The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon picks up shortly after the previous chapter, continuing the expansive and ever-evolving Kiseki series timeline. Van Arkride and his crew of hired allies venture into uncharted territory as humanity steps into the dawn of space travel.
At the center is Project Startaker, a space shuttle mission that successfully sent humans into orbit, capturing the world’s attention. Yet, behind the scenes, something ominous stirs.
What consequences will this monumental leap bring to the continent of Zemuria and beyond? Join us as we explore the possible outcomes of this new Spriggan investigation.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon
Developer: Nihon Falcom, PH3 GmbH
Publisher: NIS America, Clouded Leopard Entertainment
Platforms: Windows, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Release Date: January 15, 2026
Price: $59.99
Once the main event kicks off, a space shuttle reaches orbit, and you’re back in control of Van Arkride. Along the way, a few familiar faces join you for what’s now a Trails prologue staple: a training ground tutorial. The battle system hasn’t changed much, but some new features have been added to shake things up, with the standout being the Z.O.C. ability.
It works in both action combat and SHARDS, the game’s term for turn-based battles, via the Xipha devices. In action combat, Z.O.C. slows enemies while you move at normal speed, letting you unleash heavy damage with rapid combos. Unfortunately, the action gameplay still feels tacked on, seemingly just to appeal to those who dislike turn-based systems.
Honestly, I wish they’d stop forcing it into recent Trails games, including the Trails in the Sky Remake. In turn-based battles, though, Z.O.C. really shines, giving your character an immediate extra turn and enabling some clever strategies.
A new combat feature that might seem minor at first is the bonus AT effect called Blitz, which can randomly activate. When it does, your action for the turn allows one of your reserve party members to jump in for an attack. It’s essentially an extension of the SLCM feature, where an active party member follows up with a free hit if you’re standing beside them.
The best part is you can stack both effects, letting three characters strike your target in a single turn! You’ll know it’s triggered when you see those flashy anime-style eye close-ups, complete with a blue swoosh and a yellow swoosh.
Dual arts feel like a more worthwhile addition to the game because casting arts in recent titles often seems pointless compared to the impact of characters’ “craft” skills. With the right elemental Ornaments, you can create powerful combined-element spells.
I’ve complained before that Arts magic rarely felt useful outside of healing. Still, dual arts can be surprisingly effective, especially since they can target both weaknesses if an enemy is vulnerable to each element. Still, even when used to their fullest, Character Crafts generally feel much stronger in almost every situation.
Many characters have crafts that scale with magic attack stats, so high-magic characters like Miss Agnes Claudel and the tomboy Quatre Salis often skip arts in favor of instantly cast magic-based crafts. Honestly, the best way to make Arts relevant again would be to remove casting times entirely; they’re just too slow to keep up with the game’s fast-paced, over-the-top turn-based strategies.
Starting Trails Beyond the Horizon as your first entry in the series is highly discouraged. While the game makes a decent effort to catch players up with frequent flashbacks and “timely times” archives, it often just leaves you feeling like you’ve already missed a lot. Even as someone who has played the previous two Daybreak games, there are so many characters here that I barely remember, yet the protagonists instantly recognize them the moment they appear.
This happens repeatedly until well past the halfway point. Like most Kiseki/Trails games, there’s an overwhelming number of side characters, so many that it’s hard to keep track—and the somewhat generic art style doesn’t help, with characters often distinguished only by hairstyle or color swaps and limited facial variety. On top of that, many female characters wear blouses that gratuitously reveal cleavage. Thanks, Japan.
One thing I’ve always admired about most Falcon games is their willingness to explore female beauty, even if it’s sometimes played for comedy. I was both surprised and delighted to see female characters in bunny suits in a particular area of the city of Calvard.
In one of the deeper districts, I was amazed to stumble upon what could only be described as a red light district, where women danced provocatively, clearly animated with great attention to detail. It took some very close observation to appreciate how carefully the character rigs were animated.
The large, sprawling optional digital dungeon returns from the previous game, but this time it’s been hacked by a villain from the past. Now called the “Grim Garten” instead of the “Marchen Garten,” it works a bit differently, featuring a quirky and convoluted gacha system.
Thankfully, there’s no real monetization involved; currency is earned entirely by finding it or defeating monsters in the game. The gacha rewards are a blast, offering cosmetics, fully designed outfits, and even powerful ornaments and droplets to permanently boost stats, which ended up being where I had most of my fun.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon demands full investment in its characters and world-building, not just from this entry or the previous two, but often drawing on characters from across the Kiseki series. This can leave you puzzled if you don’t remember them, but for those fully caught up, it’s another fantastic chapter in the franchise.
The combat system has inspiring elements, though its presentation can feel a bit confusing at first, and the new additions may seem like overkill on top of an already complex system; though, for some, more is always better. It might be time to drop the action combat and focus purely on turn-based gameplay.
Will Arts spells finally feel useful in the next game, even with the addition of Dual Arts? With no shortage of entries in the ever-growing Kiseki series, here’s hoping these aspects get some fine-tuning next time around.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 using a code provided by NIS America. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is now available for Windows PC (via Steam), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
