Cold Steel I is a game that almost doesn't feel like Trails. It's 3D now, the MC is more anime than all the others (the entire female cast wants him + Persona dating social links), a vast majority of the plot is episodic city exploration that bloats the narrative more than the previous games ever did. But the high points, especially the last part, redeem it.
The music is great (an obvious statement about a Trails game, but noteworthy nonetheless), the combat system is a step up from Crossbell's, and it just feels fun to play, with even its duller moments being pretty comfy. It doesn't have Sky's comfortable and homely vibe, it doesn't have Sky 3rd's level of themes and character writing, it doesn't have Crossbell's consistency and high points overall writing wise, but it does have one thing that it crushes the previous games in — the rule of cool.
Rean (as of this game) is no Kevin, but his struggles are quite compelling, and more importantly, he has a katana, which is the coolest weapon a Trails MC has had yet. He is a cool swordsman. And Cold Steel is very cool when it wants to be. The last act some real hype moments that rarely work for me in videogames, and they were done creatively. I immediately booted up the beginning of CS2 because I just couldn't wait.
Despite at times looking like an obvious lower budget JRPG (why replace 2D character portraits with 3D models..? it took some time to get used to), and having a worse (IMO) art style than Crossbell, CS1 definitely has a nice visual style. Despite being the first 3D Trails game, once you get used to how it looks, it's really nice seeing environments that would have been previously seen from a 2.5D, top-down view in their full glory.
Overall, it's a heavily flawed, inconsistent, almost messy (you could even say it sucks sometimes) game, but when it hits, it's very exciting, and leaves you wanting more. I can't wait to see more of this journey.
The music is great (an obvious statement about a Trails game, but noteworthy nonetheless), the combat system is a step up from Crossbell's, and it just feels fun to play, with even its duller moments being pretty comfy. It doesn't have Sky's comfortable and homely vibe, it doesn't have Sky 3rd's level of themes and character writing, it doesn't have Crossbell's consistency and high points overall writing wise, but it does have one thing that it crushes the previous games in — the rule of cool.
Rean (as of this game) is no Kevin, but his struggles are quite compelling, and more importantly, he has a katana, which is the coolest weapon a Trails MC has had yet. He is a cool swordsman. And Cold Steel is very cool when it wants to be. The last act some real hype moments that rarely work for me in videogames, and they were done creatively. I immediately booted up the beginning of CS2 because I just couldn't wait.
Despite at times looking like an obvious lower budget JRPG (why replace 2D character portraits with 3D models..? it took some time to get used to), and having a worse (IMO) art style than Crossbell, CS1 definitely has a nice visual style. Despite being the first 3D Trails game, once you get used to how it looks, it's really nice seeing environments that would have been previously seen from a 2.5D, top-down view in their full glory.
Overall, it's a heavily flawed, inconsistent, almost messy (you could even say it sucks sometimes) game, but when it hits, it's very exciting, and leaves you wanting more. I can't wait to see more of this journey.
I’ve sat here for a while and I still don’t really know how to note down my thoughts on this game but I’ll give it a try. It took me a very long time to complete but wasn’t very engaging at all. The jump to 3D was not kind to Falcom, with the characters faces looking pretty poor and the models as a whole looking quite janky. Environments are okay, about what you could expect when you realise this is a PSVita game. Visuals are one thing, but the gameplay and story are huge drawbacks compared to the constant 9/10 - 10/10’s that Trails pumped out every release prior to Cold Steel
This game is just too easy, you get given so much bullshit and the changes made to the orbment system made this game so easy to break, and while it wouldn’t mind if the game was fun, or this happened near the late game, it happens fairly early on once you can unlock most of your slots, and leaves the game to become a slog.
I wish I knew how many hours I wasted spamming the A button in battles, because that’s what the game became in pretty much every fight that wasn’t a boss battle. Past entries had challenge in most dungeons, and while did get easier near the end outside of boss fights, weren’t at the level of tedium this game presented.
While the last few hours were okay in comparison to the rest of the game, the constant exposition and plot twists were a bit annoying. Too much of this game feels like filler and then they put everything important at the end.
The game as a whole just feels mediocre.
Only good parts of the game were the final boss fight, which is completely different to the rest of the series so far, and the music is still as good as ever, though not as memorable.
Oh and Crow 👍🏼
This game is just too easy, you get given so much bullshit and the changes made to the orbment system made this game so easy to break, and while it wouldn’t mind if the game was fun, or this happened near the late game, it happens fairly early on once you can unlock most of your slots, and leaves the game to become a slog.
I wish I knew how many hours I wasted spamming the A button in battles, because that’s what the game became in pretty much every fight that wasn’t a boss battle. Past entries had challenge in most dungeons, and while did get easier near the end outside of boss fights, weren’t at the level of tedium this game presented.
While the last few hours were okay in comparison to the rest of the game, the constant exposition and plot twists were a bit annoying. Too much of this game feels like filler and then they put everything important at the end.
The game as a whole just feels mediocre.
Only good parts of the game were the final boss fight, which is completely different to the rest of the series so far, and the music is still as good as ever, though not as memorable.
Oh and Crow 👍🏼
haha...
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a blast with Trails of Cold Steel, but I can’t help but feel that was more the result of the game riding the coattails of its predecessors, rather than being a great experience in its own right. After the immaculate worldbuilding of the Crossbell games, I’m pretty much game for whatever this series has to offer, which is why I blazed through this nearly 60-hour game in a week in a half, but if you’re not already invested in the world building and overarching narrative like I am, I can’t see there being all too much here to appeal to you.
When I say this game has no plot, I’m only slightly exaggerating. The main antagonists who ostensibly drive the story of this game barely have any screen time. They show up at the end of most chapters to cause some trouble, but those events don’t feel like they meaningfully build up or into one another, leaving you with what in terms of a narrative? It feels like they wrote nine character arcs, a basic outline of Erebonian political tensions, and then decided to base the whole game around that. A lot of people will tell you that characters are the most important part of a story, and I agree with that to an extent, but your characters need to be doing something to make it interesting.
The thing about this that frustrates me the most is that at the end of chapter 6, you get an exposition dump outlining several major events that seem like they would be far better shown and not told, a move that goes from confusing to infuriating when you find out that in fact, it was shown, just not in the game itself. Instead, it was relegated to a Japan-only drama CD. What? I read online that this part was supposed to be included in the game, but was cut due to the Vita’s hardware limitations. If that’s true it makes even less sense! Surely the characterization from any of the first three chapters could’ve been moved somewhere else so that they had the space to fit in these clearly important plot points, but no. It appears that including 20 hours of almost nothing was a conscious decision on Falcom’s part, and not just your usual case of a mildly bloated JRPG being mildly bloated.
I do have to give credit where credit is due though, the final chapter was a high note for the game to end on in terms of story, and the final plot twist in particular was excellent. The writers also deserve an extra round of applause for making the Noble Faction devious enough that Chancellor Osborne, the most comically evil character in this series, did not seem like the obviously greater evil between the two. As usual, Olivier comes out on top.
On an unrelated note, I finally have a reason to talk about the combat again, as it’s received its first set of substantial changes since the foundation was laid all the way back in First Chapter. My opinions are mixed. I’m not a big fan of the changes made to the orbment system. While having specific quartz directly correlate to certain artes does simplify the system in a way that makes it more accessible, it comes at the cost of more engaging customization. Now that stacking quartz of the same element doesn’t add new artes to the list of artes you already have, you’re a lot more limited in what a single character can do. Some may view this as a welcome challenge, but to me it just meant that I became a lot less interested in creating specific builds, and preferred to just throw healing quartz on the healers while giving everyone else a random assortment of powerful offensive artes.
I thought the link system was a fun addition to combat that gives the player more of a reason to use regular physical attacks, but since the links break whenever a party member dies or is swapped out for another party member, I often forgot to re-set them, and as I result I didn’t utilize the feature nearly as much as the game probably wanted me to. I wish there was a way to make them set automatically.
As a final note on the gameplay, I felt that the balancing was a little off in this one. Of course, this wasn’t too big of a problem, as Falcom solved grinding ages ago with the retry offset feature (a mechanic with which each passing game I’m becoming more and more convinced is actually the best quality of life feature ever implemented in a JRPG) but for the first half of the game I was consistently underleveled, despite not avoiding encounters any more often than I did in the Crossbell games.
I would be remiss not to mention the characters, who, considering the lack of anything else happening in the writing department, are by default the highlight of the game. I’m being facetious, but in all seriousness, most of them do live up to the series standard. Towa easily ranks among my favorite characters in the series thus far; Sharon is thoroughly entertaining if for nothing else but the fact that she could not have been more suspicious if she tried; and I liked Sara a lot, which is funny because she’s just Schera again, and I didn’t like Schera at first. I do feel the need to note that Millium’s voice is obnoxious, but she meshes well with the rest of Class VII, so I ended up being pleasantly surprised with her character overall. There was admittedly a bit of an issue with screen time. Because of the way the field studies work, some characters got solid development, only to then be cast aside and promptly forgotten about for a couple hours. This was an especially big problem for Jusis and Machias, who the game didn’t seem to know what to do with after their feud concluded. It didn’t do any favors for Crow and Millium either, as they joined fairly late in the game, but overall I liked Class VII and the game’s supporting cast.
It’s strange, because Cold Steel was the series’ most accessible entry point for a while, and so I would guess that it’s where a lot of people started, but now that the full series is more or less widely available, I would never recommend starting with Cold Steel. There’s simply not enough happening to capture new players’ attention. I know that if I started here, I wouldn’t have finished the game in under two weeks—play sessions probably would’ve been spread across a couple months, if I finished it at all. On top of that, though they don’t go into so much detail that new players would be lost, they casually reference the events of the Crossbell games far more often than those games reference the Sky arc. As someone who is in the loop, it was cool to see those events unfold from afar, but to new players it probably would seem strange that such major events are being relegated to background details.
Hardcore Trails fans would probably call it sacrilege, but if you’re not like me, and you’re a normal person who is hesitant to jump into a series of twelve interconnecting JRPGs that last 30-60 hours each, I would actually recommend you start with Zero. Of all the arc openers, it hooks you in the fastest and has the strongest world building. Then, if you like the Crossbell arc, you can go back to the Sky games to see what you’ve missed, knowing that it’s a much slower burn, and once you’re finally all caught up, you can start on the Cold Steel games.
When I say this game has no plot, I’m only slightly exaggerating. The main antagonists who ostensibly drive the story of this game barely have any screen time. They show up at the end of most chapters to cause some trouble, but those events don’t feel like they meaningfully build up or into one another, leaving you with what in terms of a narrative? It feels like they wrote nine character arcs, a basic outline of Erebonian political tensions, and then decided to base the whole game around that. A lot of people will tell you that characters are the most important part of a story, and I agree with that to an extent, but your characters need to be doing something to make it interesting.
The thing about this that frustrates me the most is that at the end of chapter 6, you get an exposition dump outlining several major events that seem like they would be far better shown and not told, a move that goes from confusing to infuriating when you find out that in fact, it was shown, just not in the game itself. Instead, it was relegated to a Japan-only drama CD. What? I read online that this part was supposed to be included in the game, but was cut due to the Vita’s hardware limitations. If that’s true it makes even less sense! Surely the characterization from any of the first three chapters could’ve been moved somewhere else so that they had the space to fit in these clearly important plot points, but no. It appears that including 20 hours of almost nothing was a conscious decision on Falcom’s part, and not just your usual case of a mildly bloated JRPG being mildly bloated.
I do have to give credit where credit is due though, the final chapter was a high note for the game to end on in terms of story, and the final plot twist in particular was excellent. The writers also deserve an extra round of applause for making the Noble Faction devious enough that Chancellor Osborne, the most comically evil character in this series, did not seem like the obviously greater evil between the two. As usual, Olivier comes out on top.
On an unrelated note, I finally have a reason to talk about the combat again, as it’s received its first set of substantial changes since the foundation was laid all the way back in First Chapter. My opinions are mixed. I’m not a big fan of the changes made to the orbment system. While having specific quartz directly correlate to certain artes does simplify the system in a way that makes it more accessible, it comes at the cost of more engaging customization. Now that stacking quartz of the same element doesn’t add new artes to the list of artes you already have, you’re a lot more limited in what a single character can do. Some may view this as a welcome challenge, but to me it just meant that I became a lot less interested in creating specific builds, and preferred to just throw healing quartz on the healers while giving everyone else a random assortment of powerful offensive artes.
I thought the link system was a fun addition to combat that gives the player more of a reason to use regular physical attacks, but since the links break whenever a party member dies or is swapped out for another party member, I often forgot to re-set them, and as I result I didn’t utilize the feature nearly as much as the game probably wanted me to. I wish there was a way to make them set automatically.
As a final note on the gameplay, I felt that the balancing was a little off in this one. Of course, this wasn’t too big of a problem, as Falcom solved grinding ages ago with the retry offset feature (a mechanic with which each passing game I’m becoming more and more convinced is actually the best quality of life feature ever implemented in a JRPG) but for the first half of the game I was consistently underleveled, despite not avoiding encounters any more often than I did in the Crossbell games.
I would be remiss not to mention the characters, who, considering the lack of anything else happening in the writing department, are by default the highlight of the game. I’m being facetious, but in all seriousness, most of them do live up to the series standard. Towa easily ranks among my favorite characters in the series thus far; Sharon is thoroughly entertaining if for nothing else but the fact that she could not have been more suspicious if she tried; and I liked Sara a lot, which is funny because she’s just Schera again, and I didn’t like Schera at first. I do feel the need to note that Millium’s voice is obnoxious, but she meshes well with the rest of Class VII, so I ended up being pleasantly surprised with her character overall. There was admittedly a bit of an issue with screen time. Because of the way the field studies work, some characters got solid development, only to then be cast aside and promptly forgotten about for a couple hours. This was an especially big problem for Jusis and Machias, who the game didn’t seem to know what to do with after their feud concluded. It didn’t do any favors for Crow and Millium either, as they joined fairly late in the game, but overall I liked Class VII and the game’s supporting cast.
It’s strange, because Cold Steel was the series’ most accessible entry point for a while, and so I would guess that it’s where a lot of people started, but now that the full series is more or less widely available, I would never recommend starting with Cold Steel. There’s simply not enough happening to capture new players’ attention. I know that if I started here, I wouldn’t have finished the game in under two weeks—play sessions probably would’ve been spread across a couple months, if I finished it at all. On top of that, though they don’t go into so much detail that new players would be lost, they casually reference the events of the Crossbell games far more often than those games reference the Sky arc. As someone who is in the loop, it was cool to see those events unfold from afar, but to new players it probably would seem strange that such major events are being relegated to background details.
Hardcore Trails fans would probably call it sacrilege, but if you’re not like me, and you’re a normal person who is hesitant to jump into a series of twelve interconnecting JRPGs that last 30-60 hours each, I would actually recommend you start with Zero. Of all the arc openers, it hooks you in the fastest and has the strongest world building. Then, if you like the Crossbell arc, you can go back to the Sky games to see what you’ve missed, knowing that it’s a much slower burn, and once you’re finally all caught up, you can start on the Cold Steel games.
This was the longest game to date, but only in favor to the biggest piece of worldbuilding seen to date with the enourmous land of Erebonia. The nation is by far the most interesting and developed with all kinds of traditions and names to familiarize. It's neat seeing how many familiar faces populate the school and even country, and the story while slow, built everything up incredibly well. It's a lot like FC, with an ending that hits equally as hard. I'm left just absorbing it all. I'm in love with this series man.
I love how the soldiers in the opening are like omg and cowering before a group of enemy tanks bout to murder them and one starts yelling (in his off-the-shelf "soldier in a battlefield calling for backup" voice) to "get in touch with w the eight armored division." Not contact, not radio, not call, but "get in touch with". Ask them how's their day. Send a polite request for assistance.
It then cuts to a group of high school kids finding dead soldiers everywhere. They take it upon themselves to save the day on their own. I have no doubt they will succeed.
It then cuts to a group of high school kids finding dead soldiers everywhere. They take it upon themselves to save the day on their own. I have no doubt they will succeed.
This review contains spoilers
The first Trails game I ever actually beat, Cold Steel I will always have a special place in my heart for getting me into the series. I tried playing Sky FC first but gave up after getting bored around the beginning of chapter 2, and even though this game has a lot of the same problems, they didn’t bother me as much for a few reasons.
First, exploring the world from a third person perspective made it a lot easier for me to get immersed than the old top down view (Even if some of the animations are rough as fuck. Seriously there’s a fight scene in this game that’s laughable with how badly it’s animated). Erebonia by itself is an incredibly interesting setting since you’re seeing things from the perspective of the people who live in the “Evil JRPG Empire.” The way this game and its sequels flesh out the country and its people are why I stuck with this through its many problems.
And the biggest problem is the pacing. Good. Fucking. God. The pacing. I’m going to preface this by saying that there is not a single Trails game out there with good pacing. Even Azure at its best struggled with this and that’s considered the best paced game in the series. But here, Holy Shit. This is one of the slowest fucking games I have ever played in my life. Not from a gameplay standpoint since the combat is much better and has a lot more going on than FCs (another reason why I beat this first) but the story moves at such a slow fucking pace that the only word to properly describe it is “unreasonable.” It is unreasonably slow. This is the kind of game that can actually put someone to sleep if they don’t care about really intricate worldbuilding or slice of life character stuff. And I really liked all that and still thought the game needed to pick the fuck up way faster than it did.
Thankfully, this game has one of the best endings I’ve ever seen, and it’s a perfect example of how to do a cliffhanger right. It hits you like a punch to the gut and makes you desperate to know what happens next. It’s something that it learned well from Sky FC (with that cliffhanger having the same effect on me when I went back and beat it), and something that CS III should have taken notes from considering how fucking bad that game’s ending is. But this does mean that CS I has now directly tied the quality of its story to its sequel, because while the cliffhanger might be effective it’s not a satisfying ending at all. But when you take it by itself, Cold Steel I is a good game to play like a few times a month over the course of a year. It’s insanely fucking long for a game that’s pure setup and way too slow for its own good, but I’d say it still succeeds at what it sets out to do and is worth playing.
First, exploring the world from a third person perspective made it a lot easier for me to get immersed than the old top down view (Even if some of the animations are rough as fuck. Seriously there’s a fight scene in this game that’s laughable with how badly it’s animated). Erebonia by itself is an incredibly interesting setting since you’re seeing things from the perspective of the people who live in the “Evil JRPG Empire.” The way this game and its sequels flesh out the country and its people are why I stuck with this through its many problems.
And the biggest problem is the pacing. Good. Fucking. God. The pacing. I’m going to preface this by saying that there is not a single Trails game out there with good pacing. Even Azure at its best struggled with this and that’s considered the best paced game in the series. But here, Holy Shit. This is one of the slowest fucking games I have ever played in my life. Not from a gameplay standpoint since the combat is much better and has a lot more going on than FCs (another reason why I beat this first) but the story moves at such a slow fucking pace that the only word to properly describe it is “unreasonable.” It is unreasonably slow. This is the kind of game that can actually put someone to sleep if they don’t care about really intricate worldbuilding or slice of life character stuff. And I really liked all that and still thought the game needed to pick the fuck up way faster than it did.
Thankfully, this game has one of the best endings I’ve ever seen, and it’s a perfect example of how to do a cliffhanger right. It hits you like a punch to the gut and makes you desperate to know what happens next. It’s something that it learned well from Sky FC (with that cliffhanger having the same effect on me when I went back and beat it), and something that CS III should have taken notes from considering how fucking bad that game’s ending is. But this does mean that CS I has now directly tied the quality of its story to its sequel, because while the cliffhanger might be effective it’s not a satisfying ending at all. But when you take it by itself, Cold Steel I is a good game to play like a few times a month over the course of a year. It’s insanely fucking long for a game that’s pure setup and way too slow for its own good, but I’d say it still succeeds at what it sets out to do and is worth playing.
Going into cold steel 1 honestly my outlook was somewhat bleak considering the reputation it had prior to me playing it, but after completing the game i'm happy to know that the hate for it is so OVERBLOWNNN. And i assume most of the hate for it is either unmerited or from people who got into the series with this game without prior knowledge.
I think this game is pretty solid, taking it's time to explore Erebonia and building it up which is the massive appeal of the series for me. This is a given to any intro trails game so i didn't particularly feel it was 'slow' as i'm used to the formula. Albeit at first it may seem formulaic but it works well and Erebonia is so damn INTERESTING!
I Kind of had some concerns about the cast size being so massive and how they were gonna handle 9 whole characters but i believe CS1 handled it pretty well to build up the foundations for alot of these characters. I'm actually pretty invested into Rean as a character and i think he could be pretty amazing down the line.
Besides the usual shit, Trails games always have amazing soundtracks and this game is no exception. First time hearing 'Oinaru Chikara' is an experience plus the gameplay is as fun as it's always been.
THE ENDINGGGGG UOGHHHHHHHHHH. I'm hyped for the rest of the Cold steel games man
I think this game is pretty solid, taking it's time to explore Erebonia and building it up which is the massive appeal of the series for me. This is a given to any intro trails game so i didn't particularly feel it was 'slow' as i'm used to the formula. Albeit at first it may seem formulaic but it works well and Erebonia is so damn INTERESTING!
I Kind of had some concerns about the cast size being so massive and how they were gonna handle 9 whole characters but i believe CS1 handled it pretty well to build up the foundations for alot of these characters. I'm actually pretty invested into Rean as a character and i think he could be pretty amazing down the line.
Besides the usual shit, Trails games always have amazing soundtracks and this game is no exception. First time hearing 'Oinaru Chikara' is an experience plus the gameplay is as fun as it's always been.
THE ENDINGGGGG UOGHHHHHHHHHH. I'm hyped for the rest of the Cold steel games man
As someone who had not played the previous Trails games, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was able to grasp when it came to the worldbuilding and history of Erobonia. The cast of characters is a mixed bag with some being great, and others having very little meaningful things to say. *The soundtrack has nothing but bangers and rivals some of my favorite gaming soundtracks such as FF7 and Mass Effect.
TL;DR, Wind!
TL;DR, Wind!
absolute slop
This review contains spoilers
I'd to start by saying that cold steel 1 is probably one of the best PS Vita games out there.
That being said, it is by far the worst trails game in the series. The great characters we had in previous games are now gone in favor of a bloated cast, harem mechanics and one dimensional genéric anime tropes. The game started on a bad note as the way they choose to introduce the main girl is by having her fall on the MC and then slap him for it which i'd be fine with any other JRPG, but it doesn't feel like it belongs to trails at all.
There is no reason for the cast being as big as it is other then trying to copy Persona's success. Bonding system was already a thing in trails to Zero and Azure but it did'nt feel like it was sacrificing the characters for it. Each chapter you are allocated with 3 to 4 different set of classmates besides Rean, the main character. This makes it so the game doesn't have enough time to develop most of them, and those they do most times end up feeling shallow.
It doesn't help at all as well that 90% of said classmates never interact with each other unless Rean, the MC, is present. Later games try to imply how the Class 7 is one big family, but you will never see a girl interacting with any other boy or vice-versa, after all, they can't do that otherwise it would ruin Reans harem. And it goes even beyond that as you won't even see girl to girl or boy to boy interactions in the game most of the time. By the end of CS2 i felt like Class 7 had more chimestry with side character students from theire clubs than with eachother with rare exceptions such as Jusis and Milion.
Unfortunatly, the game also doesn't have much of a story until the epilogue, leading to the civil war in CS2. In some ways it feels like both CS1 and CS2 are trying to redo what Sky FC did in some parts.
Bracers were an excellent ideia of giving a reason as to why the characters would do minial side quests for the population. The SSS in crossbell, was also a good ideia of doing the samething for another reason that felt believable. Class 7 and Rean in other hand, feels like they do it just because the higher ups tell them too. There isn't any goal as the story goes on, it feels way to passive, like your only goal in the game is to find missing cats or deliver some goods to town people.
Yes, they stumble in some issues along those chores that will lead to events showing deeper problems in the Empire, but unlike the Bracer couple looking for the missing father and trying to be promoted and the SSS crew trying to end corruption in Crossbell, they don't have an actual motivation to do those things. That ends up making the pace feel even slower then the first Sky game.
Another complaint i have with this structure, which fortunatly is solved in CS2, is how unlike Sky and Crossbell, the empire doesn't feel like an actual country in gameplay. Crossbell and Sky makes the character travel on foot to learn about the countries before they give you any sort of fast travel (if any in case of sky), which helps with world building by making those interconected cities and villages feel like they form an actual real country. CS1 in the other hand, has Trista as a hub town, that then fast travels the player to other regions every chapter. They use a map to show where exactly you are going, but it doesn't even compare to the feeling of being able to go from point A to B by yourself.
One positive thing i have to note is that CS1 lays the foundation for the great combat system of CS2. I'd say this far, all trails games had great combat systems, each improving from the last, but CS2 takes the best aspects of each, such as team attacks from zero and burst/overdrive from azure and gives you a lot of tools to experiment. Although, it is worth to note that CS1 also sacrifices the strategy behind orbement building, which i'm not the biggest fan of such a change, but i came to accept as i played future games.
Prior to cold steel, you had to use certain amounts of a element quartz before it would unlock a Arts to be used, after CS1, those Arts have their own quartz, so it's more about squizing as much power as you can in a character instead of choosing wisely what stats you want and what arts are available with them.
With all that said, i think cold steel is a decent RPG if you are willing to overcome it's horrible pacing, has a great epilogue leading to CS2 and still has one of the best combat systems in any turn-based RPG. But it fall flat as a trails game from what we came to expect from both Sky and Crossbell arcs.
Some say this is the best place to start the series as as it is the most modern entrie game in the series, but i wholeheartly disagree with that. Starting with CS1 means you will spoil the best trails has to offer so far with Sky and Crossbell, although doing so will probably make you be a more fond of this game than i was for sure, as most of my issues with it come from knowing how great of a series trails has been before CS1.
That being said, it is by far the worst trails game in the series. The great characters we had in previous games are now gone in favor of a bloated cast, harem mechanics and one dimensional genéric anime tropes. The game started on a bad note as the way they choose to introduce the main girl is by having her fall on the MC and then slap him for it which i'd be fine with any other JRPG, but it doesn't feel like it belongs to trails at all.
There is no reason for the cast being as big as it is other then trying to copy Persona's success. Bonding system was already a thing in trails to Zero and Azure but it did'nt feel like it was sacrificing the characters for it. Each chapter you are allocated with 3 to 4 different set of classmates besides Rean, the main character. This makes it so the game doesn't have enough time to develop most of them, and those they do most times end up feeling shallow.
It doesn't help at all as well that 90% of said classmates never interact with each other unless Rean, the MC, is present. Later games try to imply how the Class 7 is one big family, but you will never see a girl interacting with any other boy or vice-versa, after all, they can't do that otherwise it would ruin Reans harem. And it goes even beyond that as you won't even see girl to girl or boy to boy interactions in the game most of the time. By the end of CS2 i felt like Class 7 had more chimestry with side character students from theire clubs than with eachother with rare exceptions such as Jusis and Milion.
Unfortunatly, the game also doesn't have much of a story until the epilogue, leading to the civil war in CS2. In some ways it feels like both CS1 and CS2 are trying to redo what Sky FC did in some parts.
Bracers were an excellent ideia of giving a reason as to why the characters would do minial side quests for the population. The SSS in crossbell, was also a good ideia of doing the samething for another reason that felt believable. Class 7 and Rean in other hand, feels like they do it just because the higher ups tell them too. There isn't any goal as the story goes on, it feels way to passive, like your only goal in the game is to find missing cats or deliver some goods to town people.
Yes, they stumble in some issues along those chores that will lead to events showing deeper problems in the Empire, but unlike the Bracer couple looking for the missing father and trying to be promoted and the SSS crew trying to end corruption in Crossbell, they don't have an actual motivation to do those things. That ends up making the pace feel even slower then the first Sky game.
Another complaint i have with this structure, which fortunatly is solved in CS2, is how unlike Sky and Crossbell, the empire doesn't feel like an actual country in gameplay. Crossbell and Sky makes the character travel on foot to learn about the countries before they give you any sort of fast travel (if any in case of sky), which helps with world building by making those interconected cities and villages feel like they form an actual real country. CS1 in the other hand, has Trista as a hub town, that then fast travels the player to other regions every chapter. They use a map to show where exactly you are going, but it doesn't even compare to the feeling of being able to go from point A to B by yourself.
One positive thing i have to note is that CS1 lays the foundation for the great combat system of CS2. I'd say this far, all trails games had great combat systems, each improving from the last, but CS2 takes the best aspects of each, such as team attacks from zero and burst/overdrive from azure and gives you a lot of tools to experiment. Although, it is worth to note that CS1 also sacrifices the strategy behind orbement building, which i'm not the biggest fan of such a change, but i came to accept as i played future games.
Prior to cold steel, you had to use certain amounts of a element quartz before it would unlock a Arts to be used, after CS1, those Arts have their own quartz, so it's more about squizing as much power as you can in a character instead of choosing wisely what stats you want and what arts are available with them.
With all that said, i think cold steel is a decent RPG if you are willing to overcome it's horrible pacing, has a great epilogue leading to CS2 and still has one of the best combat systems in any turn-based RPG. But it fall flat as a trails game from what we came to expect from both Sky and Crossbell arcs.
Some say this is the best place to start the series as as it is the most modern entrie game in the series, but i wholeheartly disagree with that. Starting with CS1 means you will spoil the best trails has to offer so far with Sky and Crossbell, although doing so will probably make you be a more fond of this game than i was for sure, as most of my issues with it come from knowing how great of a series trails has been before CS1.
Rean schwarzer
Some of the worst writing ever. Combat is enjoyable, as usual.
Overall, just an ok game. Im not a fan of how hard they lean into anime tropes, this was already seen in previous installments but it feels even worse here to the point its making a major change in how I see the game. Game is easy to break but that makes it fun. I did enjoy my time but its not astounding by fan means and could have been cut down a lot
The legend of heroes, what lies behind this name is a legacy carried by a Japanese company named Nihon Falcom, whose throughout the years has been crafting some of the most ambitious world building. The sub serie Trail is one part of the said legacy, it abides to the simple and neat concept : every game within the sub serie must takes place on the same continent namely Zemuria. To be even more precise, Trail is made of multiple arcs, and each of them focus on one specific country in Zemuria. Doing so, different stories are interconnected, characters from different games cross path and so on. Trail of Cold Steel is the third arc, it proposes players this time to discover the infamous Erebonian Empire with a brand new main character : Rean Scharwzer. The challenge is double, Trail of Cold Steel 1 must respects its elders, and takes the first step to become one of them. And what would you know, Falcom actually does it in a pretty convincing way.
Meticulous and self aware of how some may portray their universe : convoluted, Falcom in this title outdo themselves and manage to properly introduce a main cast of 9 students, enrolled in a military school they will be tasked of traveling all around the country and accomplish various missions. This classic yet efficient setup, allows players to dive into the world through the eyes of characters that also have much to discover and learn. First thing first, they get to know each other, figuring out how to work as a team, spoiler alert : it won't be easy. There will be tension, arguments, and disputes making everything more believable. On the flip side, there are comedy moments and even some fluff, striking a balance between the two extremes.
While some games would either ignore or rush such bonding moments, Trail of Cold Steel 1 embrace this slice-of-life aspect without hesitation and that's refreshing. At last, a game which takes its time, my affection is not granted, putting some piano and violin over a wannabe sad flashback, 5 minutes after I met a character, it is just not enough for me. This deliberate slow burn coupled with good writing allows the main cast to escape typical archetypes, becoming more nuanced, deep and likeable individuals, a primal reason as to why the ending of this game is so impactful.
Regarding the quote on quote good writing, I'll try to prove my point without delving too much into spoilers. For instance, there is among the main cast a foreigner who will encounter cultural shocks, a clever way to introduce basics naturally and avoid awkward exposition scenes. Another example, early in the game Rean with 2 other classmates face a special opponent, later in the game the exact same fight occurs, this time around the player is free to choose any character. Using the same composition as the first encounter will trigger unique dialogues, showcasing Falcom's attention to details. Obviously, those examples are mere details, alone they do not do much, but there is plenty of them making the story a great, if not the greatest asset of this game.
As the story unfolds, Cold Steel 1 winks references, characters, and details that only people who played previous titles might understand. A gratification bow from Falcom to their fan base, a delicate pratice, with too many references the game would be a past worshipper, with not enough references or respect for its predecessors, it would be a no root delinquent. But once again credits where it's due, Falcom manages to balance everything making this title a great entry point for the franchise.
Without being directly related to the main story itself, an issue arises with the romance system introduced seemingly as a last-minute decision. If being allowed to choose a romance isn't necessarily bad per se, the game was not conceived with this idea in mind from the start. The main story does highlight a romantic tension between Rean and a certain girl, leading to inevitable frustration for players deviating from this "canon" route, players following the "canon" route will be left craving for more with a relationship that barely progresses. Does the main character always need to be the one and only plot device, the talk of all towns, and to possess a harem ? Well Falcom's answer is no, no, and yes. Very unfortunate, this romance system is a today defect and a burden to become.
Aside from that, there are no significant issues. The game could benefit from some more QOL, but the blissful turbo mode makes up for a lot. The combat system is a classic turn based JRPG, not the most unique system, it still offers a decent amount of character customization and strategy. There are a few fights that you cannot win, something that always gave me mixed feelings. Also dungeons are linear for the most part. To sum up, nothing but minor downfalls that cannot taint the charm of this game.
Not only charming, this game feels genuine and endearing. Maybe because of this weird blend of peculiar outdated graphics and top notch music. Maybe it's due to the vividly lack of budget contrasting with the actual result product, which by the way, put to shame a number of AAA productions in more than one department. Maybe it's because of Falcom's history itself regarding the conception of Trails games, from XSEED's disillusion and struggle facing the localization, to a prevented tragic event among Carpe Fulgur, to the unfortunate arrival of NISA into the dance. Or maybe it's just me being emotional despite being a cold cynical jerk.
To conclude, despite some flaws, Trail of Cold Steel 1 excels in its assigned tasks, a prowess later installments will struggle to replicate. There would be many things to say about this game that I've forgotten to mention, but I might as well advice anyone interested in this game or franchise to give it a try. I bet 50 miras you will enjoy this game.
Meticulous and self aware of how some may portray their universe : convoluted, Falcom in this title outdo themselves and manage to properly introduce a main cast of 9 students, enrolled in a military school they will be tasked of traveling all around the country and accomplish various missions. This classic yet efficient setup, allows players to dive into the world through the eyes of characters that also have much to discover and learn. First thing first, they get to know each other, figuring out how to work as a team, spoiler alert : it won't be easy. There will be tension, arguments, and disputes making everything more believable. On the flip side, there are comedy moments and even some fluff, striking a balance between the two extremes.
While some games would either ignore or rush such bonding moments, Trail of Cold Steel 1 embrace this slice-of-life aspect without hesitation and that's refreshing. At last, a game which takes its time, my affection is not granted, putting some piano and violin over a wannabe sad flashback, 5 minutes after I met a character, it is just not enough for me. This deliberate slow burn coupled with good writing allows the main cast to escape typical archetypes, becoming more nuanced, deep and likeable individuals, a primal reason as to why the ending of this game is so impactful.
Regarding the quote on quote good writing, I'll try to prove my point without delving too much into spoilers. For instance, there is among the main cast a foreigner who will encounter cultural shocks, a clever way to introduce basics naturally and avoid awkward exposition scenes. Another example, early in the game Rean with 2 other classmates face a special opponent, later in the game the exact same fight occurs, this time around the player is free to choose any character. Using the same composition as the first encounter will trigger unique dialogues, showcasing Falcom's attention to details. Obviously, those examples are mere details, alone they do not do much, but there is plenty of them making the story a great, if not the greatest asset of this game.
As the story unfolds, Cold Steel 1 winks references, characters, and details that only people who played previous titles might understand. A gratification bow from Falcom to their fan base, a delicate pratice, with too many references the game would be a past worshipper, with not enough references or respect for its predecessors, it would be a no root delinquent. But once again credits where it's due, Falcom manages to balance everything making this title a great entry point for the franchise.
Without being directly related to the main story itself, an issue arises with the romance system introduced seemingly as a last-minute decision. If being allowed to choose a romance isn't necessarily bad per se, the game was not conceived with this idea in mind from the start. The main story does highlight a romantic tension between Rean and a certain girl, leading to inevitable frustration for players deviating from this "canon" route, players following the "canon" route will be left craving for more with a relationship that barely progresses. Does the main character always need to be the one and only plot device, the talk of all towns, and to possess a harem ? Well Falcom's answer is no, no, and yes. Very unfortunate, this romance system is a today defect and a burden to become.
Aside from that, there are no significant issues. The game could benefit from some more QOL, but the blissful turbo mode makes up for a lot. The combat system is a classic turn based JRPG, not the most unique system, it still offers a decent amount of character customization and strategy. There are a few fights that you cannot win, something that always gave me mixed feelings. Also dungeons are linear for the most part. To sum up, nothing but minor downfalls that cannot taint the charm of this game.
Not only charming, this game feels genuine and endearing. Maybe because of this weird blend of peculiar outdated graphics and top notch music. Maybe it's due to the vividly lack of budget contrasting with the actual result product, which by the way, put to shame a number of AAA productions in more than one department. Maybe it's because of Falcom's history itself regarding the conception of Trails games, from XSEED's disillusion and struggle facing the localization, to a prevented tragic event among Carpe Fulgur, to the unfortunate arrival of NISA into the dance. Or maybe it's just me being emotional despite being a cold cynical jerk.
To conclude, despite some flaws, Trail of Cold Steel 1 excels in its assigned tasks, a prowess later installments will struggle to replicate. There would be many things to say about this game that I've forgotten to mention, but I might as well advice anyone interested in this game or franchise to give it a try. I bet 50 miras you will enjoy this game.
[LEARN THE DIFFERENCE]
Has politics (BAD)
Don't has politics (GOOD)
Thank goodness they will never put politics in my beloved Kiseki games.
Has politics (BAD)
Don't has politics (GOOD)
Thank goodness they will never put politics in my beloved Kiseki games.
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers for Sky FC/SC, Zero, Azure, and CS1
I dunno, man. Maybe it was my tempered expectations. From hearing that the Cold Steel arc was filler, or my overhype from Azure. Maybe I was just really in the mood for an RPG. Maybe it was just one of those right time right place things. Maybe it was something I don’t really wanna bring up on backloggd dot com. I’m not really sure. But fuck, this was awesome. It’s got the second best ending in the series(out of the 6 games I’ve played). Nothing beats the ending of FC. The cast, for how big they are all end up feeling relatively unique, the soundtrack has a metric ton of highs compared to the previous games, the gameplay is actually fun with a streamlined quartz system, I could go on and on as a ramble but let’s get down to business. I got this format down to a science now.
Characters: There’s not many I dislike, with the exception of one which I have a whole dedicated rant towards. They all really grew on me and feel unique, I think my favorites are probably Crow, Fie and Rean. I liked Alisa’s arc, it hit home for me, same with Crow’s words at the festival afterparty. Fie is definitely going to be expanded on in future, and I’m excited to see where her arc goes. I was worried after Machias’ and Jusis’ arc that Laura and Fie’s would be the exact same, but they’re different. Fie and Laura become lesbros and I loved their dual, not only that it was where you fight Rean and Machias and it just shows how much they get each other and link well, I loved that part. Machias/Jusis conflict on the other hand is very abrasive and loud, but then gets quietly resolved once they overhear each other’s struggles and come to terms with why they feel a certain way. The cherry on top was the cheesy duet they did at the concert. All of Class 7 feels unique in their own way, even if some of the tropes overshadow their uniqueness.
Music: First off, Exceed is a worthy successor to Fateful Confrontation. I wasn’t really feeling it at first but after the C fight I was a huge fan. The regular battle theme is pretty good, definitely better than Azure but doesn’t beat get over the barrier or sophisticated fight. I was a huge fan of “Class 7’s Inevitable Struggle” the song I don’t know the name of that vaguely sounds like Inevitable Struggle but is clearly different. Even the Practical Exam theme which has this awful out of tune guitar at the height of the song grew on me. Is that you, Singa? The town themes for the field studies reminded me of the unique town themes of Sky. They all felt different and I don’t remember Crossbell having that many themes. The dining bar theme is awesome and reminds me of Arc en Ciel. The “ethereal” themes that play when you fight otherworldly things are really great too. The credits theme was too good. Felt like an OP for CS2 tbh but I was groovin the entire time. I didn’t think it was possible but Trails now has a soundtrack that isn’t mostly mediocre/forgettable.
Story/Lore :So the whole shtick of CS1’s story is that it’s happening concurrently with the events of Azure. Good thing I forgot most of what happened there lol. I mostly remember the Crois stuff but I forget how much the Trade Conference was a big deal. Now with the chancellor either fucking dead or gravely wounded I really wanna go back and see what he told the SSS in Azure. Might have a double meaning. I didn’t expect Sharon to be an Ouroubouros Enforcer, it is kinda cool. I liked how there was a single fucking offhand mention of Estelle and Joshua from Bleublanc, it made me giggle a bit. Anyway the story itself is kinda like Sky FC(which I have some nostalgia for by now, I miss the days when it was just Joshua and Estelle doing junior bracer things). Class 7 ends up going on a bunch of field studies to different towns in Erebonia to see how things are. It’s simple, but I really like it. As stated in the music section I really like how each place has its own unique atmosphere, the Nord Highlands and Legram are examples of this. I had initially thought that CS2 was going to be the rest of Class 7’s first year, but with Rean off to who knows where by the ending, things seem to be taking a drastic turn. The ending was fantastic, but I already mentioned it. I still like the police feel to Zero more but the story here is great. As for lore/worldbuilding, I’m really enjoying seeing how the technology is evolving as well as politics. We get to know more about Calvard here, if just a bit, and Alisa just mentions air conditioning and everybody loses their shit. It’s a really stupid example but it does show just how much they’ve come and how far the world still has to advance. Important figures have flip phones, but I wonder when they will take off with the public, or the orbal net. It’s just a real joy to see this world advance bit by bit. Erebonia is a very different continent from what I had imagined it to be, the Nobles vs Reformists is a really compelling narrative and I hope they can do some unique things with it like they did with Crossbell’s Indepence. I hear CS3 and 4 practically require you to have played Crossbell beforehand so I bet those games expand on the slideshow we got as an ending to Azure/Crossbell’s independence arc. Which means I get to see my boys Wade and Wazy again. Anyway I like how Cold Steel’s story feels like a piece to a much bigger puzzle between Crossbell, Erebonia, and Calvard.
Gameplay: Remember two years or so ago when I went on a huge rant about why the Sky games’ combat sucks? Probably not, in fact dont go read them they’re probably really fucking cringy to read back. But the gist was the quartz system that needed an entire supplemental manual to figure out how to use arts made me avoid the combat like the plague and just spam the weaken enemy button after I died. And bosses’ overreliance on cheap status gimmicks to make the fight difficult sucked as well(looking at you Renne). By the time I got to Zero/Azure I was just coasting on easy mode, not giving whatever changes they brought a chance. Does CS1 change anything? Yes. I love the combat in this game. The quartz system was streamlined, there’s now like 500 different quartz that you can fuse to make a certain skill. Technically it is pretty cluttered but I’ll take it over the other system. You simply find a skill(s) you want and then fuse it, and now can use it. I don’t know why the Sky/Crossbell games weren’t like this. The regular combat loop is fun, and I honestly like how S-Breaks were tied to character growth, it really made early game difficult but rewarding. Resounding Beat is kinda OP and carried the first 20 hours or so for me. Bosses are also really fun, and exploitable if you know how to abuse the turn order. I really like that aspect, it adds another layer to pre-planning. If a boss is set to get a 10% HP Boost you gotta scramble to find a way to avoid that outcome. Or in the places with higher elements, you can grind and wipe out enemies with ease if you keep track of deathblow effects. The only Boss I had to use the weaken enemy button on were C and either Floor 5 or 6’s Schoolhouse boss. I went all out on V so C was too much for a back to back fight. (I tried him like 5 times then weakened once and then 3 attempts later I got him). The Schoolhouse boss I just didn’t save so I didn’t have a way to grind S-Breaks or anything and didn’t want to do the dungeon again. Patrick too, maybe? But that was because I thought you needed to get the goals to progress. Anyway, point is the only reason I used the weaken enemy button were my own faults, not because of infuriating game design. CS1 combat is SO much better, and I feel like if I were to ever replay the series I’d find something to love in the previous 5 games combat, too. Not really a place to mention this elsewhere in the gameplay section but the one on one brawl with Crow as the true final boss was awesome, I’m a sucker for shit like that.
Biggest Gripes:Angie. Not only does her dubbed actress grate on my ears, but her entire character is just “haha lesbian sexual harrassment”. She honestly makes my blood boil I fucking hate Angie so much. The social sim element feel tacked on. The Septian calendar's inclusion doesn’t add anything. It’s like Falcom saw the success of persona 3 and 4 and decided to include elements of it in the next trails game but god they just really fucking suck. The free day quests are fetch quests outside of schoolhouse trips, thankfully in the later chapters the schoolhouse is the only required quest on these days. The bonding events feel really fucky. they didn’t commit to full on social link style events so they’re just kinda click through things to get a few arcus points. The bonding events just end up feeling like a nothingburger. Dungeons still suck, they were never a strong suit of trails but with the move to full on 3d there seems to be more unintentional backtracking. It’s the same as in the previous games where you go find a switch, hit it and then go back but because the dungeons all look so samey I ended up missing a ton of those switches and had to go back. The final dungeon was a slog too, though easily binged. The song for that dungeon was great. Another issue I had was some of the characters feel tropey/ samey to other characters in the series. This is mostly alleviated by the end of the game with all of Class 7’s backstories mostly revealed but I worry that their arcs are going to take on a similar path to characters from previous games. I get this is a relatively shonen rpg and that kind of overlap should be expected, but iunno, I still hope they find new ground to cover. My biggest worry for this is Crow himself, I legit didn’t see the twist coming(I figured it was Campnella for whatever reason) but I hope that his arc isn’t just Joshua’s arc again.
Final Thoughts: Honestly? Surpasses Zero for me. The best Trails game there is. The next “peak trails” is supposedly Reverie but I learned my lesson with Azure, keeping my expectations in check for that one. On schedule Reverie is gonna be played early 2025 tho. I don’t even own it yet. I’ll jump into CS2 sometime this year, but I am definitely watching all those recap videos first lol. So many small details I’d forgotten and need to brush up on. Despite the fact it takes place concurrently with Azure I’d forgotten so much that some of the developments got me a second time. Damn you Ian Grimwood and your shitty game ruining twists. After a few days of post game depression I’ll hop into Raincode and after that… well hoo boy the rest of the year is fucking stacked methinks. Many amazing games in the backlog I’m gonna play this year.
I dunno, man. Maybe it was my tempered expectations. From hearing that the Cold Steel arc was filler, or my overhype from Azure. Maybe I was just really in the mood for an RPG. Maybe it was just one of those right time right place things. Maybe it was something I don’t really wanna bring up on backloggd dot com. I’m not really sure. But fuck, this was awesome. It’s got the second best ending in the series(out of the 6 games I’ve played). Nothing beats the ending of FC. The cast, for how big they are all end up feeling relatively unique, the soundtrack has a metric ton of highs compared to the previous games, the gameplay is actually fun with a streamlined quartz system, I could go on and on as a ramble but let’s get down to business. I got this format down to a science now.
Characters: There’s not many I dislike, with the exception of one which I have a whole dedicated rant towards. They all really grew on me and feel unique, I think my favorites are probably Crow, Fie and Rean. I liked Alisa’s arc, it hit home for me, same with Crow’s words at the festival afterparty. Fie is definitely going to be expanded on in future, and I’m excited to see where her arc goes. I was worried after Machias’ and Jusis’ arc that Laura and Fie’s would be the exact same, but they’re different. Fie and Laura become lesbros and I loved their dual, not only that it was where you fight Rean and Machias and it just shows how much they get each other and link well, I loved that part. Machias/Jusis conflict on the other hand is very abrasive and loud, but then gets quietly resolved once they overhear each other’s struggles and come to terms with why they feel a certain way. The cherry on top was the cheesy duet they did at the concert. All of Class 7 feels unique in their own way, even if some of the tropes overshadow their uniqueness.
Music: First off, Exceed is a worthy successor to Fateful Confrontation. I wasn’t really feeling it at first but after the C fight I was a huge fan. The regular battle theme is pretty good, definitely better than Azure but doesn’t beat get over the barrier or sophisticated fight. I was a huge fan of “Class 7’s Inevitable Struggle” the song I don’t know the name of that vaguely sounds like Inevitable Struggle but is clearly different. Even the Practical Exam theme which has this awful out of tune guitar at the height of the song grew on me. Is that you, Singa? The town themes for the field studies reminded me of the unique town themes of Sky. They all felt different and I don’t remember Crossbell having that many themes. The dining bar theme is awesome and reminds me of Arc en Ciel. The “ethereal” themes that play when you fight otherworldly things are really great too. The credits theme was too good. Felt like an OP for CS2 tbh but I was groovin the entire time. I didn’t think it was possible but Trails now has a soundtrack that isn’t mostly mediocre/forgettable.
Story/Lore :So the whole shtick of CS1’s story is that it’s happening concurrently with the events of Azure. Good thing I forgot most of what happened there lol. I mostly remember the Crois stuff but I forget how much the Trade Conference was a big deal. Now with the chancellor either fucking dead or gravely wounded I really wanna go back and see what he told the SSS in Azure. Might have a double meaning. I didn’t expect Sharon to be an Ouroubouros Enforcer, it is kinda cool. I liked how there was a single fucking offhand mention of Estelle and Joshua from Bleublanc, it made me giggle a bit. Anyway the story itself is kinda like Sky FC(which I have some nostalgia for by now, I miss the days when it was just Joshua and Estelle doing junior bracer things). Class 7 ends up going on a bunch of field studies to different towns in Erebonia to see how things are. It’s simple, but I really like it. As stated in the music section I really like how each place has its own unique atmosphere, the Nord Highlands and Legram are examples of this. I had initially thought that CS2 was going to be the rest of Class 7’s first year, but with Rean off to who knows where by the ending, things seem to be taking a drastic turn. The ending was fantastic, but I already mentioned it. I still like the police feel to Zero more but the story here is great. As for lore/worldbuilding, I’m really enjoying seeing how the technology is evolving as well as politics. We get to know more about Calvard here, if just a bit, and Alisa just mentions air conditioning and everybody loses their shit. It’s a really stupid example but it does show just how much they’ve come and how far the world still has to advance. Important figures have flip phones, but I wonder when they will take off with the public, or the orbal net. It’s just a real joy to see this world advance bit by bit. Erebonia is a very different continent from what I had imagined it to be, the Nobles vs Reformists is a really compelling narrative and I hope they can do some unique things with it like they did with Crossbell’s Indepence. I hear CS3 and 4 practically require you to have played Crossbell beforehand so I bet those games expand on the slideshow we got as an ending to Azure/Crossbell’s independence arc. Which means I get to see my boys Wade and Wazy again. Anyway I like how Cold Steel’s story feels like a piece to a much bigger puzzle between Crossbell, Erebonia, and Calvard.
Gameplay: Remember two years or so ago when I went on a huge rant about why the Sky games’ combat sucks? Probably not, in fact dont go read them they’re probably really fucking cringy to read back. But the gist was the quartz system that needed an entire supplemental manual to figure out how to use arts made me avoid the combat like the plague and just spam the weaken enemy button after I died. And bosses’ overreliance on cheap status gimmicks to make the fight difficult sucked as well(looking at you Renne). By the time I got to Zero/Azure I was just coasting on easy mode, not giving whatever changes they brought a chance. Does CS1 change anything? Yes. I love the combat in this game. The quartz system was streamlined, there’s now like 500 different quartz that you can fuse to make a certain skill. Technically it is pretty cluttered but I’ll take it over the other system. You simply find a skill(s) you want and then fuse it, and now can use it. I don’t know why the Sky/Crossbell games weren’t like this. The regular combat loop is fun, and I honestly like how S-Breaks were tied to character growth, it really made early game difficult but rewarding. Resounding Beat is kinda OP and carried the first 20 hours or so for me. Bosses are also really fun, and exploitable if you know how to abuse the turn order. I really like that aspect, it adds another layer to pre-planning. If a boss is set to get a 10% HP Boost you gotta scramble to find a way to avoid that outcome. Or in the places with higher elements, you can grind and wipe out enemies with ease if you keep track of deathblow effects. The only Boss I had to use the weaken enemy button on were C and either Floor 5 or 6’s Schoolhouse boss. I went all out on V so C was too much for a back to back fight. (I tried him like 5 times then weakened once and then 3 attempts later I got him). The Schoolhouse boss I just didn’t save so I didn’t have a way to grind S-Breaks or anything and didn’t want to do the dungeon again. Patrick too, maybe? But that was because I thought you needed to get the goals to progress. Anyway, point is the only reason I used the weaken enemy button were my own faults, not because of infuriating game design. CS1 combat is SO much better, and I feel like if I were to ever replay the series I’d find something to love in the previous 5 games combat, too. Not really a place to mention this elsewhere in the gameplay section but the one on one brawl with Crow as the true final boss was awesome, I’m a sucker for shit like that.
Biggest Gripes:Angie. Not only does her dubbed actress grate on my ears, but her entire character is just “haha lesbian sexual harrassment”. She honestly makes my blood boil I fucking hate Angie so much. The social sim element feel tacked on. The Septian calendar's inclusion doesn’t add anything. It’s like Falcom saw the success of persona 3 and 4 and decided to include elements of it in the next trails game but god they just really fucking suck. The free day quests are fetch quests outside of schoolhouse trips, thankfully in the later chapters the schoolhouse is the only required quest on these days. The bonding events feel really fucky. they didn’t commit to full on social link style events so they’re just kinda click through things to get a few arcus points. The bonding events just end up feeling like a nothingburger. Dungeons still suck, they were never a strong suit of trails but with the move to full on 3d there seems to be more unintentional backtracking. It’s the same as in the previous games where you go find a switch, hit it and then go back but because the dungeons all look so samey I ended up missing a ton of those switches and had to go back. The final dungeon was a slog too, though easily binged. The song for that dungeon was great. Another issue I had was some of the characters feel tropey/ samey to other characters in the series. This is mostly alleviated by the end of the game with all of Class 7’s backstories mostly revealed but I worry that their arcs are going to take on a similar path to characters from previous games. I get this is a relatively shonen rpg and that kind of overlap should be expected, but iunno, I still hope they find new ground to cover. My biggest worry for this is Crow himself, I legit didn’t see the twist coming(I figured it was Campnella for whatever reason) but I hope that his arc isn’t just Joshua’s arc again.
Final Thoughts: Honestly? Surpasses Zero for me. The best Trails game there is. The next “peak trails” is supposedly Reverie but I learned my lesson with Azure, keeping my expectations in check for that one. On schedule Reverie is gonna be played early 2025 tho. I don’t even own it yet. I’ll jump into CS2 sometime this year, but I am definitely watching all those recap videos first lol. So many small details I’d forgotten and need to brush up on. Despite the fact it takes place concurrently with Azure I’d forgotten so much that some of the developments got me a second time. Damn you Ian Grimwood and your shitty game ruining twists. After a few days of post game depression I’ll hop into Raincode and after that… well hoo boy the rest of the year is fucking stacked methinks. Many amazing games in the backlog I’m gonna play this year.
Trails of Cold Steel, the sixth entry of the Trails series and the start of a brand new arc taking place in the nation of Erebonia.
Originally on PS Vita, Cold Steel represents a leap for the series, going full 3D for the first time. While that leap to 3D is impressive, we'll focus on the smaller tweaks to the Trails formula first before diving into the bigger stuff.
First up the battle system builds off what's come before. Instead of using a grid based system for range of movement, we now have movement range limited to a circumference which is more natural for the full 3D environments. The new ARCUS battle orbments now allow two characters to be linked in battle which means characters are able to provide follow up attacks and earn Brave Points. Brave Points can be accumulated to allow for more powerful follow up attacks with 3 points allowing a Rush attack where the two linked party members can rush an enemy for a few hits and 5 points allow a burst attack which has moved from the Crossbell games as a bonus action on a turn to here. Burst attacks basically see your party go ham on the enemies doing a good amount of damage and great for tackling larger groups of mobs. Your links can also be levelled up for even more abilities, like at level two a finishing blow unlocks meaning if you use a link attack on an enemy and bring their health down low enough, your link partner will follow up and finish off the enemy. Other abilities include stuff like Auto-Tear and Cover and overall I think it's a fantastic addition on top of Trails already fun combat. It gives you more options to work with and helps speed up the flow of regular battles which is great.
Moving onto the Orbment changes, we're mostly building off Azure here with Master Quartz returning but other elements have been simplified. Quartz now comes with Arts variants that include an art or three on them so instead of building your arts by using the right elemental combinations in your orbment, now you just need to find the quartz with the art you want and hey ho, you can use Tear. With the larger cast this game has, I can understand why the system has been simplified. Constantly trying to remember set ups for arts you want would be a pain when you're swapping between 9+ characters so I can see why you'd alleviate that by just making quartz hold spells. I did miss the fun in experimenting with quartz layouts and seeing what arts I could get but again, I can understand why the change was made.
Another gameplay tweak that I greatly appreciated is that every area now has a map for it. It was always a weird thing in the previous games for me where most dungeons didn’t have maps for some reason but thankfully Cold Steel changes that. There’s also a whole new type of battle introduced at the end of the game that I am very excited to see more of in future games but shall hold off going into here and spoiling it. I’ll just say it very much appealed to my tastes.
The core gameplay loop is very much still Trails at its heart, exploring towns, doing quests, etc to progress the story but the choice of setting this time changes up the cycle a bit this time. The Empire of Erebonia is so much larger than either Liberl or Crossbell that we’ve explored previously and the decision made was to pick one core area to keep returning to as we explore different areas. That core area? A military academy - school. Now I know most people will roll their eyes at Persona comparisons but when it feels like the inspiration for the choice of setting and when Persona and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are my core references for school settings in videogames, I think being able to use them to explain what I feel this game does right and wrong with its setting is valuable. Now Thors Military Academy being, well a military academy means this feels closer to Three Houses than Persona for me. The students here are being taught with the expectation that most of them will end up joining the military someday so for the most part the setting works. Managing to find a third way to implement the Trails rank system where you gain more points for doing more sidequests by making it a graded study report is very cool, props to them for that.
Of courses, taking inspiration from Persona means we have a calendar system introduced here. Worry not, you won’t be playing every single day of a month, instead you’ll be playing a select few days in every month. The first day takes place at school and is mostly just story stuff before moving into the second day which is your free day. Free days are split into afternoon and evening sections where you’ll get your traditional Trails sidequests to do but also Bonding Points to spend. Every month you’ll get 3 or 4 bonding points to spend on having bonding events with your classmates where you’ll get to know them better. They’re kind of inspired by Persona’s Social Links but you’re not ranking them up and continuing a narrative through them, more just seeing an extra event with that character for that month that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It does tie into your romantic partner of choice at the end of the game which changes up the final cutscene a little and who you can dance with at the school festival but otherwise, they feel very minimal and offer a little more insight to characters.
Your important quest for every free day is to visit the old school building. The old school building is a mysterious building that acts like a dungeon and every month adds a new floor to explore. Think Temple of the Ocean King from Zelda: Phantom Hourglass but without having to go through the whole thing every month, just the new floor. It mostly feels like something added to have a traditional dungeon experience for the school portions of the game and there’s very little given to the mystery to keep your interest in it outside of the fourth floor before the eventual payoff in the final chapter. It does make for a nice change of pace during the school portions and it’s also the only area for the bulk of the game where you have full control of your choice of party set up which is much appreciated.
Completing the old school building task each month transitions the day to evening and gives you one extra bonding point to spend before you return to the dorms for the day. The next day is always your Practical Exam. Basically here you’ll be given a battle to fight and often have side objectives to meet, like not letting anyone die or not using arts. These are fine and are mostly used to let characters who have tension with each other to blow off some steam and settle grievances while also building up bonds.
Finally after that you’re giving your field study destination for the month which acts as your more traditional Trails experience for the month. The class is split into two groups and sent off to different destinations to get a feel for what’s happening in Erebonia, meet the people who live in these places and help them out in a very Bracer like fashion by completing tasks. The field studies are where the more interesting story elements happen as the characters get to witness first hand the tensions between Erebonia’s Noble Faction and Reformist Faction as the flames of Civil War begin to build in the background of all the school bonding trips. The class will witness first hand the actions of the terrorist group The Imperial Liberation Front and will end up having to put a stop to them. It makes for an exciting end to each month but unfortunately because of the school system and the gameplay loop they choose to stick to so closely, rather than being able to escalate and build off these events, you’re immediately dragged back to Thors before you get to see or feel any of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on these areas and it completely takes the wind out of the plot. It’s a similar problem to what Three Houses suffer from in the first half of its game where things start to feel repetitive and the school portions start to drag on more and more as the game goes on and you want the plot to build up to something a bit more meaningful and longer lasting. It does eventually get there in the final chapter but having to go through around 60 hours of game before that point does take its toll. I think another issue comes from this game's story taking place from around late game Trails from Zero through to late game Trails to Azure. Basically throughout the game you’ll constantly be getting updates from what’s happening in Crossbell (and seeing this from the Erebonian perspective is greatly appreciated, especially with how its newspaper distorts facts to make Chancellor Osborne sound much more important to going ons in Crossbell than he actually was and dismissing the declaration of independence as a fools dream) but the issue is everything that’s happening in Crossbell sounds (and if you’ve played Zero/Azure it IS) so much more interesting than what you’re getting to see in Erebonia. So much of the political tension in Erebonia feels like it takes place off screen because these school kids are a bit too far detached from it. Sure there’s characters who have relatives who are very much involved with the quarrelling factions but they all feel like they’re kept at arm's length and are unable to give much insight to what’s happening themselves. Compare that to Elie from Zero, whose grandfather is Mayor of Crossbell and she herself has enough of an interest in politics to be able to explain to Lloyd and the player and the whole political situation of Crossbell, then it’s clear to see that we were missing someone like that in Cold Steel.
Let’s get into the cast itself then. The protagonist for this game is Rean, a young lad whose background gives him a balanced view between nobility and commoner. He ends up going to Thors Military Academy where a brand new class is being set up for a select group of students - Class VII. This class takes people from all sorts of different backgrounds and puts them together in an attempt to help people understand each other from different societal classes and try to bridge the gap between them. Including Rean the class features a total of 9 classmates to begin with which is a lot of characters to introduce at once and start building with.
We have Alisa who hides her second name and wants to take on everything herself while also looking out for everyone else. Elliot who is much more into his music than his military training. Laura, who is a noble incredibly dedicated to her training with the sword. Jusis, another noble who starts off more like the lone wolf of the group. Machias who absolutely detests nobles and wants nothing to do with them. Fie who despite being the youngest of the group, is so much more combat ready than anyone else. Emma who is the class president, top of the class but also has a mysterious air about her. And finally Gaius, a foreigner from the allied nation of Nord. On top of this we have our homeroom teacher Sara who very much opts for doing things unconventionally and loves a wee drink here and there. That’s just the opening group for the game and it’s a lot of people to manage and develop. The game does do well in trying to manage this by splitting the group up for field studies, allowing you to focus on 3 or 4 characters as well as forcing characters into groups where they’ll have to address their issues with each other (like Machias and Jusis or Fie and Laura). On top of that the field studies tend to take place in a character's hometown or somewhere where they have family connections which is great for their personal character growth. Despite the bloated cast, I did end up loving most of the characters with Alisa, Emma, and Jusis being my standouts while Gaius and Elliot unfortunately didn’t do much for me compared to the rest.
But wait there’s even more important characters! A group of second years becomes close to the group introducing us to the smartass Crow, student council president Towa, engineer George and way over the top aggressively lesbian Angelica. For the most part they’re a great bunch, I absolutely loved Crow and his dynamic with Rean though Angelica has some issues and leans way too hard into uncomfortable tropes that are yeah…. Just an overall bad representation of a lesbian character.
And hold up, there’s even more important characters like Elise - Rean’s sister, Patrick, a noble who has that noble superiority complex, Olivert and his brother and sister, more academy professors…..
Oh and we can’t forget our antagonistic group, the Imperial Liberation Front whose members like to call themselves the first letter of their name - G, S, V and the mysterious leader C who wears a black suit and mask like he’s some sort of Power Ranger fanboy (it’s cool though and he has plenty of charisma). For the bulk of the game this group really doesn't feel like much. They show up, get their asses beat off school kids and run away pretending like it was all part of the plan (which granted I’ll give C credit for his long game planning because he definitely threw me off his competency with those earlier operations)
Basically, if this feels like a lot, it’s because it is and it contributes to Cold Steel’s biggest issue - bloat. There is way too much here in terms of characters and locations to set up and in traditional Trails fashion, it’s done slowly and meticulously to make sure they truly build a world that feels alive and credit where it’s due, they do manage to accomplish that but at the same time it takes 60+ hours to do that. 60+ hours of world and character building is something that starts to drag on. I was craving for something of excitement and importance to happen because as much as I can appreciate taking your time to craft a world with great detail, I also need something to get me invested in the plot at large. I think part of the issue is the school sections take up a big chunk of play time and knock the wind out of the larger plot and bloat up the whole game while also killing the pacing. Like they are important for the camaraderie between Class VII but they do alter the balance of the traditional Trails experience in a way that I feel overall hinders the pacing. As someone who has played Three Houses the most apt comparison I can make is - imagine the academy phase of that game stretched out to 60+ hours and just as the war phase is about to begin the game ends and that’s going to be covered in the next game.
The finale of Cold Steel is fantastic, I loved the last portion of the game and everything that went down, it just took way too long meandering to that point. Take Trails in the Sky FC for example. That game is also very much focused on the slow burn of world building for the majority of the game but it does so through a much more manageable cast, with a strong focus on Estelle and Joshua at its centre as everything else is built around them and it’s last quarter gets into the exciting plot developments to make journey more memorable and it’s all done in around 40 hours. Cold Steel is juggling way too many characters without focusing on any one or two characters as its central focus and as a result everything takes so much longer to get going.
Jumping back to that transition to 3D, I will say the game does a fantastic job at bringing the scale of Erebonia to life. Cities are massive with the capital Heimdallr split into multiple districts full of massive buildings. Roer feels like Zeiss from Liberl reimagined into the full scale city it represented. The Nord Highlands bring a massive open area traversable via horse which is incredible for what is at its core a Vita game though I could’ve done with some fast travel points in that area as traversing constantly between the village and the military base to accomplish the quests in that area felt dragged out with how large it is. Ultimately though they did a fantastic job at making Erebonia feel like the massive Empire it is compared to Crossbell and Liberl. Each destination is only reachable via train as well further driving home just how massive this nation is. Some of the road areas have exits that are outside the field study boundary but signposts point out where those roads lead to which could be interesting for future games in this arc if travelling isn’t limited to trains later on.
All that to say is the world design in this game is well done and on top of that the dungeons are fun to traverse with their gimmicks like flipping switches to activate and deactivate bridges and stuff like that. The gameplay side of things really helps to keep the game being fun as it drags its heels with its narrative and for me that was greatly appreciated when my frustrations were building.
On the soundtrack side of things it’s another great offering. The upbeat sounds of school life, the atmospheric dungeon music, the heavy battle music - it’s all here to elevate the experience and help bring this world to life. The opening song is really catchy and the title screen music fits the mood of the adventure. Speaking of the title screen, I loved the neat touch of adding more characters alongside Rean on the train as the game progresses. It’s one of those little things that just make the experience a bit more special. And another little thing I think worth mentioning is this Cold Steel’s book collection Red Moon Rose - a thrilling tale of a vampire hunter and her encounter with a vampire who has been sucking the blood dry out of people during the night and I absolutely loved it. Again it’s one of those extra things that makes Trails such a great series and I love how much effort is put into those novels. On the disappointing side of things though, we do lose our funny little chest messages in this game which is a real shame.
Trails of Cold Steel is unfortunately overall, a step back from what came before it. Overly ambitious and bloated by its large cast and choice of setting, it takes way too long setting up things and not enough time paying off that build up. The finale is a great start to paying off the build up but that’s all it is - a start. Hopefully with this build up out of the way Cold Steel II can hit the ground running like the other follow up games have done in this series. The great cast of characters and fantastic gameplay makes Cold Steel still an overall enjoyable experience despite its flaws, just one that falls a bit short of what this series has managed to do before it.
Originally on PS Vita, Cold Steel represents a leap for the series, going full 3D for the first time. While that leap to 3D is impressive, we'll focus on the smaller tweaks to the Trails formula first before diving into the bigger stuff.
First up the battle system builds off what's come before. Instead of using a grid based system for range of movement, we now have movement range limited to a circumference which is more natural for the full 3D environments. The new ARCUS battle orbments now allow two characters to be linked in battle which means characters are able to provide follow up attacks and earn Brave Points. Brave Points can be accumulated to allow for more powerful follow up attacks with 3 points allowing a Rush attack where the two linked party members can rush an enemy for a few hits and 5 points allow a burst attack which has moved from the Crossbell games as a bonus action on a turn to here. Burst attacks basically see your party go ham on the enemies doing a good amount of damage and great for tackling larger groups of mobs. Your links can also be levelled up for even more abilities, like at level two a finishing blow unlocks meaning if you use a link attack on an enemy and bring their health down low enough, your link partner will follow up and finish off the enemy. Other abilities include stuff like Auto-Tear and Cover and overall I think it's a fantastic addition on top of Trails already fun combat. It gives you more options to work with and helps speed up the flow of regular battles which is great.
Moving onto the Orbment changes, we're mostly building off Azure here with Master Quartz returning but other elements have been simplified. Quartz now comes with Arts variants that include an art or three on them so instead of building your arts by using the right elemental combinations in your orbment, now you just need to find the quartz with the art you want and hey ho, you can use Tear. With the larger cast this game has, I can understand why the system has been simplified. Constantly trying to remember set ups for arts you want would be a pain when you're swapping between 9+ characters so I can see why you'd alleviate that by just making quartz hold spells. I did miss the fun in experimenting with quartz layouts and seeing what arts I could get but again, I can understand why the change was made.
Another gameplay tweak that I greatly appreciated is that every area now has a map for it. It was always a weird thing in the previous games for me where most dungeons didn’t have maps for some reason but thankfully Cold Steel changes that. There’s also a whole new type of battle introduced at the end of the game that I am very excited to see more of in future games but shall hold off going into here and spoiling it. I’ll just say it very much appealed to my tastes.
The core gameplay loop is very much still Trails at its heart, exploring towns, doing quests, etc to progress the story but the choice of setting this time changes up the cycle a bit this time. The Empire of Erebonia is so much larger than either Liberl or Crossbell that we’ve explored previously and the decision made was to pick one core area to keep returning to as we explore different areas. That core area? A military academy - school. Now I know most people will roll their eyes at Persona comparisons but when it feels like the inspiration for the choice of setting and when Persona and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are my core references for school settings in videogames, I think being able to use them to explain what I feel this game does right and wrong with its setting is valuable. Now Thors Military Academy being, well a military academy means this feels closer to Three Houses than Persona for me. The students here are being taught with the expectation that most of them will end up joining the military someday so for the most part the setting works. Managing to find a third way to implement the Trails rank system where you gain more points for doing more sidequests by making it a graded study report is very cool, props to them for that.
Of courses, taking inspiration from Persona means we have a calendar system introduced here. Worry not, you won’t be playing every single day of a month, instead you’ll be playing a select few days in every month. The first day takes place at school and is mostly just story stuff before moving into the second day which is your free day. Free days are split into afternoon and evening sections where you’ll get your traditional Trails sidequests to do but also Bonding Points to spend. Every month you’ll get 3 or 4 bonding points to spend on having bonding events with your classmates where you’ll get to know them better. They’re kind of inspired by Persona’s Social Links but you’re not ranking them up and continuing a narrative through them, more just seeing an extra event with that character for that month that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It does tie into your romantic partner of choice at the end of the game which changes up the final cutscene a little and who you can dance with at the school festival but otherwise, they feel very minimal and offer a little more insight to characters.
Your important quest for every free day is to visit the old school building. The old school building is a mysterious building that acts like a dungeon and every month adds a new floor to explore. Think Temple of the Ocean King from Zelda: Phantom Hourglass but without having to go through the whole thing every month, just the new floor. It mostly feels like something added to have a traditional dungeon experience for the school portions of the game and there’s very little given to the mystery to keep your interest in it outside of the fourth floor before the eventual payoff in the final chapter. It does make for a nice change of pace during the school portions and it’s also the only area for the bulk of the game where you have full control of your choice of party set up which is much appreciated.
Completing the old school building task each month transitions the day to evening and gives you one extra bonding point to spend before you return to the dorms for the day. The next day is always your Practical Exam. Basically here you’ll be given a battle to fight and often have side objectives to meet, like not letting anyone die or not using arts. These are fine and are mostly used to let characters who have tension with each other to blow off some steam and settle grievances while also building up bonds.
Finally after that you’re giving your field study destination for the month which acts as your more traditional Trails experience for the month. The class is split into two groups and sent off to different destinations to get a feel for what’s happening in Erebonia, meet the people who live in these places and help them out in a very Bracer like fashion by completing tasks. The field studies are where the more interesting story elements happen as the characters get to witness first hand the tensions between Erebonia’s Noble Faction and Reformist Faction as the flames of Civil War begin to build in the background of all the school bonding trips. The class will witness first hand the actions of the terrorist group The Imperial Liberation Front and will end up having to put a stop to them. It makes for an exciting end to each month but unfortunately because of the school system and the gameplay loop they choose to stick to so closely, rather than being able to escalate and build off these events, you’re immediately dragged back to Thors before you get to see or feel any of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on these areas and it completely takes the wind out of the plot. It’s a similar problem to what Three Houses suffer from in the first half of its game where things start to feel repetitive and the school portions start to drag on more and more as the game goes on and you want the plot to build up to something a bit more meaningful and longer lasting. It does eventually get there in the final chapter but having to go through around 60 hours of game before that point does take its toll. I think another issue comes from this game's story taking place from around late game Trails from Zero through to late game Trails to Azure. Basically throughout the game you’ll constantly be getting updates from what’s happening in Crossbell (and seeing this from the Erebonian perspective is greatly appreciated, especially with how its newspaper distorts facts to make Chancellor Osborne sound much more important to going ons in Crossbell than he actually was and dismissing the declaration of independence as a fools dream) but the issue is everything that’s happening in Crossbell sounds (and if you’ve played Zero/Azure it IS) so much more interesting than what you’re getting to see in Erebonia. So much of the political tension in Erebonia feels like it takes place off screen because these school kids are a bit too far detached from it. Sure there’s characters who have relatives who are very much involved with the quarrelling factions but they all feel like they’re kept at arm's length and are unable to give much insight to what’s happening themselves. Compare that to Elie from Zero, whose grandfather is Mayor of Crossbell and she herself has enough of an interest in politics to be able to explain to Lloyd and the player and the whole political situation of Crossbell, then it’s clear to see that we were missing someone like that in Cold Steel.
Let’s get into the cast itself then. The protagonist for this game is Rean, a young lad whose background gives him a balanced view between nobility and commoner. He ends up going to Thors Military Academy where a brand new class is being set up for a select group of students - Class VII. This class takes people from all sorts of different backgrounds and puts them together in an attempt to help people understand each other from different societal classes and try to bridge the gap between them. Including Rean the class features a total of 9 classmates to begin with which is a lot of characters to introduce at once and start building with.
We have Alisa who hides her second name and wants to take on everything herself while also looking out for everyone else. Elliot who is much more into his music than his military training. Laura, who is a noble incredibly dedicated to her training with the sword. Jusis, another noble who starts off more like the lone wolf of the group. Machias who absolutely detests nobles and wants nothing to do with them. Fie who despite being the youngest of the group, is so much more combat ready than anyone else. Emma who is the class president, top of the class but also has a mysterious air about her. And finally Gaius, a foreigner from the allied nation of Nord. On top of this we have our homeroom teacher Sara who very much opts for doing things unconventionally and loves a wee drink here and there. That’s just the opening group for the game and it’s a lot of people to manage and develop. The game does do well in trying to manage this by splitting the group up for field studies, allowing you to focus on 3 or 4 characters as well as forcing characters into groups where they’ll have to address their issues with each other (like Machias and Jusis or Fie and Laura). On top of that the field studies tend to take place in a character's hometown or somewhere where they have family connections which is great for their personal character growth. Despite the bloated cast, I did end up loving most of the characters with Alisa, Emma, and Jusis being my standouts while Gaius and Elliot unfortunately didn’t do much for me compared to the rest.
But wait there’s even more important characters! A group of second years becomes close to the group introducing us to the smartass Crow, student council president Towa, engineer George and way over the top aggressively lesbian Angelica. For the most part they’re a great bunch, I absolutely loved Crow and his dynamic with Rean though Angelica has some issues and leans way too hard into uncomfortable tropes that are yeah…. Just an overall bad representation of a lesbian character.
And hold up, there’s even more important characters like Elise - Rean’s sister, Patrick, a noble who has that noble superiority complex, Olivert and his brother and sister, more academy professors…..
Oh and we can’t forget our antagonistic group, the Imperial Liberation Front whose members like to call themselves the first letter of their name - G, S, V and the mysterious leader C who wears a black suit and mask like he’s some sort of Power Ranger fanboy (it’s cool though and he has plenty of charisma). For the bulk of the game this group really doesn't feel like much. They show up, get their asses beat off school kids and run away pretending like it was all part of the plan (which granted I’ll give C credit for his long game planning because he definitely threw me off his competency with those earlier operations)
Basically, if this feels like a lot, it’s because it is and it contributes to Cold Steel’s biggest issue - bloat. There is way too much here in terms of characters and locations to set up and in traditional Trails fashion, it’s done slowly and meticulously to make sure they truly build a world that feels alive and credit where it’s due, they do manage to accomplish that but at the same time it takes 60+ hours to do that. 60+ hours of world and character building is something that starts to drag on. I was craving for something of excitement and importance to happen because as much as I can appreciate taking your time to craft a world with great detail, I also need something to get me invested in the plot at large. I think part of the issue is the school sections take up a big chunk of play time and knock the wind out of the larger plot and bloat up the whole game while also killing the pacing. Like they are important for the camaraderie between Class VII but they do alter the balance of the traditional Trails experience in a way that I feel overall hinders the pacing. As someone who has played Three Houses the most apt comparison I can make is - imagine the academy phase of that game stretched out to 60+ hours and just as the war phase is about to begin the game ends and that’s going to be covered in the next game.
The finale of Cold Steel is fantastic, I loved the last portion of the game and everything that went down, it just took way too long meandering to that point. Take Trails in the Sky FC for example. That game is also very much focused on the slow burn of world building for the majority of the game but it does so through a much more manageable cast, with a strong focus on Estelle and Joshua at its centre as everything else is built around them and it’s last quarter gets into the exciting plot developments to make journey more memorable and it’s all done in around 40 hours. Cold Steel is juggling way too many characters without focusing on any one or two characters as its central focus and as a result everything takes so much longer to get going.
Jumping back to that transition to 3D, I will say the game does a fantastic job at bringing the scale of Erebonia to life. Cities are massive with the capital Heimdallr split into multiple districts full of massive buildings. Roer feels like Zeiss from Liberl reimagined into the full scale city it represented. The Nord Highlands bring a massive open area traversable via horse which is incredible for what is at its core a Vita game though I could’ve done with some fast travel points in that area as traversing constantly between the village and the military base to accomplish the quests in that area felt dragged out with how large it is. Ultimately though they did a fantastic job at making Erebonia feel like the massive Empire it is compared to Crossbell and Liberl. Each destination is only reachable via train as well further driving home just how massive this nation is. Some of the road areas have exits that are outside the field study boundary but signposts point out where those roads lead to which could be interesting for future games in this arc if travelling isn’t limited to trains later on.
All that to say is the world design in this game is well done and on top of that the dungeons are fun to traverse with their gimmicks like flipping switches to activate and deactivate bridges and stuff like that. The gameplay side of things really helps to keep the game being fun as it drags its heels with its narrative and for me that was greatly appreciated when my frustrations were building.
On the soundtrack side of things it’s another great offering. The upbeat sounds of school life, the atmospheric dungeon music, the heavy battle music - it’s all here to elevate the experience and help bring this world to life. The opening song is really catchy and the title screen music fits the mood of the adventure. Speaking of the title screen, I loved the neat touch of adding more characters alongside Rean on the train as the game progresses. It’s one of those little things that just make the experience a bit more special. And another little thing I think worth mentioning is this Cold Steel’s book collection Red Moon Rose - a thrilling tale of a vampire hunter and her encounter with a vampire who has been sucking the blood dry out of people during the night and I absolutely loved it. Again it’s one of those extra things that makes Trails such a great series and I love how much effort is put into those novels. On the disappointing side of things though, we do lose our funny little chest messages in this game which is a real shame.
Trails of Cold Steel is unfortunately overall, a step back from what came before it. Overly ambitious and bloated by its large cast and choice of setting, it takes way too long setting up things and not enough time paying off that build up. The finale is a great start to paying off the build up but that’s all it is - a start. Hopefully with this build up out of the way Cold Steel II can hit the ground running like the other follow up games have done in this series. The great cast of characters and fantastic gameplay makes Cold Steel still an overall enjoyable experience despite its flaws, just one that falls a bit short of what this series has managed to do before it.
Trails of Cold Slop
Trails of Cold Slog
Trails of Tears n Sorrow (me atm being sad what did they do to my series beloved)
Baffled how badly they dropped the ball on a "set-up" game. FC was a set-up and Zero was a "set-up" yet these 3 nothing alike. Both FC and Zero were able to set-up the region and introduce a cast of really interesting characters where in a combined playtime of 80 hours. This was 60 hours, 3/4ths both games combined and it told us a mostly nothing burger of a story with a flat cast that basically doesn't exist without Rean, who even then are the most basic and non interesting group apart from 3 of the playable characters. But oh it wasn't too bad, the story finally got interesting in the end, yes it did, but the 60 hour runtime sort of soured the experience.
TL;DR
Too much useless fluff, boring cast, too long, only interesting last hour. Personally, a 4/10 but since the last segment was good and series bias.
Overall: 5/10
Trails of Cold Slog
Trails of Tears n Sorrow (me atm being sad what did they do to my series beloved)
Baffled how badly they dropped the ball on a "set-up" game. FC was a set-up and Zero was a "set-up" yet these 3 nothing alike. Both FC and Zero were able to set-up the region and introduce a cast of really interesting characters where in a combined playtime of 80 hours. This was 60 hours, 3/4ths both games combined and it told us a mostly nothing burger of a story with a flat cast that basically doesn't exist without Rean, who even then are the most basic and non interesting group apart from 3 of the playable characters. But oh it wasn't too bad, the story finally got interesting in the end, yes it did, but the 60 hour runtime sort of soured the experience.
TL;DR
Too much useless fluff, boring cast, too long, only interesting last hour. Personally, a 4/10 but since the last segment was good and series bias.
Overall: 5/10
I would die for Rean
and when I meet kondo in the 7th layer of hell
This review contains spoilers
My first Trails game, a series that's a bit out of my comfort zone, but if CS is any indication should be fun all things considered.
Killer soundtrack, interesting combat and cool little character interactions kept me going all the way. Very convenient too, with built-in fast-forwarding, quick travel options, and sidequests that are fairly easy to keep up with.
The geopolitical focused narrative didn't do much for me, though. Don't get my wrong, I was paying attention; it's just not my kinda thing.
(I opted to use the spoiler warning for this next section.)
I also prefer games that stick to a "confined" narrative where most of the plot is tied up by the last few minutes, and Cold Steel's ending is anything but. By the time the credits were rolling it felt like I was at best halfway through the story. It's not an objectively bad thing, just, y'know. What I said up there. (Also part of the reason why I can't be bothered with FFXIV anymore)
And I guess that's an apt way to put it. Pretty fun, kept me engaged all the way through; but the aforementioned geopolitical heavy plot mixed with certain tropes aren't exactly my cup of tea either.
Killer soundtrack, interesting combat and cool little character interactions kept me going all the way. Very convenient too, with built-in fast-forwarding, quick travel options, and sidequests that are fairly easy to keep up with.
The geopolitical focused narrative didn't do much for me, though. Don't get my wrong, I was paying attention; it's just not my kinda thing.
(I opted to use the spoiler warning for this next section.)
I also prefer games that stick to a "confined" narrative where most of the plot is tied up by the last few minutes, and Cold Steel's ending is anything but. By the time the credits were rolling it felt like I was at best halfway through the story. It's not an objectively bad thing, just, y'know. What I said up there. (Also part of the reason why I can't be bothered with FFXIV anymore)
And I guess that's an apt way to put it. Pretty fun, kept me engaged all the way through; but the aforementioned geopolitical heavy plot mixed with certain tropes aren't exactly my cup of tea either.
This review contains spoilers
VALIMAR THE ASHEN
Alisa: Fuck me now, Rean.
Rean: Not now Alisa, i need to lose all my money gambling with Elliot, Gaius and Crow
Rean: Not now Alisa, i need to lose all my money gambling with Elliot, Gaius and Crow
This is the most boring fucking game I have ever played in my life and I hope all those who think its excellent shall burn in the eternal flames of hell
so fucking slow. the gameplays fine, its exploitable, we like that, but everything is too fucking slow. the noble vs reformist debate only gets all of its moving parts exposed by like chapter 6 of 7, which is way too fucking long, like i shouldn't finally understand why there's a conflict happening 45 hours into a 60 hour long game. it's still trails, i'm still enjoying everything slowly being dripfed, there's nothing really like it, but this pacing is glacial.
whatever man the plots stupid and the character writing is piss (god i fucking hate Rean, what a fucking loser) but its all just supposed to tie-in to Crossbell and it does an OK job, and the game itself is still pretty fun - i love the increased dependance on Crafts and S-Crafts here, so it's not all bad.
whatever man the plots stupid and the character writing is piss (god i fucking hate Rean, what a fucking loser) but its all just supposed to tie-in to Crossbell and it does an OK job, and the game itself is still pretty fun - i love the increased dependance on Crafts and S-Crafts here, so it's not all bad.
the game was always enjoyable and fun, the story was stagnant for most of the story because it was all building up to greatness, but when it peaked IT PEAKEDDDD the finale was such a great fucking sequence of events I'm flabbergasted
loved the cast and their interactions, the atmosphere was always great and the music was always great
this really was our cold steel.... can't wait to see what this arc turns into...
loved the cast and their interactions, the atmosphere was always great and the music was always great
this really was our cold steel.... can't wait to see what this arc turns into...
(Scores are for my own purposes and aren’t trying to be objective, and are subject to change as I add more to my list)
So, Trails of Cold Steel. My first game in this series, and I had mixed feelings going into it, not being sure what to expect. I ended this game completely sold on playing ALL the games in this franchise.
I came to this accustomed to Atlus’ SMT/Persona style of turn based JRPG. The first thing that took getting used to was the fact that you could move around the field and that positioning, formation and ranges were important parts of battle. At first I found it daunting, but once I got into the groove of things, it was really satisfying using my pary members to fulfill different roles, with tanks drawing enemy aggro, healers in the back etc.
The combat system is also extremely versatile. You can “link” characters together to enable followup attacks and other useful abilities. As the game goes on, this ability strengthens and becomes even more versatile.
The spells in this game are known as Arts, and are determined by the quartz system. Its great since it essentially allows you t completely respec your characters arts on the fly at any time, by rearranging and redistributing quartz amongst party members and in conjunction with your typical selection of different accessories, weapons and and armour.
Characters also have innate abilities known as Crafts, which can be used based on a separate gauge which automatically charge up. At 100-200 craft points, you can use an ultimate attack, which can be used to interrupt enemy attacks. Useful when the enemy is about to take a critical hit turn, but you steal the turn for yourself! They’re also extremely fun.
Different turns sometimes have different buffs or debuffs that apply to whoever takes that turn, which adds another layer of tactic to the game, which I love.
Another thing I liked about the gameplay loop is that, for narrative reasons, half of the areas force you to create a party from half of your classmates, which means you are forced to learn each characters niches. From a narrative standpoint, it also allows the characters to develop their own arcs without following the trope of the entire group going through the exact same experiences.
The narrative is also amazing, however this game is ultimately just buildup to the second game. But my god is it worth it. All the worldbuilding in this game feeds in massively to the next games’ arc. All the different factions you meet, and the references to the events of other games which happen concurrently make the world and story very rich and lived in. Narratively, this franchise is ambitious with its scale.
For this game specifically though, it does follow a fairly rigid structure of going on a field study in a various region, solving one of your classmates personal issues, then exploring the dungeon at school and doing some quests and events on your free days
This game is very tropey however. Plenty of typical anime highschool hijinks as the backdrop for this political narrative. I think it gives the game a certain charm however, pretty reminiscent of some 00s anime. Thankfully the overarching story is pretty good, with amazing setup for future games, many games become super tropey without any substance.
Without the final few hours/cliffhanger ending, my score probably be a bit lower since the entire game is set up for something much larger. Still well worth my while, because that ending is one hell of a rush though.
So, Trails of Cold Steel. My first game in this series, and I had mixed feelings going into it, not being sure what to expect. I ended this game completely sold on playing ALL the games in this franchise.
I came to this accustomed to Atlus’ SMT/Persona style of turn based JRPG. The first thing that took getting used to was the fact that you could move around the field and that positioning, formation and ranges were important parts of battle. At first I found it daunting, but once I got into the groove of things, it was really satisfying using my pary members to fulfill different roles, with tanks drawing enemy aggro, healers in the back etc.
The combat system is also extremely versatile. You can “link” characters together to enable followup attacks and other useful abilities. As the game goes on, this ability strengthens and becomes even more versatile.
The spells in this game are known as Arts, and are determined by the quartz system. Its great since it essentially allows you t completely respec your characters arts on the fly at any time, by rearranging and redistributing quartz amongst party members and in conjunction with your typical selection of different accessories, weapons and and armour.
Characters also have innate abilities known as Crafts, which can be used based on a separate gauge which automatically charge up. At 100-200 craft points, you can use an ultimate attack, which can be used to interrupt enemy attacks. Useful when the enemy is about to take a critical hit turn, but you steal the turn for yourself! They’re also extremely fun.
Different turns sometimes have different buffs or debuffs that apply to whoever takes that turn, which adds another layer of tactic to the game, which I love.
Another thing I liked about the gameplay loop is that, for narrative reasons, half of the areas force you to create a party from half of your classmates, which means you are forced to learn each characters niches. From a narrative standpoint, it also allows the characters to develop their own arcs without following the trope of the entire group going through the exact same experiences.
The narrative is also amazing, however this game is ultimately just buildup to the second game. But my god is it worth it. All the worldbuilding in this game feeds in massively to the next games’ arc. All the different factions you meet, and the references to the events of other games which happen concurrently make the world and story very rich and lived in. Narratively, this franchise is ambitious with its scale.
For this game specifically though, it does follow a fairly rigid structure of going on a field study in a various region, solving one of your classmates personal issues, then exploring the dungeon at school and doing some quests and events on your free days
This game is very tropey however. Plenty of typical anime highschool hijinks as the backdrop for this political narrative. I think it gives the game a certain charm however, pretty reminiscent of some 00s anime. Thankfully the overarching story is pretty good, with amazing setup for future games, many games become super tropey without any substance.
Without the final few hours/cliffhanger ending, my score probably be a bit lower since the entire game is set up for something much larger. Still well worth my while, because that ending is one hell of a rush though.
man I should not have started this right after finishing azure (peak) the huge drop in writing quality was so sad
my first trails game no clue why it hooked me probably the soundtrack and that I hadnt played a game in such a long time but man I really enjoyed this game. This would suck to hop into after azure, I think its the slowest and most underwhelming of the arc intro trails game.