Not quite up to today's standards.
Then combat began. Yay! Wait.. what the heck is this? Is this an RPG or an action game? Battles are turn-based, sure. But all you do is spam the same key over and over and over. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it's not. There are skills in the game and you will naturally acquire new ones as you level, but the truth is, aside from heal you will probably scarcely use any of your spells or skills. You can cruise right through the game by simply using the default attack for all characters. You can even randomly select your target. It doesn't matter, you'll probably still win. If you make use of your one special attack every time it's charged up, you're good to go. And really, you don't even need to use that skill. You could probably just keep tapping the button while you read a book or something. Yeah, it's that exciting. I did keep my characters up to date in the best gear, but even then, it shouldn't be THAT easy..
Obviously, the lack of challenge to the combat became tedious really quickly. At some point, you'll probably be like me and decide to just bypass fighting all together as you run from city to city to move the story forward. Thank goodness this is an option thanks to enemies being visible on the map. No random encounters! Yay!
I was semi-motivated to keep the story going because it was decent, but with all the translation errors, any immersion was short-lived. For a good chunk of time, I was just running around talking to people to progress the story and I was sure that at some point the boss battles would be too difficult since I hadn't been leveling up all this time. So, I took a bit of time to get my characters up to speed and they leveled incredibly fast. The battles were slightly harder, but still beatable with the simple strategy I mentioned earlier. Once I was caught up in levels, I went for another long stretch without fighting anything other than the required battles, then had a short level up period again. Rinse and repeat. And there you have Legend of Heroes.
All in all, it's not a terrible game. The characters are likable enough and the writers did a decent job of giving them unique personalities. But I must say, the main character, Avin, has got to be one of the worst main characters ever. His excessive tendency to whine will wear on you over time. He is supposed to be a hot-headed, non-emotional kind of guy and they portray that well enough. But you'll quickly get bored of his little tantrums all the time and watching Mile try to calm him down. This aspect of his personality was way overdone and you soon start to see every episode coming before it even happens. Someone does something to push Avin's buttons, he goes into a psychotic rage, Mile is the voice of reason and brings Avin back to his sense, blah blah blah x30000000.
When it comes down to it, if you want a game that you can play on the go and aren't expecting any sort of challenge and don't mind all the translation errors and generic spell/skill names, Legend of Heroes might be worth your time. Anyone who enjoys a challenge and a truly immersing storyline will want to skip this one.