For those of you who are fans of Nihon Falcom (the makers of the Ys games and other series) or interested in a well-written and meticulously-detailed JRPG, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC releases on 29 October 2015. It's been a wait of...depending on who you ask, a year or two, or four years, or maybe even eleven. But it's coming soon.

It's the second half of the story that starts in the first game (just called "Trails in the Sky" and sometimes called "FC"). I think it's probably analogous to Golden Sun being spilt into two parts. FC and SC were in fact originally designed as one game but then split because they're just too big.

Obviously not something to play until you've played the first. Estimates are that the first will take about 50 hours and the second takes about 100 hours. This is for a series that's known for its meticulous worldbuilding and setting details and every NPC having distinctive dialogue and being a distinctive character, with a number of them remembering how you've helped them and changing their dialogue accordingly.

You can in fact bring save data from FC over to SC, and based on how many bracer points you have you can get perks for it. A perfect save file gets you an accessory that increases rare item drop rate. And people you've helped in the first game will remember you in the second one.

First game was originally released in 2004 for PC. 2007 saw a PSP port in Japan. XSEED brought over the PSP version and released that in 2011, and then for a period of time XSEED and Carpe Fulgur (the folks who localized Recettear) worked on SC without publicly announcing their efforts, until around 2013 when the news finally came out that they were working jointly on it. Various difficulties pushed an expected release of winter 2014 all the way to late fall 2015...but it's finally coming.

website for English localization of the Trails in the Sky series: http://trailsinthesky.com/

The first game is available on PC (GOG, Humble Store, Steam) and PSP (physical release, and maybe also a digital release? I'm not sure).

GOG: http://www.gog.com/game/the_legend_of_hero...ails_in_the_sky
Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/theleg...esky_storefront
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/251150

The second game will be available in five days on PC (GOG and Steam; Humble Store is forthcoming) and PSP (digital release).

Steam (none of the other sites have pages up yet): http://store.steampowered.com/app/251290

(WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST GAME IN THE INFO FOR THE SECOND GAME. This is kinda inevitable because they're the two parts of the same story.)

FYI, there is a third game in the Sky subseries, called "The Third" or just "Third" (or occasionally "TC"), which is more of a spinoff than a continuation of the first two -- the two games have a self-contained plot between them. The Third ties the first two games in with the subsequent games of the Trails series -- Ao (Blue), Zero, and the Sen (Cold Steel) subseries, all of which take place on places in the setting that weren't explored in the Sky subseries. It has been officially stated that whether the Third will get an English release depends on the sales of SC.

The first game in the Cold Steel subseries is getting a PSV and PS3 release in the coming months or so. No PC version because it's not a PC native. The PC gaming market in Japan dried up and led Falcom to stop making PC games in-house in 2009. If they ever get back in, we might see them porting it to PC...

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