Hello all! I am very new to this website thank you very much for checking this out. Recently I have started this game "The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel" as it is next in line in the "Kiseki Series" that I am currently playing through. I have thoroughly enjoyed playing through the series thus far, and have decided that to make an interesting change I will journal my path through this game and give my thoughts on it as it goes. Apologies if updates to this are a little slow/on and off. I am married and work full time irl so I do not have the time to blast through it all in one sitting. Without further ado I shall give my thoughts.

The game starts with a good use of media-res. We as the audience are immediately thrown into the action without prior knowledge of the events (unless you played the previous entry in which case you will have an idea of the conflict in Crossbell). We are met with a cast of people we have never seen before and none of them appear to have any names other than their identifying features. I liked this little segment as it was a staunch "throwback" in a sense. Seeing the imperial soldier uniform now in 3D hit it very home in the park that this series is hopefully reaching it's pinnacle and this is where the action is going to start. We then take control of the black haired boy and go about with completing the mission- stopping some sort of railgun. It is then that we get into the gameplay. Some of the movement was rather blocky I found and some of the controls were a bit difficult to figure out. I am rather fond of the fact that they have kept the switching party member button and they all have different attack moves/abilities as a result. It was fun to simply switch them around and try them out. In regards to the actual combat- I found it most enjoyable but I shall save this for when the tutorial dungeon takes place.
After all of that it turned out that the entire thing was a flash forward- which in my view was a bit surprising. The previous Trails games did not start off like that- so it is cool to see that the writing techniques of the writing team are in fact evolving.

We flash forward to the suburban Trista town which in my opinion looks absolutely lovely. I would love to live there if it did not seem like the type of place where the property prices would be otherworldly extortionate in their manner. But, I digress it is simply a beautiful area though I do wish it was in High Definition (HD). I find that the shops are very quaint! The bookstore and cafe and garden shop in particular looked very very nice. It was also very cool to see the train from the Crossbell games in 3D- I do remember pondering to myself what it would be like to see it in 3D and here we are. There is also a good use of foreshadowing with the red uniforms etc- signifying that we are to be a class. I also liked the use of the trope where the blonde girl falls down and the protagonist Rean helps her up. It was admittedly rather cheesy, but cute.

Afterwards we take the path up to Thors Military Academy and my goodness it does look very nice seeing it in 3d. We are introduced to some sort of noble person with a butler and blonde hair- he seems rather arrogant in my view. Though, I imagine this is to create tension within the group- another example of how the writers have cleverly positioned the group to have contrasting personalities. The two upperclassmen however I found rather odd- though I did appreciate the use of irony in that despite them being upperclassmen they would actually appear to be less mature than the underclassmen.

After that we are introduced formally to the characters and a training exercise takes place. Of the bunch I find that my favourite is Eliot. He has a very good air about him. Rather meek, and yet charming- I imagine we will help him to overcome hardships and bond deeper with him. A very fine individual though the rest of the cast seem good too. Instructor Sara is also a good use of irony as despite being an instructor she is rather unprofessional- though I do enjoy her energy and charisma.

It is then the initial dungeon where we are all walked through the new ARCUS units. I am unsure why they call them this however. I much preferred the Enigma units from the previous titles- but never the less we meet people properly and see their weapons etc some of which are very cool. I do particularly like the Poleaxe and Elliot's orbal staff. I hope it can transform a bit like Tio's in the previous title but I am sure that time will come.
Character relationships are also established with Jusis and Machias arguing with eachother- I quite like these two myself and I think that they have cool weapons. Laura is also very cool and a favourite of mine. Eliot is #1 with Alis and then Gaius following behind. I do not much care for Emma or Fie unfortunately but I am sure their time will come. A scene I did find a bit weird though was the groping of Alisa- it seemed rather unnecessary but I suppose they were attempting to market it or something or the other.

I find that the combat in this game is a vast step up from the previous titles and it is very cool to see everything in 3D in particular the enemies. The bat monster from Trails in the Sky makes a return which was a very welcome return I might add- though it would appear we are back to only four elements in combat much like Trails in the Sky. I like that the grid and the attacks are now circular and the battles feel a lot more realistic. However a change that I do dislike is that there is unfortunately no more chest messages. If they were going to bring back chests they should have also brought back the messages in my view. I am also sadly not a fan of the quartz no longer giving element points. It was rather fun to mix and match but now you simply equip the skills. Hopefully this will change further down the line.

After getting to the end of the dungeon we are met with an orbment charging station. The series does include a lot of good points but I do wish it would explain why these are here or have people comment on it. At any rate we moved forward into the boss fight (which was very tricky for this point in the game I might add) there was a glorious moment of everyone coming together and even those with rivalries put their differences aside to seize the day and become Class SEVEN. There was also a cameo of Olivier from the Sky games which was also very exciting.

So far this has been a very pleasant experience and I am looking forward to what Trails of Cold Steel has to offer- 5 stars from me so far!