The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III

 PC
Metascore
tbd

No score yet - based on 1 Critic Review

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. The Overpowered Noobs
    May 13, 2020
    70
    I’ve yet to meet a Trails game I didn’t like, and this is no exception.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
8.3

Generally favorable reviews- based on 39 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 30 out of 39
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 39
  3. Negative: 3 out of 39
  1. Sholva
    Mar 9, 2021
    10
    The Legends of Heroes series of games always do at least one very important thing that some other JRPGs or even regular RPGs don’t get right:The Legends of Heroes series of games always do at least one very important thing that some other JRPGs or even regular RPGs don’t get right: a story that spans and connects among different sagas, yet being able to tell us the origin stories of so many characters in every single of those sagas, while doing it correctly, and more importantly, consistently.

    With the Cold Steel saga, being composed of 4 games, things started a bit slow in the first game, it was the introduction of these so many important characters, with little references to the previous material we knew, which was the Trails in the Sky saga. A very good game still, with one of the most famous cliffhangers in the series, and overall it felt quite epic really.

    Cold Steel II was a big improvement in many fronts especially when it comes to character development and connection with other games in the franchise, you could feel things were starting to truly connect everywhere, also a really amazing game.

    And then here we are in Cold Steel III: this is yet another great evolution of the saga, and the series overall. The characters of older games are more mature now, and the new characters introduced have some of the most well written and complete developments in the series, in my opinion, for being just done in a single game.

    This is Nihon Falcom’s strength, story, character development and world building, and we get to care about every single one of these characters, even some of the casual NPCs we can find around, or interact and learn about their lives in secondary quests. It is Falcom’s seal of quality for these games, and we have tons of that in Cold Steel III.

    This game is probably the longest so far in the saga, maybe IV will be longer, it seems everything points towards that, which I’m happy about, there’s a lot to cover.

    I don’t do spoiler reviews but…yeah, I really enjoyed CS III’s story overall and that ending...I was expecting something like that, since this is Falcom we’re talking about, they had to set the stakes even higher for the last game in this saga, and they did.

    This is also a game that provides great legit good fan service moments, not just the cheap kind of fan service, but the one directed to fans of the series as a whole, not just Cold Steel fans. And those moments, some subtle, some more prominent, are all great and very well done.

    On the technical side of things, being used to the top notch quality level standards that the PC ports for CS I and II set, Durante and his team at PH3 Games set the bar even higher once more for CS III’s port: it is simply amazing and it really spoils the hell out of me having such high quality PC versions of these games, because then I go and play other PC ports from other games and the experience isn’t that great on the PC settings front in other games, haha :P

    I first played this game when it came out for PC on a R5 3600 and GTX 1070, and it ran pretty nice with everything maxed. Controls are nice, and the option to use either keyboard prompts or PS4/Xbox buttons is always welcome. There are a plethora of graphical settings to choose from, as usual, in the launcher, so you can expect to run being able to run this game in a wide range of PCs too.

    Now that the PC version of CS IV has a release date for April 9th, 2021, it is a good time to revisit these games once more, and as usual, keep on dreaming for what’s to come.

    Cold Steel III is a great game in the series, overall, which improves a lot on the new full 3D style this saga introduced, and that Falcom seems to have completely embraced in future games.

    I also want to give a big shout-out to the incredible job and performance of the English voice actors in this game, and the whole CS saga so far: without their great skills some of the characters wouldn't feel the way they do, I know they sound great in Japanese as well, but this English localization team did a very good job, there's a lot of incredible talent here and hopefully they continue using most of them in future games, they deserve it. The translation to English is also really good, kudos to the team them as well.

    Finally, reviewing a Falcom game not mentioning the soundtrack is absolutely epic and badass seems like sacrilege to me, and yeah in this game we get some very nice tracks worthy of the best Falcom games, I love listening to them even after playing their games, quite often in fact. Some tracks, especially for the break / slice of life segments in the game remind me a lot of another great Falcom game: Tokyo Xanadu, obviously since it's the same team making music for all these games, but it's so cool, really, I love their soundtracks.

    Playing these games just...makes me smile a lot, I feel so happy despite so many heart-wrenching moments too in these games, and I can only hope this continues to be the case in future games and sagas, and I can't wait.    … Full Review »
  2. MoofiaBossVal
    Dec 26, 2021
    7
    While the first 2 games were fantastic, 3 is where the saga starts declining. The game is 130 hours long, but the first 90 hours are fillerWhile the first 2 games were fantastic, 3 is where the saga starts declining. The game is 130 hours long, but the first 90 hours are filler and aren't very satisfying. Nothing really happens until the last 30-40 hours of the game, but even then the writing is really wonky and unsatisfying. The cast of the first two games is ditched for a new party, and they aren't as fun to hang out with. The chapters also drag on for too long and outstay their welcome, becoming exhausting half way through.

    This game makes the bizzare choice of ditching the locations of the first two games you had visited and built up an emotional investment in. The new locations are just aesthetic rehashes of old stuff, but without your emotional investment in them.

    Some of the new combat changes are good on paper, but the overall difficulty of this game is way too easy and you never really get challenged, unlike the previous two games.

    The English voice acting is a mixed dub. The old characters sound great as usual but the new characters sound really rough.    … Full Review »
  3. death12123
    Apr 11, 2020
    9
    I thought this series couldn't be more amazing but it just is.
    - Some of the best soundtrack in RPGs (and on PC if you don't like it, it's    I thought this series couldn't be more amazing but it just is.
    - Some of the best soundtrack in RPGs (and on PC if you don't like it, it's moddable)
    - An amazing part of the story that left me wanting more.
    - A great balance of gameplay, difficulty and story (although the story part is somewhat complicated if you haven't played the past games)
    - Some of the best characters I enjoyed
    - Great choice of voice actors (English)
    and many more things.

    This is probably one of the top RPGs I played and I can't wait for the 4th game in the franchise to be localized. I would put this as one of my favorite RPG franchises and top games I played this year and of all time.

    A couple of minor nitpicks keep me from giving a perfect score but it's so close to it I wish I could give a 9.5 or 9.6.    … Full Review »
See all user reviews »