I played all of cold steel in 2 months. Apparently I have a problem. I agree with the individuals who said I do. Then let me answer a few basic questions from this predicament.
Do I like cold steel? Ya, its alright. Certainly the weakest between the 3 main arcs so far. Do I have praises for the arc? Sure I do! Some of my favorite moments in kiseki now come from CS. Is there problems I want to address? Well…funny you say that..
Before I go on my rampant tangent of my issues, ill first go off on complimenting the series.
Gotta say this before hand
THERE IS GOING TO BE SPOILERS, so if rando #354 complains on why im talking about certain scenes they haven’t seen yet from a future game, that’s all on u buddy.
To start off, CS3 has one of my favorite finales in kiseki. The fact they had the balls to kill off one of the casts most beloved characters AND have the good guys lose with such a dramatic build up? That was fantastic. From that standpoint, it looked like “how tf they gonna salvage the end of the world upon them lmao” Killing off millium hurt, she was by far the best class 7 member. She had that energy that literally everyone else lacked. I stayed up until like…5am I think, finishing CS3, that’s how invested it got me in from the finale starting.
CS2 I liked consistently. Each chapter had you revisit previous areas of the first game, but fixing shit that went wrong due to the actions of CS1. Each moment had something of note and value to the story, whether it be minimum or massive. The finale segments of CS2 was also one of my favorites with how they concluded old class 7s time together. That and on top of the mini crossbell segment that certainly was a jumpscare, meshed perfectly for how to exit the first half of cold steel.
CS4s first act was by far the best act out of the non-finale segments in all of cold steel. The entire segment without Rean? And the characters learning how to deal on situations without him while on the search for him? Was wonderfully done. There was some really great character moments, like with Musse and Ash coming to terms on how they deal with themselves with all they have been through.
My favorite fight in all of kiseki, after some thinking on this, has to be the boss fight between all of the Iron Bloods. Decisive Collision SAR is already probably my favorite track in cold steel, but adding a whole lot of other story elements that feel very attaching, damn fantastic fight. Jusis has really grown on me, he grew from some pompus prick noble who feels holier than thou, to one of the few class 7 members who actually is suffering, the only other one I can think of is Alisa (not counting rean bc its very obvious at that point). Jusis has known a lack of love from his father since he was born of a commoner, but held high regard for his brother, Rufus, for always sticking up for him. Eventually, with adding Millium to the picture, Jusis gained another person he can show his softer side for, since Millium does not mind bringing out her most playful side with him. With CS2, Jusis felt torn about Rufus’s decision on joining the noble alliance and being an enemy of his father since he does not wish to follow his footsteps. By CS3, Jusis learns the hard truth that Rufus isn’t even blood related at all, and that his father has been neglecting the wrong child, but wanted to keep up appearances. On top of the iron bloods actions and severe confrontation with Rufus, Jusis had to deal with fighting Millium, which they both did not want to do. With Millium dying also, Jusis was torn lmao. He has basically no family left, and I love those moments of character suffering, when they have very little to no power to fix anything. Glad the series was not afraid to go this route.
With Alisa, she probably has the award of the worst parents of kiseki. While rean has the worst dad, both of his mothers are very nice and irrelevant people. Alisa has a bitch of a mom who was willing to fuck over the world if it was really her old husband she was dealing with. But with the reveal that it was his alter ego, she dipped out. But please realize she was willing to 100% follow through, if it was her original husbands personality who decided all that. And as for that husband/ father of alisa. Ya where to begin: war criminal, crimes against humanity, terrorist, disregard for his daughter and wife, the list goes on. So Alisa had a very shitty parental issue, and adding salt on the wound, with her best friend and maid going back to the dark side bc….a contract im still having trouble understanding the legalities of, Alisa was also in a very dark spot with all of her close members basically becoming her enemy.
On a different topic, music has always been something I put something important to me when I rate or talk about a game or series. Each kiseki game has their absolute bangers. Sky Fc having sophisticated fight, SC silver will, 3rd Silver will forma de death (Defeat me, that is all), Zero having getting over the barrier, Ao having azure arbitrator, cs1 having their op [I like it ] cs2 having their final final boss theme, cs3 having the godsend that is decisive collision SAR, and CS4 having the final dungeon theme. I feel its fair to say that each of the kiseki games pre CS had very notable themes for each area, Like off of memory, I can remember the theme of the port town from Sky. I can remember both the hospital theme and the main city themes of all of the crossbell games. Each of the fortresses had very militaristic vibes, very memorable.
The cold steel games did not have very memorable tracks aside from some of the battle themes. A lot of them felt like…filler music. I honestly cannot remember an area theme aside from cs4 final dungeon theme (thanks to recent playing), and maybe the ehil fortress theme. A lot of it was “that sure was an area theme” that serves the purpose to having an area theme. The music composer change was apparent. The new composer definitely had some bangers, but everything else was, lack of a better word, unremarkable. Which is sad, bc I love hearing an entire ost full of heaters.
Onto another subject, holy fuck is cold steel easy. For the first two games, I played on Hard, thinking I would like some challenge since ive played this series for a while now. I switched to Nightmare for the last two games and still did not feel fulfilled in how baffling easy these games are. I should have limited myself to like, not using brave orders or not using ex orbs, or not using certain strats or characters, etc..
The biggest and most notable example for how I found the games were too easy, was in CS3 against both Campanella and McBurn during the crossbell final fight. They both were heavy ass dealing magic users who had the capability to nuke my party whenever they so wished…Emmas brave order allows me to absorb magic attacks for 10 turns. Both mcburn and campanella do NOTHING but magic attacks on both basic and craft arts. The difficulty went from a 9 to a 1. Should I have not done it? Maybe. Should they have had that function in the game? No. Brave orders trivialize almost every fight. The few times I was screwed over was during cs4 when them fuckass ironbloods have brave orders of their own, cancelling out mine, but from there I do way too much damage and take too little to care regardless. On nightmare the game was too easy. On the Very Hard mode of their series, about…10 games in, their game was too easy. They added way too much and had too many gimmicks to charatcters for difficulty to mean anything. This creates another issue I hear which is abyss mode, which is just too hard, and that you have to resort to the most cheese strats to even manage a standing chance. Balance does not feel efficient in this series now, which is unfortunate bc I liked the difficulty standing in the crossbell games, even though if those had the starting problem with how busted you can be. Even that does not compare to what you can accomplish by in cs4.

So onto da meat and ‘tatoes of my biggest issues: the story and Rean problem.
So this is a bit of a weird, yet understandable situation that sort of makes sense, but is still very asinine to see. Ill give a few examples. Musse is a phenomenal character who shows the true ideals she stands her guns on, dealing with the political world and the brunt of stress she had the potential of dealing with. Juna is a victim of crossbells annexation and holds a lot of malice and anxiety towards both the ones responsible and the scapegoats for her tragedy. Alisa struggles in the business world trying to appease to her mothers wishes all while trying to understand and better herself as a woman. Emma is looking to see becoming the next promising elder in her secret village of witches who are in charge of very important world building stuff. Gauis ( as much of a meme that he is) is now a dominion member of the church, a very high position of power and influence, akin to oroborus members. Jusis is a struggling member of the noble faction who learns to keep his friends close to him while fighting against the system that oppresses his friends so. Altina has now grown more self aware of her own existence and wants to learn how to be a better person with her friends.
Until Rean steps in.
From there, Musse becomes very insufferable, Alisa becomes very rean thirsty, Juna does a complete 180 on her standing with her teacher and by the end of CS4 confesses her love to him, Altina all of a sudden loves rean, Emma gets naked several times for rean (in the astral plane), gauis then wont shut the fuck up about the wind (maybe this isn’t a rean problem), jusis just relies on rean whenever he steps in, fie relates rean to her dad and falls for him, laura p much forces herself onto rean, sara is into rean, claire kisses rean, machias rean, kurts there, rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean
REAN
Now on the flipside, this is where it gets funny. Rean is a very suffering character in which by the end of CS1. He lost his friends to the faction and had a great fear of not knowing whether they were alive again or not. By CS2 he was stuck being a dog for the government against his will and judgement. By CS3, he was promoted from dog to hound for the government whenever lechter dropped in with a paper in front of reans face and said “ do it, boy”. By the end of cs3, he was at his lowest, being the cause for the end of the world, all with his friend dead, and his dad holding him by the neck saying “les get this bread”. Rean definatly is a good character and has a lot of hard moments….when he isn’t involved with girls.
When he is involved with a female of some type, he becomes the most dense motherfucker next to the likes of kirito or lucia route tonouji kotaro. He does the “ahh..etto..nani..?” while looking dumbstruck as ever. He can just BREATHE, and they be thinking about rean 24/7. Everybody loves rean. He don’t understand why. You see, I liked Juna in Cs3 bc she hated rean for some reason. Ash was a dick to rean. Juna 180’d in cs4 and that was very fucking unfortunate. Rean needs some haters bc god forbid he got none in the world of Zemuria. Of course this is 100% on the writters, bc man, give the man a nongeneric role that isn’t harem protagonist or shonen katana wielding mr perfect. There is so much more to all the bullshit they give him, like the cassius bright ordeal, or the fact he can beat super well trained awakener pilots with like 2 years experience vs their 50+ years. Did you know he can cut tanks in half without harming the drivers? Bc fuck it why not.
Its very weird that when either party is separate, whether it’s the friends faction or rean solo, they have great moments, but mesh the two together, and it can be a mess 75% of the time. Speaking of factions and members, I can think of two characters who had 0 reason to be a part of the group. Elliot had no business being there. No one will fight me on that. Hes accomplished nothing, can contribute nothing, is nothing, and will have been remembered for nothing aside from needing to get stronger and getting his s-craft the next segment. The next member who did not need to be there was laura. She was best as a side character or npc to the likes of towa. Alright characters to their standing, but 0 need to be in the party. Every one else played a much bigger role than those two. They had to story-buff laura to have her the slightest semblance of being in the group, its laughable. She was insufferable in cs1, unnoticeably there in cs2, there in cs3, and a creep in cs4. I have no idea why she has fans aside from their poor taste in “she looks hot bro”. The same can be said for a lot of characters of class 7, but they at least provide their 2 cents at important members. I can easily list them: Emma is the most important class 7 member with her role as the witch, jusis is the noble lord upcoming, machias is the peoples champ for the noble party, alisa runs the fucking reinford company is a branch ceo, gauis (undeservingly) is dominion number 8 of the church, fie is ( by some fucking aspull) a senior ranked bracer within a year, sara is a former high ranked jeager, crow (I don’t even need to list his reasons lmao, if u know u goddamn know), juna is a crossbell hero, kurt is a fucking vander (who does nothing with it now that im thinking about it), altina is a former intelligence member for the government, musse is the fucking mastermind behind countering Osbornes plans, ash is the secret survivor (retcon lmao) of hamel and semi responsible for the events leading to cs4 with the assassination attempt of the emperor. Everyone important. Elliot? Plays a mean violin. Laura? Her dads cool.
Back to more gripping on other subjects, the oroborus have never been more frauds than ever before. Their cast is fucking weak sauce. It took fucking 4 games to convince me that mc burn is actually a threat instead of being a guy who can set stuff on fire very hot. Ya turns out he is a super demon from another plane of reality that the full force of class 7 could dent in, cool. Duvalie has no personality aside from “waga arugie!!” shes the main member of the stalhlrieqhwfbwerjgbwerv, but she quit that p much. The others followed suit after their main boss died. Speaking of, the main boss, lliane, died to a backshot from Rufus lmao. Vita quit, Bluebanc quit, McBurn p much I think quit from the ending of cs4, campanella kind of was there but got pushed back by the most obscure of npcs (aurelias right hand man whose name I forgot lmao) and to top it off: there was very little they did in terms of hostility and terrorism. Shirly literally was there to fuck around and for some reason gilbert was there. Remember in Sky when oroborus actually initiated world-ending shit? Oh ya also forgot that mariabell was there…don’t know why exactly she was there now that I think about it. She played like no role I was aware of for the phantasmal blaze plan. Speaking of, that plan is retarded.
Osborne was the most competent villain in cold steel, man actually thought light years in advance. Everyone else was either alight or less. George was a joke. No one is taking his ass seriously. Want to see a better fat villain? Watch puss in boots 2.
The last compliment ill give, which I don’t know if I covered already or not, was act 1 of cold steel 4 was the best act out of all of cold steel apart from each games finales. Even at that, I liked it more than cs1 and cs4s. each character learning how to deal with their own shit without rean? Awesome stuff. The guy needed to take a step back. There was some fantastic moments that each character had an opportunity to shine in.
Now for the worst act ive had the bitter experience of dealing with, act 3 of cs3. This shits like cs1 chapters all together, but on steroids. Not only did almost nothing happen for the grand amount of it, I can remember nothing apart from their final dungeon, but they had one of the worst rean moments in the game. Sara kiss bc she likes her former student. And claire comparing rean to her brother and proceeds to kiss him. Claire probably has to be my most hated character in kiseki. Shes so badly written, but guys will fall for her bc shes hot lmao. It’s a mess. But my main issue lies in the final dungeon part of that act. Can you imagine being told by some jobber group that “ no, you cant come in, youre not strong enough, nor do you have a leader amongst your group to handle this, we’ll do it, unless u think u can beat us”. Rean in all his glory, backs off, one of the rare times he submits to this bc………anyway, aurelia joins in, that one character they introduced in cs2 for being super strong bc she is. Anyway turns out by the magical science of bulllshit, shes strong! And a leader! She will lead the brigade! And in gameplay? Oh fuck it make her one of the strongest units you have ever seen. Cherry on top? She can match up to Lliane toe to toe, ya know, the 7th Anguis who was known for being the litteral strongest next to McBurn, who had demon powers. Ya she can match up to her toe to toe, no special powers OR REASONING, whatsoever. And then they all fuck off, chapter over. Man im getting a headache thinking about that again.

Cold steel has more problems than praises than I can count, but their praises can come high when I think on them. So its not that it’s a dogshit series, but disappointing for how they handled a lot of scenes and characters. I hope, oh god do I hope, that kuro fixes up a lot of the issues I had. Mainly there being a Van problem, whether it be a harem or naïve issue. I move onto the penultimate game before the Calvard arc, Hajimari. I thought I was really looking forward to this game from the past, now im just bracing myself for a lot of weird character moments. If they somehow manage to salvage a lot of characters from their previous bad writing experience, ill be baffled upon belief.

kind of a long review

So cold steel is certainly a set of games I have feelings for. Not too many positive ones, but certainly feelings for sure! I wanna go through my thoughts of the first two games in this one review, despite this one is mainly for CS2. So my friends do not like the CS games compared to the rest of the series, so I was bracing myself for funny shenanigans. I held no bias going into the series since I want to see for myself why its not so well received compared to the rest.

Instead of doing the cringe story summary and go through my thoughts from there, I wanna break down my categories for the two games I played between the following: Setting, music, gameplay, even more gameplay, the over arching story, my likes, my dislikes. Ill probably have a tandem here and there or a brief saying on something miniscule, but overall this is how I want to break down my experiences.
So the CS games takes place in Erobonia, this land has been heavily talked about in the previous games and is pretty much a big deal in regards to their status as a major power. According to the map, this area is fuckin HUGE. Largest place so far. So with CS taking the span of four games, its no wonder the country is massive. A bit intimidating, but something surely cool to look forward to. Experiencing new areas is always a fun thing to do in each countries starting game…shame CS1 kind of fucked it up imo.
Music is great in CS1 and 2. I have like 2 or 3 songs I can strongly remember for how great they are. Love hearing badass soundtracks played at the right moments. My top 3 are the boss theme from CS1, the true final boss theme of CS1 and the true final boss theme of CS2. Crazy how the boss themes are the most memorable. Weird even. The other music isn’t offensive or bad nor boring, I found them quite nice and relating to the previous games also. So it was still fine to listen to. Weird moment where the Sky main theme played during certain characters scenes despite them having no relation at all to anything to Sky, but ill let that slide still.
So the gameplay still follows the same formula that I know of, only major difference is the switch to 3D, so the placements for attack areas is a bit easier to see. There are still Arts, Crafts, Items, etc.. Nothings changed as far as the formula goes. As a matter of fact, certain gimmicks from previous games make a return as a permanent feature in addition to the system we already have. Adding all out attacks to be triggered any time you crit is insane to me. You had to wait for a certain turn to pop up before in previous games to launch this kind of attack. Yes you had to build up bravery meter for this, but building that up is trivial. Adding ontop of that in CS2 is the Overdrive system. From Ao, this system made certain fights very fuckin easy, catch is, its not available every time unless you are in a story heavy fight or literally the final dungeon. CS2 just made this available from the get-go. Its limited to 2 people per proc for 3 of their turns, but the catch from this one is: Its very easy to build up and this allows you to trivialize fights. I don’t want to use this term lightly for this specific circumstance, so let me rephrase or reword to the best of my ability.

Overdrive in Cold Steel 2 makes the game playing on Hard feel like im playing on Very Easy.
Ive been told multiple times that Hard in the kiseki games is just easy and that Nightmare+ is if you want the game to be actually hard. Should of listened bc good lord, game was wayyy to easy for me.

So the main cast is your average rag tag of students who all are either very important or have very important family members. Theres people like Elliot whose literally just there..i cannot for the life of me remember what he even does. All I know is that his dad is someone big. Gaius, who is also just there (and talks about wind or something), his dad is a tribe leader who can cut down major entities or something, no big deal. Alisa is there as the almost forced main girl of your entourage, her mom is the CEO of the major manufacturing for Erobonia, no big deal. Jusis is the son of one of the big 4 heads of the aristrocratic family in all of erobonia, no big deal. Machias is the son of a governor of the capitol of erobonia, no big deal. Emma is another one of the almost if not borderline forced girls the make you bring to almost every big story event, shes a witch of a long forgotten clan who has very big ties to rean and his destiny as an awakener, no big deal. Fie is the daughter of the jeager king, one of the two most powerful jeagers of their time, no big deal. Lauras dad is fucking on par if not more powerful than the benchmark that is cassius bright, no big fucking deal there. Millium (bless her heart) is a test tube baby who works for the chancellor who is a very important big deal, regardless, no big deal there. Crow is the head of a liberation front who also serves as another awakener with his own mech, no big deal. And Rean. Where to start….I don’t know, I don’t know whether to start with the fact that he knows of the 8 style blade doohickey..the likes that very few people know..like Cassisus, Arios and Richard. Or lets not forget that he is an awakener with his very own fucking mech. OH lets also not forget that he has ties and relations to the most powerful people on the planet, like Dominion #2 of the septian church and almost all of the Ironbloods. Hrmm what else. Oh ya his dad is the chancellor. No big deal.

This has to be the most powercrept cast in kiseki so far. And I didn’t even touch the guest characters we have from here and there. Remember when we just played as a cop? Or met a jackass bracer who was just rank B or C or something (agate), or when one of our party members was just a military member straight from the corps (noel). Now I wont downplay that each of the games have their own big dick party members as well like randy, son of the war god jeager or olivert lmao. But when your entire playable cast has this much on their plate…well then fuck me man you cant beat those folks.

So speaking of big dick cast members, lets talk big dick gameplay now. I touched how the game still is true to its core in terms of how everything functions. This wont stop CS2 from being overly trivial for what else you pull off. Remember how overdrive made the game into very easy mode? Well, let me touch how I beat one of the last few bosses of the games in this way. On our turn, everyone goes before the boss. Have rean activate anime good boy powers for 100cp, immidiantly overdrive and use the last craft for big dick damage. Oh crit chance? Cool, all out attack. Oh my designated caster with the quartz that doubles the damange of my first magic attack goes on a 0 EP cost turn? Sol Magna, one of the lost arts that does like damage in the 200ks or something, and that’s not even me touching its full potential. Oh a crit turn? Let me use Millium with the dominion quartz to double the damage I do with her full 200cp s craft. Oh I have one more turn with rean? Let me use the once per fight mecha segment to negate any damage and deal twice if not thrice depending on my cp. By the way the boss was dead about like 10 turns ago. Nutty. Its nutty the amount of big dick tools they give you for every instance you have in the way of offense. The best crafts are nutty. The best arts are nutty. The best accessories are nutty. The zemurian ore wepaons are nutty. Bonkers even.

Now as far as stories go? CS1 fucking sucks. How the hell do you fuck up world building in a game where the previous entries did their world building arcs phenomenally. For like 4 chapters during in CS1 I was taken to places for field studies…and nothing happened. There was very very little to no over arching build up to the plot of CS during those segments. The characters had their own little mini arcs where they became less sufferable. Speaking of, CS1 laura has to be the worst character to ever do it bc good lord they wrote her very fucking petty and entitled. Back on topic, there was a chapter where I found out that someone was smuggling good or something. Nothing happened. Another where a port town had spookies or something. Nothing happened. Another where one of my party members was locked up accidentally and never talked about again after the events happened. Nothing also happened btw. One of my most frustrated parts though was chapter 6. You see, in the previous chapter, SOMETHING HAPPENED!!! WOW GOOD LORD HOLY SMOKES FISH PASTE. And then chapater 6 happened and we were back to the same formula where nothing happenes in this hick ass town but we went there bc…..ya cold steel 1 fucking sucks in terms of its world building. Crazy though how the finale shit was actually great. Like I wont go into detail describing what happened bc ima assume u know all im talking about since this is a spoiler heavy review, but ya the finale was great.
CS2 on the opposite spectrum of CS1, was great as well! I had a fun time with it! Shit actually meant something like 90% of the time I went somewhere! Bonding events suck. Not gonna lie. They just do. Also very sucks that very important story relevant circumstances depending on which ones you watch and which final bonding event you chose. Like look, I think Fie is cute. Does she have a character? No, not really. But shes cute and I chose her for the final bonding event for CS1, apparently that was a big mistake bc I should have taken the gay route with crow bc he provides a very good scene for the final event for cs1. Damn, hate the see it. Crazy how they lock important scenes behind characters you wouldn’t pick instead of ur wiafu or something. Trying to tell me something here falcom? CS2 final bonding event I chose millium, she cute and crazy strong. Good thing her final event also was very nice to see that fitted very well with the story. I had a blast with cs2 compared to cs1 for a majority of the story.

I can list a few things I liked about cs1. I liked how it at least makes you feel like youre apart of the school spirit, this really comes together in cs2 when after you reunite with everyone, u feel happy that it all worked out. The finale to epilogue for cs2 is actually amazing. Aside from the “that wont be necessary” moments the finale dungeon had, was pretty great for the last segments. The twists it showed alongside fighting along crow with ur mech, was pretty awesome. The segment between finale and epilogue when ur playing as Lloyd? Would EASILY be my fav segment if it wasn’t for the forced rixia party member and banter they had. I really don’t like rixia. Idc if it was fitting that she was a spy and that entire segment was her forte, they had all the reason to pick anyone else. It would have easily just have worked with literally anyone else from the crossbell party. Other than that, fantastic segment. Also epilogue? That was actually a great sendoff to the first half of cold steel. Gathering literally all your party members from the games PLUS a few more? It felt like a mini Sky 3rd moment. I actually enjoyed it plenty ngl. The icing on that cake though was the true final boss in its entirety. I had one gripe in that it’s a copy paste of the original final boss from cs1 with added stats, but that didn’t take away from class VIIs last victory lap. It actually ended very nice. I may have not liked the cast that much, but they sure did send them off very well. And for the folks who didn’t like this segment bc it added nothing or whatever, go back and play persona you fucking has-been washed off knock off brandless mediocre self sustaining biased conformist jigaloo riding hacks. Overall, I didn’t like CS1 but CS2 was a huge step up for me. Taking a slight break before I continue to CS3.

oh ya and the phantasmal blaze plan explanation is one of the stupidest things ive ever read