This game acts as an epilogue of Trails in the Sky and Trails in the Sky SC (so play them first), ties some loose ends and acts as a bridge to the following games in the series. Here the main story is much shorter and the game is structured in dungeons, with a more polished combat and a larger pool of characters available. Although the Star, Sun and Moon Doors are optional, it is highly advisable to clear all the Star Doors, as they contain short stories that are essential to the world-building of the saga.
Trails of Cold Steel is a good entry point to The Legend of Heroes series, if the "old school" graphics of Trails in The Sky don't appeal to you and you prefer "fancy 3D graphics". Aside from graphics, Cold Steel games share the same flaws and virtues as Sky: They are long games, with a very slow start and an overwhelming amount of dialogues. But it's the price to pay for a rich story, detailed character development, and incredible world-building. There's a lot of lore hidden in books and dialogues, and NPCs react to the changes in the world that surrounds them as the story progresses, to the point that some will remember if you helped or interacted with them in the previous game. The combat is still turn based, and the game doesn't force you to grind to advance the story as in other rpg. The PC port is very well optimized, has lots of graphic settings (uncapped FPS, HBAO+, Draw Distance and Depth of Field sliders, etc.) and works even on old laptops. It does feature some quality-of-life features such as Turbo Mode, skipping battle animations, natively load modded textures, inmediate load last saved game without loading screeen/menus, etc.
