Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II (PC, Falcom/XSEED) releases on February 14

Xavi · Jan 26, 2018

Just announced on XSEED's stream. Also the steam page is already up

http://store.steampowered.com/app/748490/The_Legend_of_Heroes_Trails_of_Cold_Steel_II/

Experience the Game as Never Before
50% more lines of English voice-overs have been added to the PC release, bringing a fresh experience to even those who have played it before on console. New features for this release include ultrawide aspect ratio support, turbo mode, and an instant resume feature that allows players to launch directly from Steam to their most recent save.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

MINIMUM:
- OS: Windows 7 or later
- Processor: Intel Atom x7-Z8700 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Shader Model 5 (GeForce 400 / Radeon HD 5000 / Intel post-2012 series)
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 18 GB available space
- Additional Notes: 1280x720 / 30 FPS with portable settings

RECOMMENDED:
- OS: Windows 7 or later
- Processor: Intel i3 3 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Geforce GTX 770 / Radeon R9 280X
- Storage: 18 GB available space
- Additional Notes: 1920x1080 / 60 FPS with high setting

Durante said:
Here's a full list of changes/improvements in the PC version:

Graphics:
- Arbitrary resolution and FPS settings (Up to 6k and 60 FPS officially supported, minimum resolution 1280x720)
- Image quality settings: up to 8x multi-sample anti-aliasing, transparency supersampling, and anisotropic filtering
- Shadow quality, distance and filtering improvements as well as additional shadow casters
- Postprocessing improvements, including HBAO+ as well as higher quality depth-of-field and glow effects
- Ultrawide aspect ratio support (e.g. 21:9)
- Field of View (FoV) adjustment

Input:
- Mouse/keyboard controls with full rebinding support
- Selectable button prompts, including mouse/keyboard and several controller types
- Gamepad button rebinding
- Option to disable camera auto-centering

Quality of Life:
- Turbo mode, with configurable speedup factors for battles and field traversal (automatically stops during timed battle input prompts)
- Autosaves with configurable autosave interval
- Instant resume feature which allows you to resume directly from Steam to your latest save
- Options for skipping startup movies and logos

Audio:
- 5271 additional lines of voice acting
- Uncompressed background music quality

Pasokon Deacon · Jan 26, 2018

Steam page is up! Please do not visit the page if you want to avoid spoilers for previous Trails games (FC, SC, Cold Steel)

Taking place on the same continent as the fan favorite Trails in the Sky offshoot of Nihon Falcom's storied The Legend of Heroes franchise, Trails of Cold Steel II (Sen no Kiseki II in Japanese) is a direct sequel to Trails of Cold Steel, picking up one month after the decisive collision that changed the fate of the entire nation of Erebonia. The speedy, tactical turn-based combat with the newly-developed "ARCUS" system returns with all the bells and whistles together with the new Overdrive mode, new means of transportation both across the land and sky, new allies, new dangers, and a renewed sense of hope as Rean tirelessly works to right the wrongs that have led the country to disarray.

KEY FEATURES

A Direct Sequel that Remembers the Past
Clear data from Trails of Cold Steel carries over into Trails of Cold Steel II, granting players bonuses, and most importantly, remembering the many relationships cultivated during time spent at Thors Military Academy, allowing for more personalized conversations throughout the story.

Take to the Land and Sky in New Modes of Transportation
Fast travel isn't just for Trista anymore; a personalized airship now allows players to swiftly choose and descend upon both familiar and foreign destinations alike—and on land, horseback riding not only returns, but players can now customize and utilize Angelica's orbal bike for fast transportation across the map.

The Link System Returns with a new Overdrive Mode
Bonding with allies continues to pay off with the Combat Link System, netting a variety of combat benefits including healing, guarding, and more, and the new Overdrive mode allows linked characters to attack up to three turns in a row for new strategic battle options.

Experience the Game as Never Before
50% more lines of English voice-overs have been added to the PC release, bringing a fresh experience to even those who have played it before on console. New features for this release include ultrawide aspect ratio support, turbo mode, and an instant resume feature that allows players to launch directly from Steam to their most recent save.

Steam PC reqs:

MINIMUM:

OS: Windows 7 or later

Processor: Intel Atom x7-Z8700 2.4 GHz

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: Shader Model 5 (GeForce 400 / Radeon HD 5000 / Intel post-2012 series)

DirectX: Version 11

Storage: 18 GB available space

Additional Notes: 1280x720 / 30 FPS with portable settings

Nakasu said:
Steam page has spoilers. Best to avoid it until finishing CS1.

Bit of info on the port:
For the CS1 completion save carry over, you just need to select it in the list of previous game saves.
Instant Resume.
Controller button remapping. ("Both keyboard/mouse controls and (new in ToCS2) gamepad buttons are completely remappable, and you'll get correct button prompts matching your remapping")
5000 or more new voices.
Battle voices have been redone
Ultrawide aspect ratio support

Bit of other info:

Cold Steel 2 (PS3/Vita) took 8 months to complete. They considered pushing it back since they thought Final Fantasy XV was going to be released, but then the August delay happened.

"Fishing has a bug until recently where fish difficulty scaled with framerate, but not your pulling strenght. I noticed it when I got a higher refresh monitor and fishing got almost impossibly hard at 100+ FPS" - Durante

Pix · Jan 26, 2018

Sweet

Stuart444 · Jan 26, 2018

Added it to my wish list :D

Can't wait to replay CS1 and 2 back to back on PC :D

Enforcer · Jan 26, 2018

Ultrawide support.

Nice.

Lord Arcadio · Jan 26, 2018

Finished CS1 a few days ago so the wait isn't long! I can't believe I'll actually catch up with the official English localizations for this series soon.

Deleted member 9746 · Jan 26, 2018

Cool! It's coming earlier than I expected.

Deleted member 21858 · Jan 26, 2018

I played the first one on PC, it was pretty good. Maybe too repetitive for my taste, but I enjoyed the battle system enough to finish the game. Hope the 2nd one doenst involve a shit ton of train trips :O

The Silver · Jan 26, 2018

Cool, currently playing Steel 1 on pc.

Mozendo · Jan 26, 2018

Maybe I'll give this a try when it goes on sale for below $15
I love the Trails in the Sky buy Cold Steel 1 was a complete downgrade when it came to characters and story, but I still want to support the franchise in the west :S

preta · Jan 26, 2018

Hupsel said:
I played the first one on PC, it was pretty good. Maybe too repetitive for my taste, but I enjoyed the battle system enough to finish the game. Hope the 2nd one doenst involve a shit ton of train trips :O

You won't be disappointed in that regard. Cold Steel 2 is structured quite differently from the first game.

Mozendo said:
Maybe I'll give this a try when it goes on sale for below $15
I love the Trails in the Sky buy Cold Steel 1 was a complete downgrade when it came to characters and story, but I still want to support the franchise in the west :S

While not perfect, I think CS2 and especially CS3 are significant improvements over CS1 on that front.

Palette Swap · Jan 26, 2018

I guess it's definitely releasing before Ys 8 lol.

I love the way they're treating the CS games. I gifted the first one to a friend who has a potato laptop, and it runs fairly well.

Also, with this, XSeed will have released 4 Trails games on PC in a little over 2 years (or 4 localizations within a year and a half if you count consoles as well). That bad press that stemmed from the conditions surrounding SC seems really overblown right now.

Amirnol · Jan 26, 2018

I'm in.

Parsnip · Jan 26, 2018

Ha-haaaa.

Looks like the min spec is aimed GPD Win again, right? That's cool.

Looking forward to Durante's technical blog posts, assuming there's going to be any.

Also on that stream at the very end there was someone sleeping on a bed and the shadow looked weird.

rickyson33 · Jan 26, 2018

nice to see it's out so soon

funny how in the past few years as someone that only even plays like a half dozen games a year at most i've gone from not having even heard of this series to playing every game as it gets released on steam

Dragonmassag77 · Jan 26, 2018

Now we wait for Cold steel 3 announcement

devSin · Jan 26, 2018

It launches on Valentine's. Jusis and Machias are on the header pic.

I SEE WHAT YOU DOING XSEED.

Pasokon Deacon · Jan 26, 2018

Some observations, cross-quoted from the Kiseki community OT::

Nakasu said:
Steam page has spoilers. Best to avoid it until finishing CS1.

Bit of info on the port:

For the CS1 completion save carry over, you just need to select it in the list of previous game saves.

Instant Resume.

Controller button remapping. ("Both keyboard/mouse controls and (new in ToCS2) gamepad buttons are completely remappable, and you'll get correct button prompts matching your remapping")

5000 or more new voices.

Battle voices have been redone

Ultrawide aspect ratio support

Bit of other info:

Cold Steel 2 (PS3/Vita) took 8 months to complete. They considered pushing it back since they thought Final Fantasy XV was going to be released, but then the August delay happened.

"Fishing has a bug until recently where fish difficulty scaled with framerate, but not your pulling strenght. I noticed it when I got a higher refresh monitor and fishing got almost impossibly hard at 100+ FPS" - Durante

Einherjer · Jan 26, 2018

Yay finally, time for a CS1 replay should last me till then if i take it slow.

Jiraiza · Jan 26, 2018

devSin said:
It launches on Valentine's. Jusis and Machias are on the header pic.

I SEE WHAT YOU DOING XSEED.

Jokes aside, Jusis is very relevant in this game. Makes a lot of sense!

Marukoban · Jan 26, 2018

Why they gotta launch a day before Chinese New Year :/

Shake Appeal · Jan 26, 2018

The bittersweetness of having a new PC Trails to play ... and no other PC Trails in sight.

Deleted member 721 · Jan 26, 2018

Cool congrats durante

Niks · Jan 26, 2018

Great news!
I thought release was ways off... this is much sooner that expected.

Thanks XSEED

Thuddert · Jan 26, 2018

Hope you all enjoy more fastartsman.

Durante · Jan 26, 2018

Here's a full list of changes/improvements in the PC version:

Graphics:
- Arbitrary resolution and FPS settings (Up to 6k and 60 FPS officially supported, minimum resolution 1280x720)
- Image quality settings: up to 8x multi-sample anti-aliasing, transparency supersampling, and anisotropic filtering
- Shadow quality, distance and filtering improvements as well as additional shadow casters
- Postprocessing improvements, including HBAO+ as well as higher quality depth-of-field and glow effects
- Unlimited draw distance option (eliminates pop-in)
- Ultrawide aspect ratio support (e.g. 21:9)
- Field of View (FoV) adjustment

Input:
- Mouse/keyboard controls with full rebinding support
- Selectable button prompts, including mouse/keyboard and several controller types
- Gamepad button rebinding
- Option to disable camera auto-centering

Quality of Life:
- Turbo mode, with configurable speedup factors for battles and field traversal (automatically stops during timed battle input prompts)
- Autosaves with configurable autosave interval
- Instant resume feature which allows you to resume directly from Steam to your latest save
- Options for skipping startup movies and logos

Audio:
- 5271 additional lines of voice acting
- Uncompressed background music quality

Thuddert · Jan 26, 2018

Two threads made at the same time heh.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/le...c-falcom-xseed-releases-on-february-14.19188/

TeenageFBI · Jan 26, 2018

Day one, as usual. Thanks, Durante!

I'm excited to try that instant start feature.

LegendarySkitch · Jan 26, 2018

Good thing I don't have a Valentine's Day date!

Xavi · Jan 26, 2018

Durante said:
Here's a full list of changes/improvements in the PC version:

Graphics:
- Arbitrary resolution and FPS settings (Up to 6k and 60 FPS officially supported, minimum resolution 1280x720)
- Image quality settings: up to 8x multi-sample anti-aliasing, transparency supersampling, and anisotropic filtering
- Shadow quality, distance and filtering improvements as well as additional shadow casters
- Postprocessing improvements, including HBAO+ as well as higher quality depth-of-field and glow effects
- Ultrawide aspect ratio support (e.g. 21:9)
- Field of View (FoV) adjustment

Input:
- Mouse/keyboard controls with full rebinding support
- Selectable button prompts, including mouse/keyboard and several controller types
- Gamepad button rebinding
- Option to disable camera auto-centering

Quality of Life:
- Turbo mode, with configurable speedup factors for battles and field traversal (automatically stops during timed battle input prompts)
- Autosaves with configurable autosave interval
- Instant resume feature which allows you to resume directly from Steam to your latest save
- Options for skipping startup movies and logos

Audio:
- 5271 additional lines of voice acting
- Uncompressed background music quality

Thanks! Will add this to the main post

SatelliteOfLove · Jan 26, 2018

"AKNOWLEDGED!"

Thoraxes · Jan 26, 2018

Hell yeah! And much sooner than I anticipated.

stone616 · Jan 26, 2018

Great game but the ending left me like

jbluzb · Jan 26, 2018

yey, looking forward to double dipping :D

devSin · Jan 26, 2018

Durante said:
- Arbitrary resolution and FPS settings (Up to 6k and 60 FPS officially supported, minimum resolution 1280x720)

16:10 support (at least letterboxed) this time?

Durante said:
- 5271 additional lines of voice acting

Yay!

Durante said:
- Uncompressed background music quality

Not yay! (Or is it just the music this time?)

Chaosblade · Jan 26, 2018

Not seeing it in the change list, what about the draw distance improvement from CS1?

Deleted member 721 · Jan 26, 2018

Durante is there a comparison video or pics?

Durante · Jan 26, 2018

devSin said:
16:10 support (at least letterboxed) this time?

No. If you play in fullscreen, your GPU should do the letterboxing though.

Chaosblade said:
Not seeing it in the change list, what about the draw distance improvement from CS1?

Of course that's in! I forgot about that. I'll edit my post.
(even though whenever I test on a new system and forget to change that option I'm appalled by the pop-in ;))

Eylos said:
Durante is there a comparison video or pics?

Not yet. I might make one again closer to launch.

SephLuis · Jan 26, 2018

Sooner than expected and with tons of improvements.
Hopefully now more people can play it.

Reader · Jan 26, 2018

I am currently finishing up The 3rd. Really looking forward to starting Cold Steel games at some point. Still going to purchase is day one to support Falcom!

devSin · Jan 26, 2018

Durante said:
No. If you play in fullscreen, your GPU should do the letterboxing though.

Really? That's never been my experience (are you saying it should work that way automatically, or are you thinking of some driver override or something?).

It's definitely not the way it works with Cold Steel 1 (you forcibly set the resolution to 1920x1080, or whatever it's set to in the options, and then it just gets stretched/scaled by the display).

Literally the only widescreen game currently in my library that cannot handle 16:10 at all.

nintendoman58 · Jan 26, 2018

DOUBLE DIPPIN' FELLAS

Chaosblade · Jan 26, 2018

devSin said:
Really? That's never been my experience (are you saying it should work that way automatically, or are you thinking of some driver override or something?).

It's definitely not the way it works with Cold Steel 1 (you forcibly set the resolution to 1920x1080, or whatever it's set to in the options, and then it just gets stretched/scaled by the display).

Literally the only widescreen game currently in my library that cannot handle 16:10 at all.

The driver should have a setting for how it handles scaling.

I don't remember exactly what it was on Nvidia but on AMD it's in Radeon Settings under Display. Turn GPU scaling on and have the scaling mode set to preserve aspect ratio.

preta · Jan 26, 2018

devSin said:
Not yay! (Or is it just the music this time?)

That's good, though, unless you're really limited on space.

devSin · Jan 26, 2018

preta said:
That's good, though, unless you're really limited on space.

I don't think compression would make any perceptible difference for most of the game's audio (especially when there's already a lot of poor mixing in general). The first game didn't really need to be 16GB.

Sandstar · Jan 26, 2018

Now to live in dread that NSIA got 3, till Xseed announces they have it. This is a day one purchase for me. If NSIA gets 3, I'll wait till 3 gets a super deep discount.

Grim Patron · Jan 26, 2018

Is it coming out on GOG the same day as well? I have the whole falcom collection there. no mention of gog in the op.

devSin · Jan 27, 2018

Sandstar said:
Now to live in dread that NSIA got 3, till Xseed announces they have it. This is a day one purchase for me. If NSIA gets 3, I'll wait till 3 gets a super deep discount.

Yeah, the sad fact is that sandwiched between two new Final Fantasy ports and with the uncertainty over the series' future (if NIS gets it, I'm out) means I'm not going to be able to pick this up on release.

It may have to wait for the summer (or even winter) sale, though I'd definitely pick it up sooner if XSEED manages to land CS3.

preta · Jan 27, 2018

devSin said:
I don't think compression would make any perceptible difference for most of the game's audio (especially when there's already a lot of poor mixing in general). The first game didn't really need to be 16GB.

I'd say there is indeed a perceptible difference between how Falcom's modern soundtracks sound on consoles and how they sound on the actual soundtrack. The compression is definitely noticeable.

devSin · Jan 27, 2018

preta said:
I'd say there is indeed a perceptible difference between how Falcom's modern soundtracks sound on consoles and how they sound on the actual soundtrack. The compression is definitely noticeable.

I wasn't referring to the music. All of the audio was uncompressed in the first game.

Also, not all compression is equal. Compression that would be used for a PC game in 2017 is not going to sound as bad as compression used for a Vita game in 2010 (or whenever the originals were made).

Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II (PC, Falcom/XSEED) releases on February 14

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