Little sad to see discussion of the game die down a bit, although I guess people are just boiling for SC at this point, eh?
Anyway, as an interesting little aside, and just in case people wonder if some of us are bullshitting about this series/franchise being a Big Deal in Japan:
The "Best Price" versions of Trails FC (what we got so far) and SC
are currently the two best-selling Best Price games on Amazon; each one, individually, is outselling the Best version of MGS Peace Walker. Trails Third comes in at fifth place on the list.
Ao no Kiseki, the upcoming fifth Trails game,
is the single best-selling PSP game currently, and has basically been there, uninterrupted, for two months now. Zero no Kiseki, the fourth game,
currently sits at around 60 or so on the top 100 chart, but has maintained a place on the top 100 chart for
three hundred seventeen days; this is a feat only matched or bested by Peace Walker and a couple of relatively obscure-in-the-West VNs, and it doesn't look like Zero is going anywhere anytime soon. Both FC and SC's Best versions also mange to place (FC being
higher than Zero right now), with FC Best having spent 70-odd days in the top 100 overall and SC 144... and this is with both games being half a decade old or more.
And overall, across all games currently being sold?
Ao no Kiseki is currently in fourth, beaten only by Dark Souls, Armored Core V, and a rerelease of ToHeart 2, and odds are it'll get third back from TH soon enough.
The TLDR is, this franchise is a Pretty Big Thing in Japan and has crazily long sales legs. There's very few franchises that can claim to have multiple entries, especially ones as old as FC and SC, in the top 100, and practically nobody who can claim to have FOUR entries ranking on a single system. Amazon's also a pretty good indicator for the rest of the market in Japan (since it's the most popular game-purchasing method in Japan, between the discounts it offers and the convenience of delivery for both the busy working set and for the more shut-in types), so sales in retail stores are pretty much guaranteed to follow the same or similar trends. And Ao is selling like this on preorders, mind you; unless the game is totally awful, it'll sell even better once reviews come in and more fair-weather fans pick it up on release.
So yeah, in case the quality of FC alone wasn't an indicator, this whole thing isn't just a couple of nerds on the internet making stuff up. Trails is one of the bigger franchises in Japan, and until now has more or less been its best-kept secret. God knows how long it'll take America to get caught up on all the releases, though.
Oh, for the curious... if you're wondering how Ys is doing in comparison?
Ys Seven ranks at 91 on the "Best Price alone" list; it's so far down that it isn't even close to ranking on the Big List at all. Oath in Felghana and Ys Chronicles don't manage to list at all, anywhere.
If you've been wondering why Falcom seems so much more sanguine about Trails these days...
