There's an rpgsite article on a hands on impressions of Cold Steel III E3 2019 demo build, sounds good
:
NIS America have finally showcased a playable demo for their upcoming localization of the next title in the beloved Trails series - how is it stacking up?
www.rpgsite.net
If you're familiar with the Trails series, then you already know (mostly) what to expect when it comes to Cold Steel III's gameplay - besides an overhauled battle interface that maps each action category to a single button a la Persona 5, the one major addition to the combat comes in the form of Brave Actions. By performing combat links your Brave Points gauge will rise - and at any time you can spend those points to apply one of these "Brave Orders" - buffs to your entire party - with each of your party members having access to their own unique "order". Ash's, for example, will raise your attack power and break rate.
Compared to even the recent PlayStation 4 re-releases for
Trails of Cold Steel 1 and
2, Trails of Cold Steel III is a massive step up from the fidelity found in those releases. Even with that upgrade, the game runs at a very smooth 1080p/60 FPS on base PS4, and native 4K/60 on PS4 Pro. Even if Falcom's animations still feel a bit stilted compared to the competition, Cold Steel 3 is both a joy to look at and to play. Even if we're not getting a PC port at launch, at least we won't have to worry about poor performance.
Finally getting to the nitty-gritty of the translation side of things - well, NIS America hasn't actually published any screenshots of the current build of the game with actual dialogue as of the making of this preview, and I didn't have access to direct capture to showcase some examples of the dialogue myself.
I've found a good way to tell the quality of a translation can be by checking the voice direction in a game's English dub, and unsurprisingly - thanks to using the same director as the two previous titles, the samples I heard during my time with Cold Steel III today left me very impressed. At this point I can say that I'm no longer worried about the actual release, and feel like I can look forward to the game's release, this September.
