NIS America just announced that they will be localizing Trails of Cold Steel III for the PlayStation 4 and releasing it sometime this fall. XSEED had previously translated many of Falcom's titles but over the past year or so other publishers like NISA, who worked on Ys VIII, and Aksys, who released Tokyo Xanadu, have begun localizing their titles instead. So even though XSEED is still releasing some of Falcom's older titles, including Cold Steel I & II on PS4, it is not too surprising that NISA will be taking over the Trails franchise, especially since many of the staff at XSEED that worked on Falcom's localizations left the company last year. Here's hoping that NISA learned their lesson from Ys VIII's initial translation and does Cold Steel III justice. I am especially interested to hear what NISA will talk about at their PAX panel tomorrow since outlets like RPG Site have said that NISA told them that "this release will see the return of certain English localization staff that have worked on previous titles in the series." So maybe they'll talk about which staff exactly is returning to work on Cold Steel III's translation. Anyway what does everyone else think of this news?

I'm really excited that this is finally getting localized, but am definitely worried that XSEED is handling it.

I want the game in English and will try my very best to be optimistic.

But boy is there a lot of room for this to go horribly wrong! These games depend on a lot of localization care being put in frankly an absurd number of places throughout each one.

I'm VERY conflicted. On one hand I'm immensely happy that this game is finally being brought over, but on the other, NISA's track record is very spotty, like you alluded to, and so I really hope they do right by the game, and the series as a whole.

And yeah, I'm also looking forward to that panel tomorrow. It sounds promising and exactly like something I hoped would happen in a case like this; that they'd bring on some of the very talented people who worked on the previous titles (many of whom are currently working as freelancers, and no longer beholden to XSEED).

Speaking of which, I hope this tweet from Rean's English voice actor means what I think it means:

@chrispaul92 said:

Isn't handling it, I think you meant.

@cettu: I think Chiplock might be referring to Valerie Arem in that tweet, who voiced directed the dub for Cold Steel I & II (and who is an amazing voice director in general that also worked on the recent Persona titles). If he is that is awesome news! He might also be talking about Brittany Avery, who also helped a bit with the dub I believe, which would be awesome as well.

Edit: Also can I just say that hearing Chiplock as Rean in the trailer was super cool. Can't wait to play this :)

Not surprising after how well Ys VIII did for them, embarrassing bumps and all.

Fans are going to very focused on who these series vets that are returning are. Good to see Chiplock mention the voice director is returning, that's definitely something I was afraid of. If they can get most of the english voice cast to return and get someone like Brittany editing, well, there's reason to be cautiously optimistic.

I've always gotten the impression it's the quality of the writing and localization that draws people to Legend of Heroes in the first place. If you're bringing over a niche franchise with a fanbase who deeply cares about that sort of thing, I'd certainly hope you'd do it right. Especially after the whole Ys VIII debacle. I took a quick look at the comparisons between the original and new localizations and boooyyyyy there's a difference.

Hearing that Trails of Cold Steel III is coming out probably means I should get started on at least one of these games, right?

@arbitrarywater: It is a big franchise to jump into but if you really value story, characters and world building in your RPGs than I'd recommend. The first two Cold Steel games are coming to the PS4 in February so you could start there and of course the entire series released in English so far is also available on the PC, so you could also start with Trails in the Sky there as well.

I already have the first two Trails in the Sky games and the first Trails of Cold Steel on Steam, so I'm good on that front. The real question is which end of the series to start with. Do I want the more traditional JRPG adventure, or the Persona-esque anime high school one?

@arbitrarywater: Either one is a good place to start. I actually played Trails in the Sky FC first, all the way back in 2011, then Cold Steel, Cold Steel II and only just recently finished Trails in the Sky SC last year. I personally liked the Cold Steel games a bit more just because of its battle system and other improvements to quality of life and presentation but there are fans that like the story in the Sky games more. Either way you'll be getting a good experience, just a different flavor so to speak.

I really love that I read the thread title as the title of the game: "Trails of Cold Steel III In the West."

The new dub for Y's was pretty good. Hopefully, they learned their lesson.

Fall is a lot sooner than I expected. I preordered both of the rereleases (Falcom has reached the point were they deserve all my money.) with the plan of having a nice, high level save file on my PS4 for when III was released. Now it sounds like I'm really going to have to hustle to get through them.

Man I really wish I was excited for this but I burnt out hard the 1st game by the end of it and I really couldn't get into that 2nd game.

I'm cautiously excited. I've been waiting a long time for this announcement, but it is pretty disheartening to see XSEED get screwed over halfway through the series, after all the work and love they've put into the series so far, only to go to a company who's recent track record has been pretty subpar.

I hear Falcom intends to more closely involved in the localization, so I just hope it turns out well.

Is the latest Y's game not a trash fire on PC yet? I was looking forward to it. Then it got pushed back, had major stability issues and the awful localization and I didn't want it. Now I don't really have money to buy games anyway and I barely see it go for lower than like 40 bucks.

Goodluck to everyone that is into the Trails series; I'd like to be but it seems like just too many games that I need to Vinny(start from the beginning, play them all). I'm scared for all of you.

@arbitrarywater: I usually say start with the Sky games, unless the old presentation is too much of a turn off to you. Cold Steel 1 is a decent jump in point for the most part, but there's still gonna be things that will mean way more to you if you have that background.

I need to know if their treasure chest jokes are on point before I make up my mind.

@lentfilms: @thewildcard: Thanks for the advice. I'll probably end up starting with Trails in the Sky and see how I like it... whenever I feel like getting into another lengthy JRPG franchise. That might end up being sooner rather than later though.

Awesome news! NISA announced at their PAX panel that Brittany Avery along with Ryan Thomson and Kris Knigge are returning to work on Trails of Cold Steel III's localization.

These are a lot of the core people that worked on Cold Steel I and II's awesome translation so it seems that Cold Steel III is in very good hands.

@lentfilms: Thank Aidios!!!

I'm now so much more confident in this project. Now let's hope that NISA will give them, and their internal team the time and resources to make this the best localization possible.

Okay now I feel much better about this. At the very least it shows a solid understanding of what needs to be done and not just a "Trust us we got this" attitude.

@cettu: From what people have been saying, NISA started work on Cold Steel III a year ago. So if it releases this fall then the localization team would have had about a year and a half to work on the game which is very similar to the schedule for Cold Steel I & II's localizations. So it is sounding pretty good so far.

Yeah I'm still not getting my expectations too high considering the lead translator and editor are still NISA people, but at least the lore should be consistent and they should be able to catch more egregious mistakes, assuming they give them enough time and input.

Just wanted to add another quick update: Rean's actor has actually mentioned the game's voice director by name and it is indeed Valerie Arem, who directed the previous two games, and Brittany Avery is once again also assisting with the dub. I thought the English dub for Cold Steel I and II was really strong and knowing that the same people are working on 3 gives me hope that it will be just as good.

It's nice to see that they brought on people from the localization teams of the previous 2 games. Hopefully this means they don't need to patch that translation multiple times again...

Now I'll probably give the first 2 games another play though after the PS4 comes out.

It still sounds wonky. Some people had zero problems with it, while other couldn't get it to run at all. Honestly I just went with the PS4 version after the first sign of trouble.

Honestly I've only played half of Trails in the Sky before playing the first Cold Steel and didn't have problems understanding stuff. But CS2 is another story though since events in another(untranslated) game are going on at almost the same time.

By and large you don't really need to understand anything happening outside of whatever subseries you are playing at the time.

Cold Steel 2 has the biggest challenge to this but even then it's mainly just a really big scene that will look very important but you won't have the context for. I didn't either at the time but it was still effective in a "Oh shit that looks bad" way.

Sounds good so far, been looking forward to this for a while. Here's hoping Zero gets an announcement soon...