The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel goes live with PC port work from Durante

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This is August 2, and that means that as promised, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel is now available on Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store. The 2013 PS3/Vita RPG is part of the Legends of Heroes series and shares a universe with the Trails in the Sky games, but it tells an entirely standalone story so you can safely dive into it even if you haven't played any of the previous releases.

"Trails of Cold Steel (Sen no Kiseki in Japanese) is the first in the series to tread Erebonian soil and explore the inner political conflicts of this oft-mentioned powerhouse nation in detail," the game description explains. "Delve into the expansive lore that has become synonymous with the series, enjoy school life and bond with fellow students to earn new abilities in battle, take advantage of speedy, tactical turn-based combat with the newly-developed 'ARCUS' system, and uncover dramatic events that stand to change everything these two opposing social classes stand for."

One of the things that makes the PC release of Trails of Cold Steel noteworthy is that it was worked on by Peter "Durante" Thoman, who's well-known for his analysis (and, occasionally, repair) of PC game ports. He posted three separate articles detailing his work on the Xseed blog, covering performance, graphical enhancements and options, and PC-specific special features including an overhauled turbo mode and support for ultrawide aspect ratios.

"A long road is about to come to its end, and I fervently hope that the game will work as well for you as it does on our testing machines. It’s the first time a game is released where I have been largely responsible for most of its PC-specific code, so I’m a bit nervous, but I do believe that it’s in a much better state than many of the releases I had a look at over the past few years," he wrote at the end of the final post. "And what I know is that if something major does go wrong, I won’t wait months, weeks, or even days to communicate with whoever is affected and try to get it resolved."

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.