The first time English-speaking players reached the end of Trails in the Sky, they were left on a cliffhanger for almost four years. Joshua Bright walks out on Estelle in the final scene, and the sequel’s script was so long that its American publisher, XSEED Games, needed outside help to translate it, as Shacknews recalls. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, Nihon Falcom’s remake of that sequel, closed the same gap in less than a year, and it shipped in English and Japanese on the same day.

The game launched on September 17, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC through Steam. GungHo Online Entertainment America publishes it in North America, and the Steam page also lists Falcom and Clouded Leopard Entertainment, so PC players everywhere buy the same version with text in English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Korean and both forms of Chinese. The standard edition costs $59.99, and the Switch 2 Edition costs $64.99. Switch owners can move up to it with a $4.99 upgrade pack. A $24.99 Season Pass holds cosmetic extras. The trailer above is the launch trailer Nintendo of America posted for the Switch 2 version.

Joshua’s goodbye starts the game

2nd Chapter remakes The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC, which first came out on PC in Japan in March 2006. The story picks up right after the first game. Estelle and Joshua have just stopped a coup in the Kingdom of Liberl and earned their rank as senior bracers, the guild agents who keep the peace in the small country. On the eve of the Queen’s birthday festival, Joshua tells Estelle the truth about his past and disappears into the night. His last words are “Goodbye, Estelle.”

She keeps his harmonica and goes after him. That search runs into Ouroboros, a secret society whose agents, the Enforcers, start tearing Liberl apart from the inside. Falcom’s own summary promises a capital in flames and a giant airship over the country. Shacknews points out that the sequel walks you back through the same regions as the first game, in the same order, in a new context.

This is not a starting point. Shacknews says it bluntly, and RPG Site agrees: you play 1st Chapter first. Falcom rewards players who do. A clear save from 1st Chapter unlocks bonus items, and progress from the free demo carries into the full game.

What Falcom changed for the remake

The 2006 original used small sprite characters. The remake rebuilds Liberl in full 3D with reorchestrated music and voice acting in English and Japanese. Fights start in the field: you can hit weaker monsters in real time and then switch to turn-based combat when a battle gets serious. The new Brave Rush move chains party attacks during those quick fights. Characters also get new Crafts and S-Crafts, their special moves, on top of the Orbment system that powers magic.

Some characters who were only NPCs in 2006 now join the party. There is fishing, poker and cooking with your companions between story chapters. RPG Site reviewer Junior Miyai described the approach with the old line “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”: only a handful of systems changed from 1st Chapter.

The English cast now covers 15 named characters. Stephanie Sheh voices Estelle and Johnny Yong Bosch voices Joshua. Matthew Mercer plays the musician Olivier Lenheim, and Brianna Knickerbocker plays Tita Russell, the young engineer whose big scene with the bracer Agate is the one RPG Site’s review singles out. Nintendo Everything played the Switch 2 version and reported no frame rate drops or crashes across a campaign that can run to about sixty hours.

Critics rate it 92, and Falcom raised its forecast

On OpenCritic, 2nd Chapter holds a Top Critic Average of 92 and a 99 percent recommendation rate from 70 reviews, which puts it in the site’s top “Mighty” tier. Miyai finished it and bought the original Trails in the Sky the 3rd straight away rather than wait for another remake. The complaints are about repetition. Shacknews called the game “about as iterative as it gets”, and RPG Site found that backtracking through areas unchanged since 1st Chapter is still a chore, even with a High-Speed Mode that fast-forwards through monster zones.

The sales count for more at Falcom. In October the company said the Trails series had passed 10 million copies worldwide and raised its full-year forecast, citing early sales of 2nd Chapter alongside 1st Chapter and the Japanese release of Kyoto Xanadu. According to Final Weapon, projected revenue went up 19.4 percent and operating profit 27.2 percent. The game is also nominated for Best Remake/Remaster at the Golden Joystick Awards, which hand out their prizes in London on November 11.

Falcom has not announced a remake of Trails in the Sky the 3rd, the third and final game of the Liberl story. Between 2011 and 2015, English-speaking players waited on translators to learn what happened to Joshua. This time the only thing holding back the next chapter is Falcom.

Tags: gaming, Nintendo Switch 2, JRPG, GungHo Online Entertainment, Nihon Falcom, The Legend of Heroes