A great experience, with plenty of humour, and a decently good difficulty curve. The quests did tend to be harder than the actual golf courses/rounds that you would play, but they were very creative that I didn't mind the grind to perfect them. The only thing keeping this from being a 5 out of 5 is the fact that this game is fairly buggy, some are quite small but I had a few shots somehow land in water when they were at least 20 yards from the shore. Thankfully that didn't happen often.

All in all very good game, but only play if you enjoy golf games.

Going to be overly harsh with this one as the novelty of these games are starting to wear off. Cold Steel 3 is a fun experience, a much improved game over Cold Steel 2. Visually it is a MASSIVE upgrade from the previous two games, the music is great and there’s also an abundance of quality of life improvements. I could go over all the positives, the fan service is plentiful here, it is so refreshing to jump into after CS2. The game is so fun to break once you get brave orders after the first hours.

BUT

And it’s a big but, after 7 games, you would think Falcom would maybe be able to change the structure of their games. Every single chapter before the finale in Trails games without fail has a boss fight at the end where the enemies don’t actually fight you and they get a monster or lackeys to fight you instead, or you fight them and you lose in the cutscene. I’m also seeing a trend where they will dump endless lore on you in the last hour (that might just be a Cold Steel thing, I think Crossbell’s games were structured pretty much perfectly) which annoys me to know end as it just ends up making you feel like you aren’t following along. Don’t get me started on a certain type of character who has ended up becoming a villain in each arc so far…

I’m not saying this game isn’t good as it was, but the more I see the same patterns and the same structures within these games the more I feel like I will start to hate future entries, and I don’t want that.

Credit where credit is due, this is still a good game, yes I will be playing Cold Steel IV immediately, or at least starting it, but I hope at some point Falcom change these things as the further along this series goes I’m worried they won’t ever hit the heights of the Sky and Crossbell arcs ever again.

A marked improvement on Cold Steel 1 in many ways, primarily due to this game being way more gameplay focused instead of the filler that dragged CS1 down. For the most part I like the new designs for the characters, and it is an interesting direction this game takes in comparison to the standard Trails formula. That being said, the Epilogue drags this game down quite a bit as it just feels pointless.

You hit the finale and then have to play for 10 more hours beyond that (not complaining about the chapter in between the Finale and Epilogue, that was sick). Combat feels better and more challenging at times, the plot has actual substance, and the plot twists are fantastic as usual. If the music was better and this game had better pacing, it would be as good as the top Trails titles, but it was clear this game needed to wrap up what Cold Steel 1 started and setup new plot devices for the journey into western Erebonia.

I’m on RPG burnout now, I’m glad this was a good game after the disappointment of the first game, hopefully I hit CS3 before the end of the year.

EDIT: I lied, jumped into CS3 straight away