Basically the problem is that this game is way too slow at having anything significant happen. In the 12 hours I played we went on a field trip an arrested a crime gang, then went into a haunted house a little bit. Dag, that's not much. I could have watched 2.5 seasons of anime with that 12 hours. All the characters take way too long to say way too many words that don't really matter anyway, and then the camera will pan slowly over to something, and then someone else will say way too much stuff, and it just goes on and on. All the scenes move at a snail's pace. The RPG fights are pretty neat, but the small encounters as you go through the maps get repetitive quickly. There should probably be like 1/4th as many small encounters that just give 4x as much experience, so that you can smack around just a few birds or wolves and then do a boss fight.

I really wanted this game to be great since my glorious king oliver was going to appear but unfortunately most of this game felt very tropey in allot of ways. A big thing that really brings it down is that we already know so much of what happens in Erebonia from the other trails games that seeing those scenes happen in the story eliminated any shock it would of had. I also wish they kept C identity more of a mystery it was super obvious who they were. A big thing I liked about FC was how familiarized I was with Liberl by the end of the game, but I felt the opposite happened here. If you showed me a map of Erebonia and told me where Legram was located I wouldn't know what to tell you. Which I find very weird, this is a setup game I really would of liked to know the place.
I know I'm ripping into the game allot, but I really do believe that its not as bad as people say it is. I always keep up with the ludicrous amount of npcs in the other trails game, but with this one I felt way more invested in what was going on with the school. I loved seeing the characters grow and become friends. They all came from different political background, and they all still found a way to get past that.
For me Cold steel definitely had allot of issues but the characters really made me turn a blind eye for most of the game. I still very much enjoyed myself with this game, and now that were mostly caught up to where Azure left of I'm hoping the story can pick up again.

Expanding the playable cast honestly hurt the series more than anything, along with the romantic bonding event feature, which is more egregious and pointless than when introduced in Crossbell. Trails excels with character to character interaction, with or without the main character's involvement, but to dumb it down to "everything revolves around Rean and only Rean" cheapens the writing quality by a lot. The locations are not as diverse- don't know how much of that was influenced by the change to full 3D- and it's funny in hindsight how little the original Class VII matters in the grand scheme of the arc. By the end of 4, they are still all empty puppets.

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.

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what Reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☑ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☐ Masterpiece
☐ Great
☑ Good
☐ Not bad
☐ Meh.
☐ Playing with anything is more fun than that.
☐ Just no

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Soundtracks}---
☑ Masterpiece
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Terrible

---{Audience}---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults

---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Moderately Fast
☐ Spoiled-Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare Comp.

---{Difficulty}---
☐ Just press "W" for Win
☐ Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy
☐ Requires some Brain Cells
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult AF
☐ #1 Player of Dark Souls Speed-runner

---{Story}---
☐ There is a Story?
☑ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Background Check
☐ Good Enough
☐ Lovely
☐ Masterpiece
☐ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short like your 8=D
☐ Average like mobile game
☑ As like Trails series :D
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If u have some spare money left
☑ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
☐ A Scam just like Gambling

---{Bugs}---
☐ Do you mean the insect?
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Some but it's funny
☐ Can get annoying
☐ Goat Simulator
☐ Unplayable
☐ The game itself is a bug

-[THE GOOD]-
Finally, orb crafting system after Crossbell arc and Liberl arc
Advanced item crafting system after Crossbell arc and Liberl arc
Advanced reward system after Crossbell arc and Liberl arc
Falcom soundtrack quality
Fun turn-based combat system
Fleshing npcs and awesome world building
S-craft more useful than previous games
New link system is tactical and useful
Mini-games are fun
Each character has a unique gameplay
Possible to make different character builds

-[THE BAD]-
Writing quality worst than previous games
Generic anime cliche
Bonding system terrible idea for characters development
Story presentation quality is poor
It focuses too much on the main protagonist
Too many cast
Pacing worst than previous games
Animation quality is even worst than previous games
Unfinished animation moves
Cutscenes have some long and weird camera angles
Boring dungeons design

---{Score 7/10}---

Edit and Note: I love the Trails series, but I changed my review from positive to negative for the entire CS arc. Falcom still making the same mistake in Kuro 2. CS has its own charm, but it's not like it's the worst arc. The thing is that the CS arc is damaging the Lore of the entire Kiseki universe. This is such a big loss that it seems very difficult for Falcom to recover it. I hope this doesn't turn into a Star Ocean 3 disaster. I'm sorry to say this, but now it's time to react to Falcom. Falcom, I'm disappointed. Give us back the old Kiseki! I want to play masterpieces like Sky and Crossbell games. Not your mid games like CS and Kuro.

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

6/10.

yawns

É cold steel é ok.
É sky first chapter só que um pouco pior e melhor ao mesmo tempo.

Não tô com saco pra falar muito, serei breve.
Trilogia sky muito boa, consistente de boa.
Duologia crossbell é deveras um ponto de picos e algumas descidas que doem, mas é o ponto bom.
Quadrilogia ou quintologia de erebonia, primeiro jogo de um novo arco sempre é meio parado, ao que me dizem, kuro é o melhor nesse quesito, amém.

A escrita parece de light novel, certeza que a tradução n ajuda, mas não é como se no jp fosse absurdamente bem escrito, fui checar com um amigo, embora seja melhor.

A prosa é mais fraca, cede a contexto político de worldbuilding que já estava sendo buildado antes, agora vamos ter um avanço significativo no plot... E QUE COMEÇO CHATO PQP, QUE PERSONAGENS DESINTERESSANTES, seja em design e personalidade, mas foi só no começo até o ch 4 (nessa parte eu tava com 25 ou 29 horas.) Deu uma melhorada, mas ainda não o suficiente, vou cobrar de cold steel 2 algo.

O que brilha nesse jogo, o combate.
Ele é fácil dps de um tempo, joguei no hard, mas no ch 5 tava só spammando s craft e matando tudo quando tava sem saco.
As master quartz nesse jogo são quebradas pqp, as craft tbm, é divertido mas bem fácil tirando 2 ou 3 bosses.

Os bounding event aqui são mais compreensíveis de existir que em azure e zero, isso me incomoda.
No fim gostei ou tenho esperança de melhora em um total de 5 ou 6 personagens.

Cold steel é um jogo inflado e são 7 chs, como faço tudo levei 55 ou 60 horas pra terminar, normalmente num jogo introdutório de arco nunca é tanto tempo tirando o sky fc que pode realmente chegar às 50 horas.

Uma narrativa fraca, um texto truncado, promete demais, espero que pague em suas sequências.
Não vou exemplificar os problemas ou falar deles, por que não quero escrever muito.

Mas assim, a trilha sonora desse jogo..... JESUS CRISTO!
É ÓTIMA, ela combina perfeitamente com todas as cenas, cenários, paisagens e etc, falcomm aqui cozinhou na ost, parabéns.

Quando toca a ost belief é hype.
Quando toca don't be defeat by a friend é delícia demais
Exceed é uma ost que eu gosto até o minuto 1:10, mas cresceu em mim.
Tie arcus link é bem bom mesmo
Atrocious raid é empolgante.

A direção musical ficou melhor, parabéns.

Os gráficos e animações eles são feios pkrl, pqp que jogo feio, eu não me importo tanto, mas as vezes incomoda o quão feio esse jogo é, to exagerado? Talvez, mas e o que sinto.

No fim gostei das sides, algumas são proveitosas, outras só engraçadas, mas maioria que fiz foi interessante.

Tem referências a jogos passados, arco de crossbell aparentemente se passa ao mesmo tempo que os 2 jogos iniciais de cold steel e tem sentido, tô interessado na sequência.

A vita cantando whereabouts of light foi bonito.

Oliviert aqui, salvou demais.

Antes de eu terminar eu gostaria de dizer, a escolha de dubladores foi precisa e ficou caprichada, joguei a dub japonesa.


No fim esse jogo tem soul ainda, foi uma experiência afável, mas longe de ideal ou boa, mas foi ok.

What awaits you in Cold Steel:

Quality worldbuilding that effectively connects the two previous arcs and Cold Steel

Well-developed characters with distinct personalities that assert themselves multiple times

An outstanding and generous OST, maintaining consistent quality from start to finish without any roller coaster fluctuations

A strategic and dynamic combat system with some spikes in unjust difficulty, but it's okay

A gut-wrenching twist and an unexpected turn of events in the final chapter

Cold Steel 1 isn't a bad game, but it is a rough one.

The gameplay and combat have been simplified in ways that noticeably reduced the skill ceiling and the potential for interesting and creative team building. The visuals are awkward with the series' first foray into 3d. And the story, while it does have some interesting plot beats, goes on for longer than needed and is way too heavy on setting up future games at the expense of providing a satisfying experience here and now.

But its not all bad. The way the game handles its changes to party composition are a step up from the Sky games and its characters, while a mixed bag, have enough bright spots that I'm pretty positives on the game in that respect. They get enough texture to their personalities to shed the anime archetypes they start out as and actually feel like well-rounded individuals with a life that doesn't revolve around being the main character's friend/love interest.

If you're interested in the Trails series, I'd still recommend starting with Sky. Cold Steel is not a great introduction to the series despite its attempts to make the experience smoother for newcomers. And while I can still see somebody playing this and still deciding to continue with the other games, its a much more awkward foundation compared to previous entry points. And for those who have already played the other Trails games, Cold Steel 1 is still decent enough to be worth getting through.

Oh man, oh maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan Cold Steel I wanted to like you so badly. I could excuse some things, but god it's just too much, but before we get to it let's actually start with the good.

The NPC's actually were a lot more memorable to me than they usually are, I think constantly going back to the school setting makes me connect with them than most. This is a constant in the cold steel arc where it's the arc where I payed the most attention to NPC's and remembered a good chunk of them even now.

This is gonna be a hot take since I see a lot of people saying otherwise but I actually really like Rean, I don't think he's SUPER engaging in CS1 in particular but overall I think he's a good protagonist. Having a protag constantly doubt himself is a good change of pace after the last 2 were uber confidence incarnate. The whole Orge thing can be kinda corny but it gets better as it goes on, but it's particularly kinda corny here.

SOME of Class VII are fun and or engaging, my stand outs were Crow, Jusis, Sara, Millium, Eliot, and Fie, so about half of them were pretty good to me.

The soundtrack is as good as always, I honestly think Erebonia arc peaks with CS 1 in terms of soundtrack. The enemy theme, school theme, boss themes, they all kinda slap. The OST isn't as strong as Crossbell but it's still pretty damn good.

The Arcus is a pretty decent mechanic, emphasizing bond points and giving the only real purpose to bonding events aside from achievement hunting, nerfing burst was also probably for the best with how busted it could be in Azure.

Alright enough stalling what don't I like? Oh boy settle down cause it's a lot.

The first thing is just the writing in general, specifically how "anime" it can be. Now don't get me twisted, Trails is an anime game and I'm not gonna be one of those people that pretends the previous games were 100% high art, the first 2 fucking games focus on the romantic relationship between adopted siblings. And this sort of stuff was already kinda sus in Azure with the romances and the REALLY weird groping scene which almost made me dock a point for it alone. But yeah Cold Steel is worse. It's no longer just weird moments I can (mostly) forget, it's entire characters and arcs. I think the Alisa scene is the easiest example, if you've played the game you know what I'm talking about. In the previous games this would have been a weird anime moment that would have been forgotten about, but in Cold Steel they have to CONSTANTLY bring it up in the first chapter for Alissa and Rean to build a relationship. The worst example of this is by far Angelica who's sole existence is for one unfunny gag that no one likes. It REALLY bothers me and there's too much of it for me to ignore like before.

On the topic of the writing, I think something this game in particular struggles with is world and character building which for Trails is fucking astounding, not to say it's bad because it's not, but in comparison to the rest of the games it's pretty sub par. I don't really remember like half the locations in CS1 and the ones I do remember aren't for fond reasons (fuckthenordplainsfuckthenordplainsfuckthenordplains) then there's the whole "literally every character has to have their problems solved by Rean complaint, which for the rest of the series I think is pretty overblow but for CS1 in particular it's pretty egregious. Every single time classmates have beef, they get it solved when Rean is ploped on a field trip with them, it makes the conflicts feel so forced and artificial. It doesn't help that half of class VII feels factory made. Laura, Emma, Gaius, Alisa, and Machias, barley feel like real people they feel like character quotas the writers wanted to check off in expanding the cast.

Then there's the pacing, and good fucking lord it's bad. I think normally slow pacing works for Trails because there's a LOT to introduce and we need time to digest all of it, but there's a lot hurting this game in particular. The first being it's inner connected nature with Zero, we know what's going to happen in the grand scheme of things so there's no suspense in what's going on in the greater world (unless this is your first Trails but I tackled these games in release order) so that conflict just doesn't matter. The second is the game's structure, it's too limiting, we know that Rean and co are gonna go to a place, it's gonna get fucked over, and they're gonna go back to school in a week, the only time this structure is broken is when the game literally ends. The third thing is, the mother fucking school house. I can not tell you how much I can't stand this thing. I GET it right? I now have the hindsight to get WHY the school house is important to the overall plot BUT when playing I sure as shit didn't care. This is the closest thing CS1 has to an isolated plot like the Intelligence Division in FC or the DG Cult in Zero, but the difference here is that we don't feel like the protagonists are growing or gaining valuable experiences when going through the school house, it's a literal chore their teacher tells them to do that just so happens to be important.

Then there's the gameplay and I'm ngl, I don't like the new art system at all. It removes any form of thinking or strategy in quartz set up. It's now just, what gives the best stats or the best moves. There's no reason to do something like use a seemingly useless overworld quartz to gain a really helpful spell, now it's just use the fight quartz to fight.

Oh but it's not like spells matter, cause in Cold Steel crafts are king, S crafts in particular are insanely strong in this game even on nightmare. They can take about a third of a boss's health with proper set up (but CS2 is where it gets REAL wacky). The CS games in general are really easy to just break in half, it's crazy to think in hindsight this was the LEAST breakable of the CS games.

On the topic of combat I want to dedicate a whole segment on the final boss because good fucking lord it's actually one of the worst final bosses I've fought in a video game. It's an entirely new mechanic introduced in the LAST 2 FIGHTS OF THE ENTIRE GAME that you have no way of customizing so it's quite literally a stat check. But not JUST a stat check because you can get randomly crit and attacked twice in 1 turn which can potentially insta kill you so it's ALSO an RNG check.

Oh fuck I forgot the villains, the ILF are lame, C is cool but Scarlet and not Scarlet are really forgettable and boring. It doesn't help that they're part of a conflict that just gets forgotten after the next game.

But I've ragged on the game long enough, I can thankfully say with hindsight that Cold Steel gets better, hell I think the next game is a massive improvement in basically everyway. But man I'd be lying if I said this game made a good first impression. I almost dropped the series all together, hell if I didn't play through the Sky and Crossbell arcs I probably would have never finished this game, since around chapter 3 I was less playing it and more so forcing myself through it.

Epic game, story heavy and with more characters per capita than the human brain can cope. Makes for an unforgettable journey. Those with trigger happy fingers, stay away. Plenty of battles to be fought, a few are quite challenging, but between those is the game’s foundation, its world building, mostly through long meaningful segments of dialogue and travel. If you’re not willing to invest you won’t be getting your money’s worth. But for those who do, there’s no denying the game’s rightfully earned classic status.

Over a hundred hours, and this is just part 1. I’ll be in Erebonia for many years to come, the never ending sequels are stacked by my console (backlogged!) and ready to go.

I really wanted to hang out at the F Bar in Roer.

Never did find how to upgrade my fishing rod.