I’ll try to make this review as brief as possible (I had a much longer one but it had too much info about the game, don’t want to post any bigI’ll try to make this review as brief as possible (I had a much longer one but it had too much info about the game, don’t want to post any big spoilers).
In short: this game’s really well done, it’s an epic conclusion to a very long saga, as we know, and this is in my opinion the best game in the Cold Steel saga, but doesn’t mean the others are bad, this one simply is even better.
The best way to truly enjoy this game, and in part the previous one, is having played the Sky and Crossbell sagas which, if you’re a fan (and you probably are, if you’re reading this) you also probably have done that, or in the process of, at least. Just do it, it’s worth it.
On the performance side of things, as usual, this port is very well done, like the previous three games, and it runs pretty similarly to CS III, but in CS IV there are more varied environments, especially in the open, with more vegetation and shadows.
On my Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060 Ti, I’ve mostly played at 2160p DSR (4K downsampled to my 1080p screen), Max Settings and MSAA set to 2x, with unlimited draw distance. Only in areas where there are lots of trees, foliage and vegetation, and this game has quite a lot more than CS III, the FPS dropped below 60.
You can settle for a lower resolution, or disable MSAA altogether, and maybe HBAO+, if you don’t want to see the FPS ever go below 60 at the settings I listed with that GPU but yeah…the game is more demanding than the previous one simply because we get to travel to many, many new places, some old too, that have more performance demanding assets under certain graphical settings like MSAA, Shadows, o HBAO+.
This game has been a joy to play, from beginning to end, I was stuck on my chair everyday as much time as I could squeeze in there. So many returning characters, from all of the previous sagas, so many references, so much well inserted fan service, not just for the sake of it, but with meaning to the story and recognition of characters and heroes of past games…it’s all amazing, there are no words to describe it, only possible to appreciate it when playing it.
Notable mention to the music, it’s a Falcom game…so of course, some tracks are real bangers, with some special surprises, one in particular really shocked me and took me by surprise: a "new" arrange of the Ouroboros theme, a song we haven’t heard in the Steel saga, ever (except as part of another track in CS III, a little bit), then comes back for CS IV in the best possible way, with an epic boss battle, and incredible new revelations of information that will define the future of the series, no doubt, but the seeds have always been there, in place, ever since the first game, and I mean Sky FC, of course.
Honestly, the story of the universe in The Legend of Heroes series is probably the most cohesive and engaging I've ever played on any RPG series, and this game does the whole Legend of Heroes name justice, because the whole series is really legendary at this point, and so are its characters, its creators, the people behind their design, their writing and scripts, music, everything.
All in all, thanks to PH3 for another excellent port of these series, and I wish the team all the best in the case they keep being in charge of any future games in these series because…they honestly earned it already with Cold Steel I years ago, and they’ve been doing amazing work so, hopefully, you guys can keep making these ports the best possible version they can be here on PC.
I know we have more games in the horizon for these series…and I can’t wait to see them coming here, especially with this level of PC port quality, always day one purchases for me, no doubt.… Expand
