TRAILS OF COLD STEEL III

TOSHIHIRO KONDO DISCUSSES THE LATEST FALCOM RPG TO HIT OUR SHORES

Though it’s a new game, Trails Of Cold Steel III has serious heritage – as part of the Legend Of Heroes series, it goes back to the late Eighties. “The overarching series of which Trails is a part, the Legend Of Heroes series, began as a reaction to the trend of increasing graphical fidelity,” says Kondo. “The idea was, ‘Well, if we have even one person who is a talented writer, and have that person write the story and it be a good one, and use all of their knowledge and ability, that’s something that could be unique.” As a result, the series has become renowned for its detailed stories – the Trails In The Sky games each had over 1.5 million Japanese characters in their scripts.

Thankfully, you don’t need to know everything that has gone on over the last 30 years, as this latest game follows up on the story started in 2013’s Trails Of Cold Steel, and it has a handy guide to catch you up if you missed the previous entries in the series. “In terms of the overall story, it’s a big time of change. One and two dealt with events that were happening within the empire of Erebonia itself – particularly the leader Osborne and his attempts to control things and take over, and the movement against him. Now, this has to do with Erebonia leading wars of aggression and trying to expand their territory,” Kondo explains. “Within that, there’s this idea that Rean [the protagonist] also needs to have a period of change within his life as well.” Where the previous games follow Rean Schwarzer as a student of Thors Military Academy, in the third game we join him as he begins to teach at its new branch campus – a home for misfits and undesirable students.

Your time will be spent developing Rean’s bond with his students at the academy, and training at the Einhel Keep facility. Of course, you’ll also find the class sent out on vital missions, where you’ll engage in rich turn-based combat. Mech battles return and have been expanded for this game, with Rean’s students able to join him in battle. “We wanted to add a new system, but we even had people in the office who were saying, ‘We have giant robots in this world, why aren’t we using them?’ Now we’re more able to do that, so we did.” There are also minigames to enjoy, including fishing and Vantage Masters – a collectible card game based on Falcom’s original Vantage Master game from the Nineties.

Trails Of Cold Steel III is Falcom’s first game developed specifically for the PS4. “Because of the power of the Playstation 4, we were able to add a lot more expressiveness to the characters. Whereas before they would just be talking one to another, looking at each other, now we can have them have various expressions and really show off their personalities a lot more.” As well as that obvious use of the hardware, the game benefits from control improvements made possible by the hardware. “Because previous games came out on handheld platforms, the number of buttons that were available to you was limited – so when you’re in combat, even a simple command like attack or defend or using Arts took many presses of the directional keys and the buttons, so it ended up feeling kind of slow,” says Kondo. “Because the Playstation 4 has more buttons, we were able to assign a command to each button, so it moves along much more speedily.”

Trails Of Cold Steel III is out now for Playstation 4, with a free demo also available for download if you fancy trying before buying.