JAPAN GAMING & ENTERTAINMENT 
Nihon Falcom was not planning a second Trails in the Sky remake while it was building the first one. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter arrives September 17, 2026 anyway, rebuilding The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC, the 2006 RPG that carried the story of the original Trails in the Sky to its ending. The remake covers that second half: the road to a conclusion first told 20 years ago.
Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo, who also produces the series, said in an email interview published in September that motivation on the team ran high while the 1st Chapter was in development, and that talk of what to do about SC started on the development floor on its own.
September 17, with a demo that stops at the end of Chapter 1
The release date is September 17, 2026, and Falcom has announced it as a simultaneous worldwide launch on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Steam. The English version does not arrive behind the Japanese launch. The English release is published by GungHo Online Entertainment America, Inc. Falcom’s official site lists full English voice and subtitles for the Steam version, and the game’s English site files it under RPG and Adventure and lists it as single-player.
A demo has been out since August. It runs about ten hours, from the prologue, A Young Girl’s Decision, to the end of Chapter 1, A Looming Shadow, and its save data carries over into the full game. The way in, though, is the game before it. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, released in September 2025, remakes the original’s first half — the game English players know as The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky — and 2nd Chapter picks up from where it ends. Anyone starting now starts there.
One thing worth saying plainly to English-speaking players: this story is not new to your side of the world. The 2006 original reached Steam in English in 2015, as The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC published by XSEED Games, and it has been playable there ever since. The remakes have a different English publisher, and what arrives on September 17 is that story rebuilt, with the combat system the remakes introduced — not that story reaching English for the first time.
Swing in real time, or stop the fight and give orders
Combat runs on two modes you switch between mid-fight, the system 1st Chapter introduced and 2nd Chapter keeps. In a Quick Battle you attack on the field, backstep and roll away from incoming hits, and fire off a character’s Craft when an opening shows. Switch to the turn-based command mode and you stop to read the turn order and everyone’s position before issuing each order.
What 2nd Chapter adds: Brave Rush, a wide, high-damage linked attack in Quick Battles that costs two bars of the brave gauge; an orbment with seven slots instead of the six 1st Chapter allowed, where upgrading those slots opens up stronger Arts; and new Crafts and S-Crafts.
Away from the fighting there is cooking, fishing and poker. Cooking reaches into combat too: botch a recipe and the failure becomes an attack dish, usable in the command mode to damage enemies at no cost.
The sequel started on the development floor
Kondo has said that a remake of SC was not in the production plan while the 1st Chapter was being built. What moved it was the team asking what was going to happen to SC. Kondo does not describe this as a sequel that started with an order from above. It started with the people making the previous game.
He had raised the possibility in public early, though. When the 1st Chapter launched in September 2025, Kondo said that with that game a remake of the original’s first half, not putting out a remake of SC as well would make the whole thing look like a lie. Nothing had been approved inside the company at that point.
Why go back to the starting point now
Kondo gives two reasons for going back to the beginning at all. The first is the way in. Kondo says that over the Trails series’ more than 20-year history, the number of players who have never touched the original Trails in the Sky has grown, and that the studio heard from people who did not know where to start.
The second is where the series itself stands. Kondo describes the Trails series as being in its final stretch, and says one question has stayed with him the whole time: whether it is right to close the series out as it is. The remake is not aimed only at newcomers, either. He says he wants players who dropped the series partway to take an interest in it again as it heads toward its ending.
Why it is two games and not one
Kondo explains the decision to split the remake in two in terms of development time. Building the volume of both halves into a single release would have turned into a four- to five-year project, and that would have pushed the sequel to The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon, another game in the same series, further back. So the remake follows the original’s split.
The gap between the two ended up short. The 1st Chapter shipped in September 2025 and 2nd Chapter follows on September 17, 2026, about a year apart. At the 1st Chapter’s launch, Kondo said that back in 2004 players had been made to wait for SC, and that this time he wanted to keep the interval down. That is the pace Falcom hit.
The one that was not in the plan
The second half was not in the production plan. If the development team had not raised SC while the first remake was still in production, that half of the story would still stand only in its 2006 form.
Sources: the official Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter and Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter sites from Nihon Falcom and GungHo Online Entertainment America, Inc.; ASCII.jp; AUTOMATON; 4Gamer.net; Famitsu; and Steam store listings. Compiled from Japanese-language material and official English-language sources.