I haven’t played a lot of JRPGs this year, so when I saw that a demo for The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III was released I had to try it out. I am not familiar with the series so I wasn’t sure what I would be getting into. It seemed like an anime-styled RPG like Star Ocean, but there is definitely a lot more going on.
When you begin the game, it throws you in the middle of a large battle and you are in control of a group of students. They are in what looks like a castle overrun with mechanical foes which you have to take down to proceed. As already mentioned, I have never played either of the previous games so I noticed right away the game assumed this isn’t your first time in the series. You can read a story summary from the other games before you begin, but I did not want to read them since I will be catching up to this one eventually. I didn’t want any spoilers 🙂
I was not explained how to manage the moves, attacks, or other tactics. Since I’m a veteran gamer, it wasn’t a big deal, but I would have liked a tutorial…which eventually happened later on.
After you clear the first area which ends in a boss battle with a trio of female knights, you get what I feel is the real intro of the game. I would have liked the game to have started in the training area (Einhel Keep) with class 7, which includes Kurt Vander, Juna Crawford, Altina Orion and Rean who is their leader.
There are a lot of options to choose from when in a battle, like link attacks, craft skills (special attacks), arts (elemental attacks), moving around the map, Brave order, switching characters, items, and more.
Storywise, the demo deals with getting to know the characters for now. The voiceovers in English and Japanese I thought were well down and I enjoyed hearing the banter between the classmates. The music was fitting to the situation and not bad at all.
Overall, I am looking forward to playing more Trails of Cold Steel III but I need to catch up to this fun JRPG first!
Did you play the demo? What did you think of it?
See the release trailer below that goes into more detail.
