Fans of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel are in for a treat, as the upgraded/enhanced version of the game is being released on August 2nd, 2017 on Steam.
Originally released for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita back during 2013, XSEED has managed to bring the title to the PC (North America) and it’s pretty damned good. Truth be told, this is my first go at the Legend of Heroes series and I rather like the game style. Sure, it’s turn-based, but it also introduces elements such as positioning during combat, as well as a nice spin on combat (such as combo attacks). The story is rather interesting, and I’m digging the character interaction and plot so far.
Performance-wise, the game, even at maxed settings runs great. I didn’t encounter any issues outside of a few shadow oddities. Played at a solid 108p@60fps, it was quite enjoyable. Oddly and no fault of the game, for some reason, Youtube encoded the following video at 720p. Thankfully, there’s a handy dandy FPS meter in the upper left-hand corner. Keep an eye on it as you watch the video.
For those wondering about how your PC will stack up, I’ve listed the required and recommended specs for you. I’m pretty sure that if an Intel Atom can run this, you should be fine. For comparisons, I was able to run this on my laptop with an Intel i5-7200u with Intel HD Graphics 620/integrated graphics and it ran fine at 1080p and hovered around 60FPS with mixed settings.
- 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
It’s worth mentioning that XSEED employed the services of Peter “Durante” Thoman to help optimize the game for PC. Fans of the PC community will no doubt know of him as someone who has helped correct “issues” on several PC ports, such as Dark Souls: Prepare to Die, Tales of Symphonia, and the more recent NieR: Automata. I’ll save the full impressions for our review, so watch out for that.
That said, this game is definitely not going to be for everyone. I’ve already seen people on the Steam community forums and Reddit complaining about the dubbing. XSEED, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to get ahold of the original Japanese voices. So the entire game has been dubbed and the voice acting in the game can be rather cringe-worthy. It’s definitely not the worst I’ve heard, it’s definitely serviceable – purists may have another idea, however.
Still, it’s nice to see another JRPG make its way to the be – XSEED, please bring more over! I’d love to see More specifically, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 2 & 3, which is being released on the PS4 later this year. The platform can only benefit from that initiative. More JRPG games making the jump works for me and I’m sure the rest of you feel the same.
Since the game will be available tomorrow, I’ve released my first 110 minutes with the game. You can check it out in the video that’s posted below. Of course, since it was my first time with the title, I may have made a few mistakes, but you can be the judge of that.
Look for our review later this week.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel releases on August 2nd, 2017, for Steam and is priced at $39.99. The title is currently available on the PS3 and PS Vita as well.
