So much happened while playing this game I honestly don’t know how to start. How about a little introduction to the Legend of Heroes series.

Developed by Nihon Falcom The Legend of Heroes games are comprised, as of this writing, of eight games. Some are sequential, meaning you will probably want to play the following game but every other game is a start of a new story, just like Trails of Cold Steel.

Story and Setting

One of the things that make these games stand out from other RPGs is that while the stories are self-contained, they all add to the build up of the world you’re playing in, the continent of Zemuria.

In many JRPGs, by the end of the game you’ll have seen the entire world, and while fun, if you think about it, it seems like the world is kind of small or empty. This is not the case here as you are more or less restrained to a single country. You’ll see some places but people will talk about other places you’ve not gone to yet, all adding to not only the county your in but to the world itself. To make an analogy I would say to think of the map of Europe. Let’s say you are starting your play through on France, and instead of seeing the entirety of Europe you’ll see every nook and cranny of France but there’s Spain and Germany right by your side and whatever happens in those countries may have an effect on you.

I think this way of presenting the world is great because it’s much more engaging. It feels like you’re knowing the country as a whole, not just one city and moving along.

So, with all that said, for this time in the franchise you start in the Erebonian Empire. The Empire part alone should give some hints on how it behaves to its neighbors and all of its back story and current policies come into the game in one way or another.

You are Rean Schwarzer, a student in a military academy which works pretty much like a school but with military training too. The classes in this school are usually decided between commoners and nobles but when you arrive a new class is created, class VII, which mixes people of many different backgrounds, commoners and nobles alike. These will be your friends and classmates throughout the whole year which is the time spam of the game.

I will stop myself from going further into the story because it’s great and you should experience it for yourself but I’d like to talk about one of the things that makes this series of games so good, and Cold Steel is no different here, the characters.

Characters

The characters are without a doubt the stars of the show here. At start some may be a little too upfront about their beliefs but gradually everyone will warm up to each other, creating a really good sense of camaraderie among all members of class VII.

Not only the characters are great themselves but their interactions with one another are once again what sets the Legend of Heroes games apart. There are a few characters which I think were a little underdeveloped compared to others but when paired together with certain particular characters they create some unique moments.

Jusis,for example, is your typical noble character. Stoic, short on words, acting somewhat above everyone else but not to the point of being a jerk or anything, just engrossed in keeping his business to himself. When he starts getting out of his shell to poke Machias and complain about Millium are in my opinion some of the best moments in the game. That alone was making a stand for putting him in my final party but he’s more than that. There are moments when he opens up to you (the protagonist) and you can see from where his behavior is coming from.

Rean is our main character and I like him just the way he is. He’s the nice guy that gets along with everyone, a little too kind but he’s not a pushover. He has a personality of his own and is pretty much the person that brings the balance to he group.

Eliot is the guy that makes you ask what he’s doing in a military academy. Differently to the other guys, he has a much more normal build and is highly interested in music. Even thought not much of a fit for a military academy he is one of those people that is just comforting to have around, like a true good friend.

Alisa is the typical tsundere love interest. She has a nice growth as a character, both personal and in her relationship with you.

Fie is probably my favorite, although that is hard to pick. I can’t exactly say what I like about her so much. For me she really feels like a character with a strong past under her back but she is still a kid, the younger of the group, and at times she acts like that, which makes her so fun. Sometimes she is mature but at other she lacks some common sense to the point of carrying a bunch of grenades to a school.

I could probably go on and on talking about the characters but suffice to say they are all good on their own but when put together they are really something else. Even the villain which appears to be your typical anime villain turns out to be much more interesting than I could have hoped for. When learning more about him it really made me feel sad at the end of the game.

Sound

When you get a game from the developer Nihon Falcom you know you’re in for a treat in regards to music, and in Trails of Cold Steel it’s no different. For comparisons sake, I felt like the overall soundtrack of Trails in the Sky was better but there are some tracks, like Tie a Link of ARCUS, which were great. I really enjoy these upbeat tracks from Falcom, they get you in the right mood for a battle. There are also some slower soothing tracks which are great when the gameplay is more relaxed, like Back to the Dorm.

Unfortunately, for me, the Western version of the game only has English audio for the voice acting but thankfully they are all very good (with the exception of Millium which I didn’t like). If played on a PC, the game can easily be patched with Japanese audio but since I played the Playstation 3 version that was not an option for me. Even with the lack of dual audio, the English track is pretty good, and even if some liberties may have been taken with the translation, I’d rather have a fluid and natural adaption, which this game succeeds with flying colors.

Graphics

The graphics department is pretty much the only one I have a few grievances with. Comparing it to other Falcom games, like Ys Memories of Celceta, Trails of Cold Steel could maybe make the locations and scenarios look more vivid. I realize it’s somewhat of a hard complain to make because even though Celceta is a Vita game the scenarios are much smaller, so it’s also much easier to make them packed with details and stuff, as in Cold Still there are some really big areas, which are great to convey their sense of grandioseness in the Erebonian Empire.

There’s also the thing that some of the characters’ movement are a little stiff, that’s even comparing to the Trails in the Sky trilogy or the aforementioned Ys. Even so, that’s a payoff when a company decides to abandon their sprites for a full 3D game and I believe that in the long run it will be worth it, specially because I don’t thing these things hindered my enjoyment. One thing I would have liked was for the drawn character art to have been used more as they are gorgeous, especially when compared to the character models.

On the bright side, I think the game did a wonderful job delivering a sense of scale. Just walking around your school makes you see how big it is, and when visiting other locations this sense of scale is even bigger.

When visiting other cities you don’t get to actually see everything but the developers used a smart way to convey a sense of size to the places you’re in, especially when going to the capital. Even with many locations being large, you are given an option for a fast travel between places in towns, so it’s always quick to get from one place to the other.

Combat

Coming from the Trails in the Sky trilogy of games, the combat has seen some changes, very welcome ones, in my opinion. For starters, the combat feels faster than in the previous games. It is still turn based but my guess is that animations are faster or maybe since you gain CP more easily, you have more ways to quickly dispatch of enemies.

There are also some changes to how quartz works. For those not familiar with it, it is somewhat similar to the materia system of Final Fantasy VII, you equip orbs into your characters and each has some special proprieties, be it stat improvements, new spells or other effects.

The changes to how orbs are equipped made the system a bit simpler and to be honest, I prefer it that way. I know this may not be the consensus among fans but it’s not as if we still didn’t have a ton of customization options for our characters and many different builds to experiment with.

I played the game on hard for my first run and I thought the game provided a very good challenge without being cheap or frustrating. So, as far as combat is concerned, I loved it. I was hooked from beginning to end, with each new skill and spell making it more and more enjoyable.

I’d like to make one observation about the difficulty of the game. For Trails in the Sky FC, I played on normal and it was a nice challenge at times. Since I s highly interested in the story, for Second Chapter I made the mistake of putting it on easy, thinking it would help me go faster (and it did) but it made every boss fight boring. So for the 3rd game of the Trails in the Sky trilogy I went back to normal and it provided me a good challenge throughout all the game. For compassion sake, I thought Trails in the Sky 3rd on normal to be harder, or at least on the same level of difficulty for Trails of Cold Steel. Keep this in mind when starting the game because this right difficulty made the experience perfect for me.

Conclusion

Overall, I loved every single moment of my 103 hours with the game. The game starts slow but in my opinion that is too the game’s benefit as this is needed for the player to get used to the characters, your party members and everything happening around in the continent. It may be a slow burn but let me add that the payoff is great.

Playing through this game was a blast and I put it together with Persona 5 and SMT Nocturne as the best games I’ve played in a very long time.