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The Legend of Heroes: Trails By means of Dawn II launches subsequent week within the West on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Swap, and PC platforms from NIS America. Forward of its launch, I have been taking part in the PC model on my Steam Decks and ROG Ally to take a look at PH3’s port, the PC-exclusive options, handheld efficiency, and extra. I used to be additionally curious to see if there have been any additions and enhancements over the PC launch for Trails By means of Dawn from final yr. 

Should you’ve not carried out so already, learn our Trails By means of Dawn II evaluation, Swap vs PS5 vs PS4 console comparability, and my interview with PH3’s Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman overlaying Trails By means of Dawn II on PC, handhelds, and extra.

Trails By means of Dawn II PC unique options — HDR help, high quality of life choices, soundtrack info, and extra

Similar to Ys X: Nordics and Trails By means of Dawn, Trails By means of Dawn II sports activities a wide range of choices, new options, and upgrades over the console variations. Along with the standard efficiency and visible upgrades, Trails By means of Dawn II on PC permits you to skip logos when launching the sport to avoid wasting time, instantly resume your save from the Steam dashboard to avoid wasting much more time, view observe and soundtrack info for in-game music, use HDR, and extra with higher turbo management choices. 

Earlier than stepping into the Trails By means of Dawn II PC graphics choices, the standard of life options are notable. Once you attempt to launch Trails By means of Dawn II on Steam, you get an choice to resume out of your final save or launch the sport usually. Should you set the “Startup Brand” possibility beneath the Normal choices  to “Skip”, it can save you much more time right here. Trails By means of Dawn II on Steam additionally helps Steam’s Droop and Resume function for cloud saves.

Trails By means of Dawn II PC unique turbo mode or Excessive-Velocity Mode choices 

On console, the Excessive-Velocity Mode permits you to regulate the Subject Battle Scaling multiplier (1x, 1.5x, and 2x) and Command Battle Scaling multiplier (2x, 3x, and 4x). On PC,, Trails By means of Dawn II’s turbo mode like most followers check with it, the Excessive-Velocity Mode provides you much more management. This allows you to allow it by holding (a brand new possibility on PC) or toggling, however you additionally get to regulate the speedup Issue throughout exploration, Subject Battle, and Command Battle. You’ll be able to improve it in multiples of 0.5 from 1.0 to 4.0 for all of these choices. 

Trails By means of Dawn II PC show choices

Trails By means of Dawn II permits you to regulate show mode (windowed, borderless, fullscreen), choose monitor, regulate decision (320×200 as much as 4K in my testing with full 16:10 help for Steam Deck at 800p), refresh price (60, 90, 144hz), toggle v-sync, restrict the body price (30fps to 360fps), regulate subject of view (25 levels to 65 levels with 40 being the default), after which use HDR.

Trails By means of Dawn II PC-exclusive HDR settings

HDR settings in Trails By means of Dawn II are just like PH3’s prior two Falcom releases. You’ll be able to toggle HDR on after which regulate the HDR Peak Brightness and the HDR UI Brightness. Be aware that this works on the Steam Deck OLED and must be enabled because it could be disabled by default for you. 

Trails By means of Dawn II PC graphics presets

Trails By means of Dawn II has 5 graphics presets on PC, however you can even regulate all of the settings manually. These presets change rendering high quality and results, however do not change different preferences like movement blur. The Trails By means of Dawn II graphics presets are as follows:

• Efficiency – That is meant for lower-end laptops or handhelds just like the Steam Deck
• Console – That is designed to match the console expertise, however does not match the decision and refresh price on consoles.
• Default – That is above console settings and is the default Trails By means of Dawn II PC expertise.
• Excessive – That is aimed to be a balanced choice for gaming PCs and is not too performance-intensive. 
• Extremely – This permits a lot of the highest-end settings minus those which have extraordinarily massive efficiency prices for little achieve. That is meant for high-end gaming PCs.

Trails By means of Dawn II graphics choices on PC 

Trails By means of Dawn II from PH3 on PC permits you to regulate just a few units of choices. These are toggles for movement blur and depth of subject, draw distance settings for characters, LOD, and lightweight (low, medium, excessive, extremely), shadow choices (decision, filtering, caching, and HBAO+ for occlusion shading), rendering high quality choices, and one final set of choices for graphical results.

Trails By means of Dawn II’s rendering high quality choices permits you to regulate decision scale (55% to 200% with updates in actual time), view the precise rendering decision when you regulate this, anti-aliasing (off, fundamental screen-space AA, high-quality FXAA, 2x MSAA, 4x MSAA, and 8x MSAA), anisotropic filtering, after which two of my favourite choices in PH3 ports: portrait supersampling and minimap anti-aliasing. Portrait supersampling is a good addition as a result of I see many video games with crisp picture high quality nonetheless render some 3D parts in areas just like the tools display at a decrease res. This fixes it.

As for minimap anti-aliasing, it’s an possibility only a few will discover, however it’s good to see PH3 deal with how some UI parts just like the minimap do not look crisp and clear all through when zooming in and when considered because the minimap throughout gameplay. These two choices do not have a serious efficiency influence, however are very good touches.

The ultimate set of Trails By means of Dawn II graphics choices is the Graphical Results menu. This allows you to allow higher-quality screen-space reflections, allow higher-resolution cubemaps for pre-baked static reflections, regulate the volumetric lighting decision, allow prime quality post-processing (rising the decision and movement stability of post-processing), and eventually toggle a top quality water shading possibility. This particular water shader possibility requires a restart or reload for the present map to work.

Another notable factor for a way Trails By means of Dawn II handles its plethora of choices is how one can view a stay preview for many if not all of the PC-specific choices to see adjustments in actual time. 

As you’ll be able to see, Trails By means of Dawn II is one other one of the crucial fully-featured PC ports in a really very long time. Whereas the visuals could not stack up in opposition to AAA video games at this time, the port high quality is properly above every thing we see from massive publishers. 

Trails By means of Dawn II really useful settings for Steam Deck OLED and LCD

The easy answer right here is utilizing the efficiency graphics preset (meant for Steam Deck) and capping the Steam Deck’s refresh price for Trails By means of Dawn II to have the sport run at 45fps at 90hz utilizing the short entry menu on the OLED mannequin. On the LCD mannequin, I opted for 40fps at 40hz and had no points. This can be a very conservative possibility for each fashions, but it surely provides you stable efficiency and saves battery life. The one time you see main drops will probably be through the over-the-top animations in fight, however not throughout precise gameplay. Be aware that a few of the screenshots under may look a bit too brilliant as a result of they have been taken with HDR enabled and never configured appropriately.

If you wish to push issues in the case of picture high quality whereas preserving a 40 and even 30fps cap, notice that the upper presets (not Extremely) will work, however the body price tanks throughout most crafts animations like within the efficiency preset beneath some circumstances. I need to notice that the PC model has gotten just a few updates pre-release and efficiency has solely gotten higher for particular graphics choices. This can be a very polished PC launch proper now for handhelds.

Trails By means of Dawn II ROG Ally impressions — 60fps with good visuals

Whereas I spent most of my time with Trails By means of Dawn II’s PC model on each my Steam Decks, I additionally did a little bit of testing on the ROG Ally (Z1 Excessive at 25W and with the 5GB VRAM setting). When taking part in at 1080p utilizing the Efficiency preset, count on round 40-50fps. Turning the decision scale all the way down to get about 720p (or operating it at 720p natively) ends in properly above 60fps at nearly all occasions. Whereas you will get Trails By means of Dawn II to run with a 60fps goal on Steam Deck, the picture high quality penalty is an excessive amount of for my liking. The ROG Ally alternatively can ship that extra persistently with higher visuals. On the ROG Ally, I additionally tried the excessive preset at 1080p. This is not good except you are prepared to play at 30fps.

To try to get as a lot efficiency as potential, I set Trails By means of Dawn II to 640×480 on the efficiency preset. I additionally disabled v-sync and noticed it run above 120fps in open areas and fields persistently. I clearly do not suggest this, however I simply wished to see how a lot I may push the efficiency on the ROG Ally.

Trails By means of Dawn II is definitely finest on PC out of each model. This has been the case with most fashionable Falcom releases, however it’s nice to see how even a recreation launched on PC lower than a yr later has enhancements over the prior launch. In reality, whereas it seems to be noticeably higher on PS5 than Steam Deck, the standard of life and different PC-exclusive options like HDR made me stick with the Steam Deck OLED as my primary platform for Trails By means of Dawn II. I am now very curious to see what occurs with the PC model for The Legend of Heroes: Kai no Kiseki -Farewell, O Zemuria- every time it releases within the West.