This review contains spoilers
Cold Steel IV, despite being structured like Cold Steel II, is pretty much its direct predecessor, Cold Steel III, on steroids. It has all the same strengths and weaknesses, but cranked up to eleven in both directions, right down to luring you into a false sense of security with an act one that stands as one of the better parts of the series in isolation, but is held back by the slow-moving trainwreck that follows it.
Starting with the good things Cold Steel IV lifts from Cold Steel III, the character moments are on-point. Anytime a character starts monologuing, you know you’re in for something good. The stars of Cold Steel IV are definitely Juna, Crow, and Cedric. Juna slots right into the protagonist role during act one so smoothly that she manages to stop the group dynamic from slacking in Rean’s absence. Her speech to the old Class VII motivating them to go rescue Rean was one of the game’s major highlights. I was actually surprised we got Crow back. I probably shouldn’t have been, considering how the Cold Steel arc follows every other major trope of the genre, so logically Crow’s redemption wouldn’t be any different, but what can I say? He spent most of Cold Steel II and III being adversarial, so I figured he was just going to stay that way. I’m glad he did return to the party though, because my opinion of him increased considerably with this entry. The resolution of his conflict with Rean was a long time coming, but was all the more satisfying for it. As for Cedric, he’s a character I probably should’ve singled out for praise in my Cold Steel III review, so allow me to remedy that here: Cedric has been one of the most interesting characters to watch develop over the course of the Cold Steel arc because his progression from bystander to full-on antagonist is shown to the player essentially in full, making him very easy to empathize with despite the side he chooses to take.
Unfortunately, that was my one point of praise for Cold Steel III, and so it is also my one point of praise for Cold Steel IV. Remember how I thought Cold Steel III was bloated both lore and cast-wise and how that brought down the game significantly in my regards? Yeah, it gets worse here.
In Cold Steel III, I was frustrated with the curse because it felt out-of-place with the pre-established lore. In retrospect, that was an objectively incorrect statement: magic like that has been part of the series since the Crossbell arc. Cold Steel IV provides me with a more valid reason to dislike it though, namely in how it robs almost all the antagonists of their agency, right down to the main antagonist of the Cold Steel arc and arguably the first half of the series as a whole: Chancellor Osborne. Turns out, he’s actually the reincarnation of Emperor Dreichels (the mechanics of which is never explained) and is a loving family man. Personally, I thought Osborne was great as a pure evil, power hungry villain, but this twist completely spits in the face of that by essentially saying that he can’t be held accountable for his actions. Admittedly, they do say later that the curse only amplifies the malice that already exists within the people it affects, but it still makes them do things they would never do otherwise, so I’m calling your bluff game: that was a bad writing decision.
Then there’s the matter of the narrative itself being way too bloated. It’s never been a secret that the writers have a skeleton outline of the series’ plot going forward at best, and that story beats are inserted and changed as necessary, but by the end of the Cold Steel arc the fact that these games are written one at a time becomes painfully obvious. I am confident that if the writers planned the whole arc out in advance, the whole story could’ve been covered in two games instead of four. So much time across the Cold Steel arc is spent either on field studies or doing glorified fetch quests to save kidnapped characters, both of which easily could’ve been cut down on or axed entirely with a little more foresight. If you assume an average of 60 hours per game, that’s 240 hours for the entire arc. There are definitely not 240 hours of necessary story content here, and if that’s not bad enough, there’s still more! A third of Reverie, at least as far as I’m aware, is devoted to wrapping up the Cold Steel arc. They’ve spent four full-length RPGs telling this story and apparently it still isn’t enough. Trails games can feel slow sometimes, but realizations like these are what really put the phrase “Trails games are poorly-paced” into context.
And of course, with a bloated plot comes a bloated cast. It’s actually absurd getting full party shots in the middle of dungeons and seeing like, twenty characters just standing there. It was during one of these full party shots when I was struck with the realization that Machias has not done anything since Cold Steel I. But he’s part of Class VII, so he has to be there! Duavile, who has spent the last three games being absolutely insufferable, decides that she’s had a change of heart and joins the party, only to be immediately backseated until the confrontation with Arianrhod towards the end of the game. Thirty plus playable characters sounds cool on paper, but the impracticality of it becomes obvious in execution. They didn’t even have time to properly finish Rean’s character arc—he’s a self-sacrificing hero with low self-esteem to the bitter end.
So that’s it then. I’ve played through four Cold Steel games and spent the entire time complaining. Why do I like these games? That’s not a facetious statement, I’m genuinely confused. I’ve said in the past that this series has a lot of potential, but out of the nine games I’ve played so far, only two of them have really lived up to that potential. I come to these games for the writing, come out of each one saying that it was poorly written, and then eagerly jump into the next one hoping that this time they’ll finally get it right. Am I just a sucker for JRPG tropes? Or maybe I’m really just that enamored with the idea of an overarching narrative. Maybe my real takeaway from the Cold Steel arc is that I’m allowed to like bad writing. I mean, I did enjoy the game. It never felt like a slog to get through or anything, it was just really easy to point and laugh at during some crucial moments, which is not something you usually want from your grand fantasy epic. I might very well come back to these games in a couple of months and decide to knock all their ratings down a few pegs, but for now, something in me is still enjoying them.
Before I close, there were a couple smaller points I wanted to bring up. One, I’ve been doing most if not all of the sidequests in each of these games since the Crossbell arc, and I have to say, Cold Steel IV has one of the series’ better batches. Especially during act three, a lot of them tie back into the lore or wrap up character subplots, which are always fun things to include in optional content. Two, I have to say, the soundtracks of this series really fell off. The Sky arc and especially First Chapter were littered with these bouncy jazz-fusion tracks that were strong across the board. Then the Crossbell arc hit and all of a sudden each game had like, one or two memorable songs each. Cold Steel I had at least a handful of songs to add to the playlist, but the rest were major letdowns. Third and finally, I made a comment in my Cold Steel III review about how I thought Cold Steel IV was going to turn my opinion on Musse around, but unfortunately, it didn’t. They did give us the info dump they were teasing, but it wasn’t anything particularly surprising and her personality largely remained the same, she was just less mysterious. It’s not a major point against the game, I just wanted to give the follow-up.
I’m a little nervous going into Reverie. Of the Trails games currently available in the west, it’s one of the three I see most consistently singled out for praise alongside Second Chapter and Azure. I’ve seen some fandom takes go as far as to say that it ties up all of the loose ends from the Cold Steel arc to give it a more satisfying conclusion. I want to buy into the hype, but I also thought the aforementioned other two games were not among the series’ best, so I don’t know. I already have the game, so I’ll probably jump right in just to see how this all ends, since I’m basically already there. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Starting with the good things Cold Steel IV lifts from Cold Steel III, the character moments are on-point. Anytime a character starts monologuing, you know you’re in for something good. The stars of Cold Steel IV are definitely Juna, Crow, and Cedric. Juna slots right into the protagonist role during act one so smoothly that she manages to stop the group dynamic from slacking in Rean’s absence. Her speech to the old Class VII motivating them to go rescue Rean was one of the game’s major highlights. I was actually surprised we got Crow back. I probably shouldn’t have been, considering how the Cold Steel arc follows every other major trope of the genre, so logically Crow’s redemption wouldn’t be any different, but what can I say? He spent most of Cold Steel II and III being adversarial, so I figured he was just going to stay that way. I’m glad he did return to the party though, because my opinion of him increased considerably with this entry. The resolution of his conflict with Rean was a long time coming, but was all the more satisfying for it. As for Cedric, he’s a character I probably should’ve singled out for praise in my Cold Steel III review, so allow me to remedy that here: Cedric has been one of the most interesting characters to watch develop over the course of the Cold Steel arc because his progression from bystander to full-on antagonist is shown to the player essentially in full, making him very easy to empathize with despite the side he chooses to take.
Unfortunately, that was my one point of praise for Cold Steel III, and so it is also my one point of praise for Cold Steel IV. Remember how I thought Cold Steel III was bloated both lore and cast-wise and how that brought down the game significantly in my regards? Yeah, it gets worse here.
In Cold Steel III, I was frustrated with the curse because it felt out-of-place with the pre-established lore. In retrospect, that was an objectively incorrect statement: magic like that has been part of the series since the Crossbell arc. Cold Steel IV provides me with a more valid reason to dislike it though, namely in how it robs almost all the antagonists of their agency, right down to the main antagonist of the Cold Steel arc and arguably the first half of the series as a whole: Chancellor Osborne. Turns out, he’s actually the reincarnation of Emperor Dreichels (the mechanics of which is never explained) and is a loving family man. Personally, I thought Osborne was great as a pure evil, power hungry villain, but this twist completely spits in the face of that by essentially saying that he can’t be held accountable for his actions. Admittedly, they do say later that the curse only amplifies the malice that already exists within the people it affects, but it still makes them do things they would never do otherwise, so I’m calling your bluff game: that was a bad writing decision.
Then there’s the matter of the narrative itself being way too bloated. It’s never been a secret that the writers have a skeleton outline of the series’ plot going forward at best, and that story beats are inserted and changed as necessary, but by the end of the Cold Steel arc the fact that these games are written one at a time becomes painfully obvious. I am confident that if the writers planned the whole arc out in advance, the whole story could’ve been covered in two games instead of four. So much time across the Cold Steel arc is spent either on field studies or doing glorified fetch quests to save kidnapped characters, both of which easily could’ve been cut down on or axed entirely with a little more foresight. If you assume an average of 60 hours per game, that’s 240 hours for the entire arc. There are definitely not 240 hours of necessary story content here, and if that’s not bad enough, there’s still more! A third of Reverie, at least as far as I’m aware, is devoted to wrapping up the Cold Steel arc. They’ve spent four full-length RPGs telling this story and apparently it still isn’t enough. Trails games can feel slow sometimes, but realizations like these are what really put the phrase “Trails games are poorly-paced” into context.
And of course, with a bloated plot comes a bloated cast. It’s actually absurd getting full party shots in the middle of dungeons and seeing like, twenty characters just standing there. It was during one of these full party shots when I was struck with the realization that Machias has not done anything since Cold Steel I. But he’s part of Class VII, so he has to be there! Duavile, who has spent the last three games being absolutely insufferable, decides that she’s had a change of heart and joins the party, only to be immediately backseated until the confrontation with Arianrhod towards the end of the game. Thirty plus playable characters sounds cool on paper, but the impracticality of it becomes obvious in execution. They didn’t even have time to properly finish Rean’s character arc—he’s a self-sacrificing hero with low self-esteem to the bitter end.
So that’s it then. I’ve played through four Cold Steel games and spent the entire time complaining. Why do I like these games? That’s not a facetious statement, I’m genuinely confused. I’ve said in the past that this series has a lot of potential, but out of the nine games I’ve played so far, only two of them have really lived up to that potential. I come to these games for the writing, come out of each one saying that it was poorly written, and then eagerly jump into the next one hoping that this time they’ll finally get it right. Am I just a sucker for JRPG tropes? Or maybe I’m really just that enamored with the idea of an overarching narrative. Maybe my real takeaway from the Cold Steel arc is that I’m allowed to like bad writing. I mean, I did enjoy the game. It never felt like a slog to get through or anything, it was just really easy to point and laugh at during some crucial moments, which is not something you usually want from your grand fantasy epic. I might very well come back to these games in a couple of months and decide to knock all their ratings down a few pegs, but for now, something in me is still enjoying them.
Before I close, there were a couple smaller points I wanted to bring up. One, I’ve been doing most if not all of the sidequests in each of these games since the Crossbell arc, and I have to say, Cold Steel IV has one of the series’ better batches. Especially during act three, a lot of them tie back into the lore or wrap up character subplots, which are always fun things to include in optional content. Two, I have to say, the soundtracks of this series really fell off. The Sky arc and especially First Chapter were littered with these bouncy jazz-fusion tracks that were strong across the board. Then the Crossbell arc hit and all of a sudden each game had like, one or two memorable songs each. Cold Steel I had at least a handful of songs to add to the playlist, but the rest were major letdowns. Third and finally, I made a comment in my Cold Steel III review about how I thought Cold Steel IV was going to turn my opinion on Musse around, but unfortunately, it didn’t. They did give us the info dump they were teasing, but it wasn’t anything particularly surprising and her personality largely remained the same, she was just less mysterious. It’s not a major point against the game, I just wanted to give the follow-up.
I’m a little nervous going into Reverie. Of the Trails games currently available in the west, it’s one of the three I see most consistently singled out for praise alongside Second Chapter and Azure. I’ve seen some fandom takes go as far as to say that it ties up all of the loose ends from the Cold Steel arc to give it a more satisfying conclusion. I want to buy into the hype, but I also thought the aforementioned other two games were not among the series’ best, so I don’t know. I already have the game, so I’ll probably jump right in just to see how this all ends, since I’m basically already there. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.