Everyone knows at least one superfan in their life who doesn’t keep quiet about the Hiking trails series, Nihon Falcom’s sprawling universe of powerful RPGs with an overwhelming number of sequels, sub-series and interwoven story arcs spanning several decades. Fortunately, the latest game in the franchise, The Legend of Heroes: Paths through the Dawnis available now and is probably the best entry point potential fans will ever get.
Van Arkride is a private detective and bounty hunter working in the Calvard Republic during a turbulent post-war boom. A young woman asks him for help in finding a lost artifact and all sorts of political intrigue, diabolical conspiracies and brutal showdowns ensue. The game will be released on July 5th for PS5, PS4, Switch and PC, and the first reviews have been published. generally positive for the game, with critics criticizing its Side missions And turn-based combat although some occasionally disappointed by the main story And Real-time combat hybrid system. I spent a few hours here and I don’t regret it.
The real question facing future breaking Dawn Players, like almost every Hiking trails game is not whether it is worth playing, but whether it is a worthy starting point. It is the 11th main game in the series, which is technically itself a sub-series of Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes games. Because of this, and also because some key games have never been localized until recently, it has always been incredibly confusing for outsiders to figure out how each sequel relates to each other and in what order they should best be played, a challenge that previous My city Editor Jason Schreier tried almost a decade ago.
In the years that followed, Falcom finally brought overseas gamers up to speed with a steady stream of ports, localizations and new releases. But that also meant that every time a new Hiking trails game was released, inexperienced RPG fans often went from “oh, great!” to “oh, oh god…” Partly this is because die-hard Hiking trails Fans will always tell you to start at the beginning with 2004 Traces in the sky. There are Payouts and revelations players will miss out if they skip it. The game originally came to the West on PSP before getting a Steam release in 2014. But unfortunately, there’s no modern way to officially play it on console unless you want to spend over $100 on a used copy.
More importantly, if you start over, you have to play all 10 games that came before. breaking Dawn. The Traces in the sky Trilogy contains two more games, Trails in the Sky SC And Traces in the sky of the 3rd, both are also exclusive to the PC under modern platforms and take a collective Estimated 120 hours for completionThen there is the Crossbell saga, which Trails from zero And Paths to AzureAlthough both games originally came out over a decade ago, they were recently ported to PS4 and Switch in addition to PC, adding up to an additional 80 hours of gameplay.
Finally, you have the Cold Steel Games that build on the worlds, characters and conflicts of the previous games and culminate in a five-game story arc with Trails of reverieThe first two games are only available for PS4 and PC. Cold Steel III, IVAnd Daydreaming are also on Switch. For these games, we’re talking about another 250 hours or so. If you’re looking for an epic RPG adventure with deep world-building and character arcs that span multiple games, then you’re in luck! But if that’s you, then you’ve probably already decided to Hiking trails long time ago. And even if you don’t feel the need to start at the very beginning, tell someone to play five games before starting breaking Dawn is still a big task.
I am someone who is happy with a handful of Hiking trails games over the years just to see what all the fuss was about, but I never got deeper into any of them, let alone completed a full story arc. If you are like me and desperate to Hiking trails-pilled, but little time, breaking Dawn could be your saving grace. It’s the start of a whole new storyline that, while tying in the past and pivotal moments, doesn’t leave you with the guilt of being thrown into a messy drama in the third act. And even better, there’s a free demo available for PlayStation and Switch if you want to try it out before you decide.
Paths through the Daybreak IIhas been available in Japan since 2022 and will probably be ported to the West next year or the year after. Then there will be The Last Airbenderthe latest game of the Hiking trails series and the third game following the exploits of Van Arkride. There is no official release date yet, but it is set to be released in Japan before the end of 2024. At the moment, it looks like US players will be waiting until 2026 or longer, so plenty of time for breaking Dawn Converts to go through the rest of the series again. And by plenty of time, I mean just enough if you play at least 45 minutes a day Hiking trails from now until then.
