this game did the impossible for me. it PEAKS so much i loved every second of enjoying this masterpiece and was honestly dumfounded by how much Cold Steel redeemed itself and became such a phenomenal arc and jump in quality

my favorite lore in the series and so many long-awaited moments in this came this was a gift for anyone who started all the way from the sky arc and didn't skip any arc. this is comfortably my second favorite Trails game

the end of the saga

Cold Steel 4 is an enigma. A curious creation. Because I think this game is fucking garbage. However, I think its enjoyable garbage. See, if you are actively thinking while playing Cold Steel 4 it falls apart at the seams and becomes a fucking hot mess writing wise, as you slowly realise how many wasted concepts from Sky 3rd the game dumps aside, or how the overarching plot is completely fucked over for the stupid curse bullshit or for the dumb shit with the Gnomes and the Reinfords. However, if you turn your brain off, it becomes a dumb fun experience with fun gameplay and stupid plot revelations, with the only real comparison I can be making in this regard is to Fire Emblem Fates. Personally speaking, I love 2/3rds of Fire Emblem Fates, Conquest especially. However, those games are infamous for having incredibly dogshit plots, horrible writing in general, with the only real saving grace being Conquest's map design, the engine, and the music. Now, you may be asking, May, how is this relevant? Well the sheer amount of unironic comparisons I can make directly between the entire Cold Steel arc and Fire Emblem Fates is frankly ridiculous and absurd. The only problem here is Fire Emblem Fates is fully self contained, and has no bearing on any other game in its series. The Cold Steel arc, a four game long arc in a nearly 15 year running series, is NOT self contained, thus with this level of DOGSHIT writing contained within affecting 5 ENTIRE GAMES BEFORE THE ARC.

However I think the worst part about this is how I enjoyed this game more than Cold Steel 1 and 3. Cold Steel 1 is quite possibly the least engaged I have ever been playing a video game, and I've played Devil May Cry 2. Cold Steel 3 felt like an active betrayal, the game stabbing me in the back as I felt dragged into a false sense of security with its excellent first three chapters only for it to drop a bowling ball on a glass house in the last two. Due to where Cold Steel 3 ended, my expectations for Cold Steel 4 were absurdly low, and therefore, I feel like I enjoyed CS4 more than I would otherwise. CS4 also has a frankly hilarious soundtrack, Singa is one of the funniest composers of all time I can't believe Deep Carnival is a real track.

Current Trails game ranking:
Zero > Azure > Sky 3rd > CS2 = Sky Sc > Sky FC > CS4 > CS3 > CS1.
I can't fucking wait to play Reverie.

as much an answer to the question of cs2 as to 3; a machine rapidly switching between the best and worst trails game; a stupid, utopian, optimistic humanist version of mecha anime like ideon which approached post ww2 and cold-war era questions of human nature/capacity for violence wrt nuclear weapons through the idea of “the weapon fighting the war itself”...
seeks catharsis through tracing the genre's concerns back to the second industrial revolution, the outbreak of world war 1, and more fundamentally prehistory; a retelling of (among other things) the universal century narrative where instead, the weight of history is a barrier that can be fully overcome, where the symbolic power of the mecha can be fully reclaimed, and where the evil behind all the conflicts, the invention of the weapon, can be isolated and defeated, revealing the ultimate truth resting in its origin: earth and fire could just as well become a human body and beating heart, the only thing the future really needs. never again listening to anyone who complains about the lack of permanent death in these games when the resurrection at this story’s end is literally the thematic completion of the entire series lol

Trails of Cold Steel IV : End Of Saga (and my sanity)

Before properly starting this review, I wanted to tell you a little story about myself.

In 2019, there was a game by the name of Kingdom Hearts III, now I know this is gonna sound off topic but bear with me for a second. Kingdom Hearts as a franchise was really important in my formative years of gaming, I received the first entry on Christmas of 2003 (the same year I got my PS2) probably because my mom saw Donald and Goofy on the cover and thought it was just one of many Disney games that she already brought home to keep me occupied during her busy hours.

What she didn’t know is that this single event was going to change the trajectory of my life forever and was going to trigger my biggest most long-running autistic hyper obsession I’ll ever have in my life. I’d say that KH1 is the most important game in my life because as funny as it’s going to sound, it was the game that taught me that games could be so much more than electronic distractions, more than just a virtual toy to lose a few hours on. Oh sure I did have games that could’ve also done that in my library such as “Link’s Awakening” or “Legacy of Kain : Soul Reaver” but as excellent as these games were, they were a bit too “cerebral” for my younger self and I only got to finish them several years down the line when I was intellectually inclined to do so.

KH1 was this perfect blend of complex yet simple, engaging yet straightforward, beautifully poetic and epic. And of course being attached to Disney properties definitely did help. Exploring worlds based on some of my childhood favorite movies was like a dream come true and all of this packed in a great deal of mystery and a seemingly deeper lore that one might not expect from a crossover game. By the end of KH1, I was so charmed, so starstruck by how magic the experience was that I said to myself : “I don’t know what this is, but I need more of whatever this is !” and thankfully enough, KH1 was also an amazing gateway title to the wider world of JRPG’s. It was thanks to KH1 (and a neighbour who was deep into RPG) that I got to play FFIX, my first Final Fantasy game for the first time, my aunt brought me Dark Cloud 2 and so forth and so forth, combine this with me discovering the internet and the wonderful world of emulation and I was set for life catching up on all the amazing games I’ve missed out on over the years and still am catching up to this day.

But KH was different, unlike many JRPG series Kingdom Hearts had its own mythology, its own internal lore and hinged heavily on its continuity. It was in fact one of the series main selling points, you came for the Disney shenanigans and you stayed to hear about the next chapter in Tetsuya Nomura’s wild ride. And while I skipped Chain of Memories when it came out (only to come back to it, to understand KH2 a lil better), I played KH2 and holy shit that game got me hooked for good and I was set for life ! Between the Mickey letter at the end and the awesome secret ending with these badass knights holding keyblade in some sort of desert, I knew that whenever KH3 was going to come out, it was going to be the best fucking game in my life.

Now KH2 was released in 2005 and KH3 eventually released in 2019…

When Square eventually announced that we’ll get not just one, not two but three KH games before the release of KH3, I was going insane !
But deep in my mind all I really wanted was KH3, the fabled conclusion to the epic saga that I was now a part of because in the end that’s one of the reasons I even got obsessed with KH in the first place. It felt like I was becoming a part of something ! I was witnessing the birth of a cult-classic franchise and I was witnessing first hand the continuous creation of its bigger story…

This excitement lasted for a while… but then an event happened which started instilling doubt into my faith in this franchise, this was the release of a little game known as Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. As a videogame, KH3D is probably one of the most serviceable games in the franchise but its story is where I started realizing that the writers were kind of stuck in a corner with this whole “seeker of darkness” arc. The plot started going off the rails with retcons on previous antagonist coming back for plot contrivance reasons, the 2 main lead were going through the same character arc they did in the previous mainline title only served on a different plate and fucking Time-Travel was a thing and made an already convoluted story even more convoluted and everything felt like it’ll lead to all the tragedies in the series and the investment I had in said tragedies being ruined for cheap fanservice down the line.

And yet, I didn’t give up, I still waited for the day KH3 would be mine. But 15 years is a long time, in 15 years a lot of things happened and the little boy who was having fun pushing the triangle button to get on the Hydra’s back in 2005 has went through a lot, I graduated from elementary school and high school, I’ve entered college then dropped out of college, I had a stomach surgery, lost my virginity, experienced many other games and many other media and sadly developed something known as : critical thinking. Since then, I replayed all the KH games through the HD collection discovering the Final Mix version of these games for the first time and realizing that KH2 wasn’t just “great”, it was “a masterpiece” and easily the single best Action-RPG ever released even almost 20 years after its release and while I still hold a lot of fondness for both KH1 and KH2 (and 358/2 days to a lesser extend), the same couldn’t be said for the portable entries.

I tried to get back into BBS but I found the game to be a boring slog with terrible writing, a bland trio of characters, a battle system that was fundamentally broken and became monotonous very fast once I understood the “cracks” in the code and a story that’s full of good ideas but executed sloppily and had to resolve to using a shit load of retcon about how the Keyblade worked in order to expand the universe which killed a bit of the magic of the first game’s plot in my opinion. Suffice to say that while I don’t find BBS bad, it’s definitely a game that aged like piss in my mind because it was trying to make the world too complex while not delivering where it mattered (aka : the character writing, the main plot and having a fun complex battle system).

When KH3 finally came out, I was a changed man and part of me still couldn’t believe this game was real and I could actually purchase it at my local game store. So I did play KH3, spending roughly 40 or so hours completing it and to say that my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined was an understatement. KH3 was indeed the big conclusive finale of the franchise and as such it’s the converging point of everything the series has built up to this point but sadly, it was also the culmination of all the bullshit the series has accumulated over the years and has slowly but surely transformed a once beloved and respected cult classic JRPG series into some sort of a running joke.
I kinda live with the disappointment nowadays and the Re:Mind DLC probably helped mitigate some of my issues I had with the game initially but I simply couldn’t believe in the “KH plan” anymore. The problem with Kingdom Hearts is that what was once the game series that taught me that games can have genuinely great and engaging writing on top of fun gameplay became just this confused mess of shitty fanservice and lore-flopping. Like the series forgot that it was supposed to tell a story with themes and shit and instead just became a collection of cliché and lore stuff thrown haphazardly into a semi-coherent mess and in the end, it wasn’t even conclusive enough, most of it was set up for the next arc which is going to be based on the story explored in the mobile game and … man I just couldn’t care less.

I already invested so much time and energy with this franchise but nowadays, I can’t even gather the energy to recommend it to anybody anymore. I think KH is very different for the people who discovered the franchise now without any nostalgic childhood attachment to it, the early games are a bit janky and most of the portable entry are not the height of gaming promised by your peers, only KH2 stands out amongst the rest for just being some sort of miracle accident which ended up creating one of the most fun and versatile action-rpg ever released (but only if you’re playing on critical mode, why would you play KH2 on anything but Critical is beyond me)

The reason I went on this tangent about KH is to tell you that after KH, I always seeked for something else that I could claim as my new hyper-obsession and at the time I was playing KH3, a friend of mine was talking about the Trails Series and hearing about it made me jump out of my chair, it sounded too good to be true ! An expensive multi-generational epic journey through multiple connected entries with an insane amount of attention dedicated to worldbuilding and continuity ? Damn, maybe I found what I wanted. So over the past 3-4 years, I caught up with the series and I did find my new hyper-obsession… well not with Trails… but with another less “respectable” franchise that I already mentioned in my CS2 review but that’s a story for another time.

I really wish I could’ve become a true super highly obsessed fan of Trails who couldn’t help but marathon these games, but the story of my relationship with Trails was a rocky one, full of powerful highs and unfortunate lows. Full of missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential, not everyone can be the next Matsuno and with the last few entries I kinda gave up on the series giving me something meaningful to latch myself onto, I never became a fan of Trails but I can somewhat empathize with Trails fans due to my experience with the KH series and how it went from my lifeblood to my favorite gaming toxic relationship.

And these problems, these minor issues that I reported in detail back during my Azure review kinda grew out of proportions like a big cancerous tumor filling itself with pus and dead cells and it all culminated in me playing Cold Steel IV.

The worst JRPG, I’ve ever played

Not “one” of the worst, that was true for all the previous entries but this one, easily takes the cake as “THE” worst experience I’ve ever had playing a JRPG.

This is quite a bold claim especially for someone like me who has well over 5000 games logged on my account, I can already smell the comments coming from a mile away.

“But CaaaaaaaaaaAAAaaaaani, you can’t possibly say this is worst than the likes of stuff like FF2, Sonic Chronicles, Any Compile Heart Games ever made, Lagoon, Lunar : Dragon Song or wtv… if you say Cold Steel IV is the worst, you should really start considering playing more truly bad games !”

And here’s the thing my dear readers, I do play bad games, sometimes by choice and sometimes by accident, I’ve had my fair share of experience with bonafide turds ! From games that are barely playable, those with awful game and level design flaws, bad controls, bad music, gameplay, completely nonsensical plot and generally an experience in which all of these elements combined into something truly awful !

I remember fondly when my mom got me “Realplay : PuzzleSphere” on Christmas and I ended using the “PuzzleSphere” in question more as a mace to hit my brother on the head with than an actual controller because of how much the game sucked ass, or getting “Space Chimp” and “Zatura” on the PS2 (bet you don’t even remember Zatura ! It was a shitty sci-fi rip-off of Jumanji that was released in theaters for some reason) ! And don’t get me started on Shrek Fairytale Freakdown for the Game Boy Color ugh. Heck I even gladly played bad games from franchises I love, Megaman X6 and X7 comes to mind as two different flavors of bad games, several Castlevania entries too and to stay on topic with the subject of this review : Ys IV Mask of The Sun and Ys III Wanderers From Ys are legitimately worse games than CS4 !

To me there’s layers to bad video games and to quote Yahtzee from the Escapist : It’s not the bad games that are the worst to review, it’s the bland ones ! The one that just takes ideas from several places and mish-mash them into a semi-functional but seemingly indistinguishable mess, the kind of games that makes you feel “nothing” at the end of the day and might make you hate the medium or genre they came from more by their sheer laziness and incompetence !

I usually love playing bad games because to me every experience is worth having, I have a lot of fondness for bad videogames. I don’t think people make bad games on purpose and you can learn a lot about your own taste or learn a lot more about what not to do when making a game from playing bad video games ! Bad games have cultural values because you can teach about their failures at game design school to teach younger devs what not to do when making a video game ! I sometimes think that some bad games have some “soul” to them, like the developers made it as a labor of love and not a labor of pure exploitation to get a paycheck at the end of the month. So yeah ! I love bad games ! Some pure exquisite kusoge of the highest level !

But even amongst BAD and I mean BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD games, Cold Steel IV, heck even more so the entire Cold Steel saga stands out in the sea of forgettable throwaway garbage that the industry pulls out on a monthly basis thanks in no small part to being part of a larger series and in doing so and failing completely at everything it does retroactively ruin my enjoyment of the entire Trails franchise up to that point ! And you may think that my little KH3 tangent at the start was to pad out time ! Well, you’re right !
But it wouldn’t be a Trails game without a copious dose of pointless padding now wouldn’t it ? (and don’t worry, it’s not just an elaborated meta joke, there’s a lot more in common between KH3 and Cold Steel IV than meets the eyes)

This time I won’t make you sit through an entire slew of paragraphs talking about the gameplay this time around because unsurprisingly, it hasn’t changed, like at all. Aside from being able to stack 2 additional BP on top of the 5 you could already stack in previous games, there is no change to the battle system this time around. That doesn’t mean that CS4 improves on the battle system, the enemy design, the boss design or god forbid the exploration but we’ll talk in due time when I’d talk about how basic the entire thing is and how it ruined my enjoyment of the entire experience.

On a more minor notes, there’s a few QoL improvements here and there especially when it comes to NPC, now every new dialogues are notified by a “NEW” next to the area you want to quick travel to which makes it easier to do an NPC sweep but also makes it harder to ignore that part of the game if you’re autistic like me and can’t stand looking at unfinished business.

In fact, unlike most games in the series, I actually did manage to get a full rank of AP point this time around by just fucking around completing side quest ! Was that necessary ? No, did it make my suffering last for longer than necessary ? Absolutely ! But I’m glad that at least in midst of all of the game’s issues, there are smudges of brilliance thrown here and there and I’d say that not making the 100% completion requirement as cryptic and obtuse as the other titles for no reasons (especially due to the needlessly padded out nature of these games preventing me from ever wanting to replay any of them, even the ones I did enjoy) was for once something that I did appreciate (now as for the actual quality of the side content, we’ll talk about that in a minute).

The game starts on probably the only good part of the game until a long while, the game teases you on being good by bringing back the playable cast members of the previous two arcs and even opens up by a shot of Estelle brand new PS4 HD Graphics ass, showing that the priorities and demographic of this game changed a lot since the last time Estelle was relevant in anything and was actually a respectfully written female character unlike most of the cast of this mess of an arc.

This section which seemingly serves as a tutorial to the game mechanics (you know, the one’s that hasn’t changed from the previous game) will let you play as husks of your favorite characters pretending to have any relevance into this game plot, a running theme throughout the entire thing but we’ll get to that later down the line (and I’ve been saying this a lot already HUH ?). After a boss fight against two of the worst antagonist ever written in the series, the game can actually continue

In the last episode of Rean Schwarzer epic Schwarzin adventure, our boy turned completely schizo after sniffing too much of the gnomes racist perfume infusion therefore triggering the release of said gaz throughout the entire country and activating the cheap cliffhanger protocol that’s so near and dear to Falcom’s writing team to make you play another 80-90 hours slog of a game where only 30 of said hours (assuming I’m being generous here) will be of any significance thanks to the power of cockblocking !
After this gnome endeavor from last time, our heroes got teleported to Eryn village, the hometown of Emma (the plot delivery glasses girl) and the base of operation of the ancient Hexen Clan aka the Witches aka Ancient Guardians of the world who lives like Internet hasn’t been invented yet like in the funny wizard boy book written by a notorious transphobe. It’s here that the rest of Class VII realizes that their teacher has gone missing and is stuck in some sort of gnome BDSM dungeon at least according to a few cutscenes and the deliciously edgy title screen of the game and thus they need to save him !

But how will they do it ?

Well by going through all the places you’ve already slogged and backtracked too with next to no change to the level layout of enemy types of course ! But don’t worry, you’re not just going around planting magic needles on the ground for plot reasons, you’re also doing this to find your missing friend and yes

Yes, you’ve been waiting for this one haven’t you ?

It’s time for yet another epic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXp-Ft404E

“Final Fantasy VI Search For Your Friends Rip-Off moment™ !”

Yes because the same way CS3 was pretty much a repurposed CS1, the same goes for CS4 being a repurposed CS2 ! Because here at Falcom, we love recycling our own ideas (borrowed from several other franchises which did it miles better anyway) and running them to the ground because you bitches have no standard and will eat anything up and accept how stagnant the franchise has become by now !

So after another tutorial dungeon to re-teach you about all the mechanics you already experienced with in the prologue (I shit you not) in one of the series now titular “Tartarus rip-off which looks randomly generated but isn’t actually randomly generated” dungeon (aka : Old Schoolhouse 3 : Revenge of the Sith) you’re out in the world to plant some magic needle to find the Gnome Headquarters, repeat that in a pattern of 3 times, get one party member back and experience what’s happening to the world in the eve of a full-scale war.

I’m going to give credit where credit is due with Act 1, starting off the game without its titular main character is actually a pretty cool idea in a “passing of the torch” kind of way. Rean has always been the strongest, baddest party member in all 3 previous Cold Steel games (if you didn’t have Laura to one-shot everything and anything that is). So it creates an interesting power imbalance which forces you to play with how well NC7 plays out of one another, this balance is pretty cool and makes for some cool moments. At that point, the story hasn’t really devolved into full crayon-eater mode either so it’s alright, I do wish that Act 1 or at least the idea that the game featured NC7 as the new lead party member actually lasted for longer because Act 1 is going to be one of the last time outside of bonding events that the characters will get to shine in any particular way with some insanely cool character moment and interesting arc.

However, I must insist that this part of the game is still relatively boring to go through. Since this is the sequel to a previous Trails game, most of the environments are ripped straight out of CS3 and with little change to the environment (aside from the skybox because that’s what war does to you) and…

Ok I think I need to come clean about the padding issues in this franchise because it is genuinely going out of control the more I advance throughout the series. See the issue with Trails isn’t that the games are too long because BIG NEWS !

JRPG’s ARE LONG !

…

Right ?

No, it’s just that in been long, these games really don’t offer much in terms of actual proper game design, while there was some effort made all the way back in the Crosbell duology to mitigate those issues, in the end, Trails has never been a series known for how excellent its gameplay loop and game design was. Ultimately, the problem with Trails is a fundamental issue with how these titles are constructed and this isn’t something I only recently started complaining about in this arc, it’s something true for the entire series up to that point. That the first game is a slow burn to get yourself familiar with the world and the setting ? Fine ! But why in the absolute living fuck does that slow pacing need to translate to every title regardless of whether or not it’s an intro title or not ?

I swear to god, it’s something you start getting numb to because of how much the game tries to find ways to make the act of playing them less of a chore, by adding more quick travel points or even turbo mode or things of the sort but it never really solves the issues ! These game structures are so rigid and artificial that you can almost see and feel where they pointlessly added stuff to artificially make the game last longer ! But I can already hear you say :

“Well if these games are so long, it’s because it’s to establish the atmosphere and the worldbuilding and the” blah blah blah cut the crap already, you know it’s not true !

You know that most of these games could be cut in half and only get better for it in terms of rhythm if you only keeping in it the actual meaningful content and that’s the problem because we’ve all been fooled into thinking that it was actually necessary to be like that in order to communicate the plot better but it’s not even fucking true is it ?

Even less so when all of the actual good scenes and character moments are contained almost exclusively in the bonding events scene which for the record are both some of the best and some of the worst in the series for reasons we’ll get into later.

These games barely evolved their formula and I’m getting tired of them, as an RPG it’s also some of the milquetoast RPG structure you could ever eat. What’s your favorite dungeon in CS4 ? The series of corridors with brown bricks or the ones with blue bricks ? SO MUCH VARIETY IT’S STAGGERING !
It’s crazy how much I managed to put out and how much so many people managed to put out with how dull and boring the loop of battle, exploration, fetch quest and cutscenes gets in this series, it’s literally driving me nuts at how fucking dull this shit it, I’m going insane !

The only thing that’s carrying this series is just text since the “cutscenes” (if you wanna even call it that) have always been so fucking low budget, badly directed and animated that you might as well make it a visual novel instead and I’ve seen Visual Novels with better staging and direction than most of the dialogue scenes in this game !

God it’s also so fucking predictable, you can make a freaking drinking game out of this !

The characters are in a pinch ? Take a shot as they get their ass saved by a random third actor that was seemingly in the room this whole time and solve the situation on their own while “Sword of Biting Gale” plays !

Take another shot when the characters are done talking about their next step and a villain that was positioned on a roof or a hill was observing them menacingly saying “Nyeheheh, class VII, We’ll see about that !”

Take another shot when the progression is stopped by Rean doing another unwarranted and frankly unnecessary pep-talk friendship speech for no fucking reasons !

Ludo-Narration ? Staging ? Direction ? Not using every repetitive character trope and cheap narrative tool in the book to tell your story through what the medium can offer instead ? I never heard that shit from a freaking Falcom game ! Good god, this is the lowest of lows, you know some games have good direction, others have bad direction but Welcome to the Kiseki series where we just won’t direct our cutscenes at all…

And fuck there is so many characters now, each dialogue and cutscene take fucking forever because Billy, Eddy, Mandy and Roger all have their snarky little comment to make on the situation and often time there’s like 60 or so character on screen and they all have to say something and it’s always the driest, blandest, most unimportant piece of dialogue why did you fucking Talk Elliot Craig ? NOBODY ASKED YOUR WHITE ASS OPINION ABOUT WAR ! YOU ARE A NOTHING CHARACTER SAYING NOTHING AND I HATE YOU ! AND ALL OF OLD CLASS VII FOR THAT MATTER ! GOD WHAT A BUNCH OF BORING USELESS CUNT I SWEAR TO GOD !

Act 2 is probably where the game starts hitting the shitting fan with this !

After saving Rean, the game’s overall quality and pacing take a complete nosedive never to return. I said in the last review that if we dug deeper we might reach China ?

But holy fucking shit, we haven’t just reached China, in fact, We dug so deep that there was no more ground to dig up and we’ve now entered an alternate dimension where the laws of physics have been broken and now everything works in “Kiseki Hours” where a single hour of gameplay progress amounts to 5 IRL time and nothing freaking happened !


Act 2 is just a pure narrative void, there is nothing of note that happen in Act 2, you’re just doing a lot of fetch questing, each worst than the last and you enter pointless conflicts with characters because this game is so starved for time and content that it starts throwing boss fight against some of the most random individuals, in fact most of the setup for boss fights in this game make no sense at all. As I was playing through the game I was even wondering half of the time : “Why are we fighting this person ? It’s completely pointless ? Why are we doing this ?” and that my friend is thanks to a really useful tool the authors have come up with to artificially spawn conflicts out of the blue !

Introducing

The Curse !

The Curse is a fascinating tool of narrative design that allows the writers to do whatever the fuck they want and justify any actions any characters at any moments might take !

In the text, it is said that the curse is something that acts on the human brain and forces them to obey their deeper instinct, but what it essentially does for the most part is turn everyone evil, violent and racist for seemingly no goddamn reasons. It also make characters act in completely uncharacteristic ways so you can have a fight with them or they can fuck you over to pad out more freaking time and justify you going through another boring ass dungeon and fighting another pointless boss fight !

But in reality, the curse is whatever the writers want it to be, yes sometimes it does make people evil and racist but sometimes it can make them addicted to gambling, sometimes it can erase memories, sometimes it can make animals aggressive and turn them into demons, sometimes it can make somebody mess their paperwork or lose their key, sometimes it can make a nun break a pot, sometimes it can force a child to run head first into the nearest kidnapper, sometimes it can power-up robots and machines and most importantly of all, sometimes it can turn your jacuzzi into purple goo which is fucking terrible isn’t it ?

The curse has no rules and no consistency whatsoever, the curse is seemingly the cause and the consequences of everything in the plot ! In fact, doing the sidequests makes the curse even worse as you realize that there are no concrete rules to the curse nor are there any concrete rules to how it works, how it affects certain people and not others or even how you’re supposed to cure people from it !

Elliot will use the power of music to turn a demon into a regular horse again and it’s never brought up ever in the actual main plot ? Bro if you can just get rid of demons like that why are we still busy fighting them in the first place ? The curse can also seemingly get cured by just “talking it out” with the person who’s affected like ok sure why not but also sometimes the curse just heals… by itself ! Magically ! With no real reasons behind it ! One time there’s a little girl who forgets who the SSS is but later without any side quest or extra scenes or anything, the girl just randomly remembers who they are and it’s ???



The only consistent thing about the curse is that it only spreads across the empire and respects the state's border but they never actually give a proper explanation as to why it works like this in the first place ? Why in the absolute living goddamn fuck is an ancient demonic curse from aeons past cares about the modern state borders of some bum ass country ? Like boohoo, poor little curse, it can’t get past a silly barrier ! I thought the Sept-Terrions were supposed to transcend the rules of the mortal realms and be these super-powerful artifacts !

I mean for fuck sake, the previous Sept-Terrion was LITERALLY ABLE TO REWRITE REALITY ! The Power Creep ceiling has already been met ! You can’t make something crazier than something which literally can ignore the rules of physics and rewrite reality how they see fit ! And yet, the game will always try to pretend that the Great One and the curse is the most dangerous fucking threat to have ever existed and seemingly the reason why the entire series happened up to this point !

Oh yeah because yeah, how about that ?

How about this franchise lore and worlbuilding being completely fucking wasted in favor of shitty JRPG plot number 5840 ?

Yeah, remember the gnome shit from CS3 ? That was already pretty fucking bad wasn’t it ? Well get a kick out of this !

Every

Single

Event

In

The

Series

Was all part of some

ANCIENT

RACIST

GUNDAM

GOD



To rebuild itself and become ultra-mega powerful, Ishmelga is the name of the robot and the one who wants to bring the world to an end, with Black…. oh wait no silly, let’s make this antagonist even more of a fucking joke than he already is by making it a Dr.Jekyl and Mr Gnome situation, yes the leader of the gnome, the absolute mastermind behind everything, is just a random sockpuppet for Ishmelga ! And even Osborne is a sockpuppet for Ishmelga, but you see he did all the evil shit ever so he can STOP Ishmelga thanks to his son Rean Chad ThunderCock Schwarzer !

Remember the cool duality between Olivert and Osborne ? The whole class warfare story ? The Imperialism ?

Get the fuck out of here man, it was NEVER ABOUT ALL OF THAT !

It’s all a setup for a shitty mech battle tournament arc with the most non-existent stake possible.

None of the villains actually wants to win most of the time, you fight people that are sometimes evil, sometimes virtuous and sometimes nothing at all thanks to the curse making things more confusing

Osborne is a wet fart of a character and a complete disapointment, the guy went from a cunning manipulator to literally a bootleg Xehanort from KH3 with the exact same end goal of “doing all of this for the good of the world” which is just “stop the racism god to spread more racism”

Oh yeah, because speaking of Olivier ?

Well fuck you he’s alive, in fact everyone who died or disappeared at the end of CS3 are alive and they’re alive because GEORGE NOME actually saved them because GEORGE NOME is not all bad guys, he has good heart inside of his tiny lil gnome heart. Everyone gets revived and sometimes they even get shitty mind control masks and have chuuni names like “Red Rosweil” who is a resurrected Angelica with her memories erased but her PEDOPHILIA STILL INTACT

FUCK YEAH LET’S GO I LOVE THIS CLOWN ASS FRANCHISE !

Yeah right, let’s make all the characters make jokes about pairing minors and adult in the same franchise that has an honest to god CHILD BROTHEL SUB-PLOT ! Hey !

How about we make said CSA victim a victim of jokey funny lol super funky sexual harassment heh ?

Ah Angelica, she ain’t just a pedophile ! SHE’S OUR PEDOPHILE !

As for Olivier, well if character assassination was a sport, the guy would be a gold fucking medalist because goddamn what have they done to my man.

To be frank it’s either getting character assassinated so thoroughly that you might actually file a complaint for manslaughter or seeing all of your favorite characters come back with their personality stripped down to a mere caricature of what they once was just for empty fanservice moment that will only work on the lowest common denominator to try and make people think this game has anything of value as the “END OF SAGA” ! When in fact absolutely nothing of value is to be found here

The story is empty, the characters are empty, the themes are bland and generic, the villains are a joke and half of them don’t even want to win because of the shitty reasons they even do all of this in the first place !

Every part of the plot is an excuse to either pad out more time or to have a “cool” boss fight against some of the most random people ever that has no reason to happen

Irina, why are you evil ?

Oh you’re not evil anymore ? Ok let’s hug it out and forget about it

THIS GAME WAS WRITTEN FOR LITERAL 5 YEAR OLD

Everytime you think the story is doing something cool or half-decent, it’s canceled out by the game doing something stupid

And don’t get me started on fucking Rean

Rean, Rean, Rean, Rean…

Oh boy, you…

You fucking pointless, annoying shallow simulacrum of a character ! You are the worst of them all, I fucking despise your sorry Narou-Kei Light Novel Default Ass ever since the first game and even in this fucking game where you saw little to no actual development and even worse actually regressed just to have the same “your friends love you” magic friendship crystal thing plot from the second game !

You are everything that’s wrong with Japanese entertainment and the genre as a whole ! You’re like a pompous little snob that gets everything he wants, an harem of cute girl wanting to suck his dick at a moments noticed, a cool giant robot ready to get him out of any bad situation, some ancient cool edgy super power that often benefit you more than it nerfs you !

You’re the chosen hero of some sort of prophecy, the ultimate sacrifice and probably the sole reason why the world go round ! And yet, you ask me to feel pity for your sorry ass ? You stubbed your toe once and made it personal and now suddenly you go from shitty power fantasy guy to a relatable virtuous misunderstood hero !

YOU ARE NOTHING REAN

JUST A SHITTY LITTLE CENTRIST CUCK WITH LITTLE TO NO ACTUAL AGENCY AND NO IDEOLOGY TO CALL YOUR OWN ! YOU’RE TRYING TO FIND THE “THIRD PATH” AND WHAT EVEN IS THE THIRD PATH HUH ? WHAT IS IT ? THE THIRD PATH THROUGH ONE OF YOUR 3 ROMANCEABLE STUDENTS CUNT ? ARE YOU A DISCORD MOD REAN ? ARE YOU DONE BEING A SISCON BECAUSE THAT’S THE ONLY SMIDGE OF PERSONALITY THE WRITERS HAS GIVEN TO YOU ???? OH I SHOULD’VE PROBABLY ROMANCED ELISE ! YOU CERTAINLY WOULD’VE LIKED THAT YOU SACCHARINE PUPPY PERVERT !

FUCK OFF REAN

YOU ARE THE WORST

FUCK YOU !

WHY SHOULD I KNEEL TO SUCH A SHITTY CHARACTER LIKE YOU !

YOU’VE EARNED NONE OF MY SYMPATHY

YOU’VE EARNE NONE OF THOSE FUCKING DOGSHIT FRIENDSHIP SPEECH !

YOU’RE SO COOL AND SO STRONG AND MAYBE EVEN STRONGER THAN CASSIUS BUT YOUR HEART IS BROKEN WELL MAYBE YOUR ASS SHOULD’VE ALSO BEEN BROKEN BY BAITING ALL THE FUJOSHI INTO TURNING INTO CROW’S PERSONAL POWER BOTTOM ONAHOLE BECAUSE THAT’S ALL YOUR FUCKING WORTH !

YOU SHOULD’VE DIED ! OH I WISH YOU HAD DIED AND THE NORMAL ENDING WAS THE CANON ONE SO THAT YOUR FUCKING FACE WOULD NEVER FUCKING SHOW UP IN ANYTHING EVER AGAIN !

God and all of the bonding events, god what happened to this franchise man ? It used to actually be about something and now it’s all gone, it’s all a mess for dirty perverted otakus to fap to !

AND I’M A DIRTY PERVERTED OTAKU WHO FAPS TO THIS STUFF !

This game wants to be an eroge so fucking bad man and I swear to god, this game would’ve been better off dropping the pretense and have H-Scenes

The bonding events in this game are a lil more fleshed out thanks to them being the conclusion to some arcs

BUT WHY IN THE FUCK MUST IT ALMOST ALL END WITH THE VAGINA EQUIPPED INDIVIDUALS WANTING REAN’S COCK ? LIKE WOW THAT FUCKING LAURA BONDING EVENT IS SO BAD ! Rean’s all like “I wanna kms” and Laura push him against the wall AND FORCE KISS HIM

THIS GAME IS A COMEDY ! IT’S A PARODY ! IT’S NOT SERIOUS ! IT HAS NEVER BEEN SERIOUS FOR A SINGLE SECOND !

And it ruined several previous entries, because it can’t just be a shitty game on its own, it’s a shitty game that ruins the credibility and my attachment to this world ! No I don’t care what’s the deal with McBurn, he was the very definition of some 14 years old OC and his presence in the narrative is amount to nothing and you fight this guy FUCKING 11 TIMES LIKE FUCKING CHRIST AND IT’S ALWAYS THE EASIEST SHIT !

Man the ending is also a fucking mess bro what the fuck is this ! You need to collect some magic crystal in some deadass cavern so it can help you contain the racism god in your friendship crystal so you can kill him and end racism forever ISTG, I’ve seen scooby-doo episodes which are more thought out like this

Man I’ve wasted so much time on this franchise and all for this ?

And you can’t even be too mad at this because they’ve put some genuine effort sometimes, they’ve put some effort in how the story is told through the NPC points of view and everything but why should I care about Falcom’s nailing the details when they fail so fucking miserably in the things that actually matter ?

Fuck Trails man…

You guys are the scientology church of JRPG fandom

It’s all those great promises of grand epic storytelling, political writing on par with Gundam and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, an endless amount of depth and generosity and attention to detail

But all you get is disappointment, all you get for your investment is some shitty ass JRPG plot that’s borrowed from like 10 different sources that did all the things that Trails did but miles better, it’s the oatmeal of JRPG !

Cold Steel made me understand why Nintendo Youtubers don't like JRPG's

Cold Steel made me understand the POV of people who started KH with the HD collection and didn't like/get it because they never grew an autistic attachment to it when they were young

Cold Steel made me even more of a leftoid than I ACTUALLY am

Cold Steel made me trauma dump to my therapist about it

Cold Steel is my videogame on a stick that's the rival of all those AVGN rip-off

Cold Steel actually worsen my mood the more I played it

Cold Steel reminded me that anime can be cool but they can also be mad cringe


I’m done writing this review, I was going to do a serious one but get a shitty rant instead, just talking about this game puts me in a bad mood !

I don’t care if Reverie or Kuro gets better ! I don’t want to touch another one of those games for a long time if ever ! I’m not even invested anymore ! Not even ironically ! This game is a mess ! And this series is a mess !

STAY AWAY FROM THIS SERIES ! IT'S POISON IT'S ALL POISON ! THERE'S SO MUCH BETTER THINGS OUT THERE ! I SWEAR AND BEG AND CRY FUCK THIS !

FUCK

FUCK

FUCK

FUCK

ASSBALLS

FUCK

Anyway…

Hop on Rance

Small edit: Rating changed to 4.5/5 because this game is fun as hell despite being very stupid at times

Wow, what a journey.

I'm not surprised this one is polarising, with people most often either yelling "peak fiction" or seeing this game as the one that messed up Cold Steel, or even Kiseki so far, right at the end. This game is a bit more difficult to write about than the other Trails games for me because it's so inconsistent. You have genuinely the worst padding in the series at times, and a lot of time wasted on stuff that doesn't amount to anything. On the other hand, you have some of the most hype stuff you'll ever see in a JRPG, and plenty of emotional moments.

On one hand you have MCU-level "Avengers moments" as opposed to the more organic ones in Zero to Cold Steel III (in CS4 they try to include everyone, so as opposed to something like Zero or CS3, they sometimes say/do their one thing then take a break from being in the story for a while relatively often), on the other hand you have some of the coolest stuff you'd dream to see in a connected universe that is only possible on this scale in Trails, such as 5-team dungeon raids and boss fights while old dungeon themes play in the OST. I am into so many long series with connected universes whose fans would salivate at the idea of even a fraction of this amount of crossover-ness.

It was difficult to decide whether to give this a 4/5 or 4.5/5, but I ultimately went with the more generous option since I enjoyed this more than CS3. It's definitely one of the coolest and most fun JRPGs out there, just heavily flawed and inconsistent, with both extremely tropey and generic ideas, as well as very creative ones that you don't see often.

Really looking forward to Reverie, I played the prologue and it's everything I've ever wanted. The best start to a video game I've ever seen, it has potential to be my favourite game of all time.

I’ve said this a few times before but this time I am not joking. This is the worst gaming experience I’ve ever had. Hundreds of hours of solid build up, an amazing predecessor, all for this 100 hours of pure mouldy dick cheese.

I’m not even gonna tag spoilers because I genuinely hope I spoil you and put you off. Everybody you thought was dead, is still alive. Anybody that did die, alive. Anybody that was dead before the events of the first game, alive. Anybody that was evil, not actually evil they were just being controlled. Anybody that made a remotely bad choice in their life, it was the actions of some mystical dookie god fuck I hate this game oh my god

The game thinks it’s so much more mature and clever than it is, you have characters in these dire situations making decisions like 13 year olds it makes me physically sick. The only reason I picked up this entire franchise was because of the cover image of this game man I wanna die

Combat is so gas my favourite turn based system ever peaked here, Rean is gas too idgaf if I have to see Lloyd again after Reverie I’m ending it all

I sincerely believe everyone involved in the production deserves some form of punishment whether it be suspension from game development or jail time.

Thank you

the worst falcom game to date.

cs4 is filled with trite, worthless filler (act 1-2), and character writing that borders on parody. act 2 is abyss fiction with conflict so forced that the villains themselves cannot even justify the reason for it. act 3 sucks and relies on the shitty plot device (the curse) to move the plot along. the curse is one of the worst written plot devices in all of fiction, being able to do basically anything the writers want by taking away character agency. with the characters having their agency being manipulated by the curse, the writers can set up literally any sort of conflict they want regardless of whether or not the character would participate in said conflict. its like the blood pact from radiant dawn (if you know what that is good job) but applied to like over half the cast. but hey, why set up sidequests/plot points/character moments when you can just make the curse do it for you? it doesnt help that the central plot doesnt kick in until act 3.

the combat was decent but falcom cannot be bothered to balance their games anymore. with balancing the combat system would be excellent but even on nightmare the game is piss easy. the mech fights are pretty cool though

the bloated cast (16 main party members) means little to no character development occurs. the only stratifying character moments come from callbacks to older arcs. the entirety of oc7 and nc7 sucks outside of ash as alisha, the rest of the characters get no character developments or moments. the harem sucks and takes away agency from the women's character arcs. musse is actually a joke and i cannot believe that anyone can take this game seriously. juna being forced as the pseudo main character was awful in cs3 and is awful now: her corny speeches are so bad they offend me. like the rest of the female cast, her character arc is ruined because of the forced rean simping. she talks like she knows the SSS even though we have never seen this. not to mention they had to fucking RETCON HER INTO CROSSBELL BY MAKING NEW VERSIONS AND HER CHARACTER IS STILL SHIT. they just use pedo coom bait like altina to sell copies instead of write them arcs (altina gets no development she doesnt even grieve over the events in cs3 ending lmao). what a joke.

characters are brought back to life for no reason, which takes away from the stakes along with the horrible pacing. the continent is on the crux of war and u are in some fuckoff town taking strolls and running errands. the stakes are also fucked because the game gives every single fucking villain a redemption arc. your friend killed 3 people? no problem, we can save him using the power of friendship!!!!

the music is okay, unisuga made some bangers. i dont know how singa is controversial considering his mixing is worse than most armature music and is overall shit. they also play his awful music for hours on end, in fragments i think i had to listen to the same 3 singa songs loop for 3 hours straight and i had to turn down the volume because it was so bad.

the localization was okay, but full of bugs. a boss in act 2 only spoke japanese lol.

they did bring back a lot of older characters for fanservice, which was cool but a bit disappointing considering they dont show up for a purpose beyond fanservice and being there for the plot. i wish more of it was like renne in zero in how they actually continued her arc and weaved it into the plot, but hey with a cast that bloated u cant really do much.

why this game has a 4.0 is beyond me. i guess kiseki fans are so deep into this series that they cant bear to recognize the game has flaws.

For those of you who have known me for any period of time.. or it may be more accurate to say, for those who I trust enough to speak without reservation, you would know I have an incredibly complicated history with Sen no Kiseki IV. This game, since its release, has been the most divisive entry in this entire franchise for me. It should be of no surprise to anyone that I live, breathe and thrive off of Kiseki so I would imagine my words have some weight. However, I am writing this due to my selfish desire to leave some record of my thoughts in this infinite sea of data. Ultimately, when Sen no Kiseki IV is good, it is some of the greatest moments this series has ever produced but when it is bad, it is arguably the worst. But- I'm not really going to talk about that. I had an entire review written up to air out my thoughts regarding this entry in the franchise and- I think I'm alright. Genuinely speaking, I have went on for hours and years about how I find masks to be an incredibly contrived plot point that insults both the writers and the readers. I have went on about how I feel the "curse" is a joke outside of the main narrative. And I have went on about how I feel regarding some of the other pertinent negatives I experienced playing this game. But I want to talk about what I liked because I want to gush about my passion for this franchise, as I usually do.

To begin I would like to mention shifting the protagonist role to Juna. This was the best decision Falcom had made. Putting my absolute love and adoration for Juna aside, she best embodies both Lloyd and Rean's spirit. She possesses Lloyd's will to surmount even the most impossible of barriers and Rean's will to relentlessly move forward into the unknown. She is the bridge between Crossbell and Erebonia, and between Class VII and the SSS. She possesses the staunch stubbornness seen in Rean and Lloyd and the unrelenting drive to do the right thing which is precisely what Zemuria needed come Sen 4. To this end her desire to act, which has been shown repeatedly in Sen 3 stemming from her desire to protect Crossbell, snaps Class VII out of their stupor and pushes everyone to action. This allows the narrative to shift focus to New Class VII and provides them an opportunity to demonstrate their growth as Rean's students. I adore this shift in dynamic and feel it adds a breath of fresh air to the story. Of course, I am bias because this means more Juna and you can never get enough of Juna.

The last detail I would like to eagerly mention is the world-building and lore. Sen IV does an excellent job of executing on the lore we have been provided so far. I would even say this is when the game is at its greatest. Eryn is one of, if not, my favorite town in Kiseki. Saint Gral Labyrinth is one of my favorite dungeons. Hexen Breed are absolutely rich in culture and background and Eryn serves as an excellent hub for that first portion of the game to say nothing of the OST. Additional locations and their associated tracks are also simply beautiful, Alster, Osgiliath Basin, Tuatha de Danann, Sanctuaries, etc. etc. etc. all are wonderfully crafted and execute well on the "magic" aspect of Erebonia. It is difficult to find fault in this as there is passion and purpose behind each location in this game. I genuinely love the mythical, fantastical aspect of Erebonia and deeply adore how Sen IV melds such fantasy into the narrative. Additionally, it must be said that Act III and beyond in Sen IV are wonderful. The conclusion of Lianne and Rutger's stories, the determination and resolution demonstrated by Duvalie and Fie, the assault on the Pales and final confrontations at Tuatha de Danaan were all enthralling. Final chapter does an excellent job of tying up loose ends and bringing closure to Liberl as well as Elie's stories. And I think this is the important part. Every moment from Act III onwards, aside from those involving the absolutely inane masks, feels deserved, deliberate and satisfactory. It is filled with a genuine desire to bring to conclusion everything this series has been building towards and pave a new path for future entries. In this game, we see the culmination of two years of Class VII's struggle. Two years of pain, grief, sadness, anger, hate, pity and all the other messy emotions binding us to our humanity. We witness the realization of Olivert's dream and the conclusion of so many stories within Erebonia. As Sara mentions, and as Emma has mentioned previously, Class VII truly is the greatest class and they embody such pure determination and hope as they make their way into the future you can only cheer for them. And to that end, the emotion this entry provokes, the genuine familial bond demonstrated between Class VII and their desire to become the foundation of the world is nothing short of perfection. And I will never not be grateful for being able to witness such a beautiful story.

Class VII is the best class.

Okay I didn't expect it would be this good. Since the previous game, the grandeur of this work has reappeared, a masterpiece, with the exception of the first chapter. Simply speechless what this series has become for me with the conclusion of this arc. Again, another one of the best endings I've ever seen. It was a complete experience.
It has one of my favorite endings from any game, and one of my favorite emotional scenes in fiction. We can argue this game has flaws, but it was more a love letter to me.

It's still my favorite Cold Steel game by a large margin and actually played the past game, the experience that this game gives you is immaculate and rewarding.

The whole Liberl and Crossbell coming back after 3 games feels so damn satisfying and pleasing to see them in 3D.

The sidequest of this game is definitely the glow up for me, so much lore behind and i was actually suprised i was even interested at reading it, the curse thing is a thing that really differs from people but i really find it okay overall and how the handled it.

This game shows how much the build-up for 9 GAMES and how they made his one of my favorite of the franchise and how that can apply to rean as well.

BASICALLY I FUCKING LOVE REAN SCHWARZER.