Nihon Falcom announcedThe Legend of Heroes: Hajimari no Kisekiwill launch in Japan on August 27 on PlayStation 4. This is quite surprising. Indeed, for years now, Falcom has usually been releasing their games in Japan on the last week of September.
We learned the release date ofThe Legend of Heroes: Hajimari no Kisekivia this week’s Famitsu magazine. Many more pieces of information on the characters and the battle system were included. All the details are below.
Note that this article contains potential spoilers seeingHajimari no Kisekitakes place afterTrails of Cold Steel IV.
Famitsu magazine included new info onHajimari no Kiseki’s battle system. It works similarly toTrails of Cold Steel IV, but with new features, one of them is called Valiant Rage. You need at least five characters in your party to be able to use Valiant Rage, and up to ten characters can use it simultaneously.
to use Valiant Rage, players need to fill the Assault Gauge, AG, by enacting certain actions like destroying objects on the battlefield. The gauge is at 1 on the UI. You can then spend AG to activate Valiant Rage commands with R2.
There are three types of Valiant Rage commands: Valiant Attack, Valiant Heal, and Valiant Arts. Using Valiant Rage efficiently allows to deal huge damage while healing yourself. You can also use any Valiant Rage command multiple times per battle as long as you refill AG. Valiant Rage also allows you to restore BP, meaning you can use Brave Orders more frequently.
More returning characters were also “confirmed” in the magazine. “Confirmed” because for most of these, either Toshihiro Kondo already said they’re coming back, either we’ve already seen them in the 1st Web CM:
Arios MacLaine (voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa).Lynn, Scott, and Aeolia appear as well.
Rixia Mao (Rina Sato)
Zeit (Osamu Ryutani)
Ilya Platiere (Yū Asakawa)
Matteus Vander (Rikiya Koyama)
Orie Vander (Yukana)
F. Novartis (Mitsuaki Madono).Vita Clotilde (Yukari Tamura)
Famitsu magazine included comments from Toshihiro Kondo, revealing more on the characters: Arios, Lynn, Scott, and Aeolia mainly appear in the Lloyd/Crossbell route. Rixia both fights with Lloyd as a main party member in his route, and performs with the Arc-en-Ciel troupe. Rixia is also rehearsing for a big performance commemorating Crossbell’s re-independence. Ilya will have more screentime than inZeroandAo.Zeit stays in dog form. Matteus and Aurier will each get involved with Rean in his route in different ways. We’ll get to see them fighting too. While Aurier first appeared inTrails of Cold Steel IV,this is the first time we’ll see Matteus in action. They’re both really strong. Besides Novartis and Vita Clotilde, other unspecified members of Ouroboros will appear and we’ll see a new side of their personalities, unseen in past games.
Lastly, Falcom revealed save link bonuses inHajimari no Kiseki:
You’ll get Proof of the Liberator when starting the Lloyd route, and Proof of the Hero when starting the Rean route.
Items marked with an * means the save data link is the only way to obtain them.
The Legend of Heroes: Hajimari no Kisekiis a full-fledged game making the bridge between the Erebonia arc /Trails of Cold Steeland an upcoming new “Calvard” arc. Players can freely switch between three different story routes:
Lost Symbol route following Rean.
The Day of Reindependence route following Lloyd.
The Miserable Sinners route following a masked character named «C».
Profiles for some of the characters revealed so far can be found onHajimari no Kiseki’s official site. Sadly, I don’t have the time to translate them all.
As a reminder, theTrailsseries, known as theKisekiseries in Japan, is a long running RPG franchise by Falcom. It’s officially described as a Story RPG to reflect the fact it has a huge amount of characters, dialogue and lore. You’ll love it if you love reading. The series is made of multiple games:
This is the first arc of the series, called the Liberl arc.
This is the second arc, called the Crossbell arc.
This is the third arc; called the Erebonia arc.Hajimari no Kisekitakes place after this arc.
Zero no KisekiandAo no Kisekiare currently Japan exclusive. However, PS4 “Kai” versions of the games arelaunching in Japan on July 02, 2025 and August 04, 2025, respectively, and Falcomteasedon multiple occasionsthese will be released in English at some point.Meanwhile,a fan translation ofZero no Kisekiwas recently released.
Trails of Cold Steel IVwas recently announced in English by NIS Americawith a Fall 2020 release on PS4, and a 2021 release on Switch and PC.
In my opinion, if you started the series withTrails of Cold Steel IorIIIand haven’t played any of the past games yet, I’d highly recommend doing so before playing playingCold Steel IV. As forAo no Kiseki,since it doesn’t have a translation patch, you could read a story summary. You could do that for all past games at worst. Or else you won’t enjoyTrails of Cold Steel IVas much and won’t understand its stakes. The Japanese subtitle of the game, “The End of Saga”, isn’t there for show. PlayingCold Steel IVwithout knowledge of the previous games would be like watchingChar’s Counterattackwithout having seen anything elseGundamrelated. Or, to take a post 2019 mainstream example any american would get, it’d be like watchingAvengers Endgamewithout having seen any other movie before it. Then again, you’re free to do as you wish, I’m just an underpaid game journalist, not your parents. Plus, some people do prefer starting with a climax, and experiencing later what lead to there. But I personally wouldn’t recommend it.
In the past, we covered thefirst details onHajimari no Kiseki.We also translatedToshihiro Kondo’s first video interview on the game.
The Legend of Heroes: Hajimari no Kisekiwas first teased by Falcom inMarch 2019.It was furthermore teased withscreenshots and story hintsin June 2019, at theKisekiSeries 15th Anniversary Event. Lastly, Falcommentioned in November 2019that a newKisekigame would launch by September 2020.
Update:Added and corrected certain details now that Famitsu magazine is officially available.
