As we speak is a genuinely momentous day if you happen to occur to be a fan of the Trails franchise.
The fifteenth January 2026 marks the discharge of Trails past the Horizon, the newest instalment in Falcom’s long-running RPG collection.
However the greater image right here is that with Horizon’s arrival, the West is formally caught up with your entire property.
Certainly, that is the primary time in franchise historical past that the entire Trails video games accessible in Japan are additionally accessible abroad. It is taken literal many years to get up to now, nevertheless it’s lastly occurred.
Falcom itself is just not a big firm, and so past the unique Trails within the Sky trilogy — initially launched in 2004 — it struggled to localise its titles within the West.
It wasn’t till 2015 that the collection could be picked up once more for a Western viewers. Xseed Video games revealed the primary Trails of Chilly Metal for PS3 and PS Vita in North America — already two years behind its Japanese launch — whereas NIS America (moderately confusingly) revealed it in Europe.
But it surely was actually the remastered PS4 model of Trails of Chilly Metal that established the property within the two areas, launching in 2019 through the aforementioned NIS America.
By this level, nonetheless, the West had fallen far behind the Japanese launch schedule.
Thankfully, the success of Chilly Metal and its direct sequel was sufficient to persuade NIS America to push ahead with plans for continued localisation.
The writer would go on to localise Chilly Metal 3, Chilly Metal 4, the 2 Crossbell video games from earlier than the Chilly Metal saga, Trails into Reverie, Dawn, and Dawn 2 all throughout the house of about 4 and a half years.
A herculean effort, nevertheless it paved the way in which for the place we are actually — all caught up with the newest Trails title.
Once more, this will not imply a lot to these unfamiliar with Falcom’s storied creation, however parity with the Japanese launch schedule has been a protracted, lengthy, lengthy time coming.
From our perspective — having been writing about these video games for what seems like an eternity — it is a borderline surreal second.
The subsequent Trails recreation — not counting upcoming remake Trails within the Sky 2nd Chapter, which has a worldwide launch anyway — is believed to be in growth proper now. It will be very fascinating to see when it will get introduced, and whether or not it will be granted a worldwide launch.
Are you an enormous Trails fan? How does it really feel to be all caught up on the newest saga? Be a part of Van and the gang within the feedback part under.
