azure’s story on Normal difficulty doing optional requests and filling up the Fishing and Recipe Books. You can definitely cut your playing time down if you avoid the optional content, but it will still take a good chunk of time to complete. You can replay the game in New Game+ to get any achievements you missed, and you can even tackle the game on Nightmare difficulty if you want an even bigger challenge. The offline achievement system also makes a return in this game, which is fantastic for those who play on Nintendo Switch, since that console does not have a native achievement system.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played, and one of my favorite games in the Trails series. The thought provoking story is memorable, the characters look fantastic and are full of personality, the turn-based combat is polished, and the music is phenomenal. Trails to Azure absolutely lived up to the bar Trails from Zero set, and surpassed it with flying colors. I did run into a couple bugs, and there were some issues with the translation, but those were not enough to bring this one down too much. I highly recommend this game to fans of the franchise and RPGs. However, since this is a sequel, you should at least play Trails from Zero before getting into this one. Trails to Azure will set you back $39.99 digitally and $49.99 for a physical copy, and I say it’s worth every penny.
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Game copy provided by the publisher.
