I disagree. If Zero has a plausible version that can be released (albeit with some work done to it) it's better than nothing. It would generate interest in the Crossbell games, and I'm sure that if - worst case scenario - Ao could never be brought over it would inspire fan translations (and general outcry, which I think is a good thing.) As it is, they're a mystical set of games people only know off-hand info about, so there's not much incentive for interest unless someone is already a big Trails fan; fans of Zero would clamor for the sequel, and their voices might have some power in various different ways.
The problem is, Zero leaves off with a very subtle 'fridge cliffhanger.' The more you think about it, the worse it gets. All of the first-game titles of each arc have some sort of cliffhanger. There's so much going on in it that leaving off without doing anything for the game would be pretty cruel from XSEED's part.
And to be fair, I'm not quite sure I trust fan translation operations with it. There's one working on Zero no, and I'm not entirely confident on their work at the moment. I've not seen anything to make me feel confident in it.
It would be completely irresponsible for XSEED to release Zero without knowing whether or not they would do Ao. If you go back to look into what happened with FC and SC, I can promise you that they would be very wary from repeating that again- because when they released FC, they thought they'd be able to do SC right away. ...but the situation proved otherwise.
As long as the PC version is just the Chinese version out there, and as long as XSEED has too many issues with getting the Evolution versions, our first thing to hope for, I'm 100% sure- is for Falcom to release it on PC.
Otherwise, push for some support to that fan translation group that's working on Zero right now. I'll sit over here and keep my eyebrow raised. Maybe they'll eventually prove me wrong. Hopefully.
Also, a major plot point in Zero and Ao actually calls in one of the larger sidequests that you go through in 3rd, too.
Not to lower anyone's standards, because you're absolutely right in that XSeed's quality is damn hard to match, but I'd take a half empty glass over an empty one.
I'll also admit that this kind of thinking encourages the translation work that we see with patches like for Nayuta no Kiseki. It encourages people to use shoddy machine translations with errors left and right just because people want to play them that badly... when people should actually be encouraging effort in the writing on them.
I've butted heads with people over the Nayuta no Kiseki translation, but it's still something I feel strongly about- it's poor to me for someone to not show any sort of real effort in all aspects of a translation project.
I'm kind of inclined to think that if people are willing to stick with FC, SC, and likely Cold Steel I/II by the time 3rd actually comes out they'd probably be happy to deal with it to get to Zero and Ao. They followed the series not only to that point but at the far end of the spectrum, so I doubt they're going to be losing players with 3rd alone.
Look at it this way. There's a possibility of Sen III being released either in 2016- and if not then, then absolutely in 2017. I wouldn't be surprised if XSEED would love to jump on that as soon as possible- especially with Cold Steel and Cold Steel II possibly being out here by the time it happens. If that is the case, then they probably wouldn't have the time to launch into another arc- especially one as massive as the Crossbell arc. Even if it's just in two games, these are the two largest titles of the series.
