JRPG fans are excited for a new English fan translation of a 'Trails' game unreleased in the west

Ten years after it was released in Japan, Nihon Falcom RPG The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki is getting an English translation from a well-respected fan translation group named Geofront. The translation, being released under the English title Trails to Azure, is years in the making, and finally releasing on Saturday, May 22.

"I would like to think that after over a year of tireless work, we have successfully done my favorite game of all time justice," wrote lead editor Scott. "I truly believe we left no stone unturned in localizing Azure. This is our love letter to not only the Trails series but our predecessors who localized these games before us and those who will continue to localize them after us."

It can be hard to keep track of just how many games there are in the Legend of Heroes JRPG series, which started in 1989, especially when you dig into the Trails in the Sky sub-series and its multiple sub-sub series, like Trails of Cold Steel. (The fourth and final Cold Steel game was just released on Steam in April). Most of the Trails games have been released in the west by publishers XSEED and NIS America years after they first came out in Japan, but a few have never made it over.

Geofront released a fan translation of another missing Trails game, Trails from Zero, in 2020. Trails to Azure is the sequel to that game, and has officially only been released in Japanese and Chinese. The Geofront translation patch will actually apply to the Chinese version of the game, which you can buy digitally. Geofront wrote a walkthrough to doing just that here. Geofront's release isn't technically Azure's first English translation—another fan effort was released in 2018—but it's definitely one that series fans are excited for.

Coincidentally, a Steam release of Trails to Azure is coming later this year, too, but only in Chinese and Korean. Geofront has said it has "no plans" to release a patch for that version of the game (or for its PSP or Vita ports), but other modders may pick up the torch and patch Geofront's script into those releases someday.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).