The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II will arrive in the West early next year, less than 12 months after its predecessor finally found its way stateside. While the sequel doesn’t sound like it will be as good of a jumping-on point as the first Trails Through Daybreak was, it will bring some meaningful improvements and new twists to bear on the evolving Japanese RPG.
I recently sat down for a hands-off preview with publisher NIS America and, though it’s impossible to get a sense of how a 40-hour game will feel in a 30-minute presentation, I certainly came away with a clearer sense of what will set Nihon Falcom’s Trails Through Daybreak II apart when it arrives on PlayStation 5, PS4, Switch, and PC on February 14. This time around, work-for-hire spriggan Van Arkride is tasked with investigating murders at the hands of a mysterious red monster in the City of Edith. Despite its familiarity, the setup nevertheless sets the stage for some notable change-ups in combat, returning character cameos, and a narrative time-loop mechanic.
Let’s take them in order, starting with combat. Players will still largely be working with the same structure and toolset they’re accustomed to, but Daybreak II’s real-time, action-oriented field combat has more options this time around, with party members able to wield Quick Arts outside of conventional turn-based combat. Once things do switch into turn-based encounters, a new Recast timer prohibits players from spamming S-Crafts back-to-back, a strategy that dominated in the first game.
Daybreak II also features a larger cast. There are more playable characters and lots of cameos. The former assassin duo from Trails Into Reverie, Swin and Nadia, will play big roles in the game. Others, like the martial artist Zin Vathek who appeared as far back in the series as Trails in the Sky, will also make appearances, fighting alongside your party for a time when the story deems it appropriate. The callbacks will be a boon for longtime Trails fans but will also potentially make Daybreak II harder to parse than the first game, which in many ways served as the most ideal jumping-on point for newcomers the series has had in years.
Perhaps most unique to Daybreak II is a time-loop system in which a magic artifact revives the team when they die and lets them pursue an alternate course of action to progress their journey instead. It sounds like this mechanic, which includes a menu screen showing branching story paths, will be purely a narrative device rather than one that impacts gameplay. You’ll still be pursuing every avenue in a somewhat linear fashion, and while time technically resets, your earned XP and treasure chest rewards remain intact between loops.
But much of the bread and butter of a Trails game is everything you’re doing in-between new dungeons and major story beats. Daybreak II’s European-inspired urban backdrop includes food carts you can buy stuff from and consume to get temporary party buffs, as well as to increase your gourmet rank to unlock new and better foodie benefits. Fishing, cards, cyberhacking, and other minigames have also been confirmed. And outside of main quests and character side stories, there’s an optional endless dungeon to grind to your heart’s content.
Even if Daybreak II seems like mid-arc filler, NIS America rep Alan Costa said its events will be important for later games, including a direct sequel that’s already out in Japan called The Legend of Heroes: Kai no Kiseki. NIS also localizes Nihon Falcom’s other big RPG franchise, Ys, the tenth entry of which just arrived in the West back in September. Costa has said NIS America is trying to cut down on the time it takes to bring the games overseas without cutting corners or hurting the quality of the translations.
That doesn’t necessarily mean using AI, however. While Nihon Falcom President Kondo Toshihiro appeared bullish on the prospects of using improving AI translation capabilities to speed up development and close the gap in global release times for Trails and Ys games, NIS America, which localizes the games for English, isn’t using any AI translation in its pipeline at the moment.
“We don’t use AI for any forward-facing translations inside of our games,” Costa told Kotaku during the recent preview event. “Anything that Falcom decides to do on their end, obviously we have no insight or oversight or say into that. I don’t believe they used any AI in the creation of their script for this game, but we didn’t in our use in localizing the title. So all of this is warts and all—hopefully we don’t have too many—this is all done by people.”
Though Trails Through Daybreak III doesn’t yet have a release date in the U.S., the second game isn’t the only Trials release next year. A remake of the first game in the series, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 1st, is also due out in 2025 on Switch. In addition to updating the 2006 game, it will also finally provide a clear starting point for new players on modern platforms.