Trails from Zero: Crossbell's first chapter

Trails from Zero (Zero no Kiseki) was released for PSP in Japan in 2010, between the Sky trilogy and Cold Steel, and it changes the series' camera. Crossbell City is a wealthy, corrupt city-state wedged between the Erebonian Empire and the Calvard Republic, run in practice by its banks, its mafia and its foreign landlords. Into it steps Lloyd Bannings, a rookie detective assigned to the newly formed Special Support Section, Elie McDowell, Tio Plato and Randy Orlando, a PR-stunt police unit the city expects to fail, modelled deliberately on Liberl's bracers and determined to outdo them.

Zero is the most self-contained entry in the saga: a complete detective novel about one city's corruption, which happens to detonate several of the series' largest long-term mysteries. It is also the game the English-speaking world nearly never got. When Falcom asked XSEED to prioritise Cold Steel instead, Crossbell was skipped, and stayed skipped for twelve years, until a fan translation became an official one. That story belongs to the Geofront; the sequel that completes the arc is Trails to Azure.