Great to see this finally get an official English release. I played the Geofront translations of Zero and Azure a while back, and they're two of the top games of the Trails series.

Fun fact: based on the blogs by the porting house that worked on this version - they progammed the saving system so that you can continue from where you left off in the Geofront edition (previous fan translation). Since the saves are compatible, you should definitely try it out and continue with the best version of Trails of Zero out there on GOG.com. :)

There's a lot of other cool tidbits on the production for this version from the Steam page too:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1668510/announcements/detail/3355764861429706189

Links to the first 2 posts talking about the port are in this article too. A shame these weren't also highlighted on the GOG game page or on the forums via official channels. Really shows the kind of care they put into this port.

As usual, the price of their games is a joke, of the bad type.

I don't know about you guys, but the art style definitely looks similar to the ones used in the anime Baccano!.

Back then it's Falcom who told Xseed to skip Crossbell. And that was the right decision, Cold Steel really launched the series in the west.

Way to spectacularly miss the point.
And NISA actually has the higher regional prices, it's only the lower ones they refuse to implement here. They're happy to charge me $2 more for this game just as they do on Steam (even though our currency is in the toilet right now).

i agree that gog or nisa shoud match the regional price on other stores
especially for regions like brazil or mexico where the income is lower
but i dont agree that your currecy is in the toilet as
i still have to pay 11 kr for 1 GBP so youre still better off than me

Reginoal prics is a bad measurment on who can afford a game annyway
There exist people with lower income in contrys that are considered rich as well

It's relative. It's massively dropped in value very recently and the regional pricing is based on the old value.
Of course. I know many people who don't have spare money for video games and the UK is generally considered a fairly wealthy country. The purpose of regional pricing is to make the games cost the same proportion of the average income. Of course mean income isn't a very helpful statistic in a country with vast wealth disparity - the very small number of extremely wealthy people pulls the average way above what a large number of people are earning.

It mostly isn't a matter of exchange rate but of wages, which are often much lower outside a few wealthy countries even for the same work. For example, based on relative median wages (2021) the regional price in Mexico should be the equivalent of $17.41 (vs. $39.99 in the US), so even with the regional price available elsewhere it is still more expensive there.

For exchange rates, anyone whose currency is increasing significantly in value vs USD should keep an eye on this thread and wait for a price update to get a better price (likely in a few weeks before the Halloween sale if not earlier). For the UK or anywhere the currency is dropping in value vs USD prices will be worse after the update (if my calculations are right this particular game would be 3.92£ more expensive in the UK if prices updated to the current exchange rate according to Google, based on the USD price not the slightly higher regional price).

An interesting article, thanks! I really appreciate many of these features. To mention one, the message log is something I use all the time in games that have one.

In case anyone from GOG is reading, this is another game that shows the weakness in how the developer is listed on the game page, since PH3 is reasonably added to the developer credits but now you can't easily look for all games by Falcom. At least searching the catalog for Falcom works again (the special sale has most of them but is missing Tokyo Xanadu).

Also, since it isn't clearly stated on the game page it is worth mentioning that the limited offer soundtrack is not the full soundtrack but only a selection of 10 tracks. Most Falcom games available here have the soundtrack in either ogg/vorbis or opus in the game directory (unfortunately not Tokyo Xanadu), although without metadata or useful file names and often more abrupt endings than on the official soundtrack (I think Falcom will ship CDs around the world but they are unreasonably expensive).

Edit: I can confirm that the game_pc/bgm directory contains 78 files, 271MB of audio in opus via opusenc --bitrate 192 (96 is usually considered lossless quality for almost all music if you aren't processing it in a way that conflicts with the lossy encoding). 3 hours, 2 minutes and 16 seconds total (vs 22 minutes 45 seconds in the limited time soundtrack).

Could some passing bluetext by any chance remove the 'soon' tag from this game's library entry? I imagine it's a side effect of the buy-it-now-or-miss-out launch edition, but it makes the game look as though it's still unreleased.

I'm gonna skip it for now. Don't give me any shit about this, the game is heavily praised in the Falcom community as the best one they ever made. There are people probably buying one physical copy of it for each system. I haven't even finished Trails In The Sky yet, so buying this right now would be a waste of time and money. Instead I'm going to buy Prodeus which I can jump into immediately and then Dark Light tomorrow.

It looks like if you wait you won't be able to get the artbook and ost at all anymore . If you're even interested in it.

Source?

nvm its on the game page at the bottom

Can I be legitimately honest about a digital artbook? To me, it's useless. I would never pay for one unless it was part of a comic bundle. However, a hardcover physical artbook that I can display on my shelf and actually thumb through the pages - that's worth it. Also, as far as an OST is concerned, you can find that music online pretty much anywhere. I like having the freebies, but they aren't anything I really need. There is one physical artbook I'm saving up for and it's a Christmas present to myself sort of deal. It's hardcover and it's $60. But I want it on my damn shelf.