I’m talking about The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV obviously.
The Legend of Heroes series, well most Falcom games really, are really unappreciated in the West. Since Falcom is an indie developer with limited budgets for each game, their games aren’t ‘graphical masterpieces’. However what Falcom does the best is building connections.
My first TLOH game was the original Trails of Cold Steel. I bought the Limited Edition of the game for the Vita since the game looked interesting. When I got the game I barely played 2 hours of it before putting it down. I didn’t touch the game for another year until I was really bored and was looking for something new to play. I gave Cold Steel the time it need and wow did it deliver. I was immediately hooked, finished the game in the next couple of days and went on to buy and play every single other TLOH game available.
I would certainly recommend every JRPG to give the series a try. The games need time and won’t blow you away from the beginning, but once you understand the world and its characters, you won’t be able to look away. Plus most of the games end on some seriously crazy cliffhangers that’ll keep you up at night.
One of the reasons I’m making this post is that the series deserves some serious love in the West. The games as you can probably guess by now don’t really sell by the ‘bucket loads’ in the West, so the games being localized is a big IF most of the time. XSEED has done a great job localizing the Trails games, especially considering how much text is in each game, however its up to Falcom in the end to see if releasing the game here is viable.
The main focus for Falcom is China and Japan, with them analyzing specific games for Western releases. Cold Steel IV was announced recently for a Traditional Chinese release for next year.
Meanwhile we still haven’t gotten the two Crossbell games (Trails of Zero and Trails of Azure) and the last two Cold Steel games (III and IV). The Cold Steel sub-series is its most popular yet, but Falcom is still hesitant.
If you’re looking into getting into the series don’t look up video of the latter Cold Steel games as they’ll have huge spoilers. The final game is like “The Avengers” of the whole series with characters from other Trails games making appearances. I’d personally recommend you play the first Cold Steel game first and then try out rest of the series.
The final entry in the Erebonia arc, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV releases today in Japan exclusively for the PS4.
Are you a fan of the The Legend of Heroes series? Let us know in the comments.
