[Update: Corrected a misattribution in the first paragraph. Falcom’s sales figures cover the Trails titles and exclude Dragon Slayer and the Gagharv trilogy. Thanks, nacho_chicken for the correction!]
Falcom has shipped over 7 million copies of games in the Legend of Heroes: Trails series. This number combines all of the games in the Trails (a.k.a. Kiseki) portion franchise. While the larger Legend of Heroes franchise starts from Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes (1989), the figure focuses on games from 2004’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky through the latest Trails game, The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki (2021). It also counts sales both domestic and overseas. As well, Falcom plans to provide commemorative dividends for its shareholders at a stocks meeting in December 2022.
The commemorative dividends are not just for this sales milestone. They are also to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Ys series. Ys also started in 1987 with Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished. Instead of more turn-based combat, Ys is an action-focused JRPG. The latest entry in the Ys series is Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, which originally came out in 2019.
While long-running JRPG series such as Final Fantasy or Tales usually do self-contained works (with some titles receiving sequels or prequels), the narrative in Legend of Heroes spans almost all of the entries in the series. The exceptions to this are the Gagharv trilogy games, as The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky (2004) introduced players to a new world and story. All of the games afterwards are sequels to Trails in the Sky.
The latest entry to the series, Kuro no Kiseki II ~ Crimson Sin will come out on the PlayStation 4 and 5 in Japan on September 29, 2022. The latest localized Legend of Heroes game, The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero, releases on PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch on September 27, 2022 in North America, September 30, 2022 in Europe, and October 10, 2022 in Australia and New Zealand.
