"As a fan of the The Legend of Heroes franchise, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon feels like a breath of fresh air, but with 20 years worth of interconnected games making up its backstory, I cannot help but wonder if it will be too much to tackle for new or casual players."
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon feels like a game created by developers who want to try something new but are afraid to commit to it to avoid upsetting their fanbase fully. As a result, its hybrid action/turn-based combat system feels lacking.
Don’t get me wrong, the combat system isn’t terrible; it is perfectly fine, but I cannot help but wish the developers committed fully to one system or the other, as mixing turn-based and action combat systems doesn’t always work well.
Few games have been able to combine two combat systems as skilfully as Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and unfortunately, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon (like its predecessor The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak) is not one of them.
Overall, it’s a solid system that does what it is supposed to, but I cannot help but feel it could be so much more if the developers were given the freedom to embrace one system or the other fully.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is a bit of a mixed bag visually; while it is visually consistent (for better or worse), compared to games such as Final Fantasy 7 Remake, it is downright primitive and feels like a title that would be more at home exclusively on the Nintendo Switch than one that is available on multiple platforms, which is a shame, as while the Nintendo Switch is an excellent console with a great library of games, it is by far the weakest 9th generation console just as it was the weakest 8th generation console performance-wise.
While many developers optimise for different platforms, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon developers seem to have developed it with the Nintendo Switch in mind, resulting in subpar visuals and awkward texturing on all platforms, including Nintendo’s newest console, the Nintendo Switch II.
In one scene, background characters appeared to be made of silicone, with blurred and patchy skin.
Performance issues aside, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon does a slightly better job of portraying female characters than The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak, which sexualised almost every female character, in that almost every female character had very large (and often bouncy) breasts, which, even when covered, attempted to steal every scene they are in.
That said, while it portrays female characters better than its predecessor, it hardly portrays them well, with many female characters still having painfully large breasts, and wearing clothing that looks not only out of place with the rest of the character, but often the situations they find themselves in.
While some may dismiss this as a non-issue, I feel strongly that making content purely to titillate is wrong, and while there is a time and place for nudity in games, making every female character eye candy is offensive, and for those who are prone to acting on their lust, dangerous, which I why I am grateful the developers had opted for a slightly more balanced roster this time, even if many of the female characters look like they will have serious back problems before they reach their mid 20s.
Voluptuous figures aside, most characters look fantastic, and fans of good-looking characters will enjoy The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon, as it seems everyone and their grandpa (literally) is incredibly good-looking unless they are the stereotypical big rough brute, in which case they only get to be ruggedly handsome or stereotypically ugly.
While The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon includes its fair share of traditional fanservice moments, it also includes what feels like hundreds of easter eggs, and nods to other games in the series, which while I can appreciate as a fan of the series, when cutscenes waffle on purely for the purpose of referencing events from other games, and characters when first mentioned trigger artwork of the character to appeal (as if to remind the player who and what they are talking about) it starts to feel like The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon’s narrative is given second billing to all that came before it, and when a game is as lengthy as The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon, a decent narrative is not only important, it’s vital.
In 2024, The Legend of Heroes series turned 20 years old. As a result, it is visually and socially inconsistent, with older titles looking visually dated and containing social views typical of the era in which they were made.
This can result in elements being viewed far less favourably in 2026 than they were in 2004, or, in the case of Western releases, 2011, which saw the series make its first steps into a wider market.
As a result, Western gamers were forced to wait several years for ports of older games, while newer titles have seen much shorter translation times.
Since 2024, Western gamers are only one title behind their Eastern counterparts, with the publisher showing interest in releasing future games closer together, with the eventual goal of unified releases in the not-so-distant future.
However, I would not expect that to occur for a few years, as the publisher has no experience with global releases of this magnitude. While I would prefer not to wait for new entries, I would still be happy if they could keep releases within the same calendar year.
The Legend of Heroes series has some of the best world-building in gaming. Each game is a self-contained story and part of a wider shared world, and characters and events regularly cross over between sub-series.
For fans of immersive world-building and deep characters, The Legend of Heroes is a real treat. However, it does require a substantial time commitment, with the currently released games taking between 550-900 hours to complete, depending on playstyle and side quest completion.
To put this figure in perspective, in 900 hours, you could:
That said, just because something takes time doesn’t mean it is not worth doing. For gamers who want to begin an epic journey and can afford to put in the time, The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak, as it was created as a “jumping on point” for new players, and allows players to understand most of what is happening in The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon, while also having many visual, cultural and mechanical similarities
However, as a fan of the series, I recommend at least watching a few story-so-far videos to truly appreciate the depth and wonder of the lore and history of The Legend of Heroes, even if I feel the games would work just as well with a run time of 25 hours or less, if the developers focused on telling the main narrative, and didn’t include so many side quests and optional encounters.
However, I appear to be in the minority, at least as far as fans of JRPGs are concerned. Many Japanese gamers and fans of Japanese games prefer longer titles because they are perceived as better value for money.
I can understand this point of view; however, I feel the option to play through the main story, bypassing non-narrative optional content, would be a great way to make the games more palatable to a wider audience while still allowing long-time fans of the series to enjoy the amount of content they are used to, without forcing less enthusiastic fans and casual gamers to play through almost 900 hours of games to experience all the series has to offer first-hand.
I feel the weakest part of the Trails series is just how wordy the narrative is, don’t get me wrong, I love a story rich RPG, but Trails, like many JRPGs includes mountains of fluffy, cringy side dialogue that in my opinion, especially in English translations, distracts from the masses of well written and fairly well acted dialogue that actually serves a purpose.
Often I will find myself watching a cutscene that seems to go in circles, with characters saying a whole lot, but very little at the same time.
This often occurs at comically bad times, with characters speaking in great depth about the urgency of having to accomplish some task with no time to waste, only to spend 10 minutes standing around talking about how important it is they deal with whatever crisis they are facing imminently in the most lengthy and drawn out way possible.
Perhaps my disdain for some elements of JRPG style dialogue is due cultural difference, and once again I am not saying it is bad, but as a western gamer in my very very late 30s, I struggle to see why every important scene and plot twist (which are often well written) needs to be accompanied by some of the worst dialogue I have ever seen, with characters reacting to even normal things like a rumbling stomach (Tales of Arise) like it was literally the most humiliating thing ever.
And don’t even get me started on the bathhouse scenes, though I admit, the one in Tales of Arise did make me laugh, if only due to how entirely absurd and out of place it was.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is a role playing game developed by Nihon Falcom and published by NIS America, it released on 15 January 2026, and is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4 and Playstation 5.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon supports the following peripherals:
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is rated PEGI 18+ and contains:
Despite having only a T rating (12+) on ESRB, due to PEGI’s stance on even simulated gambling, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is given a much higher rating that it would otherwise have warranted.
I like the entire The Legend of Heroes series, and I intend to invest some serious “non-review” hours into The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon in the not too distant future, however I would have enjoyed it much more if it was vastly shorter and I was not forced to face off against near identical groups of enemies every few minutes.
Sometimes less is less, but in the case of The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon and many JRPGs entering the western market, I feel less is more, and hopefully major developers like Nihon Falcom find ways to allow players to choose if they wish a streamlined experience or play the game as it was originally intended for its Japanese audience.
Ultimately a fantastic game that is not for everyone, and one that buckles under the weight of its 20 years worth of interconnected and often very lengthy titles, making it less enjoyable for new players or those with less than encyclopaedic knowledge of the The Legend of Heroes franchise.
We found The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon to be a good game, meaning it is likely to be enjoyable for most players, despite having a few areas that could be improved upon.
"Sengoku Dynasty is a much-needed return to form for the Dynasty franchise, which is still reeling from the disaster that is Wild West Dynasty."
"Chernobylite is an excellent RPG held back by edgy writing, excessive profanity and overconfident developers who react unfavourably to negative feedback and criticism"
"While Class of Heroes 2G: Remaster Edition is slightly less dated than Class of Heroes: Anniversary Edition, nostalgia is the only reason anyone would choose to play it today."
