The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II is a role-playing video game developed by Nihon Falcom and Vicarious Visions for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. First published by the company in Japan in 2014, it was later translated into English and published by Xseed Games and Activision in 2016 in North America. It is an entry in The Legend of Heroes series, and a direct sequel to Trails of Cold Steel. A port for Microsoft Windows is planned for release worldwide in early 2018, while a PlayStation 4 version will also be released in Japan the same year. A sequel, Trails of Cold Steel III was released in Japan in late 2017.

Gameplay
The game plays very similarly to the original Trails of Cold Steel game, playing as a traditional JRPG with turn-based battles. The game is not, however, tied to the school schedule structure of the original, with the game now centered around traveling the world rather than attending classes. If the player has a completed game save file from completing the prior game, it has an effect on the game of Cold Steel II, with certain events and dialogues playing out different based on choices and relationships built in the prior game.

Story
The game is a direct sequel to the original Trails of Cold Steel, picking up one month after the close of the prior game, with Rean having escaped with the Divine Knight, Valimar. He makes it to his hometown of Ymir with the assistance of bracer Toval Randonneur, where Princess Alfin Reise Arnor had also escaped to, but is later kidnapped along with Rean's sister Elise by members of the Noble Alliance. Students from Thors Military Academy including those from Class VII had been scattered across the country and so with the help of Toval and Valimar, Rean tries to get everyone back together again.

Development
The game was released in Japan on September 25, 2014. The game was translated into English by Xseed Games and Activision Blizzard. Work on translating the game began on February 2015, and was a massive project, containing 1.45 million characters to be translated. Translating alone took around a year, with it being about 95% complete in January 2016. Xseed and Activision Blizzard also added approximately 11,000 lines of English dialogue for its English release. The game was released in North America almost two years after the original Japanese release, on September 6, 2016, and two months later on November 11, 2016 in Europe.

Music
Harry Gregson-Williams replaces Christophe Beck to compose the score for the video game sequel Trails of Cold Steel II. Later the additional music was composed by Stephen Barton, Stephanie Economou, Tom Howe, Nick Glennie-Smith and Steve Mazzaro with the additional arrangements provided by Justin Burnett and Philip Klein. The orchestra score was conducted by Harry Gregson-Williams with addfitional music conductor Nick Glennie-Smith when the orchestral score was recorded at Warner Bros. Eastwood Scoring Stage, The Bridge Recorders and The Fox Newman Scoring Stage by Brad Haehnel and Malcolm Luker and mixed at Arata Music by Malcolm Luker with the additional recordings by Satoshi Mark Noguchi, Alan Meyerson and Daniel Kresco. A soundtrack album for Trails of Cold Steel II was released on February 11, 2014 by WaterTower Music.

Reception and sales
The game was generally well received by critics. On Metacritic, a website that aggregates review scores, the Vita version of the game received an 80/100 score, based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The PS3 release received a 90/100 rating, but based on just 4 critic reviews. Chris Shrive of Hardcore Gamer strongly praised the game for being "a modern JRPG masterpiece" with "the perfect blend of the classic JRPG formula mixed with contemporary features" concluding that "the emphasis on story telling and immense cast of memorable characters make the large time commitment worthwhile." Kimberly Wallace of Game Informer was similarly positive about the game's story and characters, but complained of the game's dull dungeons design. Despite the shortcommings, she still felt that the game "takes the cast and story in such interesting directions and provides so much to do that it’s hard to put down...[the game] makes me care so much about the characters and the world that it becomes easier to look past its flaws." Darren McPhail of RPGSite was similarly positive about the game, stating "For fans of the previous Legend of Heroes games and especially the first Trails of Cold Steel, picking up Trails of Cold Steel 2 is a no-brainer easy recommendation. While this sequel is unevenly paced and lacks shocking plot twists until the conclusion, the Trails of Cold Steel games are some of the best of the genre and well worth a look for most hardcore RPG fans." All three reviewers agreed that, while it was possible to enjoy the game's story as a stand-alone experience, the story was better for people who had played the original Trails of Cold Steel first, due to the game's direct ties to one another.

In Japan, the game sold 86,283 physical retail copies on the PlayStation Vita and 65,498 retail copies on the PlayStation 3 within its debut release week, representing a shipment sell-through of 71.96% and 77.3% respectively. Within that week, the Vita version placed second amongst all software sales in Japan, while the PS3 version placed fifth. Famitsu gave both versions of the game a review score of 31/40.