This review contains spoilers
So, here we are. The worst Trails game. I will never understand how there are people out there stupid enough to try and defend this shit, but the Falcom fanbase already feels like it's made up entirely of braindead simps so I don't know why I'm surprised. I could sum this whole thing up by saying that I genuinely cannot think of a game, JRPG or otherwise, that's as disappointing to me as this one. That this was my reaction to the series as a whole once I finished CS IV. But for an actual explanation as to why Cold Steel IV is one of the worst games I have ever played, here we go.
First off, I'm skipping over the good section because Falcom does not get credit for anything in this game that's good. The overall gameplay and combat are identical to how it was in CS III, both on foot and in your Divine Knights, so they don't get points for that. You don't get to say "Hey they fucked up the story but at least they didn't fuck up the gameplay too!" and act like that's not the bare minimum. And when you market your game as a story focused RPG, with literal hours upon hours of cutscenes, and your story feels like it was written by a 10 year old, then you have failed at what you set out to do.
The writing in this game is some of the worst shit that I have ever seen in my life. In any form of media. I have read literal fucking fanfiction that is better than this. I don't know what happened between this and CS III, but every character is an idiot now. They all either waste their time with shit that doesn't matter while the actual plot advances offscreen, or they just constantly talk about how much they want to fuck Rean. Rean has been turned from a deconstruction of the stock Light Novel/Anime hero, to just being the stock Light/Novel Anime hero. They have stopped trying to do anything interesting with his character anymore and just turned him into what everyone who hated him said he was. This is capped off by him getting a God-awful redesign that looks like someone's Deviantart OC circa 2006.
They continue to use the Curse as a crutch so every villain sucks and has the same exact "they were just brainwashed" motivation. And making things even worse is that the pacing is somehow worse than CS I! The first 2 Acts of this game do not matter. They are pure filler built around bullshit fetch quests and saving Elise, who I am now calling the single worst character in the entire franchise. Elise Schwarzer is Estelle Bright if Estelle Bright was completely unlikable and written by a dude who is jacking off to Lolicon as we speak. She is every creepy anime incest trope rolled into one insufferable package. So of course, she's perfect for this game.
The only time anything remotely interesting happens is during Fragments, which is ruined when Catgirl Celine shows up because you've got to get that money from the Furry crowd apparently, and Eventide. Eventide feels like what the rest of this game should have been, and it's nice solely because you get to see this massive cast of characters actually interact with each other like people for one of the first times in the series. But even this is immediately undermined by how contrived and poorly written the Finale is.
First off, Osborne's motivations in this game win a special award for managing to out nonsense everyone else in this garbage plot and ruins the ending of Azure in the process. If everything he was trying to do was to free Erebonia and the world from the Curse, and if the Curse only affected the people of Erebonia, THEN WHY DID HE NEED TO ANNEX CROSSBELL? The entire emotional crux of the ending of Azure was Crossbell getting annexed by the Empire despite everything and then it turns out that not only was the occupation not that bad if you go off how everyone acts in CS III, but it apparently only happened because the people making the decisions are the dumbest motherfuckers on the face of the planet. Osborne was originally written to be an Otto von Bismarck/Napoleon expy who loved his country and wanted to annex Crossbell because he wanted Erebonia to eventually rule over the entire continent. Them trying to pivot to all of this being a big plan to stop the Curse not only turns one of Trails best villains into a dumbass, but it feels like a massive retcon that only happened to make this specific game fit in with the rest of the series.
In the end, to borrow a quote from the RPG Site Review, Trails of Cold Steel was a mistake. It took everything that could have made this the series best arc and fucked it all into the dirt beyond the point of redemption. CS I & II, when taken on their own, are worth experiencing since they're at least coherent and feel like they're building up to something. CS III is good as long as you stop right before you finish Chapter 4. But I cannot think of single reason for anyone to play this game other than sunk cost fallacy. The writing is terrible, the characters have been bastardized to the point that they might as well be different people, the plot makes no sense if you put even a moment of thought into it, and the whole thing feels more like it exists out of obligation rather than as the "climatic finale" to the Erebonia arc that it was supposed to be. I'm going to see Trails through to the end, but every game that I play going forward will be with a massive amount of hesitation in the back of my mind. Because after seeing this and the ending of CS III, I know now that Falcom can fuck it up at any time.
First off, I'm skipping over the good section because Falcom does not get credit for anything in this game that's good. The overall gameplay and combat are identical to how it was in CS III, both on foot and in your Divine Knights, so they don't get points for that. You don't get to say "Hey they fucked up the story but at least they didn't fuck up the gameplay too!" and act like that's not the bare minimum. And when you market your game as a story focused RPG, with literal hours upon hours of cutscenes, and your story feels like it was written by a 10 year old, then you have failed at what you set out to do.
The writing in this game is some of the worst shit that I have ever seen in my life. In any form of media. I have read literal fucking fanfiction that is better than this. I don't know what happened between this and CS III, but every character is an idiot now. They all either waste their time with shit that doesn't matter while the actual plot advances offscreen, or they just constantly talk about how much they want to fuck Rean. Rean has been turned from a deconstruction of the stock Light Novel/Anime hero, to just being the stock Light/Novel Anime hero. They have stopped trying to do anything interesting with his character anymore and just turned him into what everyone who hated him said he was. This is capped off by him getting a God-awful redesign that looks like someone's Deviantart OC circa 2006.
They continue to use the Curse as a crutch so every villain sucks and has the same exact "they were just brainwashed" motivation. And making things even worse is that the pacing is somehow worse than CS I! The first 2 Acts of this game do not matter. They are pure filler built around bullshit fetch quests and saving Elise, who I am now calling the single worst character in the entire franchise. Elise Schwarzer is Estelle Bright if Estelle Bright was completely unlikable and written by a dude who is jacking off to Lolicon as we speak. She is every creepy anime incest trope rolled into one insufferable package. So of course, she's perfect for this game.
The only time anything remotely interesting happens is during Fragments, which is ruined when Catgirl Celine shows up because you've got to get that money from the Furry crowd apparently, and Eventide. Eventide feels like what the rest of this game should have been, and it's nice solely because you get to see this massive cast of characters actually interact with each other like people for one of the first times in the series. But even this is immediately undermined by how contrived and poorly written the Finale is.
First off, Osborne's motivations in this game win a special award for managing to out nonsense everyone else in this garbage plot and ruins the ending of Azure in the process. If everything he was trying to do was to free Erebonia and the world from the Curse, and if the Curse only affected the people of Erebonia, THEN WHY DID HE NEED TO ANNEX CROSSBELL? The entire emotional crux of the ending of Azure was Crossbell getting annexed by the Empire despite everything and then it turns out that not only was the occupation not that bad if you go off how everyone acts in CS III, but it apparently only happened because the people making the decisions are the dumbest motherfuckers on the face of the planet. Osborne was originally written to be an Otto von Bismarck/Napoleon expy who loved his country and wanted to annex Crossbell because he wanted Erebonia to eventually rule over the entire continent. Them trying to pivot to all of this being a big plan to stop the Curse not only turns one of Trails best villains into a dumbass, but it feels like a massive retcon that only happened to make this specific game fit in with the rest of the series.
In the end, to borrow a quote from the RPG Site Review, Trails of Cold Steel was a mistake. It took everything that could have made this the series best arc and fucked it all into the dirt beyond the point of redemption. CS I & II, when taken on their own, are worth experiencing since they're at least coherent and feel like they're building up to something. CS III is good as long as you stop right before you finish Chapter 4. But I cannot think of single reason for anyone to play this game other than sunk cost fallacy. The writing is terrible, the characters have been bastardized to the point that they might as well be different people, the plot makes no sense if you put even a moment of thought into it, and the whole thing feels more like it exists out of obligation rather than as the "climatic finale" to the Erebonia arc that it was supposed to be. I'm going to see Trails through to the end, but every game that I play going forward will be with a massive amount of hesitation in the back of my mind. Because after seeing this and the ending of CS III, I know now that Falcom can fuck it up at any time.
6 Comments
@spiderfreak1011 Thank you! I wanted to bring up the death problem but I thought this was already too long. By the time you get to the end of this game the death count is in the fucking negatives with all the fakeouts and bullshit resurrections. And the grooming thing was already insanely creepy when they were trying to push Tita and Agate as a couple, but here it's inexcusable. I read a dev post where they said they wanted to let Rean marry his love interest but dropped the idea because some of them are underage. Holy Shit Falcom. How about you keep the marriage idea but, I don't know, drop the underage love interests, YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING DEGENERATES!
I've already beaten Reverie and it was a pretty mixed bag. C's route was really good. Rean's route was hamstrung by it being tied to CS IV and him always having at least one insufferable character in his party. And Lloyd's route was a complete waste of time that should not have been in the game. It was nothing but rehashed plot points from other games and every scene made the game worse. I want to at least try Daybreak to see for myself if they have any idea of what they're doing with the new arc, but I've more or less given up on expecting this series to have a satisfying conclusion. I'm trying to get into Xenoblade since I've heard the same about it, but I loved the first game and absolutely hated 2, so I've been taking a long break before I go back and try to beat Torna before moving on to 3.
I've already beaten Reverie and it was a pretty mixed bag. C's route was really good. Rean's route was hamstrung by it being tied to CS IV and him always having at least one insufferable character in his party. And Lloyd's route was a complete waste of time that should not have been in the game. It was nothing but rehashed plot points from other games and every scene made the game worse. I want to at least try Daybreak to see for myself if they have any idea of what they're doing with the new arc, but I've more or less given up on expecting this series to have a satisfying conclusion. I'm trying to get into Xenoblade since I've heard the same about it, but I loved the first game and absolutely hated 2, so I've been taking a long break before I go back and try to beat Torna before moving on to 3.
@CrossOfFate Yeah, I understand why you cut the review short in that case, don't blame you. The ironic thing here is Crossbell arc ironically did the same thing of not killing anyone (even antagonists, other than Joachim) but at least there it didn't fake you out with a million protag. deaths, ridiculous. And yeah, screw the degenerates at Falcom honestly. Rean having a harem was already bad enough, but adding in underage teens is just... ugh. I don't know how these people sleep at night.
Yeah that sounds about right from what I've heard of Reverie. The fact one third of the game is literally forced to be Cold Steel 5 already had me turned off from wanting to check it out, and it's a shame they do the Crossbell cast so dirty. Daybreak I hear is mostly good (but the fanservice garbage persists in disgusting ways), but Daybreak 2 is where the CS4 problems rear their ugly heads again in full force, so just be warned.
And yeah, I don't blame you for hating Xenoblade 2, I despised it myself. It has a lot of similar issues to Cold Steel 4 ironically, in a lot of disgusting ways, so definitely take all the time you need to recover after playing 2. But believe me when I say, holy crap, Xenoblade 3 COMPLETELY atones for 2's sins in every sense of the word. I've legitimately never seen such a hard return to form (and not a bait and switch one like Cold Steel 3 after CS1 and 2) that fixes literally everything wrong about the previous game, but then proceeds to do even more to make the game even better than its predecessors. If you loved Xenoblade 1, I can guarantee that you'll love 3 without a shadow of a doubt. 3 feels like the TRUE thematic sequel to 1's themes with a more young adult tone vs. 1's shonen tone (not trying to dunk on Xenoblade 1 at all, I think it was still a pretty mature game despite it being a more shonen-esque story, but 3 feels a lot more grounded and I think it works really well). Not only that, but 3 feels so much like a Trails game (in a good way) with how fully realized and real the world and quests are, there's so much to them there vs. previous games. The side content is immaculate. The character writing in 3 is also the best in the series. Future Redeemed (3's story DLC) is also godlike.
As for Torna, it's definitely a pretty good improvement after 2, but it still shares some problems. While the story is mostly more in line with Xenoblade 1's kind of tone and writing, there is still one annoying fanservice moment, since Mythra is in it, so it's sadly unavoidable. Thankfully the game is literally only 20 hours long, so that helps (also protip, do all the quests in advance as you go throug hteh plot since the story will gate you later if you don't). If you can get through Torna, believe me, 3 and Future Redeemed are infinitely worth the payoff and hardship. Trails really could stand to learn from Monolith Soft.
Yeah that sounds about right from what I've heard of Reverie. The fact one third of the game is literally forced to be Cold Steel 5 already had me turned off from wanting to check it out, and it's a shame they do the Crossbell cast so dirty. Daybreak I hear is mostly good (but the fanservice garbage persists in disgusting ways), but Daybreak 2 is where the CS4 problems rear their ugly heads again in full force, so just be warned.
And yeah, I don't blame you for hating Xenoblade 2, I despised it myself. It has a lot of similar issues to Cold Steel 4 ironically, in a lot of disgusting ways, so definitely take all the time you need to recover after playing 2. But believe me when I say, holy crap, Xenoblade 3 COMPLETELY atones for 2's sins in every sense of the word. I've legitimately never seen such a hard return to form (and not a bait and switch one like Cold Steel 3 after CS1 and 2) that fixes literally everything wrong about the previous game, but then proceeds to do even more to make the game even better than its predecessors. If you loved Xenoblade 1, I can guarantee that you'll love 3 without a shadow of a doubt. 3 feels like the TRUE thematic sequel to 1's themes with a more young adult tone vs. 1's shonen tone (not trying to dunk on Xenoblade 1 at all, I think it was still a pretty mature game despite it being a more shonen-esque story, but 3 feels a lot more grounded and I think it works really well). Not only that, but 3 feels so much like a Trails game (in a good way) with how fully realized and real the world and quests are, there's so much to them there vs. previous games. The side content is immaculate. The character writing in 3 is also the best in the series. Future Redeemed (3's story DLC) is also godlike.
As for Torna, it's definitely a pretty good improvement after 2, but it still shares some problems. While the story is mostly more in line with Xenoblade 1's kind of tone and writing, there is still one annoying fanservice moment, since Mythra is in it, so it's sadly unavoidable. Thankfully the game is literally only 20 hours long, so that helps (also protip, do all the quests in advance as you go throug hteh plot since the story will gate you later if you don't). If you can get through Torna, believe me, 3 and Future Redeemed are infinitely worth the payoff and hardship. Trails really could stand to learn from Monolith Soft.
@spiderfreak1011 Yeah, the lack of deaths is definitely noticeable in Crossbell but the story still felt like it had stakes. Like the ILF members at the Trade Conference get slaughtered so at least they’re trying to make an effort, and Ilya being crushed by the chandelier fucks her up for the entire rest of the game. But man, the amount of damage that this and CS III do to Azure is insane, since the entire emotional crux of the ending is destroyed by how shitty the payoff is in those games.
And I’ve heard the same things about side quests in Torna. I’ll try and get to it soon. Glad to hear that Xenoblade 3 is such a massive improvement from 2. At least of these companies can learn from their past mistakes.
And I’ve heard the same things about side quests in Torna. I’ll try and get to it soon. Glad to hear that Xenoblade 3 is such a massive improvement from 2. At least of these companies can learn from their past mistakes.
@CrossOfFate Yeah, I agree with you that Azure still had stakes, since they didn't shoot themselves in the foot the way CS3 and 4 did regarding that. It is a shame they ruin Azure's ending, I really enjoyed it otherwise.
Glad to hear! Hope you enjoy it and the rest of Xenoblade a lot, there's a lot to enjoy about them. And yeah, glad at least one of these companies learns from their mistakes and takes fan criticism to heart.
Glad to hear! Hope you enjoy it and the rest of Xenoblade a lot, there's a lot to enjoy about them. And yeah, glad at least one of these companies learns from their mistakes and takes fan criticism to heart.
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@CrossOfFate Oh, last thing, but I'd recommend NOT going into base Xenoblade 3 expecting it to be a full on direct sequel, it's like Cold Steel 1 after Sky arc (references to previous games and some direct ties but still largely standalone). I say this since a lot of people go into it expecting it to be Xenoblade Infinity War and it's not, it's more standalone with some cool ties to previous games later on in the narrative. Future Redeemed is the more direct sequel story to previous games though, and it's done very well.
spiderfreak1011
1 month ago
Also I'm gonna warn you right now, but this type of awful plot device writing that invalidates character motivation, on top of the ridiculous fanservice garbage doesn't leave the series with CS4. Falcom continues to be as deceitful as ever. The first 2 arcs of Trails are pretty great and make you think the series will have pretty grounded mature writing that has true integrity and won't go into the area of killing stakes or character agency, nor objectifying women in disgusting pathetic ways, only for Cold Steel to shit on ALL of that and confirm that there are otaku working at Falcom who want to pander to that same audience. Reverie dials back on the plot device crap and fanservice compared to CS, only for Kuro 1 and 2 to repeat CS's mistakes in different varying degrees, so just be warned for the future if you truly want to see this series to the end. I dropped the series here personally, and what I've heard about future games from friends who still follow it confirm this series isn't worth my time. Honestly, if you want a better RPG driven series that has great culmination pay off that better respects your time and doesn't go for this kind of writing garbage that later Trails games do, I'd recommend Xenoblade Chronicles personally. I will admit 2 is the weak link (at least when it comes to fanservice crap), but imo 1 and especially 3 really capitilize on areas Trails tries to without any of the flaws that the last several games of Trails faces.