The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero PS4 Version will Not Include QoL Improvements from Switch and PC Versions

The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero is a game from Nihom Falcom which was originally released all the way back in 2011 on the PlayStation Vita. Fast forward about nine years, and Japan re-released the game on PlayStation 4. The game’s slated for a Western re-release under publisher NIS America and will launch at the end of September.

There’s just a bit of an elephant in the room. Let’s try to break it down. First off, The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero is going to release on September 27th, 2022 for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. That’s where the similarities end, though. In two Steam blog posts (Part 1 and Part 2), NIS America revealed many of the upgrades the PC port would be getting, like additional aspect ratio support, full playability with only your mouse, high FPS support, and more.

Something else that’s… a bit stranger is that, beyond all of these upgrades, the PlayStation 4 version is outright inferior to the Nintendo Switch and PC versions. In a tweet from Gematsu, you can see that NIS America announced the PlayStation 4 version will outright lack the previously-stated game changes, which is all kinds of odd. You can view that tweet below.

I asked @NISAmerica why this wasn’t conveyed to consumers and whether any of the graphical upgrades / quality-of-life additions by @durante_pt are planned for the PS4 version. Here is its response.

Blog links:
Part 1: https://t.co/NkXfJkv3X8
Part 2: https://t.co/f5yN9G1Ggx https://t.co/xtuvfegIOv pic.twitter.com/ZKmQg596Mg

— Gematsu (@gematsu) September 7, 2022

What you’ll be getting on the PlayStation 4 is a PlayStation Vita title blown up to a PS4’s display, with none of the quality of life that other versions will get. It gets stranger still; Peter “Durante” Thoman (a famous modder and CTO of studio PH3), in a Reddit post from back in March 2022, mentioned these changes to the Nintendo Switch and PC versions, as well as discussing the PlayStation 4 version.

One such user asked about the texture quality on the PlayStation 4, and, to quote Durante, he said,

The texture situation is really complicated. PSP has the original artistic intent, the older PC release has some re-drawn higher quality map textures, but sometimes they are a bit artistically different, the character and monster sprites are higher-detail but dithered, the KAI version mostly use PSP upscales for map textures and character sprites but have the highest-quality UI art.

And yes, if you get the impression that we spent a ton of time looking into these things you would be right ???? Our intention is for our releases to have the best of everything (and improved beyond that where feasible, e.g. removing dithering) while staying artistically close to the PSP versions whenever there is a choice to be made.

There are many more questions like this in the Reddit post, but as it stands, the versions won’t be the same at launch. Whether PS4 will get the overhauls it’ll need to be on par with the PC and Nintendo Switch versions, we don’t know yet, but we’ll update when more information is released. The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero is out now on PlayStation Vita. It will be released on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam on September 27th, 2022.