The past three games fail to deliver on characters, conflicts, and moments especially when looking at the bar set by the previous two arcs. Many of this game's failings can be attributed to the poor foundation set by CS1-3. While there are still some great highs, the thought that the climax of this 400+ hour arc is far from meeting its potential was always in the back of my mind. And knowing nothing this game does can truly solve the bigger issues with the arc makes it even more disheartening.
One of the greatest games ever made and falcoms most ambitious title yet. Absolute peak fiction
I'd say the game has several high points but also many low points. There were still many moments I really loved, but at the same time there were some aspects, especially regarding some parts of the writing, which I didn't like that much. Despite this, I still had a good time with the game and really enjoyed it.
Overall, I can say that the Cold Steel Arc is, so far, definitely my least favorite Trails arc. I still really liked it, but I definitely prefer the Sky and Crossbell games.
Overall, I can say that the Cold Steel Arc is, so far, definitely my least favorite Trails arc. I still really liked it, but I definitely prefer the Sky and Crossbell games.
this was a game it totally was definitely a game lmao
This review contains spoilers
Cold Steel IV, despite being structured like Cold Steel II, is pretty much its direct predecessor, Cold Steel III, on steroids. It has all the same strengths and weaknesses, but cranked up to eleven in both directions, right down to luring you into a false sense of security with an act one that stands as one of the better parts of the series in isolation, but is held back by the slow-moving trainwreck that follows it.
Starting with the good things Cold Steel IV lifts from Cold Steel III, the character moments are on-point. Anytime a character starts monologuing, you know you’re in for something good. The stars of Cold Steel IV are definitely Juna, Crow, and Cedric. Juna slots right into the protagonist role during act one so smoothly that she manages to stop the group dynamic from slacking in Rean’s absence. Her speech to the old Class VII motivating them to go rescue Rean was one of the game’s major highlights. I was actually surprised we got Crow back. I probably shouldn’t have been, considering how the Cold Steel arc follows every other major trope of the genre, so logically Crow’s redemption wouldn’t be any different, but what can I say? He spent most of Cold Steel II and III being adversarial, so I figured he was just going to stay that way. I’m glad he did return to the party though, because my opinion of him increased considerably with this entry. The resolution of his conflict with Rean was a long time coming, but was all the more satisfying for it. As for Cedric, he’s a character I probably should’ve singled out for praise in my Cold Steel III review, so allow me to remedy that here: Cedric has been one of the most interesting characters to watch develop over the course of the Cold Steel arc because his progression from bystander to full-on antagonist is shown to the player essentially in full, making him very easy to empathize with despite the side he chooses to take.
Unfortunately, that was my one point of praise for Cold Steel III, and so it is also my one point of praise for Cold Steel IV. Remember how I thought Cold Steel III was bloated both lore and cast-wise and how that brought down the game significantly in my regards? Yeah, it gets worse here.
In Cold Steel III, I was frustrated with the curse because it felt out-of-place with the pre-established lore. In retrospect, that was an objectively incorrect statement: magic like that has been part of the series since the Crossbell arc. Cold Steel IV provides me with a more valid reason to dislike it though, namely in how it robs almost all the antagonists of their agency, right down to the main antagonist of the Cold Steel arc and arguably the first half of the series as a whole: Chancellor Osborne. Turns out, he’s actually the reincarnation of Emperor Dreichels (the mechanics of which is never explained) and is a loving family man. Personally, I thought Osborne was great as a pure evil, power hungry villain, but this twist completely spits in the face of that by essentially saying that he can’t be held accountable for his actions. Admittedly, they do say later that the curse only amplifies the malice that already exists within the people it affects, but it still makes them do things they would never do otherwise, so I’m calling your bluff game: that was a bad writing decision.
Then there’s the matter of the narrative itself being way too bloated. It’s never been a secret that the writers have a skeleton outline of the series’ plot going forward at best, and that story beats are inserted and changed as necessary, but by the end of the Cold Steel arc the fact that these games are written one at a time becomes painfully obvious. I am confident that if the writers planned the whole arc out in advance, the whole story could’ve been covered in two games instead of four. So much time across the Cold Steel arc is spent either on field studies or doing glorified fetch quests to save kidnapped characters, both of which easily could’ve been cut down on or axed entirely with a little more foresight. If you assume an average of 60 hours per game, that’s 240 hours for the entire arc. There are definitely not 240 hours of necessary story content here, and if that’s not bad enough, there’s still more! A third of Reverie, at least as far as I’m aware, is devoted to wrapping up the Cold Steel arc. They’ve spent four full-length RPGs telling this story and apparently it still isn’t enough. Trails games can feel slow sometimes, but realizations like these are what really put the phrase “Trails games are poorly-paced” into context.
And of course, with a bloated plot comes a bloated cast. It’s actually absurd getting full party shots in the middle of dungeons and seeing like, twenty characters just standing there. It was during one of these full party shots when I was struck with the realization that Machias has not done anything since Cold Steel I. But he’s part of Class VII, so he has to be there! Duavile, who has spent the last three games being absolutely insufferable, decides that she’s had a change of heart and joins the party, only to be immediately backseated until the confrontation with Arianrhod towards the end of the game. Thirty plus playable characters sounds cool on paper, but the impracticality of it becomes obvious in execution. They didn’t even have time to properly finish Rean’s character arc—he’s a self-sacrificing hero with low self-esteem to the bitter end.
So that’s it then. I’ve played through four Cold Steel games and spent the entire time complaining. Why do I like these games? That’s not a facetious statement, I’m genuinely confused. I’ve said in the past that this series has a lot of potential, but out of the nine games I’ve played so far, only two of them have really lived up to that potential. I come to these games for the writing, come out of each one saying that it was poorly written, and then eagerly jump into the next one hoping that this time they’ll finally get it right. Am I just a sucker for JRPG tropes? Or maybe I’m really just that enamored with the idea of an overarching narrative. Maybe my real takeaway from the Cold Steel arc is that I’m allowed to like bad writing. I mean, I did enjoy the game. It never felt like a slog to get through or anything, it was just really easy to point and laugh at during some crucial moments, which is not something you usually want from your grand fantasy epic. I might very well come back to these games in a couple of months and decide to knock all their ratings down a few pegs, but for now, something in me is still enjoying them.
Before I close, there were a couple smaller points I wanted to bring up. One, I’ve been doing most if not all of the sidequests in each of these games since the Crossbell arc, and I have to say, Cold Steel IV has one of the series’ better batches. Especially during act three, a lot of them tie back into the lore or wrap up character subplots, which are always fun things to include in optional content. Two, I have to say, the soundtracks of this series really fell off. The Sky arc and especially First Chapter were littered with these bouncy jazz-fusion tracks that were strong across the board. Then the Crossbell arc hit and all of a sudden each game had like, one or two memorable songs each. Cold Steel I had at least a handful of songs to add to the playlist, but the rest were major letdowns. Third and finally, I made a comment in my Cold Steel III review about how I thought Cold Steel IV was going to turn my opinion on Musse around, but unfortunately, it didn’t. They did give us the info dump they were teasing, but it wasn’t anything particularly surprising and her personality largely remained the same, she was just less mysterious. It’s not a major point against the game, I just wanted to give the follow-up.
I’m a little nervous going into Reverie. Of the Trails games currently available in the west, it’s one of the three I see most consistently singled out for praise alongside Second Chapter and Azure. I’ve seen some fandom takes go as far as to say that it ties up all of the loose ends from the Cold Steel arc to give it a more satisfying conclusion. I want to buy into the hype, but I also thought the aforementioned other two games were not among the series’ best, so I don’t know. I already have the game, so I’ll probably jump right in just to see how this all ends, since I’m basically already there. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Starting with the good things Cold Steel IV lifts from Cold Steel III, the character moments are on-point. Anytime a character starts monologuing, you know you’re in for something good. The stars of Cold Steel IV are definitely Juna, Crow, and Cedric. Juna slots right into the protagonist role during act one so smoothly that she manages to stop the group dynamic from slacking in Rean’s absence. Her speech to the old Class VII motivating them to go rescue Rean was one of the game’s major highlights. I was actually surprised we got Crow back. I probably shouldn’t have been, considering how the Cold Steel arc follows every other major trope of the genre, so logically Crow’s redemption wouldn’t be any different, but what can I say? He spent most of Cold Steel II and III being adversarial, so I figured he was just going to stay that way. I’m glad he did return to the party though, because my opinion of him increased considerably with this entry. The resolution of his conflict with Rean was a long time coming, but was all the more satisfying for it. As for Cedric, he’s a character I probably should’ve singled out for praise in my Cold Steel III review, so allow me to remedy that here: Cedric has been one of the most interesting characters to watch develop over the course of the Cold Steel arc because his progression from bystander to full-on antagonist is shown to the player essentially in full, making him very easy to empathize with despite the side he chooses to take.
Unfortunately, that was my one point of praise for Cold Steel III, and so it is also my one point of praise for Cold Steel IV. Remember how I thought Cold Steel III was bloated both lore and cast-wise and how that brought down the game significantly in my regards? Yeah, it gets worse here.
In Cold Steel III, I was frustrated with the curse because it felt out-of-place with the pre-established lore. In retrospect, that was an objectively incorrect statement: magic like that has been part of the series since the Crossbell arc. Cold Steel IV provides me with a more valid reason to dislike it though, namely in how it robs almost all the antagonists of their agency, right down to the main antagonist of the Cold Steel arc and arguably the first half of the series as a whole: Chancellor Osborne. Turns out, he’s actually the reincarnation of Emperor Dreichels (the mechanics of which is never explained) and is a loving family man. Personally, I thought Osborne was great as a pure evil, power hungry villain, but this twist completely spits in the face of that by essentially saying that he can’t be held accountable for his actions. Admittedly, they do say later that the curse only amplifies the malice that already exists within the people it affects, but it still makes them do things they would never do otherwise, so I’m calling your bluff game: that was a bad writing decision.
Then there’s the matter of the narrative itself being way too bloated. It’s never been a secret that the writers have a skeleton outline of the series’ plot going forward at best, and that story beats are inserted and changed as necessary, but by the end of the Cold Steel arc the fact that these games are written one at a time becomes painfully obvious. I am confident that if the writers planned the whole arc out in advance, the whole story could’ve been covered in two games instead of four. So much time across the Cold Steel arc is spent either on field studies or doing glorified fetch quests to save kidnapped characters, both of which easily could’ve been cut down on or axed entirely with a little more foresight. If you assume an average of 60 hours per game, that’s 240 hours for the entire arc. There are definitely not 240 hours of necessary story content here, and if that’s not bad enough, there’s still more! A third of Reverie, at least as far as I’m aware, is devoted to wrapping up the Cold Steel arc. They’ve spent four full-length RPGs telling this story and apparently it still isn’t enough. Trails games can feel slow sometimes, but realizations like these are what really put the phrase “Trails games are poorly-paced” into context.
And of course, with a bloated plot comes a bloated cast. It’s actually absurd getting full party shots in the middle of dungeons and seeing like, twenty characters just standing there. It was during one of these full party shots when I was struck with the realization that Machias has not done anything since Cold Steel I. But he’s part of Class VII, so he has to be there! Duavile, who has spent the last three games being absolutely insufferable, decides that she’s had a change of heart and joins the party, only to be immediately backseated until the confrontation with Arianrhod towards the end of the game. Thirty plus playable characters sounds cool on paper, but the impracticality of it becomes obvious in execution. They didn’t even have time to properly finish Rean’s character arc—he’s a self-sacrificing hero with low self-esteem to the bitter end.
So that’s it then. I’ve played through four Cold Steel games and spent the entire time complaining. Why do I like these games? That’s not a facetious statement, I’m genuinely confused. I’ve said in the past that this series has a lot of potential, but out of the nine games I’ve played so far, only two of them have really lived up to that potential. I come to these games for the writing, come out of each one saying that it was poorly written, and then eagerly jump into the next one hoping that this time they’ll finally get it right. Am I just a sucker for JRPG tropes? Or maybe I’m really just that enamored with the idea of an overarching narrative. Maybe my real takeaway from the Cold Steel arc is that I’m allowed to like bad writing. I mean, I did enjoy the game. It never felt like a slog to get through or anything, it was just really easy to point and laugh at during some crucial moments, which is not something you usually want from your grand fantasy epic. I might very well come back to these games in a couple of months and decide to knock all their ratings down a few pegs, but for now, something in me is still enjoying them.
Before I close, there were a couple smaller points I wanted to bring up. One, I’ve been doing most if not all of the sidequests in each of these games since the Crossbell arc, and I have to say, Cold Steel IV has one of the series’ better batches. Especially during act three, a lot of them tie back into the lore or wrap up character subplots, which are always fun things to include in optional content. Two, I have to say, the soundtracks of this series really fell off. The Sky arc and especially First Chapter were littered with these bouncy jazz-fusion tracks that were strong across the board. Then the Crossbell arc hit and all of a sudden each game had like, one or two memorable songs each. Cold Steel I had at least a handful of songs to add to the playlist, but the rest were major letdowns. Third and finally, I made a comment in my Cold Steel III review about how I thought Cold Steel IV was going to turn my opinion on Musse around, but unfortunately, it didn’t. They did give us the info dump they were teasing, but it wasn’t anything particularly surprising and her personality largely remained the same, she was just less mysterious. It’s not a major point against the game, I just wanted to give the follow-up.
I’m a little nervous going into Reverie. Of the Trails games currently available in the west, it’s one of the three I see most consistently singled out for praise alongside Second Chapter and Azure. I’ve seen some fandom takes go as far as to say that it ties up all of the loose ends from the Cold Steel arc to give it a more satisfying conclusion. I want to buy into the hype, but I also thought the aforementioned other two games were not among the series’ best, so I don’t know. I already have the game, so I’ll probably jump right in just to see how this all ends, since I’m basically already there. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
A marked improvement over Cold Steel 3 in many respects. Though it suffers from a meandering Act 2, the vast majority of the game is filled to the brim with interesting events, revelations, and long-coming character conclusions. Though the Erebonia Arc has long outstayed its welcome, I can at least say for me personally, it ended on a high note.
A huge disappointment to me.
conceptually interesting in some areas and features some actual character writing unlike its predecessor, but still wack. The pacing is shit, the story is nonsense, and it spits in the face of cs3 which was already awful.
DAMN THEY GOT THE KNIGHTS AND SHIT
Class VII was a sociological study conducted by Nihon Falcom. We are now complete with our study. Thank you for your time.
There is something in Erebonia.
If my main compliment of CS3 is that I love playing the game, then CS4 is a direct downgrade from CS3 because they made playing the game worse, still decent combat though. They also made the experience of the game directly worse too, and then swapped out the DESERVING major antagonist for a final act eldritch being to take all the blame and make the game non-political.
Absolutely the worst experience in the Trails franchise, Please go to Laura Cave for refund.
If my main compliment of CS3 is that I love playing the game, then CS4 is a direct downgrade from CS3 because they made playing the game worse, still decent combat though. They also made the experience of the game directly worse too, and then swapped out the DESERVING major antagonist for a final act eldritch being to take all the blame and make the game non-political.
Absolutely the worst experience in the Trails franchise, Please go to Laura Cave for refund.
Good finale to the CS arc. It has serious pacing issues, but also some of my favorite parts in the series.
"wot if u were a boy with no personality but hot babes and children fell in love with you because you were nice to them on the most basic level possible and also the children were your students but it's ok it's not weird we promise they actually like that you are Their Teacher it's ok :)"
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
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
The Legend of Xenogears: Trails of Cold Saga IV
(the game that broke my brain)
Where do I even start with this game? The lore is batshit insane (derogatory), everyone treats Rean like he's the second coming of Anime Jesus, the characters take literal days to rest in the middle of WW3 after doing a day or two of hiking, the vast majority of the returning cast is flanderized to hell and back TO THE POINT IT HAPPENS IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CUTSCENES IN THE GAME (thankfully Renne is at least spared such a tragic fate), they revive 3 separate characters (Toval, Olivier, and Victor) who died very much onscreen, in a very unambiguous way, to which the party's reactions were very apparent, because Falcum can't stand killing off their OCs (yes it's a spoiler and no I don't care), they revive Crow 3 times by taping his soul to Valimar or some shit, the curse only exists to make the party have 3 billion boss fights with the most rando characters imaginable (WHY AM I FIGHTING THE FUCKING MUSIC TEACHER FROM CS1 GET ME OFF THIS TRAINWRECK), Thomas fucks off for the 4th game in a row despite being built up to hell and back (hey remember when Dominions were actively involved in the plot and eventually became party members? well that sure is a thing of the past), TOWA ISN"T PLAYABLE YET AGAIN, Musse becomes a grand chessmaster or something idk, McBurn sure is a boss fight and mcburninates everyone and activates his inner Trogdor and gives you an item that unlocks the true ending (?????) and you can only get the true ending by completing all the quests in the game (????????????) and the last quest is beating up the dragon Holy Beast (???????????????????????????????????????), all the women party members, INCLUDING REAN"S FUCKING STUDENTS (INCLUDING FUCKING ALTINA) (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA), are romanceable (screaming internally) (I still can't get over the Laura cave scene and that's a whole other bucket of worms), TOWA ACTIVELY FORGIVES CROW ON SCREEN FOR BEING DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ACTIVELY AND QUITE POSSIBLY KNOWINGLY PUTTING HER LIFE IN DANGER IN CS1 (that shit should give her PTSD at least and that's not even getting into her very possible abandonment issues SET UP ONLY 1 GAME PRIOR), Alberich is there to be a bad guy who does evil bad guy things because that's what the evil bad guy do (on top of functionally being a really bad ripoff of Dmitri Yuriev which should be a war crime on its own), Kloe isn't playable yet again AND IS LITERALLY PUT IN A POSITION TO BE PLAYABLE but Falcum didn't want to animate her or something I guess (I don't think she even gets a Brave Order either when Schera of all people does which is extra retarded, especially with hindsight from Hajimari BECAUSE SCHERA IS PREGGERS AND IS IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ACTIVE WARZONE), the party fights Osborne and Arianrhod at the bottom of the Gnome BDSM factory hobbit hole thing (??????????????????????????????????) way before the end of the game which takes away what little crumbs of gravitas he had left (I don't think he even gets an Anti-Order WHICH YOU"D THINK HE WOULD SINCE HE APPARENTLY CAN SPREAD THE ANTI-ORDER VIRUS TO THE IRONBLOODS), the writing generally being barely passable at best and an absolute fustercluck at worst, the gameplay being the easiest it's ever been even on Nightmare and every enemy being walking bags of HP (I checked at least a few times per chapter if I didn't accidentally switch it to an easier difficulty even when I wasn't optimizing everyone), and a lot of other stuff that probably slipped my mind but I don't care because this game's plot is frighteningly worthless.
Before I start ranting about the game's comically lopsided reception compared to how it actually is, I want to say that there are a handful of things I did like about the game.
-I liked that Juna was basically the protagonist for the first chapter of the game (and honestly she should have just been the protag, or at least a deuteragonist, for the rest of the game). Alisa entirely dropped being the deuteragonist during CS2 and it would have been nice to have someone fill in that role, especially since it would give a chance to split the cast to focus on other parts of Erebonia with Class 7 focusing on one part and Class 7 2 focusing on another part (why in the shiny fuck we didn't get to go to Jurai or North Ambria instead of farting around for the entirety of Chapter 2 I will never fathom). But anyway, Juna protag I very much appreciated for the short time it happened, since she's easily the only one left with any amount of tangible reason to want to stop Daddy Osborne from being a big ol' meanie (and NO, Crow no longer counts).
-There were a handful of bonding events I liked, despite easily being the worst handled aspect of the arc. I liked the one with Altina where she tried to help liberate Ymir from Imperial soldiers, the one where Emma tried to purge Ishmelga from Rean at great personal risk to herself (even though, let's face it, the only reason they did it was to have a reason for Emma to be naked), and the one with Musse showing Rean her suicide gun. There were a few problems with the setup for each of them (and frankly for Emma's it really should have just been a plot scene instead of Insert Epic Anime Fight #236754762354) but the fact that I really like the ideas for them more than makes up for their shortcomings.
And now for the rant.
If it isn't obvious, this is one of the worst games I've ever played, and not just because it's such a massive blueball for longtime fans who want something more substantial than having shiny objects dangling in front of them. And it really stinks because the plot can be summed up as "Xenogears meets Highlander during WW3" which sounds fucking awesome, but somehow Falcum made it the most boring, mind-numbing, tedious waste of time ever. Falcum has been building up Osborne since FUCKING SKY THE THIRD and his scene in Ao where he was openly threatening Dieter in a room full of dignitaries from other countries was easily one of the best scenes in the entire series, and in this arc he's been nothing but an absolute tin can of a person. I legitimately can't even tell if it's one of those "iT wAs JuSt iShMeLgA aLL aLoNg" plotpoints or if Osborne was completely in control the entire time because the way the writers explain the mind-melding whatever the hell was going on with him and Alberich is extremely confused and misleading. To be fair I completely clocked out by that point in the game, but I actively tried to look it up and ask other people what was happening with that, and either method didn't help me to understand much better beyond "Ishmelga and Osborne were doing stuff together". To put it in perspective, one of my favorite game series is Xenosaga. There is a very delicately woven, intricate plot of subterfuge, corporate spying, fucky experimentation, and intrigue all centered around an event that took place 14 in-game years ago. There are many different factions with different interests either trying to vie for control or to oppose the factions that would disturb the peace. To say that the player needs to almost take notes at some points while playing the games would not be an understatement. And those games are much easier to follow than most of anything in this game and Cold Steel because the writers had a goal they wanted to accomplish and actively articulated what everyone was doing when they were doing it, and the player can easily see what was happening and can make reasonable guesses as to what could happen next, and has many twists and turns to keep it interesting that don't come out of the same nowhere that Ishmelga showed up from. With this game, that sense is very much absent, at least for me. And Takahashi's plans got derailed partway through making the series; he had to cut down from 6 games to 3 games, with some supplementary content to fill in necessary gaps that couldn't make it into the games proper. What Takahashi accomplished in just 3 games, a VN and a phone game was monumental; what this game accomplished with all the buildup, time to develop and money that Falcum could muster was a tragedy. And for the final nail in the coffin, the entire Xenosaga series can be 100% completed in roughly the same time someone would 100% complete CS1.
And I'm not here trying to say everyone who likes this game is bad or anything, but I genuinely envy the people who can just turn their brains off and enjoy this shit. Superficially, longtime favorite characters make appearances and generally do things that they might do in this situation, so the immersion isn't ruined. There's a lot of pretty crazy stuff happening after Rean makes a comeback which amps up the stakes for the latter half of the game, and Cassius comes out of retirement to teach Rean a pretty cool and (relatively speaking) mechanically interesting S-craft that, admittedly, is one of my favorites in the series and can reasonably compete with all-time greats like Sakura Morning Moon.
All that being said, the amount of praise this game gets despite how much of a shitshow it is at a glance deeper than cursory always baffled me. There's people who either love this game to pieces or there's people who absolutely hate it with every fiber of their being, which is really unfortunate because the writers (might) still have an amount of passion for the series but to have it fail on this scale, especially with a relatively decent track record, says to me they need to slow production of this series down and let the series breathe a bit and have them think through everything properly. With the few things that I liked, even when it's an unfortunately very small part of the runtime it's genuinely up there with some of the other games I really enjoy. And to top it all off, I don't think Trails is even recoverable after this game; Hajimari did a decent job of trying to retcon a lot of the really dumb nonsense that was set up in this game and is basically just CS4 2: The Search for More Hanging Plot Threads, but Falcum's braindead insistence on having characters futz around on screen until the plot happens has finally caught up to them, and the plot is no longer something I can take seriously in any capacity.
Anyway, Cold Steel in general is an arc that I suggest people skip (the amount of stuff the player needs to know from it to get into Kuro can literally be summed up in a paragraph) but especially skip this one. The only parts of it that I think are worth watching are up on Youtube so just search around there.
(the game that broke my brain)
Where do I even start with this game? The lore is batshit insane (derogatory), everyone treats Rean like he's the second coming of Anime Jesus, the characters take literal days to rest in the middle of WW3 after doing a day or two of hiking, the vast majority of the returning cast is flanderized to hell and back TO THE POINT IT HAPPENS IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CUTSCENES IN THE GAME (thankfully Renne is at least spared such a tragic fate), they revive 3 separate characters (Toval, Olivier, and Victor) who died very much onscreen, in a very unambiguous way, to which the party's reactions were very apparent, because Falcum can't stand killing off their OCs (yes it's a spoiler and no I don't care), they revive Crow 3 times by taping his soul to Valimar or some shit, the curse only exists to make the party have 3 billion boss fights with the most rando characters imaginable (WHY AM I FIGHTING THE FUCKING MUSIC TEACHER FROM CS1 GET ME OFF THIS TRAINWRECK), Thomas fucks off for the 4th game in a row despite being built up to hell and back (hey remember when Dominions were actively involved in the plot and eventually became party members? well that sure is a thing of the past), TOWA ISN"T PLAYABLE YET AGAIN, Musse becomes a grand chessmaster or something idk, McBurn sure is a boss fight and mcburninates everyone and activates his inner Trogdor and gives you an item that unlocks the true ending (?????) and you can only get the true ending by completing all the quests in the game (????????????) and the last quest is beating up the dragon Holy Beast (???????????????????????????????????????), all the women party members, INCLUDING REAN"S FUCKING STUDENTS (INCLUDING FUCKING ALTINA) (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA), are romanceable (screaming internally) (I still can't get over the Laura cave scene and that's a whole other bucket of worms), TOWA ACTIVELY FORGIVES CROW ON SCREEN FOR BEING DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ACTIVELY AND QUITE POSSIBLY KNOWINGLY PUTTING HER LIFE IN DANGER IN CS1 (that shit should give her PTSD at least and that's not even getting into her very possible abandonment issues SET UP ONLY 1 GAME PRIOR), Alberich is there to be a bad guy who does evil bad guy things because that's what the evil bad guy do (on top of functionally being a really bad ripoff of Dmitri Yuriev which should be a war crime on its own), Kloe isn't playable yet again AND IS LITERALLY PUT IN A POSITION TO BE PLAYABLE but Falcum didn't want to animate her or something I guess (I don't think she even gets a Brave Order either when Schera of all people does which is extra retarded, especially with hindsight from Hajimari BECAUSE SCHERA IS PREGGERS AND IS IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ACTIVE WARZONE), the party fights Osborne and Arianrhod at the bottom of the Gnome BDSM factory hobbit hole thing (??????????????????????????????????) way before the end of the game which takes away what little crumbs of gravitas he had left (I don't think he even gets an Anti-Order WHICH YOU"D THINK HE WOULD SINCE HE APPARENTLY CAN SPREAD THE ANTI-ORDER VIRUS TO THE IRONBLOODS), the writing generally being barely passable at best and an absolute fustercluck at worst, the gameplay being the easiest it's ever been even on Nightmare and every enemy being walking bags of HP (I checked at least a few times per chapter if I didn't accidentally switch it to an easier difficulty even when I wasn't optimizing everyone), and a lot of other stuff that probably slipped my mind but I don't care because this game's plot is frighteningly worthless.
Before I start ranting about the game's comically lopsided reception compared to how it actually is, I want to say that there are a handful of things I did like about the game.
-I liked that Juna was basically the protagonist for the first chapter of the game (and honestly she should have just been the protag, or at least a deuteragonist, for the rest of the game). Alisa entirely dropped being the deuteragonist during CS2 and it would have been nice to have someone fill in that role, especially since it would give a chance to split the cast to focus on other parts of Erebonia with Class 7 focusing on one part and Class 7 2 focusing on another part (why in the shiny fuck we didn't get to go to Jurai or North Ambria instead of farting around for the entirety of Chapter 2 I will never fathom). But anyway, Juna protag I very much appreciated for the short time it happened, since she's easily the only one left with any amount of tangible reason to want to stop Daddy Osborne from being a big ol' meanie (and NO, Crow no longer counts).
-There were a handful of bonding events I liked, despite easily being the worst handled aspect of the arc. I liked the one with Altina where she tried to help liberate Ymir from Imperial soldiers, the one where Emma tried to purge Ishmelga from Rean at great personal risk to herself (even though, let's face it, the only reason they did it was to have a reason for Emma to be naked), and the one with Musse showing Rean her suicide gun. There were a few problems with the setup for each of them (and frankly for Emma's it really should have just been a plot scene instead of Insert Epic Anime Fight #236754762354) but the fact that I really like the ideas for them more than makes up for their shortcomings.
And now for the rant.
If it isn't obvious, this is one of the worst games I've ever played, and not just because it's such a massive blueball for longtime fans who want something more substantial than having shiny objects dangling in front of them. And it really stinks because the plot can be summed up as "Xenogears meets Highlander during WW3" which sounds fucking awesome, but somehow Falcum made it the most boring, mind-numbing, tedious waste of time ever. Falcum has been building up Osborne since FUCKING SKY THE THIRD and his scene in Ao where he was openly threatening Dieter in a room full of dignitaries from other countries was easily one of the best scenes in the entire series, and in this arc he's been nothing but an absolute tin can of a person. I legitimately can't even tell if it's one of those "iT wAs JuSt iShMeLgA aLL aLoNg" plotpoints or if Osborne was completely in control the entire time because the way the writers explain the mind-melding whatever the hell was going on with him and Alberich is extremely confused and misleading. To be fair I completely clocked out by that point in the game, but I actively tried to look it up and ask other people what was happening with that, and either method didn't help me to understand much better beyond "Ishmelga and Osborne were doing stuff together". To put it in perspective, one of my favorite game series is Xenosaga. There is a very delicately woven, intricate plot of subterfuge, corporate spying, fucky experimentation, and intrigue all centered around an event that took place 14 in-game years ago. There are many different factions with different interests either trying to vie for control or to oppose the factions that would disturb the peace. To say that the player needs to almost take notes at some points while playing the games would not be an understatement. And those games are much easier to follow than most of anything in this game and Cold Steel because the writers had a goal they wanted to accomplish and actively articulated what everyone was doing when they were doing it, and the player can easily see what was happening and can make reasonable guesses as to what could happen next, and has many twists and turns to keep it interesting that don't come out of the same nowhere that Ishmelga showed up from. With this game, that sense is very much absent, at least for me. And Takahashi's plans got derailed partway through making the series; he had to cut down from 6 games to 3 games, with some supplementary content to fill in necessary gaps that couldn't make it into the games proper. What Takahashi accomplished in just 3 games, a VN and a phone game was monumental; what this game accomplished with all the buildup, time to develop and money that Falcum could muster was a tragedy. And for the final nail in the coffin, the entire Xenosaga series can be 100% completed in roughly the same time someone would 100% complete CS1.
And I'm not here trying to say everyone who likes this game is bad or anything, but I genuinely envy the people who can just turn their brains off and enjoy this shit. Superficially, longtime favorite characters make appearances and generally do things that they might do in this situation, so the immersion isn't ruined. There's a lot of pretty crazy stuff happening after Rean makes a comeback which amps up the stakes for the latter half of the game, and Cassius comes out of retirement to teach Rean a pretty cool and (relatively speaking) mechanically interesting S-craft that, admittedly, is one of my favorites in the series and can reasonably compete with all-time greats like Sakura Morning Moon.
All that being said, the amount of praise this game gets despite how much of a shitshow it is at a glance deeper than cursory always baffled me. There's people who either love this game to pieces or there's people who absolutely hate it with every fiber of their being, which is really unfortunate because the writers (might) still have an amount of passion for the series but to have it fail on this scale, especially with a relatively decent track record, says to me they need to slow production of this series down and let the series breathe a bit and have them think through everything properly. With the few things that I liked, even when it's an unfortunately very small part of the runtime it's genuinely up there with some of the other games I really enjoy. And to top it all off, I don't think Trails is even recoverable after this game; Hajimari did a decent job of trying to retcon a lot of the really dumb nonsense that was set up in this game and is basically just CS4 2: The Search for More Hanging Plot Threads, but Falcum's braindead insistence on having characters futz around on screen until the plot happens has finally caught up to them, and the plot is no longer something I can take seriously in any capacity.
Anyway, Cold Steel in general is an arc that I suggest people skip (the amount of stuff the player needs to know from it to get into Kuro can literally be summed up in a paragraph) but especially skip this one. The only parts of it that I think are worth watching are up on Youtube so just search around there.
This review contains spoilers
Ce jeu est honnêtement LE PIRE JEU QUE J'AI JAMAIS JOUÉ. Cold steel 1 et 2 j'ai kiffé même s'ils sont un peu meh par rapport aux jeux crossbell / liberl, cold steel 3 était déjà assez merdique MAIS PURÉE... CE JEU EST COMPLÈTEMENT DE LA MERDE...
Le scénario est complètement incompréhensible, FALCOM A ESSAYÉ DE RACHETER TOUS LES ANTAGONISTES MÊME S'ILS ONT COMMIS DES CRIMES EXTRÊMEMENT GRAVES COMME LE MEURTRE ET LE TERRORISME, Osborne a été absolument détruit niveau writing. Le "writing" dans ce jeu est TELLEMENT merdique, les persos commencent à agir comme des idiots tout à coup et l'explication c'est "AH NON MAIS C'EST LA FAUTE DE LA MALÉDICTION D'EREBONIA" (d'ailleurs cette soi-disant malédiction est le pire plot point que j'ai vu dans n'importe quel jeu), Rean a TOUJOURS pas même un peu de character development du tout (il est le pire protagoniste de tous les RPGs auxquels j'ai joué, sérieux), toujours extrêmement chiant... En plus, il y a une "vraie fin" alors on est obligé à jouer au jeu encore plus pour obtenir une fin tellement stupide où tout le monde est magiquement vivant 💀
Genre, c'est censé être UNE GUERRE CIVILE BON SANG, et vous comptez me dire que tout le monde a survécu sans même un seul mort ??? C'est quoi ce bordel ??? Même les persos qui étaient censés être morts SONT REVENUS À LA VIE, GENRE POURQUOI WTF ??? Ce genre de truc élimine complètement les conséquences dans le scénario, après avoir vu ça j'ai pas pu prendre l'histoire au sérieux du tout. Le scénario et la fin du jeu sont tellement merdiques que j'ai commencé à détester Cold steel 3 encore plus qu'avant, C'EST VRAIMENT SI MAL QUE ÇA.
Bref, je déteste Rean, je déteste Crow, je déteste Erebonia. Quelle sacrée perte de temps putain, QUATRE JEUX + REVERIE, ÇA A PAS VALU LE COUP. Ce jeu est pas seulement le pire jeu kiseki de loin, mais c'est aussi le pire RPG que j'ai fait. SVP, touchez pas à ce jeu sauf si vous vous détestez.
Le scénario est complètement incompréhensible, FALCOM A ESSAYÉ DE RACHETER TOUS LES ANTAGONISTES MÊME S'ILS ONT COMMIS DES CRIMES EXTRÊMEMENT GRAVES COMME LE MEURTRE ET LE TERRORISME, Osborne a été absolument détruit niveau writing. Le "writing" dans ce jeu est TELLEMENT merdique, les persos commencent à agir comme des idiots tout à coup et l'explication c'est "AH NON MAIS C'EST LA FAUTE DE LA MALÉDICTION D'EREBONIA" (d'ailleurs cette soi-disant malédiction est le pire plot point que j'ai vu dans n'importe quel jeu), Rean a TOUJOURS pas même un peu de character development du tout (il est le pire protagoniste de tous les RPGs auxquels j'ai joué, sérieux), toujours extrêmement chiant... En plus, il y a une "vraie fin" alors on est obligé à jouer au jeu encore plus pour obtenir une fin tellement stupide où tout le monde est magiquement vivant 💀
Genre, c'est censé être UNE GUERRE CIVILE BON SANG, et vous comptez me dire que tout le monde a survécu sans même un seul mort ??? C'est quoi ce bordel ??? Même les persos qui étaient censés être morts SONT REVENUS À LA VIE, GENRE POURQUOI WTF ??? Ce genre de truc élimine complètement les conséquences dans le scénario, après avoir vu ça j'ai pas pu prendre l'histoire au sérieux du tout. Le scénario et la fin du jeu sont tellement merdiques que j'ai commencé à détester Cold steel 3 encore plus qu'avant, C'EST VRAIMENT SI MAL QUE ÇA.
Bref, je déteste Rean, je déteste Crow, je déteste Erebonia. Quelle sacrée perte de temps putain, QUATRE JEUX + REVERIE, ÇA A PAS VALU LE COUP. Ce jeu est pas seulement le pire jeu kiseki de loin, mais c'est aussi le pire RPG que j'ai fait. SVP, touchez pas à ce jeu sauf si vous vous détestez.
This is not a three-star game but a game that oscillates wildly between a one-star and a five-star game. What it does well, it does exceptionally. What it does poorly, it does horrendously. It's very rarely just mediocre.
I played this game around once a week consistently for two years. I cried, I laughed, I sighed in annoyance, I screamed into my hands in frustration. For all its problems, it became a part of my routine. And I'm genuinely looking forward to continuing to the next installment. Just. Maybe after a nice break.
I played this game around once a week consistently for two years. I cried, I laughed, I sighed in annoyance, I screamed into my hands in frustration. For all its problems, it became a part of my routine. And I'm genuinely looking forward to continuing to the next installment. Just. Maybe after a nice break.
by far the messiest trails game. has some pretty low lows, but some extreme highs.
PERFECTION
This review contains spoilers
Very good overall, however, some parts were quite slow and broke the rhythm. Rean only becoming playable from the beginning of the second half of the game was a downside for me.
8/10
Still a great game but has some significant issues with writing and pacing, but I did like a lot of the major story beats and there were many epic moments.
Gameplay is great and I love the side content too. However the main story does suffer from some horrible sections.
Still a great game but has some significant issues with writing and pacing, but I did like a lot of the major story beats and there were many epic moments.
Gameplay is great and I love the side content too. However the main story does suffer from some horrible sections.
This review contains spoilers
I played all of cold steel in 2 months. Apparently I have a problem. I agree with the individuals who said I do. Then let me answer a few basic questions from this predicament.
Do I like cold steel? Ya, its alright. Certainly the weakest between the 3 main arcs so far. Do I have praises for the arc? Sure I do! Some of my favorite moments in kiseki now come from CS. Is there problems I want to address? Well…funny you say that..
Before I go on my rampant tangent of my issues, ill first go off on complimenting the series.
Gotta say this before hand
THERE IS GOING TO BE SPOILERS, so if rando #354 complains on why im talking about certain scenes they haven’t seen yet from a future game, that’s all on u buddy.
To start off, CS3 has one of my favorite finales in kiseki. The fact they had the balls to kill off one of the casts most beloved characters AND have the good guys lose with such a dramatic build up? That was fantastic. From that standpoint, it looked like “how tf they gonna salvage the end of the world upon them lmao” Killing off millium hurt, she was by far the best class 7 member. She had that energy that literally everyone else lacked. I stayed up until like…5am I think, finishing CS3, that’s how invested it got me in from the finale starting.
CS2 I liked consistently. Each chapter had you revisit previous areas of the first game, but fixing shit that went wrong due to the actions of CS1. Each moment had something of note and value to the story, whether it be minimum or massive. The finale segments of CS2 was also one of my favorites with how they concluded old class 7s time together. That and on top of the mini crossbell segment that certainly was a jumpscare, meshed perfectly for how to exit the first half of cold steel.
CS4s first act was by far the best act out of the non-finale segments in all of cold steel. The entire segment without Rean? And the characters learning how to deal on situations without him while on the search for him? Was wonderfully done. There was some really great character moments, like with Musse and Ash coming to terms on how they deal with themselves with all they have been through.
My favorite fight in all of kiseki, after some thinking on this, has to be the boss fight between all of the Iron Bloods. Decisive Collision SAR is already probably my favorite track in cold steel, but adding a whole lot of other story elements that feel very attaching, damn fantastic fight. Jusis has really grown on me, he grew from some pompus prick noble who feels holier than thou, to one of the few class 7 members who actually is suffering, the only other one I can think of is Alisa (not counting rean bc its very obvious at that point). Jusis has known a lack of love from his father since he was born of a commoner, but held high regard for his brother, Rufus, for always sticking up for him. Eventually, with adding Millium to the picture, Jusis gained another person he can show his softer side for, since Millium does not mind bringing out her most playful side with him. With CS2, Jusis felt torn about Rufus’s decision on joining the noble alliance and being an enemy of his father since he does not wish to follow his footsteps. By CS3, Jusis learns the hard truth that Rufus isn’t even blood related at all, and that his father has been neglecting the wrong child, but wanted to keep up appearances. On top of the iron bloods actions and severe confrontation with Rufus, Jusis had to deal with fighting Millium, which they both did not want to do. With Millium dying also, Jusis was torn lmao. He has basically no family left, and I love those moments of character suffering, when they have very little to no power to fix anything. Glad the series was not afraid to go this route.
With Alisa, she probably has the award of the worst parents of kiseki. While rean has the worst dad, both of his mothers are very nice and irrelevant people. Alisa has a bitch of a mom who was willing to fuck over the world if it was really her old husband she was dealing with. But with the reveal that it was his alter ego, she dipped out. But please realize she was willing to 100% follow through, if it was her original husbands personality who decided all that. And as for that husband/ father of alisa. Ya where to begin: war criminal, crimes against humanity, terrorist, disregard for his daughter and wife, the list goes on. So Alisa had a very shitty parental issue, and adding salt on the wound, with her best friend and maid going back to the dark side bc….a contract im still having trouble understanding the legalities of, Alisa was also in a very dark spot with all of her close members basically becoming her enemy.
On a different topic, music has always been something I put something important to me when I rate or talk about a game or series. Each kiseki game has their absolute bangers. Sky Fc having sophisticated fight, SC silver will, 3rd Silver will forma de death (Defeat me, that is all), Zero having getting over the barrier, Ao having azure arbitrator, cs1 having their op [I like it ] cs2 having their final final boss theme, cs3 having the godsend that is decisive collision SAR, and CS4 having the final dungeon theme. I feel its fair to say that each of the kiseki games pre CS had very notable themes for each area, Like off of memory, I can remember the theme of the port town from Sky. I can remember both the hospital theme and the main city themes of all of the crossbell games. Each of the fortresses had very militaristic vibes, very memorable.
The cold steel games did not have very memorable tracks aside from some of the battle themes. A lot of them felt like…filler music. I honestly cannot remember an area theme aside from cs4 final dungeon theme (thanks to recent playing), and maybe the ehil fortress theme. A lot of it was “that sure was an area theme” that serves the purpose to having an area theme. The music composer change was apparent. The new composer definitely had some bangers, but everything else was, lack of a better word, unremarkable. Which is sad, bc I love hearing an entire ost full of heaters.
Onto another subject, holy fuck is cold steel easy. For the first two games, I played on Hard, thinking I would like some challenge since ive played this series for a while now. I switched to Nightmare for the last two games and still did not feel fulfilled in how baffling easy these games are. I should have limited myself to like, not using brave orders or not using ex orbs, or not using certain strats or characters, etc..
The biggest and most notable example for how I found the games were too easy, was in CS3 against both Campanella and McBurn during the crossbell final fight. They both were heavy ass dealing magic users who had the capability to nuke my party whenever they so wished…Emmas brave order allows me to absorb magic attacks for 10 turns. Both mcburn and campanella do NOTHING but magic attacks on both basic and craft arts. The difficulty went from a 9 to a 1. Should I have not done it? Maybe. Should they have had that function in the game? No. Brave orders trivialize almost every fight. The few times I was screwed over was during cs4 when them fuckass ironbloods have brave orders of their own, cancelling out mine, but from there I do way too much damage and take too little to care regardless. On nightmare the game was too easy. On the Very Hard mode of their series, about…10 games in, their game was too easy. They added way too much and had too many gimmicks to charatcters for difficulty to mean anything. This creates another issue I hear which is abyss mode, which is just too hard, and that you have to resort to the most cheese strats to even manage a standing chance. Balance does not feel efficient in this series now, which is unfortunate bc I liked the difficulty standing in the crossbell games, even though if those had the starting problem with how busted you can be. Even that does not compare to what you can accomplish by in cs4.
So onto da meat and ‘tatoes of my biggest issues: the story and Rean problem.
So this is a bit of a weird, yet understandable situation that sort of makes sense, but is still very asinine to see. Ill give a few examples. Musse is a phenomenal character who shows the true ideals she stands her guns on, dealing with the political world and the brunt of stress she had the potential of dealing with. Juna is a victim of crossbells annexation and holds a lot of malice and anxiety towards both the ones responsible and the scapegoats for her tragedy. Alisa struggles in the business world trying to appease to her mothers wishes all while trying to understand and better herself as a woman. Emma is looking to see becoming the next promising elder in her secret village of witches who are in charge of very important world building stuff. Gauis ( as much of a meme that he is) is now a dominion member of the church, a very high position of power and influence, akin to oroborus members. Jusis is a struggling member of the noble faction who learns to keep his friends close to him while fighting against the system that oppresses his friends so. Altina has now grown more self aware of her own existence and wants to learn how to be a better person with her friends.
Until Rean steps in.
From there, Musse becomes very insufferable, Alisa becomes very rean thirsty, Juna does a complete 180 on her standing with her teacher and by the end of CS4 confesses her love to him, Altina all of a sudden loves rean, Emma gets naked several times for rean (in the astral plane), gauis then wont shut the fuck up about the wind (maybe this isn’t a rean problem), jusis just relies on rean whenever he steps in, fie relates rean to her dad and falls for him, laura p much forces herself onto rean, sara is into rean, claire kisses rean, machias rean, kurts there, rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean
REAN
Now on the flipside, this is where it gets funny. Rean is a very suffering character in which by the end of CS1. He lost his friends to the faction and had a great fear of not knowing whether they were alive again or not. By CS2 he was stuck being a dog for the government against his will and judgement. By CS3, he was promoted from dog to hound for the government whenever lechter dropped in with a paper in front of reans face and said “ do it, boy”. By the end of cs3, he was at his lowest, being the cause for the end of the world, all with his friend dead, and his dad holding him by the neck saying “les get this bread”. Rean definatly is a good character and has a lot of hard moments….when he isn’t involved with girls.
When he is involved with a female of some type, he becomes the most dense motherfucker next to the likes of kirito or lucia route tonouji kotaro. He does the “ahh..etto..nani..?” while looking dumbstruck as ever. He can just BREATHE, and they be thinking about rean 24/7. Everybody loves rean. He don’t understand why. You see, I liked Juna in Cs3 bc she hated rean for some reason. Ash was a dick to rean. Juna 180’d in cs4 and that was very fucking unfortunate. Rean needs some haters bc god forbid he got none in the world of Zemuria. Of course this is 100% on the writters, bc man, give the man a nongeneric role that isn’t harem protagonist or shonen katana wielding mr perfect. There is so much more to all the bullshit they give him, like the cassius bright ordeal, or the fact he can beat super well trained awakener pilots with like 2 years experience vs their 50+ years. Did you know he can cut tanks in half without harming the drivers? Bc fuck it why not.
Its very weird that when either party is separate, whether it’s the friends faction or rean solo, they have great moments, but mesh the two together, and it can be a mess 75% of the time. Speaking of factions and members, I can think of two characters who had 0 reason to be a part of the group. Elliot had no business being there. No one will fight me on that. Hes accomplished nothing, can contribute nothing, is nothing, and will have been remembered for nothing aside from needing to get stronger and getting his s-craft the next segment. The next member who did not need to be there was laura. She was best as a side character or npc to the likes of towa. Alright characters to their standing, but 0 need to be in the party. Every one else played a much bigger role than those two. They had to story-buff laura to have her the slightest semblance of being in the group, its laughable. She was insufferable in cs1, unnoticeably there in cs2, there in cs3, and a creep in cs4. I have no idea why she has fans aside from their poor taste in “she looks hot bro”. The same can be said for a lot of characters of class 7, but they at least provide their 2 cents at important members. I can easily list them: Emma is the most important class 7 member with her role as the witch, jusis is the noble lord upcoming, machias is the peoples champ for the noble party, alisa runs the fucking reinford company is a branch ceo, gauis (undeservingly) is dominion number 8 of the church, fie is ( by some fucking aspull) a senior ranked bracer within a year, sara is a former high ranked jeager, crow (I don’t even need to list his reasons lmao, if u know u goddamn know), juna is a crossbell hero, kurt is a fucking vander (who does nothing with it now that im thinking about it), altina is a former intelligence member for the government, musse is the fucking mastermind behind countering Osbornes plans, ash is the secret survivor (retcon lmao) of hamel and semi responsible for the events leading to cs4 with the assassination attempt of the emperor. Everyone important. Elliot? Plays a mean violin. Laura? Her dads cool.
Back to more gripping on other subjects, the oroborus have never been more frauds than ever before. Their cast is fucking weak sauce. It took fucking 4 games to convince me that mc burn is actually a threat instead of being a guy who can set stuff on fire very hot. Ya turns out he is a super demon from another plane of reality that the full force of class 7 could dent in, cool. Duvalie has no personality aside from “waga arugie!!” shes the main member of the stalhlrieqhwfbwerjgbwerv, but she quit that p much. The others followed suit after their main boss died. Speaking of, the main boss, lliane, died to a backshot from Rufus lmao. Vita quit, Bluebanc quit, McBurn p much I think quit from the ending of cs4, campanella kind of was there but got pushed back by the most obscure of npcs (aurelias right hand man whose name I forgot lmao) and to top it off: there was very little they did in terms of hostility and terrorism. Shirly literally was there to fuck around and for some reason gilbert was there. Remember in Sky when oroborus actually initiated world-ending shit? Oh ya also forgot that mariabell was there…don’t know why exactly she was there now that I think about it. She played like no role I was aware of for the phantasmal blaze plan. Speaking of, that plan is retarded.
Osborne was the most competent villain in cold steel, man actually thought light years in advance. Everyone else was either alight or less. George was a joke. No one is taking his ass seriously. Want to see a better fat villain? Watch puss in boots 2.
The last compliment ill give, which I don’t know if I covered already or not, was act 1 of cold steel 4 was the best act out of all of cold steel apart from each games finales. Even at that, I liked it more than cs1 and cs4s. each character learning how to deal with their own shit without rean? Awesome stuff. The guy needed to take a step back. There was some fantastic moments that each character had an opportunity to shine in.
Now for the worst act ive had the bitter experience of dealing with, act 3 of cs3. This shits like cs1 chapters all together, but on steroids. Not only did almost nothing happen for the grand amount of it, I can remember nothing apart from their final dungeon, but they had one of the worst rean moments in the game. Sara kiss bc she likes her former student. And claire comparing rean to her brother and proceeds to kiss him. Claire probably has to be my most hated character in kiseki. Shes so badly written, but guys will fall for her bc shes hot lmao. It’s a mess. But my main issue lies in the final dungeon part of that act. Can you imagine being told by some jobber group that “ no, you cant come in, youre not strong enough, nor do you have a leader amongst your group to handle this, we’ll do it, unless u think u can beat us”. Rean in all his glory, backs off, one of the rare times he submits to this bc………anyway, aurelia joins in, that one character they introduced in cs2 for being super strong bc she is. Anyway turns out by the magical science of bulllshit, shes strong! And a leader! She will lead the brigade! And in gameplay? Oh fuck it make her one of the strongest units you have ever seen. Cherry on top? She can match up to Lliane toe to toe, ya know, the 7th Anguis who was known for being the litteral strongest next to McBurn, who had demon powers. Ya she can match up to her toe to toe, no special powers OR REASONING, whatsoever. And then they all fuck off, chapter over. Man im getting a headache thinking about that again.
Cold steel has more problems than praises than I can count, but their praises can come high when I think on them. So its not that it’s a dogshit series, but disappointing for how they handled a lot of scenes and characters. I hope, oh god do I hope, that kuro fixes up a lot of the issues I had. Mainly there being a Van problem, whether it be a harem or naïve issue. I move onto the penultimate game before the Calvard arc, Hajimari. I thought I was really looking forward to this game from the past, now im just bracing myself for a lot of weird character moments. If they somehow manage to salvage a lot of characters from their previous bad writing experience, ill be baffled upon belief.
Do I like cold steel? Ya, its alright. Certainly the weakest between the 3 main arcs so far. Do I have praises for the arc? Sure I do! Some of my favorite moments in kiseki now come from CS. Is there problems I want to address? Well…funny you say that..
Before I go on my rampant tangent of my issues, ill first go off on complimenting the series.
Gotta say this before hand
THERE IS GOING TO BE SPOILERS, so if rando #354 complains on why im talking about certain scenes they haven’t seen yet from a future game, that’s all on u buddy.
To start off, CS3 has one of my favorite finales in kiseki. The fact they had the balls to kill off one of the casts most beloved characters AND have the good guys lose with such a dramatic build up? That was fantastic. From that standpoint, it looked like “how tf they gonna salvage the end of the world upon them lmao” Killing off millium hurt, she was by far the best class 7 member. She had that energy that literally everyone else lacked. I stayed up until like…5am I think, finishing CS3, that’s how invested it got me in from the finale starting.
CS2 I liked consistently. Each chapter had you revisit previous areas of the first game, but fixing shit that went wrong due to the actions of CS1. Each moment had something of note and value to the story, whether it be minimum or massive. The finale segments of CS2 was also one of my favorites with how they concluded old class 7s time together. That and on top of the mini crossbell segment that certainly was a jumpscare, meshed perfectly for how to exit the first half of cold steel.
CS4s first act was by far the best act out of the non-finale segments in all of cold steel. The entire segment without Rean? And the characters learning how to deal on situations without him while on the search for him? Was wonderfully done. There was some really great character moments, like with Musse and Ash coming to terms on how they deal with themselves with all they have been through.
My favorite fight in all of kiseki, after some thinking on this, has to be the boss fight between all of the Iron Bloods. Decisive Collision SAR is already probably my favorite track in cold steel, but adding a whole lot of other story elements that feel very attaching, damn fantastic fight. Jusis has really grown on me, he grew from some pompus prick noble who feels holier than thou, to one of the few class 7 members who actually is suffering, the only other one I can think of is Alisa (not counting rean bc its very obvious at that point). Jusis has known a lack of love from his father since he was born of a commoner, but held high regard for his brother, Rufus, for always sticking up for him. Eventually, with adding Millium to the picture, Jusis gained another person he can show his softer side for, since Millium does not mind bringing out her most playful side with him. With CS2, Jusis felt torn about Rufus’s decision on joining the noble alliance and being an enemy of his father since he does not wish to follow his footsteps. By CS3, Jusis learns the hard truth that Rufus isn’t even blood related at all, and that his father has been neglecting the wrong child, but wanted to keep up appearances. On top of the iron bloods actions and severe confrontation with Rufus, Jusis had to deal with fighting Millium, which they both did not want to do. With Millium dying also, Jusis was torn lmao. He has basically no family left, and I love those moments of character suffering, when they have very little to no power to fix anything. Glad the series was not afraid to go this route.
With Alisa, she probably has the award of the worst parents of kiseki. While rean has the worst dad, both of his mothers are very nice and irrelevant people. Alisa has a bitch of a mom who was willing to fuck over the world if it was really her old husband she was dealing with. But with the reveal that it was his alter ego, she dipped out. But please realize she was willing to 100% follow through, if it was her original husbands personality who decided all that. And as for that husband/ father of alisa. Ya where to begin: war criminal, crimes against humanity, terrorist, disregard for his daughter and wife, the list goes on. So Alisa had a very shitty parental issue, and adding salt on the wound, with her best friend and maid going back to the dark side bc….a contract im still having trouble understanding the legalities of, Alisa was also in a very dark spot with all of her close members basically becoming her enemy.
On a different topic, music has always been something I put something important to me when I rate or talk about a game or series. Each kiseki game has their absolute bangers. Sky Fc having sophisticated fight, SC silver will, 3rd Silver will forma de death (Defeat me, that is all), Zero having getting over the barrier, Ao having azure arbitrator, cs1 having their op [I like it ] cs2 having their final final boss theme, cs3 having the godsend that is decisive collision SAR, and CS4 having the final dungeon theme. I feel its fair to say that each of the kiseki games pre CS had very notable themes for each area, Like off of memory, I can remember the theme of the port town from Sky. I can remember both the hospital theme and the main city themes of all of the crossbell games. Each of the fortresses had very militaristic vibes, very memorable.
The cold steel games did not have very memorable tracks aside from some of the battle themes. A lot of them felt like…filler music. I honestly cannot remember an area theme aside from cs4 final dungeon theme (thanks to recent playing), and maybe the ehil fortress theme. A lot of it was “that sure was an area theme” that serves the purpose to having an area theme. The music composer change was apparent. The new composer definitely had some bangers, but everything else was, lack of a better word, unremarkable. Which is sad, bc I love hearing an entire ost full of heaters.
Onto another subject, holy fuck is cold steel easy. For the first two games, I played on Hard, thinking I would like some challenge since ive played this series for a while now. I switched to Nightmare for the last two games and still did not feel fulfilled in how baffling easy these games are. I should have limited myself to like, not using brave orders or not using ex orbs, or not using certain strats or characters, etc..
The biggest and most notable example for how I found the games were too easy, was in CS3 against both Campanella and McBurn during the crossbell final fight. They both were heavy ass dealing magic users who had the capability to nuke my party whenever they so wished…Emmas brave order allows me to absorb magic attacks for 10 turns. Both mcburn and campanella do NOTHING but magic attacks on both basic and craft arts. The difficulty went from a 9 to a 1. Should I have not done it? Maybe. Should they have had that function in the game? No. Brave orders trivialize almost every fight. The few times I was screwed over was during cs4 when them fuckass ironbloods have brave orders of their own, cancelling out mine, but from there I do way too much damage and take too little to care regardless. On nightmare the game was too easy. On the Very Hard mode of their series, about…10 games in, their game was too easy. They added way too much and had too many gimmicks to charatcters for difficulty to mean anything. This creates another issue I hear which is abyss mode, which is just too hard, and that you have to resort to the most cheese strats to even manage a standing chance. Balance does not feel efficient in this series now, which is unfortunate bc I liked the difficulty standing in the crossbell games, even though if those had the starting problem with how busted you can be. Even that does not compare to what you can accomplish by in cs4.
So onto da meat and ‘tatoes of my biggest issues: the story and Rean problem.
So this is a bit of a weird, yet understandable situation that sort of makes sense, but is still very asinine to see. Ill give a few examples. Musse is a phenomenal character who shows the true ideals she stands her guns on, dealing with the political world and the brunt of stress she had the potential of dealing with. Juna is a victim of crossbells annexation and holds a lot of malice and anxiety towards both the ones responsible and the scapegoats for her tragedy. Alisa struggles in the business world trying to appease to her mothers wishes all while trying to understand and better herself as a woman. Emma is looking to see becoming the next promising elder in her secret village of witches who are in charge of very important world building stuff. Gauis ( as much of a meme that he is) is now a dominion member of the church, a very high position of power and influence, akin to oroborus members. Jusis is a struggling member of the noble faction who learns to keep his friends close to him while fighting against the system that oppresses his friends so. Altina has now grown more self aware of her own existence and wants to learn how to be a better person with her friends.
Until Rean steps in.
From there, Musse becomes very insufferable, Alisa becomes very rean thirsty, Juna does a complete 180 on her standing with her teacher and by the end of CS4 confesses her love to him, Altina all of a sudden loves rean, Emma gets naked several times for rean (in the astral plane), gauis then wont shut the fuck up about the wind (maybe this isn’t a rean problem), jusis just relies on rean whenever he steps in, fie relates rean to her dad and falls for him, laura p much forces herself onto rean, sara is into rean, claire kisses rean, machias rean, kurts there, rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean
REAN
Now on the flipside, this is where it gets funny. Rean is a very suffering character in which by the end of CS1. He lost his friends to the faction and had a great fear of not knowing whether they were alive again or not. By CS2 he was stuck being a dog for the government against his will and judgement. By CS3, he was promoted from dog to hound for the government whenever lechter dropped in with a paper in front of reans face and said “ do it, boy”. By the end of cs3, he was at his lowest, being the cause for the end of the world, all with his friend dead, and his dad holding him by the neck saying “les get this bread”. Rean definatly is a good character and has a lot of hard moments….when he isn’t involved with girls.
When he is involved with a female of some type, he becomes the most dense motherfucker next to the likes of kirito or lucia route tonouji kotaro. He does the “ahh..etto..nani..?” while looking dumbstruck as ever. He can just BREATHE, and they be thinking about rean 24/7. Everybody loves rean. He don’t understand why. You see, I liked Juna in Cs3 bc she hated rean for some reason. Ash was a dick to rean. Juna 180’d in cs4 and that was very fucking unfortunate. Rean needs some haters bc god forbid he got none in the world of Zemuria. Of course this is 100% on the writters, bc man, give the man a nongeneric role that isn’t harem protagonist or shonen katana wielding mr perfect. There is so much more to all the bullshit they give him, like the cassius bright ordeal, or the fact he can beat super well trained awakener pilots with like 2 years experience vs their 50+ years. Did you know he can cut tanks in half without harming the drivers? Bc fuck it why not.
Its very weird that when either party is separate, whether it’s the friends faction or rean solo, they have great moments, but mesh the two together, and it can be a mess 75% of the time. Speaking of factions and members, I can think of two characters who had 0 reason to be a part of the group. Elliot had no business being there. No one will fight me on that. Hes accomplished nothing, can contribute nothing, is nothing, and will have been remembered for nothing aside from needing to get stronger and getting his s-craft the next segment. The next member who did not need to be there was laura. She was best as a side character or npc to the likes of towa. Alright characters to their standing, but 0 need to be in the party. Every one else played a much bigger role than those two. They had to story-buff laura to have her the slightest semblance of being in the group, its laughable. She was insufferable in cs1, unnoticeably there in cs2, there in cs3, and a creep in cs4. I have no idea why she has fans aside from their poor taste in “she looks hot bro”. The same can be said for a lot of characters of class 7, but they at least provide their 2 cents at important members. I can easily list them: Emma is the most important class 7 member with her role as the witch, jusis is the noble lord upcoming, machias is the peoples champ for the noble party, alisa runs the fucking reinford company is a branch ceo, gauis (undeservingly) is dominion number 8 of the church, fie is ( by some fucking aspull) a senior ranked bracer within a year, sara is a former high ranked jeager, crow (I don’t even need to list his reasons lmao, if u know u goddamn know), juna is a crossbell hero, kurt is a fucking vander (who does nothing with it now that im thinking about it), altina is a former intelligence member for the government, musse is the fucking mastermind behind countering Osbornes plans, ash is the secret survivor (retcon lmao) of hamel and semi responsible for the events leading to cs4 with the assassination attempt of the emperor. Everyone important. Elliot? Plays a mean violin. Laura? Her dads cool.
Back to more gripping on other subjects, the oroborus have never been more frauds than ever before. Their cast is fucking weak sauce. It took fucking 4 games to convince me that mc burn is actually a threat instead of being a guy who can set stuff on fire very hot. Ya turns out he is a super demon from another plane of reality that the full force of class 7 could dent in, cool. Duvalie has no personality aside from “waga arugie!!” shes the main member of the stalhlrieqhwfbwerjgbwerv, but she quit that p much. The others followed suit after their main boss died. Speaking of, the main boss, lliane, died to a backshot from Rufus lmao. Vita quit, Bluebanc quit, McBurn p much I think quit from the ending of cs4, campanella kind of was there but got pushed back by the most obscure of npcs (aurelias right hand man whose name I forgot lmao) and to top it off: there was very little they did in terms of hostility and terrorism. Shirly literally was there to fuck around and for some reason gilbert was there. Remember in Sky when oroborus actually initiated world-ending shit? Oh ya also forgot that mariabell was there…don’t know why exactly she was there now that I think about it. She played like no role I was aware of for the phantasmal blaze plan. Speaking of, that plan is retarded.
Osborne was the most competent villain in cold steel, man actually thought light years in advance. Everyone else was either alight or less. George was a joke. No one is taking his ass seriously. Want to see a better fat villain? Watch puss in boots 2.
The last compliment ill give, which I don’t know if I covered already or not, was act 1 of cold steel 4 was the best act out of all of cold steel apart from each games finales. Even at that, I liked it more than cs1 and cs4s. each character learning how to deal with their own shit without rean? Awesome stuff. The guy needed to take a step back. There was some fantastic moments that each character had an opportunity to shine in.
Now for the worst act ive had the bitter experience of dealing with, act 3 of cs3. This shits like cs1 chapters all together, but on steroids. Not only did almost nothing happen for the grand amount of it, I can remember nothing apart from their final dungeon, but they had one of the worst rean moments in the game. Sara kiss bc she likes her former student. And claire comparing rean to her brother and proceeds to kiss him. Claire probably has to be my most hated character in kiseki. Shes so badly written, but guys will fall for her bc shes hot lmao. It’s a mess. But my main issue lies in the final dungeon part of that act. Can you imagine being told by some jobber group that “ no, you cant come in, youre not strong enough, nor do you have a leader amongst your group to handle this, we’ll do it, unless u think u can beat us”. Rean in all his glory, backs off, one of the rare times he submits to this bc………anyway, aurelia joins in, that one character they introduced in cs2 for being super strong bc she is. Anyway turns out by the magical science of bulllshit, shes strong! And a leader! She will lead the brigade! And in gameplay? Oh fuck it make her one of the strongest units you have ever seen. Cherry on top? She can match up to Lliane toe to toe, ya know, the 7th Anguis who was known for being the litteral strongest next to McBurn, who had demon powers. Ya she can match up to her toe to toe, no special powers OR REASONING, whatsoever. And then they all fuck off, chapter over. Man im getting a headache thinking about that again.
Cold steel has more problems than praises than I can count, but their praises can come high when I think on them. So its not that it’s a dogshit series, but disappointing for how they handled a lot of scenes and characters. I hope, oh god do I hope, that kuro fixes up a lot of the issues I had. Mainly there being a Van problem, whether it be a harem or naïve issue. I move onto the penultimate game before the Calvard arc, Hajimari. I thought I was really looking forward to this game from the past, now im just bracing myself for a lot of weird character moments. If they somehow manage to salvage a lot of characters from their previous bad writing experience, ill be baffled upon belief.
the epic highs and lows of the legend of heroes: trails of cold steel iv
Thank you for everything, my friend. I'll never forget you.
𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥
𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦
𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦
𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵
𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘶𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬
𝘪𝘧 𝘪 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺
𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘶𝘯𝘮𝘰𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘦
𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦
𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘵
𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘶𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬
𝘪𝘧 𝘪 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺
终于给了黎恩一个好结局，喜欢这代的剧情，歌都很好听，最后的婚礼很棒。一路以来饱受挫折的黎恩最后终于成为了那照亮时代的一闪。
it at least has tio plato
This review contains spoilers
Cold Steel IV is one of the poorest attempts at creating a compelling narrative, let alone an enjoyable game experience, that I’ve ever seen. While it’s not all bad, I feel like it fails in so many basic aspects that make a story entertaining or meaningful in any way. And it makes me sad that’s the case.
In a way, this long review is going to be a critique of the arc as a whole, since it’s the final entry.
I love Trails, I really do. Previous to the start of this arc I had the time of my life going through the games, and they’re full of things that mean a lot to me. Now, if you’ve had the displeasure of speaking about the series with me, then you know what I think about Cold Steel as an arc, and I would love to say that how I judge this game is done separately from those previous negative notions but, unfortunately, pretty much everything I dislike in this entry is just the culmination of all the problems I’ve noticed since Cold Steel started, poor writing and handling that has been stacking up over the years.
The elephant in the room and the easiest thing to criticize is the sheer size of this story, and how it works against it. Cold Steel is very, very ambitious and it always has been. It deals with the problems of the largest setting in the series yet and the ramifications of that story affect the entirety of the Trails world as a whole. Erebonia has been a subject of buildup since the very first entry in the series, having characters and places be directly affected by the Empire’s actions, and this arc had the role of dealing with said buildup and try to find a satisfactory conclusion to it. Unfortunately, it presents so many copouts that I can’t help but feel those years of buildup were done a disservice, but I’ll get to that later.
The problem with said ambition comes in the form of bloat, and there’s no better word for it. Everything in this arc is just completely bloated. The cast is too big, there’s too many maps, there’s too many stories going on at the same time, there’s too much of everything. What ends up happening where there’s too much of something is that most of it feels out of place or meaningless. Old Class VII is a massive cast and most of them feel underutilized or undeveloped. New Class VII was a step in the right direction but ultimately they still have to deal with all the stories they’ve started in the first two games, and that means bringing back OC7 immediately whether they fit in the story or not. It’s a mess.
And speaking of messes, this also affects the pacing. Pacing has always been a massive problem in this arc. They will have a story that could be resolved in a single game and stretch it out into two full length JRPGS. What ends up happening is that one of said games will be 60 hours of nothing but setup and the next one will have to try to resolve all of that, often unsatisfactorily. Both CS1 and CS3 are nothing but the tease of a story, you will visit new areas and meet new people, the same repeated formula will happen over and over again thorough the story and you then the game will end and nothing will have happened.
And because of this split into 4 games, CS2 and CS4 are left with a phenomenon where they’re supposed to be the climax of the story but at the same time, they have to make a full length game, so they will pad the story out as much as they can, adding situations and events that feel like they have no reason to occur. In these two games that presents itself as Act 2, and dear god is Act 2 a slog to go through in this game. Nothing of note happens, you’re presented with, once again, the same formula repeated over 20 hours until you’re deemed as worthy of continuing with the main plot. The same events will happen, the same exact cutscenes, but with a different location and different characters. This is also nothing new, it’s one of the many problems in Cold Steel.
The character bloat makes this even worse, because since now you have a cast of over 20 characters with ongoing stories, which this game as a final entry of an arc is trying to give them, you now find yourself in situations where the story artificially goes out of its way to presents problems that these specific characters, who haven’t contributed to the story for hours, have to deal with.
Characters associated with members of the OC7, who were previously seen as ‘good’, will ally themselves with the opposing forces for no discernable reason other than to have said member of OC7 go against them and arrive at a character ‘conclusion’. And it’s especially infuriating because none of them are presented with consequence. They will provide the enemy forces with machinery or men or whatever and fight against you, only for them to go back at how they were before going through that dance, meanwhile the protagonist just accept them back. I think the idea they’re trying to go for is that these people care for you and are trying to “””TEST YOUR RESOLVE””” by standing in your way, but when that happens 6 times in a row it’s starts to be draining.
This tiring song and dance also makes it so most villains have no real motives to be evil, they’re all actually ‘good guys’ but are either forced to stand in your way because they’re spineless and can’t fight the situation they’re in, or they’re trying to “””TEST YOUR RESOLVE”””. There are a few standout Good Villains, who I love, but as with the main cast, the sheer bloat just sours the experience. Especially because that villain bloat means you have to go through two dozen boss fights before anything happens.
Padding like this completely takes away from the experience, you’re just begging the game to go anywhere but they keep throwing new dungeons to go through or more boss fights to take on. You start flying towards what seems like an objective and -‘oh no they’re putting up a barrier!! We have to go into this dungeon to destroy it!!!!’- It’s never ending and it completely drains away at you.
But these are mostly gameplay grievances, and I’m not gonna sit here and pretend like it’s anything new to the series. But when it’s something that takes 4 games to finish it starts become noticeable more and more. And these are not my main problem with these games.
Said problem comes in the way of its story, of the overall higher plot of Cold Steel. I dislike the Great Twilight, I dislike how they handle Erebonia, I dislike the divine knights’ plot, and I very much strongly dislike the Great One and the Curse.
As I’ve said, this arc deals with being the conclusion to a lot of Erebonia build up. Characters who had suffered because of the actions of the Empire as a militaristic force, and I’ve always found that to be really cool setup, it was exciting to see what they would do with it and how they would go about dealing with the Empire’s sins. So imagine my face when I got to talk with the Emperor himself and he told me ‘Everything the empire has done has been the consequences of dealing with an ancient Curse, I am powerless to stop it’
The game itself is not even sure about how they want to utilize the Curse as a narrative device. Sometimes you’re lead to believe it’s nothing but a ‘devil in your shoulder’ sort of deal, doing nothing but accentuating Erebonia’s nationalism and tendency for conflict. Other times they say the Curse has a mind of its own and it is controlling people, taking away the blame from them.
What I believe happened here is that it was easier to portray the Empire as an antagonistic force when we only say the consequences of their actions, but now that we have a cast inside it and most of all, we have Rean inside of it, there’s no way we can say our heroes are fighting to save a flawed country. Therefore, it turns into a completely spineless story which wants to have its centrist cake and eat it too. Now, ’m told the Curse was handled better in the original JP text and the implication was that they committed fully to the devil in your shoulder, but the text I read leaned against it so this is my takeaway from the story.
And it’s spineless in a way that affects every single aspect of it, especially the villains. No one is allowed to be evil, everyone is secretly rooting for you and fighting to protect the world, they’re just trying to kill you for your sake I promise. Some of the reveals like that are cool but do you have any idea how frustrating it is to go through your 27th boss fight in a row only to be told ‘heh, I actually wanted you to win’ every single time. It takes away from the experience, it makes it feel like they’re making fun of you for wasting your time even fighting bosses.
The absolute biggest offenders in this are Lecther and Claire, not once are they given a proper reason as to why the hell they’re even siding with Osbourne until the very end. Both their backstories are about how much The Chancellor destroyed their lives and yet they are just constantly, for the lack of a better word, dickriding him while so very sadly wishing they could do something else and help the cast, we’re good guys I swear !!
And going back to the curse, it turns out even Osbourne, the guy they’ve also been setting up since Sky, the guy who took away our previous heroes’ home in Crossbell, he was ALSO just a victim to the Curse and trying to make it vulnerable so the main cast could destroy it. It is just SO frustrating of a story.
In the end the Curse ends up being nothing but a generic JRPG device to say that humanity will find a new way, it is the common trope of creating a big huge bad guy at the end of a story to put the blame on everything that has happened, and by killing this force of evil everything will be okay now. It’s fine, it’s been done before and it works. But personally I end up feeling like an idiot for thinking they would approach the concept of the Erebonian Empire in an interesting way.
The ending is also a copout, this arc is utterly afraid of writing consequences. Dead characters come back 5 hours later, villains become good and are presented with no retaliation after what they do. Crow is a literal terrorist and he’s allowed to come back as if nothing happened after dying. Nothing that happens feels earned in the slightest because nothing feels ever lost. They go on about how the Curse is a metaphor for how humanity can only grow in strife but said strife is barely noticeable because no one dies in this story, no one gets really hurt, everything happens with little to no real conflict.
At this point I’m just rambling, and there’s a dozen things I could nitpick and get bitchy about. It’s so funny how this game goes out of its way to pair all the male main characters with random NPCs but leaves all the female main characters single because Rean has to be able to romance them. Speaking of Rean, I’m not even gonna start on him because at the end of the day, I like him enough. I think his spot as the best and most important guy in the world hurts the narrative a lot but that’s been said before and I don’t care enough to go into it. Just now that more than a few times I rolled my eyes and how the story treated him and how half of the characters turn into nothing but Rean drones.
Again, I don’t dislike all of this game. Some characters are very strong, especially Rufus and Cedric. Some of the lore they set up about the world is also extremely cool and I’m excited to see how it goes. But most than all this was just a draining and awful experience to go through, and I really have a hard time believing someone would find it enjoyable from start to finish without ever stopping to think why they’re doing the things they’re doing and if keeping playing is worth it. I might be too much of a hater, I don’t care.
I wish Cold Steel was good, it’s just not. There’s potential but the execution it got was flawed from the start and continues to be flawed up until the very end. It does make me sad.
Doesn’t mean I’m not excited for the future of the series, I know I’m gonna enjoy what’s next. I just really wished I like these more.
TL:DR
Ughhhhhhh
In a way, this long review is going to be a critique of the arc as a whole, since it’s the final entry.
I love Trails, I really do. Previous to the start of this arc I had the time of my life going through the games, and they’re full of things that mean a lot to me. Now, if you’ve had the displeasure of speaking about the series with me, then you know what I think about Cold Steel as an arc, and I would love to say that how I judge this game is done separately from those previous negative notions but, unfortunately, pretty much everything I dislike in this entry is just the culmination of all the problems I’ve noticed since Cold Steel started, poor writing and handling that has been stacking up over the years.
The elephant in the room and the easiest thing to criticize is the sheer size of this story, and how it works against it. Cold Steel is very, very ambitious and it always has been. It deals with the problems of the largest setting in the series yet and the ramifications of that story affect the entirety of the Trails world as a whole. Erebonia has been a subject of buildup since the very first entry in the series, having characters and places be directly affected by the Empire’s actions, and this arc had the role of dealing with said buildup and try to find a satisfactory conclusion to it. Unfortunately, it presents so many copouts that I can’t help but feel those years of buildup were done a disservice, but I’ll get to that later.
The problem with said ambition comes in the form of bloat, and there’s no better word for it. Everything in this arc is just completely bloated. The cast is too big, there’s too many maps, there’s too many stories going on at the same time, there’s too much of everything. What ends up happening where there’s too much of something is that most of it feels out of place or meaningless. Old Class VII is a massive cast and most of them feel underutilized or undeveloped. New Class VII was a step in the right direction but ultimately they still have to deal with all the stories they’ve started in the first two games, and that means bringing back OC7 immediately whether they fit in the story or not. It’s a mess.
And speaking of messes, this also affects the pacing. Pacing has always been a massive problem in this arc. They will have a story that could be resolved in a single game and stretch it out into two full length JRPGS. What ends up happening is that one of said games will be 60 hours of nothing but setup and the next one will have to try to resolve all of that, often unsatisfactorily. Both CS1 and CS3 are nothing but the tease of a story, you will visit new areas and meet new people, the same repeated formula will happen over and over again thorough the story and you then the game will end and nothing will have happened.
And because of this split into 4 games, CS2 and CS4 are left with a phenomenon where they’re supposed to be the climax of the story but at the same time, they have to make a full length game, so they will pad the story out as much as they can, adding situations and events that feel like they have no reason to occur. In these two games that presents itself as Act 2, and dear god is Act 2 a slog to go through in this game. Nothing of note happens, you’re presented with, once again, the same formula repeated over 20 hours until you’re deemed as worthy of continuing with the main plot. The same events will happen, the same exact cutscenes, but with a different location and different characters. This is also nothing new, it’s one of the many problems in Cold Steel.
The character bloat makes this even worse, because since now you have a cast of over 20 characters with ongoing stories, which this game as a final entry of an arc is trying to give them, you now find yourself in situations where the story artificially goes out of its way to presents problems that these specific characters, who haven’t contributed to the story for hours, have to deal with.
Characters associated with members of the OC7, who were previously seen as ‘good’, will ally themselves with the opposing forces for no discernable reason other than to have said member of OC7 go against them and arrive at a character ‘conclusion’. And it’s especially infuriating because none of them are presented with consequence. They will provide the enemy forces with machinery or men or whatever and fight against you, only for them to go back at how they were before going through that dance, meanwhile the protagonist just accept them back. I think the idea they’re trying to go for is that these people care for you and are trying to “””TEST YOUR RESOLVE””” by standing in your way, but when that happens 6 times in a row it’s starts to be draining.
This tiring song and dance also makes it so most villains have no real motives to be evil, they’re all actually ‘good guys’ but are either forced to stand in your way because they’re spineless and can’t fight the situation they’re in, or they’re trying to “””TEST YOUR RESOLVE”””. There are a few standout Good Villains, who I love, but as with the main cast, the sheer bloat just sours the experience. Especially because that villain bloat means you have to go through two dozen boss fights before anything happens.
Padding like this completely takes away from the experience, you’re just begging the game to go anywhere but they keep throwing new dungeons to go through or more boss fights to take on. You start flying towards what seems like an objective and -‘oh no they’re putting up a barrier!! We have to go into this dungeon to destroy it!!!!’- It’s never ending and it completely drains away at you.
But these are mostly gameplay grievances, and I’m not gonna sit here and pretend like it’s anything new to the series. But when it’s something that takes 4 games to finish it starts become noticeable more and more. And these are not my main problem with these games.
Said problem comes in the way of its story, of the overall higher plot of Cold Steel. I dislike the Great Twilight, I dislike how they handle Erebonia, I dislike the divine knights’ plot, and I very much strongly dislike the Great One and the Curse.
As I’ve said, this arc deals with being the conclusion to a lot of Erebonia build up. Characters who had suffered because of the actions of the Empire as a militaristic force, and I’ve always found that to be really cool setup, it was exciting to see what they would do with it and how they would go about dealing with the Empire’s sins. So imagine my face when I got to talk with the Emperor himself and he told me ‘Everything the empire has done has been the consequences of dealing with an ancient Curse, I am powerless to stop it’
The game itself is not even sure about how they want to utilize the Curse as a narrative device. Sometimes you’re lead to believe it’s nothing but a ‘devil in your shoulder’ sort of deal, doing nothing but accentuating Erebonia’s nationalism and tendency for conflict. Other times they say the Curse has a mind of its own and it is controlling people, taking away the blame from them.
What I believe happened here is that it was easier to portray the Empire as an antagonistic force when we only say the consequences of their actions, but now that we have a cast inside it and most of all, we have Rean inside of it, there’s no way we can say our heroes are fighting to save a flawed country. Therefore, it turns into a completely spineless story which wants to have its centrist cake and eat it too. Now, ’m told the Curse was handled better in the original JP text and the implication was that they committed fully to the devil in your shoulder, but the text I read leaned against it so this is my takeaway from the story.
And it’s spineless in a way that affects every single aspect of it, especially the villains. No one is allowed to be evil, everyone is secretly rooting for you and fighting to protect the world, they’re just trying to kill you for your sake I promise. Some of the reveals like that are cool but do you have any idea how frustrating it is to go through your 27th boss fight in a row only to be told ‘heh, I actually wanted you to win’ every single time. It takes away from the experience, it makes it feel like they’re making fun of you for wasting your time even fighting bosses.
The absolute biggest offenders in this are Lecther and Claire, not once are they given a proper reason as to why the hell they’re even siding with Osbourne until the very end. Both their backstories are about how much The Chancellor destroyed their lives and yet they are just constantly, for the lack of a better word, dickriding him while so very sadly wishing they could do something else and help the cast, we’re good guys I swear !!
And going back to the curse, it turns out even Osbourne, the guy they’ve also been setting up since Sky, the guy who took away our previous heroes’ home in Crossbell, he was ALSO just a victim to the Curse and trying to make it vulnerable so the main cast could destroy it. It is just SO frustrating of a story.
In the end the Curse ends up being nothing but a generic JRPG device to say that humanity will find a new way, it is the common trope of creating a big huge bad guy at the end of a story to put the blame on everything that has happened, and by killing this force of evil everything will be okay now. It’s fine, it’s been done before and it works. But personally I end up feeling like an idiot for thinking they would approach the concept of the Erebonian Empire in an interesting way.
The ending is also a copout, this arc is utterly afraid of writing consequences. Dead characters come back 5 hours later, villains become good and are presented with no retaliation after what they do. Crow is a literal terrorist and he’s allowed to come back as if nothing happened after dying. Nothing that happens feels earned in the slightest because nothing feels ever lost. They go on about how the Curse is a metaphor for how humanity can only grow in strife but said strife is barely noticeable because no one dies in this story, no one gets really hurt, everything happens with little to no real conflict.
At this point I’m just rambling, and there’s a dozen things I could nitpick and get bitchy about. It’s so funny how this game goes out of its way to pair all the male main characters with random NPCs but leaves all the female main characters single because Rean has to be able to romance them. Speaking of Rean, I’m not even gonna start on him because at the end of the day, I like him enough. I think his spot as the best and most important guy in the world hurts the narrative a lot but that’s been said before and I don’t care enough to go into it. Just now that more than a few times I rolled my eyes and how the story treated him and how half of the characters turn into nothing but Rean drones.
Again, I don’t dislike all of this game. Some characters are very strong, especially Rufus and Cedric. Some of the lore they set up about the world is also extremely cool and I’m excited to see how it goes. But most than all this was just a draining and awful experience to go through, and I really have a hard time believing someone would find it enjoyable from start to finish without ever stopping to think why they’re doing the things they’re doing and if keeping playing is worth it. I might be too much of a hater, I don’t care.
I wish Cold Steel was good, it’s just not. There’s potential but the execution it got was flawed from the start and continues to be flawed up until the very end. It does make me sad.
Doesn’t mean I’m not excited for the future of the series, I know I’m gonna enjoy what’s next. I just really wished I like these more.
TL:DR
Ughhhhhhh
No mentían, es peak.
I don't love everything in this game but it's a pretty solid ending to the story focusing on Rean after like 200 hours