The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd

Gameplay

The game plays similarly to its predecessors, a role-playing video game with turn-based battles, but this time enemies have affinities to the three higher elements of time, space and mirage. Other additions are the turn bonuses of "rush", allowing the player to take two actions at once, "guard", which nullifies any damage, "vanish", which makes a target disappear for a few turns, and "death", which gives the attack the effect of an instant death. Throughout the games' dungeons the player will find doors engraved with symbols of the moon, stars and the sun, which trigger, respectively, long story scenes, short story scenes, and mini-games. Those scenes usually tell the story of past events and sometimes feature battles.

Story

Six months after the events in Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, Kevin Graham finds himself in the airspace of the Erebonian Empire, right in the middle of a mission for the Septian Church. After a successful completion, he returns to his ship and immediately receives another request, now to investigate an artifact recovered from the bottom of Valeria Lake in the Liberl Kingdom. There, he meets Ries Argent—an old friend—and they both get caught up in an incident that leads them into Phantasma, the Land of Shadows, a place that seems to follow its own otherworldly rules. Thus, they begin their investigation, which leads them to unearth their own past.

Creation and release

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky was initially planned to be released as one singular game, however, the size and scope of the game grew so much that Falcom had to either pare down the game, or split it up. They chose the latter, and eventually split into two parts: First Chapter and Second Chapter. Later they started development on an epilogue to those games, which became Third Chapter. While the first two entries focused on the more upbeat adventures of Estelle and Joshua, Third Chapter shifts its story-telling into a darker direction.

Third Chapter was released on a number of different platforms. A high definition PlayStation 3 port was released in June 2013. It was also released on PlayStation Plus on January 2014.

Save data from Second Chapter from the PSP and PS3 releases unlock bonus content when present on the console playing Third Chapter. Additionally, Third Chapter saved data is transferrable from the PSP to PS3 release, allowing the player to continue the game on PS3 where they had left off on the PSP copy.

Localization

First Chapter, the smallest in the series, was a massive undertaking, with a script size of over 1.5 million Japanese characters, and sales of the PSP version did not meet Xseed's sales goals. The company stated unfavorable "large undertaking, low payoff" releases would, eventually, put them out of business. After First Chapter's successful launch on Steam, Xseed has shown renewed interest in localization of Third Chapter, contingent to the success of the Second Chapter. In 2013, Xseed teamed up with a third party translating company, Carpe Fulgur, to translate Second Chapter; The Third's release largely hinged on its success. Ken Berry, Vice President of Xseed Games, stated that despite having the right to release Third Chapter, they would be willing to allow others to translate them as well due to them being such large undertakings. Kotaku announced on March 11, 2016 that The Third has been licensed, planned for release in Spring 2017.

In 2011, publisher Aeria Games announced they would release an English version of the iOS version in North America, with added social interactions features. To date, no additional details have been released since the initial announcement. Xseed stated that they have no connection to the potential Aeria Games release.

Reception

Upon release in Japan, the PlayStation Portable version received a score of 30/40 from the video game magazine Famitsu.