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The Legend of Heroes franchise, otherwise known as the Kiseki or Trails series, has received some major news. After years of being ignored by localization companies, NIS America will finally be bringing Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure to English-speaking audiences. Fans might be aware that both of these titles have had unofficial English patches created by the fan translation group Geofront, who has just revealed that they've partnered with NIS America to use their work as the basis for the official localization. Multiple members of the Geofront team expressed their excitement over the deal through an announcement post on their site, though they also mentioned that this means the fan-translation patches will no longer be available on their website, asking fans to support the official release, now that one is happening.

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Trails from Zero will be releasing in the fall of 2022 for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC (Steam and Epic), while Trails to Azure will be releasing in 2023 for those same platforms. In addition, NIS America will also be bringing The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails and The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie west as well.

Source

 

[lwiz]

After finding Falcom via Cold Steel I their releases tend to go to my frontlog, even if I'm playing something else at the moment. I'll probably wait for Reverie and then finish all missing trophies at once.

ATM waiting for getting my hands on Scarlet Nexus (already downloaded and whatnot), but have to finish some translation stuff etc. I'm working on. Then it's time for backlog spanning from 1980's - again

 

[godreborn]

I kinda wish there were trophies on the switch or some sort of achievement system. I beat the hell out odyssey, ys viii, and a few other games. my first switch died from nand corruption according to Nintendo, so it would've given me more incentive to go through games like octopath traveler again. that game can be brutal, which is why I haven't. it's a small triumph to beat the next boss imo.

 

[lwiz]

I kinda wish there were trophies on the switch or some sort of achievement system. I beat the hell out odyssey, ys viii, and a few other games. my first switch died from nand corruption according to Nintendo, so it would've given me more incentive to go through games like octopath traveler again. that game can be brutal, which is why I haven't. it's a small triumph to beat the next boss imo.

Kinda funny that - they tried some kind of achievos at least for Xenoblade X but those were just ingame IIRC. Nintendo trying to prevent competition & rivalries between players? (Although, achievos kinda mean a little these days, especially on certain platforms as they are unlockable without even playing...)

 

[godreborn]

that is true. someone has platsinum on the ps4 in over 8,000 games, and he has acknowledged that he cheated. it's just kinda cool that something caries over to the next iteration of the platform. I haven't been cheating or using faqs with the switch. I think you get more out of the game that way. maybe one day Nintendo will have some sort of achievement system. that's the reason I was going to go legit on the ps3, without fear of getting banned, but that didn't work out so well.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

that guy in question devised a way to get trophies without ever installing the games. he posted something on psx place a while back. that's where I heard of him.

 

[AbyssalMonkey]

Trying to think if this is the first fan translation picked up in such a manner.

Plenty of source recreation, level hackers and emulator authors doing much of the previous two plucked out of the community before, plus the whole sega thing a few years back, but this is new as far as I am aware.

If I remember correctly, the Dies Irae translation was a mostly-finished fan translation before the group making it was hired to release it officially with Kickstarter backing. That Visual Novel had a reputation for being obscenely difficult to translate, so it was pretty notable.

As Chaos said. But the entire visual novel scene has an entire history of this type of thing. The publisher Sekai Project basically exclusively does this, while the other publishers do it on rare occasions. Sekai Project's reliance on it is almost shady in a way. I would worry about this being a thing in the future. Fan TL's are a great thing, but large companies exploiting them for underpaid work that would be paid to actual translators for their time is worrying. Honestly the entire market around translations, manga scanning, "donations", and bounties is going to come to a head and I fear for the outcome of the community in the aftermath.

 

[ZeroFX]

These are some nice games.

 

[McPringles]

Trying to think if this is the first fan translation picked up in such a manner.

Plenty of source recreation, level hackers and emulator authors doing much of the previous two plucked out of the community before, plus the whole sega thing a few years back, but this is new as far as I am aware.

XSEED licensed some fan translations for Ys games back in the PSP era, I believe. Ironically, if XSEED's outsourced translation for Trails in the Sky SC hadn't ended up being such a clusterfuck, they might've also been able to localize Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure when they were first remastered for the Vita, and these fan translations never would've happened.

Purchasing fan translations isn't all that unusual for visual novels, either; I think both Steins;Gate and The Devil on G String both used the fan translations as the basis for the official ones. The group who was translating Root Double also got brought on for the official translation, although I don't know how much work they actually had done prior to that point.

What's really interesting about this is that the Trails to Azure patch was only released a month ago, long after talks with NISA were probably in the works. I get that the 'official' release is still two years down the line, and has extra content compared to the original game, but I'm kind of surprised NISA didn't try to stop them from publishing the patch weeks before the official announcement.

 

[VartioArtel]

@VartioArtel

Yeah I found out through a streamer friend hilariously the night of the announcement.

I'm happy, but I and others seem to be wary. The translation's gonna be great, no joke. The issue is Geofront did more than a stellar translation, they also fixed a number of bugs found EVEN in the version of the game we'll be getting, provided other QOL like a retry for one Quest-related minigame that lacked a retry, so on and so forth.

Time will tell if the time for Azure is to add in these QOLs.

 

[Arras]

As Chaos said. But the entire visual novel scene has an entire history of this type of thing. The publisher Sekai Project basically exclusively does this, while the other publishers do it on rare occasions. Sekai Project's reliance on it is almost shady in a way. I would worry about this being a thing in the future. Fan TL's are a great thing, but large companies exploiting them for underpaid work that would be paid to actual translators for their time is worrying. Honestly the entire market around translations, manga scanning, "donations", and bounties is going to come to a head and I fear for the outcome of the community in the aftermath.

The problem is that in many cases, especially vns, getting a proper translator is very expensive and the genre is niche enough that you may never see a return on investment, so a normal translation just won't happen. On the other hand, paying for a fan translation that already exists is a lot more viable.

 

[Jayro]

I'd rather see Tales of Destiny 1 and 2 remakes.

 

[Deleted member 514389]

Incredibly impressive.

I've always kinda wondered if 'fan translation' and 'official localization' couldn't go hand in hand.

Thank goodness some woke people are still roaming the planet
*starts believing in various gawds again*

 

[fvig2001]

Wow good for the fans of the series. I kind of want to get into traiks but couldn't really get into it.

 

[Eleczoro]

Fan translation becoming official? I wonder if that could happen for Ace Attorney Investigations 2 or Mother 3

 

[MadMakuFuuma]

i already played both Ao and zero last year, but this is the best news of this year so far! now we finally will have all the main trails games officially to buy ^^'

 

[AbyssalMonkey]

The problem is that in many cases, especially vns, getting a proper translator is very expensive and the genre is niche enough that you may never see a return on investment, so a normal translation just won't happen. On the other hand, paying for a fan translation that already exists is a lot more viable.

If it's not viable, the market isn't viable. This is just looking for worker exploitation. The business isn't doing anything except taking money for the licensing. They aren't providing a service, they're being a middleman. They are being the literal worst kind of business. If these businesses can't do things professionally, above board, they shouldn't be hiring out what are effectively contractors at sub-minimum wage with no working benefits.

Fuck em. Manga Gamer and JAST seem to be doing just fine. Even if they only release a few releases every year. Ace Attorney and the 9 series do just fine. There is no excuse for this crap. Either they pay professionally or they can fuck off. Don't come into a scene and just hire already made work. This is how the blight known as FAKKU came to be. And 99% of the community hates them. They're disruptive and have caused more damage for a few sheckels than actually growing the market.

 

[Pluupy]

NIS wining and Xseed failing

Legit never expected this

Xseed can't hear you over the sound of all the otome games they're localizing which would NEVER have been touched by any other company in the west.

 

[NeoGranzon]

I just hope it's a 100% complete translation,not like Digimon World:Next Order(Chinese version english patch)for PS Vita which,in addition to the title screen also has other untranslated things,such as when you enter the gym the symbols some tools are in Chinese.
For this i prefer to play Japanese games,if there are no official English versions like for the Legends of Heroes series or Attack on Titan 2 etc ... for PS Vita.

 

[VartioArtel]

I just hope it's a 100% complete translation,not like Digimon World:Next Order(Chinese version english patch)for PS Vita which,in addition to the title screen also has other untranslated things,such as when you enter the gym the symbols some tools are in Chinese.
For this i prefer to play Japanese games,if there are no official English versions like for the Legends of Heroes series or Attack on Titan 2 etc ... for PS Vita.

The Zero/Azure are 100%. Geofront's patches are being used as a basis and NISA already asked them to translate more - implying these are the KAI releases. Ofc, NISA will do an edit pass first.

Hajimari? They wouldn't dare leave the capstone of the West Zemuria mythos untranslated.

 

[the_randomizer]

Too bad it's a series you can't just jump in at any given game but one you have to start from the very beginning.

 

[Steel-Winged_Pegasus]

OOOOH, so much hype! I just started playing Sky SC, so I'll have more than enough time to get in on the Crossbell duology!