Having followed their development since 2019, I can say for sure authors have been putting so much love in this project and their fans.

The visuals are lovely even for a VN. The way images move as the story is told is great, and it makes up a little for the lack of gameplay, as the format is always changing and moving. The amount of art you'll see is huge, and it's really well optimized for Switch. The OST has just a few songs, but they fit the setting quite well and they're not repetitive.

It's more like a story where you press a key whenever you want rather than a game. I miss branch options or some ways to interact or interfere with the story. It'd be amazing to engage with the characters a little more.
The pacing is... somewhat strange sometimes, and hints too abstract or unconnected. It feels as if things happen conveniently with no actual narrative thread. Not that it can't be a really enjoyable experience, though! Take this review with a grain of salt.

I'd say this VN appeals to a very specific target. If you're fine with VNs full of relatable quotes and not taking themselves seriously, give it a shot. If the artstyle is enough to get you interested, go for it. If you're a VN expert, this game might be kind of a rough experience.

It was certainly a treat to go through this game again. Now despite my rating, no this game isn't actually perfect. I just love it that much on a personal level. I love the characters, the story, the visuals, the new animated opening, the absolutely spectacular soundtrack and so on so forth. It's a beautiful package.

Gameplay and pacing-wise is where I see people having some problems with this game. Of course some puzzles aren't perfect...the sound puzzle was updated to include visual cues to make it much easier but it's still not very great. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the mirror maze was made easier but I've forgotten how exactly it worked in the original so it may just be my memory playing tricks on me.

The pacing is a little all over the place. with some chapters being full of puzzles and slow development (Fleta and Harpae's, then the later ones like Lisette's and Enjels are mostly just walking through linear corridors while being given their exposition. It's unfortunate that there was nothing added to fluff these portions up a bit more.

Even those sections are great though. Lisette's atmosphere comes together very well, with the heavy use of symbolism within the area. The circus portion is one of my favorites, even if it is pretty short. Just being able to explore heavily themed areas in this RPG Maker format, it's something I will never get tired of. An immense amount of content, including the collectible pumpkin charms, optional wax records and various endings, and of course a very large story that certainly is one of my favorite parts of this game.

It doesn't advance the overarching story much but outside of that it's nothing but gas. The character writing is still really strong and the returning characters like Swin and Nadia are treated really well and are implemented in a way that doesn't feel like pandering or fanservice.

In terms of gameplay they pretty much fixed my only complaints with Kuro 1, S-Crafts now have cooldown so you can't constantly spam them, the AT bar actually makes sense and you can steal turn order bonuses again and boss fights from my experience aren't completely braindead easy on Nightmare difficulty anymore. Also has what is probably the rawest final boss in the series.

Nihon Falcom's JRPG The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki was unequivocal, undeniable proof that mankind as a collective species has triumphed over God. It is a literary masterpiece with no flaws whatsoever. I would have five hours of sweaty, rigorous sex with the protagonist Van Arkride. I would raise one hundred billion dollars and hand-deliver it to the palms of his hands, all while licking his balls. If he were to get an incurable disease I would singlehandedly develop a cure for it and use it only on him. I would reanimate the corpse of one of his beloved dead relatives. All of this wouldn't even begin to show my love for him for his part in creating this Michelangelo-level piece of art.

I have played Kuro over 50 times. I know every line and scene down to the last detail. If I was asked to reenact the entire 100 hour long journey I could do it with flawless detail and precision. Once my physical version of Kuro no Kiseki arrives I will have sex with it. You cannot stop me.

Its no secret that trails games aren't the most inventive JRPG franchise around their roots are tied closely with tons of anime tropes and typical JRPG mechanics yet the trails series from sky to azure were insanely engaging and filled with fun mechanics a storyline that covers a wide variety of topics with a world that's a joy to explore yet almost none of those things i said can really describe cold steel and that's its biggest failing.

Cold steel seems to take an aggressive stance when it comes to systems from the previous games everything is downgraded and simplified to the point that participation from the player is rarely ever required this can especially be seen in the orbment system which has completely lost all its originality and fun factor, Quartz no longer pertain to a specific element and instead grant the art it says on the tin this basically means you no longer have to play around with elemental setups to get the specific arts you need all of it can easily be slotted from the get go and personally i think this is a terrible way for the mechanic to evolve there is almost no thought put into how your quartz are setup its now just
-What arts do i need
-Do i need to boost this specific stat
or do i not care and just let the game automatically do it for me (which is viable for 90% of the game).
But i have intentionally not mentioned the fact that arts are almost completely useless for this games runtime for some reason every character even support types have both insanely good status crafts and AOE crafts this gets worse when you learn how delay works and using it you can effectively delay spam the enemy and never let them get a single turn basically what this all means is that you rarely ever feel like you have to use arts which is a big negative against the balancing.

Speaking of balancing everything from the level scaling to simply encounter design is badly tuned and rarely ever reflects how strong the party even from 1-70 is always insanely ahead of the enemy and can easily get out of most situations with ease this also means that bosses are complete jokes either being HP sponges that take forever to kill or status spammers that are easily circumvented by equipping prevent items (which you always have an influx of because the game is constantly giving them out) this also is reflected in the dungeon design which ranges from one note corridors to simply flipping switches to reveal the way not terrible but it doesn't leave you with much either way the closest to a okay dungeon is maybe the final one but even that one is just a series of corridors with switches and a weird gimmick.

Getting into story territory here and while i'm not the biggest fan of the story in Trails it was very consistent from the get go sky - azure are insanely fun but somewhat cheesy anime JRPG storylines and while CS has that CS forgot to actually write compelling characters everyone is insanely one note and vapid there are no character arcs to be had here only mild disagreements with other party members that are quickly swept under the rug with "rean made them make up" there's a even point in the game where one of the characters are revealed to be a jaeger and the cast just shrugs and says "s'all cool" completely ignoring how jaegers are treated in universe and their disposition to civilians (one of the major character motivations in sky relates heavily to what jaegers did and none of it was pleasant).

This also ties into a major problem i had with the game Cold steel is designed as a newcomer friendly story and while usually that's fine and dandy it seems the writers or someone else forgot to actually make it compelling for returning players 90% of the game is nothing and leaves you with nothing the only times the game threatens you with being interesting is during chapter 6's ending and the finale but then it immediately decides "y'know what we don't want that lets move on" leaving you with absolutely nothing to take away from that in general this frustrated me to no end because i was consistently wondering when the plot would decide to actually start and not just waste my time with filler nonsense i understand that with the first game in a story arc you need to setup a ton of plots and characters (especially characters since cold steel introduces way too many) but when its just constant setup and fake problems its not really that engaging plus the franchise has already done something like this with Sky FC and that game was ten times better paced and had an actual plot for most of it while cold steel seems to forget and just shrugs while going "Wait for the next game we'll actually do something".

Overall Cold steel is a miserable downtrodden experience with nothing to take away from it or to be gained this is made worse given that this is a direct sequel to easily one of the best trails games Azure which's plot and ending is heavily tied into the events of cold steel i really wish i could say it gets better but it seems like its all downhill from here.