Excellent classic JRPG on Steam NOW, $16.99 (Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky)

no Steam DRM. Only downside is the lack of any beta builds.

Note to self: make sarcasm more blatant.

Part 3 coming on May 3rd!

This thread title really is the worst.

Trails of Cold Steel is also coming to PC this summer with 5,000 additional voiced lines and ToCS 2 has been announced for PC at a later date.

Woooooooo, I didn’t know that! Awesome news!

Yeah, great news for sure. Just need to make sure I get through Persona by then…

Look at that price though. It’s only relevant to this thread when the price is precisely $16.99.

Also, it’s not on Steam NOW, so it fails in that regard too.

Not sure if anyone is playing this, but I just finished Chapter 4.

The big differences between this and the earlier games is it’s a lot more combat focused, and that combat assumes you understand the system well by now, so it will kick your ass if you’re not ready.

There’s plenty of great dialogue if you’re familiar with the characters by now as well. I doubt I’ll replay this, as I never replay RPG’s, but I’m enjoying the hell out of the ride.

nice! i like ToCS (on Vita) alot despite every attempt of this game to genericize the Trails world with the Fightin’ High Schoolers element every other JRPG/anime seems to have. Now what I need is a TitS reboot using this games combat system :P

the next Cold steel game is going to have two characters from this trilogy added in. That might help.

Might play it on Steam in 5 years if I have the means.

Since excellent classic JRPG is now on sale on Steam, I figured this would be a good time to bump this old thread with a wonderful mini-documentary on the history of Falcom by a relatively unknown Youtuber. In addition to the charming footage of the 80s game scene in Japan, which always makes for a fun watch, I found the video quite informative.

Thanks for posting that! Haven’t watched yet, but I love Falcom’s games.

That was pretty good. Watched the whole thing anyway. I really love the Trails games (well, the two that I’ve played) but this made me want to check out the Ys games and some of the earlier Legends of Heroes ones.

I just finished watching that. Very interesting. The most interesting part was right at the start when it started as a computer store. When I got to the part where they made the biggest hit PC game ever in Japan, Xanadu, I was thinking, how can a company this successful be one that I’ve never heard of? The video doesn’t really go into the reason for the massive brain drain that effectively killed them in the 90s. I wonder if other successful companies of the late 80s faced similar obstacles? Or perhaps Falcom didn’t share the wealth enough and all these great developers that left didn’t feel appreciated because of that?

It was also interesting just how long they stubbornly kept making Japanese PC games despite Japanese no longer buying PC games. What the heck were they thinking? It’s also charming that Kondo, who runs the company now and led their recent resurgence, started as someone who ran a fan site for their games.

I haven’t played any of their games, but that was certainly an interesting story. Since the video never really went into what kind of space they moved into, in my mind they still operate out of that original computer store where they sold Apple II and other PCs. Though I’m 99% sure that’s not true.

I’m keen to pickup one of the Ys games during the Steam sale. I’ve heard they’re all standalone, so you can jump in anywhere. Right now, I’m leaning towards getting the remake of the 3rd game (Ys: The Oath in Felghana), which was originally a Zelda 2-esque side scroller, as it seems to be consistently highly regarded by the fans.

I would’ve loved to see more detail on the talent exodus, too. For me, I appreciated the start of the doco the most as it was such an exciting era. Can you imagine going from running a mom and pop store to having a beloved company with a music publishing arm and super-successful blockbusters that supported by endless ancillary products in just a few years? That’s insane!

I really liked Ys Origin, which I believe was the first one that got the Steam treatment. The later ones add or improve a bunch of things, but there’s a clarity to what Origin is doing and if you like it (or don’t), the rest of the series will probably go the same way.

Oath in Felghana is my favorite, followed by Origin. The older ones are a bit primitive to enjoy today, and the most recent ones switch to a 3-person party that dilutes them a bit.

I just had a look at Steam to see how many Legend of Heroes Trials games have been released on Steam since this thread started. I was really surprised that there’s so many, and so many more Legend of Heroes games are on the way soon! What the heck?

Also, did HRose finally put the title in the thread today, or was it a moderator?

Can’t vouch for the rest, but the first two Trails of Cold Steel are great.

I think mostly these are old games just finally getting a full English translation and port. The translations are top notch…no Engrish in sight.

Ooh, that one was recently released on Switch, too. I think I’ll be bold and pickup both Origin and Oath! :)