Review for The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Game for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, the video game was released on 26/09/2013 The version for PC came out on 30/09/2017 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 08/03/2018
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel and sequel have been released - in both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita versions - for the first time in the Old Continent three years ago by NIS America, while the following year XSEED (which took care of the translation of the games, as well as the publication in North America) created a port for PC with a 50% increase in dubbing (with about 5000 lines of dialogue more!).
Less than six months ago, Marvelous Europe (which is obviously part of the Marvelous stable, like XSEED, on the other hand) announced that even the ports for PlayStation 4, published between March and April last year in Japan directly by Nihon Falcom Corporation (developer of the game), would have come in Europe in early 2019; the promise has been kept, given that today the first comes out, while there is still a date for the second but it cannot be far away, considering that in the autumn Trails of Cold Steel III is expected, the first developed natively for PlayStation 4.
As part of the regular series of The Legend of Heroes, Trails of Cold Steel (Sen no Kiseki in Japan) is the thirteenth chapter as well as the founder of the homonymous quadrilogy, which is the fifth narrative arc of The Legend of Heroes, which ended in 2018 (at least in the motherland). The last three sub-series (the trilogy of Trails in the Sky, the non-localized Crossbell Arc and the tetralogy of Trails of Cold Steel, in fact) are among them autonomous, but they are all set on the continent of Zemuria around the same time, that is, at the beginning of the thirteenth century of the Septian Calendar. Trails of Cold Steel, therefore, is a good starting point for newbies, although ideally it would be better to start from the Trails in the Sky trilogy, available on Steam and partially on PSP (in this regard, we will dedicate the next episode of our column right back to the first Trails in the Sky, Ed.).
As for the characteristics of the game, we can only refer to the exhaustive review of the PlayStation 3 version by our Salvo Cifalinò; here, it suffices to remember that it is about one of the best exponents of the JRPG genre with turn-based combat of the last decade, able to offer a compelling storyline, a very rich lore (even more for those who have played the previous Trails) and a classic battle system, which is the natural evolution of that of Trails in the Sky.
That said, here we are more interested in dwelling on the peculiarities of this remastered version, compatible with the saves of the PS3 and PS Vita versions (which are cross-save). First of all, the technical sector: clearly, being faced with a game of six years ago (not exactly high-budget, moreover), the graphics taste of old, but the resolution increase (up to 4K) and frame rate (60 fps) give a more than dignified rendering, despite the dated animations; also, it registers some technical improvements (such as the reduction of aliasing and loading times), so that the version for PlayStation 4 can be easily compared to that for PC. The same goes for the sound, as the remaster includes not only expanded English dub of which we said at the beginning, but also, for the first time in the series, the possibility of selecting the original dubbing in Japanese, added in the PC version last November with patch 1.6.
In terms of content, the remaster includes all the numerous DLCs released for the game, although it must be said that none of them are particularly interesting: there are no additional missions, areas or characters, but only costumes and objects, many of which are not even so. rare. The introduction of the Turbo Mode, also borrowed from the PC version: by pressing the L2 key, speed doubles when exploring and even quadruples when fighting; combined with the rush (R1) and the skip (Options button), the Turbo Mode makes the experience much smoother, partially compensating for the not exactly tight pace of play, especially during the first ten or fifteen hours.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is certainly nothing new for JRPG fans, but this remastered version is without a doubt the best on the market, not so much for small technical improvements or for the inclusion of all the DLCs. , as well as for the addition of some very welcome options, such as Japanese voice acting and Turbo Mode to speed up exploration and combat.
► The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is a JRPG type game developed by Nihon Falcom Corporation and published by NIS America Marvelous for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, the video game was released on 26/09/2013 The version for PC came out on 30/09/2017 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 08/03/2018
