Poll of the Day > Can I play Trails of Cold Steel without playing the rest of the series?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Basically start at Trails off Cold Steel and play that and sequels without doing earlier Legend of Heroes games.

@Judgmenl

He has me ignored or blocked or something.

Oh he's a big fan of the series apparently I figured if anyone here would know it'd be him

You can play the first 3 I think . After that the other games tie into the story . I know for a fact atleast 1 and 2 are safe . And the ones you need after that are being localized on the switch soon besides trails in the sky , you can get those on vita or steam tho so you should be good .

Fun!

I'm playing through Trails in the Sky SC Evolution on the VITA. I plan to play 3RD and the Crossbell games then off to Cold Steel

Huge Trails fan here.

The answer is technically yes - it will reference prior games in the series, but the story doesn't depend on you having played them (the party is not the same as the Trails in the Sky or Trails to Zero/Azure parties and it's set in a different part of the continent than those two), so it's still perfectly possible to play them without knowing anything from the prior games. That said, the game will spoil some wonderful plot twists from earlier games in the series, so I still always recommend that people play the first three games (Trails in the Sky FC, SC, and Third) before they jump into Cold Steel. They're older games now, but still excellent JRPGs.

The Crossbell duology (Trails to Zero/Trails of Azure, which are being properly localized as we speak but which have had a high-quality fan translation available for a year or two now) is set at the same time as Cold Steel, so does not need to be played first (and, in fact, I recommend playing it AFTER the first two Cold Steel games - both spoil points from the other, but Crossbell spoils some of ToCS's best twists, while Cold Steel largely doesn't touch on the bigger twists from Crossbell, with one notable exception).

That said, by the time you hit Cold Steel 3, the game will start calling on more and more parts of the previous games and Cold Steel 4 will be difficult to follow unless you have played everything that came prior.

So yeah, if you *really* want to, start with ToCS, but Sky FC is the better entry point for the series. Ideal play order, in my opinion, is:

Trails in the Sky FC --> Trails in the Sky SC --> Trails in the Sky the Third --> Trails of Cold Steel --> Trails of Cold Steel 2 --> Trails to Zero --> Trails to Azure --> Trails of Cold Steel 3 --> Trails of Cold Steel 4

Also, while there are games in the "The Legend of Heroes" series that came before Sky FC, they are effectively unconnected from a story perspective and don't need to be played at all (it's debatable whether they even take place in the same universe and nothing in the current storyline references them; in fact, Falcom has largely dropped the "Legend of Heroes" series name, because it's no longer relevant to the current "Kiseki/Trails of" series).

I really wish the Sky games would get a console port.

VincentVega posted...

I really wish the Sky games would get a console port.

I mean, they're 15-20 year old games. At this point if you own a computer more powerful than a toaster oven, it can run the PC ports.

I really should play the trails games, i loved the first 3 (vermillion,moonlight witch and song on the ocean) on the psp but never got around to the trails ones.

You can, but you shouldn't.
My friend did Cold Steel -> Sky and is waiting for Crossbell while playing the Japanese version of Reverie right now.
I did Sky -> SC -> CS1 -> CS2 -> 3rd -> CS3 -> CS4 and it was okay but could have been better. I've also been spoiled for some elements of Reverie and Kuro1/2 right now and was spoiled for CS4's ending before CS3 was even released in the west.
Ideally you want to play them in release order and never read wikis.

darkknight109 posted...

I mean, they're 15-20 year old games. At this point if you own a computer more powerful than a toaster oven, it can run the PC ports.

I don't own a computer.

VincentVega posted...

I don't own a computer.

Get a Steam Deck