Review for The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III. Game for PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 22/10/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 29/10/2019
In this cruel market we like to believe that, in the midst of the mass of games released every year, it is possible to be successful even thanks to pure talent. While there are numerous success stories that started out as modest projects, unfortunately the previous statement is not entirely true. If what matters in the market is only the quality of the title, then The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III would be shoulder to shoulder with Death Stranding, the most anticipated game of this end of 2019.
After 2 exceptional direct prequels and 5 other titles set in the same universe, Nihon Falcom takes back its mother series with the intention of putting an end to the epic of its legendary heroes. And with 2 years of delay even we Westerners can finally enjoy The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, a title that we consider the absolute creative peak of a developer who, in her niche, has always produced small - and large - gems.
As you may have understood from the introduction, this review will have mainly positive notes. However, the "budget" nature of the game and its peculiar position in the series bring with them some flaws that we want to highlight immediately. First of all, despite having arrived at us in 2019, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is not a title that boasts a graphic sector that is up to many rivals, Persona and Dragon Quest above all. The title is not unpleasant to see, far from it, but if there is one field in which we would like to see Falcom grow it is precisely the presentation of its titles. Another obstacle to the full appreciation of the game is its nature as an epilogue, or at least the first part of the epilogue, of a series consisting of 7 titles, which tell 3 different narrative arcs. Although we do not consider this a defect, for reasons that we will expose later, it is undeniable that to play Trails of Cold Steel III it is recommended at least to recover the first two Cold Steel, in order to experience the Erebonia and Class 7 saga. Starting from this third chapter is not discouraged, it is just purely impossible if you want to appreciate the narrative component, that while not the only strong point of the game, it is part of the soul that makes it one of the best, if not the best, JRPG of the current generation.
Removed the metaphorical pebble from the shoe, let's talk directly about the aforementioned soul of Nihon Falcom's latest title. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III tells the story of Rean Schwarzer, a hero of the Erebonian civil war struggling with his new life as a teacher in the secondary branch of the military school in which he grew up. The title, despite having a time skip compared to the epilogue of Cold Steel II, stands as its direct sequel, going to address many outstanding themes and using many characters from the two previous episodes. Where, however, this third chapter differs is in the role in which it places all the characters, involved together with several newcomers in a narrative that extremely thins the line that divides main and secondary characters. This is both at the plot level and in the gameplay, in fact the characters that can be used in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III are innumerable, and their roles in the story so important and in-depth that they cannot be properly considered secondary characters.
And it is in the characters that The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III finds its greatest strength. If the first chapter already proposed a very personal writing, which allowed the members of Class VII to grow in a plausible and satisfying way, this sequel perfects the formula already consolidated in Cold Steel leading to a narrative that intertwines the stories of dozens of characters incredibly without any of them having sketchy or inconsistent psychology. While the plot is not without twists and has a practically perfect pace, it is the wonderful characters and their characterization that elevate the title.. However, the defect we have already talked about comes into play in this aspect: although the new characters are as convincing and charismatic as the old ones, with special mention for Musse, the protagonists of the previous Legend of Heroes play a key role in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, so without knowing them you could miss the excitement of some moments of interaction. On the other hand, thanks to its immense world building, Trails of Cold Steel III is a title capable of giving satisfaction that grows the more you know it.. Seeing characters from past games come back and learn more about their lives is fun and rewarding for those who have spent hours with them. We do not deny that by reviewing characters like Laura, Oliver or others that we prefer not to anticipate, our hearts were a bit tight.
Luckily accompanying the formidable main cast we have a wonderfully constructed world, a storyline that never stops evolving, and a cast of secondary characters with more characterization than is often reserved for the main ones in other less curated titles. Thanks to this last advantage, the gameplay is enhanced, given that the player is much more inclined to carry out secondary activities knowing that they include mini-stories about characters who, however, always know how to give something more to the game, which is a background mission. comic or an insight into how the population of erebonia experienced past events.
Last, but absolutely not least, the gameplay discourse. The past has shown us that it is possible to make games with great narrative and poor gameplay, while still managing to remain in the hearts of the players. A good example can be found in Yoko Taro's titles prior to Automata. However, Trails of Cold Steel III does not even miss the combat system, and like the past chapters it offers a very complex and rewarding turn-based system. The main strength of this combat system is the stratification of the system: during the fight there will be many weapons at our disposal, which can even turn against us. The reason it is so good to fight in this game, however, is that each of these mechanics can be exploited in different strategies. Whether you want to bet on the glass cannon, manipulate your turns and enemy turns to have the perfect combination of environmental buffs, or think of any other way to fight, the game allows you to experiment without ever losing an excellent level of challenge, even at normal difficulty.
The amount of content on offer is simply impressive. We are talking about a game that takes about sixty hours to complete, even with "High speed mode" active, without ever having the feeling that everything is going on for a long time. There's always good content on the horizon: whether it's character bonding events, side missions, exploration of practice areas or mini-games (including a very nice Hearthstone-like), everything is useful and everything is fun. We also underline how Falcom has finally lightened its policy regarding cosmetics, previously reserved almost exclusively for NG + and DLC, but now obtainable during the campaign through exploration or other secondary activities.
The music is also good, although it cannot be combined with titles such as Persona and / or the phenomenal Shadowbringers, it remains excellent for the entire, long, adventure. If we really have to nitpick, we could complain about the impossibility of freely exploring every area of the game and the fact that the ending remains open for the next chapter, however we find that these elements are more than the "prices" to pay for to have the story that Falcom wants to give us, more than real defects, especially because the adventure is more than satisfactory despite having a "to be continued" at the end of the credits.
Trails of Cold Steel III, like previous The Legend of Heroes, will not make its mark on the market. This is not a title that will be lucky enough to revive the brand as Persona 5 did two years before him. However, it is a simply exceptional title, which all the more reason should entice more people to recover this saga unfortunately so easily ignored in the West. In a generation that, in the long run, has given great satisfaction to JRPG fans, Trails of Cold Steel III enters a special triad of masterpieces that show how the genre is still able to give unrepeatable experiences. A title that, years after the days when Final Fantasy X made us fall in love with the genre, reminded us why we love playing JRPG. Unfortunately it is not recommended for those who have not played the first two Trails of Cold Steel, although all in all bringing people to recover (at least) these other 2 pearls is not an unforgivable flaw.
► The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III is an RPG-Adventure game developed and published by Nihon Falcom Corporation for PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 22/10/2019 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 29/10/2019
