The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Of Cold Steel Review (PC)

Truth be told, I’ve always wanted to try out The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. While it was available to play, I was always gravitating toward more well-known titles like the Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star games. By the time I finally got around to it, I had either run out of time or lost my drive, or both. But now that Trails of Cold Steel has made its way to PC, I jumped at the chance to check it out, and I’m happy that I did. I definitely missed out on a great RPG, but thanks to XSEED, I’ve more than made up for it.

Game Name: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
Platform(s): PC, also on PS3 & PS Vita
Publisher(s): XSEED Games
Developer(s): Nihon Falcom
Release Date: August 2nd, 2017
Price: $39.99

In an interesting spin on RPGs, you aren’t controlling a team of ragtag heroes or training the biggest badass in the world. You aren’t even saving the world. Instead, you’re thrust into what amounts to tossing high school students from different backgrounds and cultures into a pot and waiting to see what emerges. There’s teasing, bickering, a spot of accidental inappropriate touching, and even a slap or two. But in the end, it all adds up to a cast of likable characters, each with their own issues to overcome.

While I enjoyed watching the story unfold, largely because of these characters, the story does drag at times. It gets downright slow, especially when you’re sent out on menial quests that are nothing more than filler. Still, where else are you going to find the antics of a very busty teacher seemingly in the middle of a mid-life crisis, or two characters who just need to disappear off screen together for a bit? Let’s just say this is Class 101 for heroes in the making.

When you’re not fighting enemies, you can upgrade and outfit your characters with various items, spells, and abilities. Spells are earned via Quartz, which functions similarly to Materia in Final Fantasy. Slotting these in provides all manner of offensive and supportive spells, and it’s a pretty handy system. It also means you can give every character multiple attack and healing spells, which becomes especially useful when you start losing party members mid-fight or need that extra burst of DPS.

One thing that bothered me was the constant swapping of party members. Multiple times, the party I had gotten comfortable with was changed without my input. I understand this was the developer’s way of exposing you to different play styles and characters, and honestly, I get it. I’m guilty of defaulting to my favorites in RPGs while neglecting the rest of the cast. This way, you experience everything the game has to offer before being allowed to build your party the way you want.

The combat in Trails of Cold Steel uses a traditional turn-based system. Depending on certain variables, either your party or your enemies will go first, but you can take steps to slow down enemy turns while speeding up your own. You can also strategically position your characters on the battlefield, which opens up advantages, particularly when using special abilities called Crafts. Earned through level progression, Crafts give you abilities that can target single or multiple enemies. Positioning and Craft usage go hand in hand, and ignoring placement will result in unnecessary damage or worse, your entire party getting wiped at once with no one left to bring them back.

Outside of positioning, you can also improve your odds by paying attention to damage types. Every character outputs a specific type of damage, and every enemy has its own weaknesses and resistances. Hit a fire-weak enemy with a fire attack and you’ll do significantly more damage. Ignore the system entirely and just throw attacks and spells at everything, and battles will drag on, if you survive the opening exchange at all.

For big damage, Link Attacks and S-Craft attacks are where it’s at. Bonds between characters can be developed outside of battle, and the stronger those bonds, the more powerful the Link Attacks become. These trigger when you deal critical damage and unbalance an enemy, opening a window for another party member to pile on with a follow-up strike. You can set up links between all of your party members outside of battle, and it’s a mechanic worth taking full advantage of.

S-Craft attacks are your super ultra moves. For the cost of either 100 or 200 CP, you can unleash an attack devastating enough to wipe out entire packs of enemies or deal massive damage to a single target. Since they burn through your CP, you can’t spam them, but with the right items you can squeeze out more than a few per battle.

Despite originally releasing back in 2013 for PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, the game holds up surprisingly well on PC, largely thanks to the graphical upgrades included in the port. Textures have been smoothed out, colors are more vibrant, and there’s a frame rate boost to boot. Right out of the gate you get a full suite of options including desired frame rate (30/60/unlimited), field of view, VSync, anisotropic filtering, anti-aliasing, borderless/windowed/fullscreen, and even widescreen support. Let that sink in for a moment.

Performance is flawless. During my testing, I played Trails of Cold Steel on three different machines: a laptop with integrated graphics, a mid-range PC, and a high-end PC. On every single one, I was able to run the game at 60fps or beyond with VSync disabled. None of them struggled, and the experience was consistent across the board. That’s not too surprising given that the minimum requirement is an Intel Atom processor and the recommended spec is an Intel i3. If you have a PC from the last six or seven years, you’ll be able to run this game.

MINIMUM:

• OS: Windows 7 or later
• Processor: Intel Atom x7-Z8700 2.4 GHz
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Shader Model 5 (GeForce 400 / Radeon HD 5000 / Intel post-2012 series)
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 15 GB available space
• Additional Notes: 1280×720 / 30 FPS with portable settings

RECOMMENDED:

• OS: Windows 7 or later
• Processor: Intel i3 3 GHz
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 770 / Radeon R9 280X
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 15 GB available space
• Additional Notes: 1920×1080 / 60 FPS with high settings

The sound is a mixed bag. The music tracks are genuinely enjoyable, but some of them feel out of place. There were moments running around town where the music sounded like it belonged in a battle, and times in a dungeon where the track was oddly slow-paced. Outside of those mismatches though, I enjoyed the overall soundtrack and found myself just listening at times, particularly to the battle theme, which is heavy on bass, fast-paced, and fits the action perfectly.

Update: Fans of the original Japanese voices can rejoice, as there is a way to add them back into the game. Check out the Falcom Discord channel for more info.

The game features a significant amount of voiced dialogue, more so than the original release from what I understand. However, XSEED wasn’t able to secure the Japanese voice-overs, so all lines were re-dubbed in English with some additional dialogue added. This has been a sore point for purists of the original title. Since I never played the original, I wasn’t exposed to what was missing, so I’m not as conflicted about it. The new dub isn’t as bad as people make it out to be, and while certain lines don’t quite land emotionally, it’s far from terrible.

That said, if the dub bothers you, you can disable voices entirely and just read the text. What was more annoying to me was the inconsistency, where certain sections were voiced and others weren’t, sometimes switching back and forth within a matter of minutes.

Rounding things out, the PC release includes something absent from both the PS3 and PS Vita versions: a turbo mode. Holding down a button lets you speed through the game, zooming past slower segments and even skipping battle animations and end screens. It’s a great addition, and I noticed XSEED has been patching it into several other Legend of Heroes titles on PC as well.

If you enjoyed this review, explore more of our in-depth video game reviews across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: This copy of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (PC) was provided to us by XSEED Games for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.