Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter releases next week

The JRPG fans among you will probably be aware of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, a well-regarded, light-hearted adventure that finally wended its way to English-speaking PCs last year. Since then, we've been eagerly anticipating the first Western appearance of its follow-up, Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter. It's a bigger game featuring a hell of a lot more text, and over the last few years it's been something of a cross to bear for the game's initial translators/localisers Carpe Fulgur (them what also localised Chantelise and Recettear). But that's all by and by, as SC is—hooray—out next week.

Nihon Falcom's game—ported, published, and with the translation finished off, by XSEED—releases October 29, on Steam and GOG. The long-running Legend of Heroes series has been around in Japan since 1989, while its Trails in the Sky sub-series has been going since 2011—a sub-series consisting of three chapters. We're finally about to get the second in the West, which just leaves Third Chapter to be localised.

Considering the effort required to make SC happen, I wouldn't hold my breath for Trails' conclusion. (Fans generally describe Third Chapter as more of an epilogue, anyway.)

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.