Trails of Cold Steel II is a direct sequel to the original Cold Steel game and as usual with these Trails games reviews, talking about the story without spoiling elements from the first game is nigh on impossible so if you haven’t played Cold Steel I to the end, the best avoid reading this review for now.

Right with that out of the way, Cold Steel II (CS2) is the second Trails entry originally released for the PlayStation Vita. Its story picks up directly from where CS1 finished and in typical Trails fashion, this game heavily reuses assets and elements from the first game and builds on top of that with a few things to keep the game interesting and change things up a little.
The regular battle system now has the Overdrive mechanic, similar to the burst mechanic from Azure where once you build up a gauge, you can unleash a series of attacks without response. In CS2 it also guarantees unbalancing the enemy and allowing a follow up attack to happen as well as eventually giving you two Overdrive gauges to fill.
For those who finished CS1 you’ll know about a special kind of battle introduced right at the end of that game and here in CS2 we get to experience a lot more of them! Divine Knight battles sees Rean piloting a giant mech and clashing with other giant mechs in battles that are pretty simple in nature but something I loved because I am weak for giant mechs. Divine Knight battles basically boil down to figuring which part of your opponent to hit depending on what stance they’re taking. You can target the head, body, arms and if you pick the right part you can unbalance the enemy and hit a follow up attack but if you choose wrong you can end up missing and being hit with a counterattack. Eventually you’ll gain access to having a character assist you by using Arts and powering up your mech, Valimar, with his own unique Orbments but ultimately as I said, the battles are pretty simple and basic in nature.

Other new aspects include new towns like Rean’s hometown Ymir (a place where an event took place during the first game but only covered in a Drama CD and referred to multiple times in this game), plenty of new and well crafted dungeons to explore, and the best thing of all - A SNOWBOARDING MINIGAME! No joke, I beat every course for it because it’s probably one of my favourite minigames in an RPG ever. Aside from that, this game is more about continuing the narrative they built from CS1 than doing a bunch of new things.

So story, after C revealed his true identity, killed Chancellor Osborne, and occupied Thors Military Academy by kicking Rean’s ass so bad he had to flee for his life, the tensions in Erebonia have boiled over into civil war breaking out. The Noble Alliance led by Duke Cayenne has teamed up with the Imperial Liberation Front, Ouroboros, and Jaeger group Zephyr in an attempt to wrestle control of Erebonia from the Reformist Faction and in the month that Rean has spent out cold after fleeing Thors, the Noble Alliance have managed to occupy a large portion of eastern Erebonia as well as take the Imperial Royal family hostage.
It’s a very interesting set up to the story and one that sees many of Class VII’s families on opposing sides and leading to our characters having to make tough decisions. Jusis in particular has it tough with his brother being one of the key figures in the Noble Alliance and his father pushing his luck in trying to become the leader of the group.
As for Class VII themselves, they’ve ended up split up after having to flee Thors and the first portion of the game is centred around regrouping with Rean’s classmates. This is where the very long build up of the first game started to pay some dividends for me as I found a lot of the reunions to be very touching because of how much time I had spent with Class VII. Seeing Rean bear hug Machias put tears in my eyes and Alisa pouring her heart out to Rean was such an emotional moment. It’s also nice seeing Class VII out of their school uniforms and in unique clothing, being free to show off their own styles and personalities a bit more.
Aside from gathering all of Class VII, Act 1 of the game shows off a few clashes between the two armies at places like Garrelia Fortress (spotting a lovely new destroyed look after Crossbell annihilated it) and the Nord Highlands, and Ymir village gets attacked by some Jaegers. We also get to have some clashes with Ouroboros and the Noble Alliance as the game spends time introducing a lot of new characters like Ouroboros Enforcer McBurn who exudes a massive amount of power and Zephyr’s Xeno and Leonidas who are part of the Jaeger group that Fie was once a part of.
After the whole of Class VII have reunited we get an Intermission chapter which serves to let us find out a little more about the many people working with the Noble Alliance as well as get Rean to a point where he can control his unique power the game lovingly dubs “ogre power”. We caught a glimpse of it in the first game but it’s more prominent here. Ogre power basically changes Rean’s appearance to have white hair and red eyes and essentially it gives him a few turns of having boosted stats in battle.
Act 2 of the game focuses more on gathering up all the other students from Thors Military Academy and liberating places like Celdic and Roer from the Noble Alliance. These missions were my favourite part of the game as it was great seeing characters either rescuing their families from being held captive or standing up to their families for the atrocities they’ve been causing. It’s not perfect, the clashes with V and S sum up the Imperial Liberation Front as the biggest set of underwhelming villains I’ve seen so far (C is the only interesting about that group for me) but ultimately the freedom introduced from being able to go anywhere in the east of the country and liberation missions made this portion of the game a lot fun for me. I also really liked that the game allows you to walk from one town to another if you want to. You could see that the world was designed to be connected in CS1 but the field trip limitations meant the world felt disjointed while in CS2 as you progress further and further, the limitations on where you can travel are loosened and it really starts to make Erebonia feel a bit more like Crossbell and Liberl when you can walk (or use the motorcycle introduced as a transport option in this game) from place to place.
It ends on a high note with a great set of battles between Rean and C as the two fight for their ideals and we have to deal with Duke Cayenne’s mischief as he ends up feeling a little bit left out because he’s another kinda meh and backgroundy villain. The revelations and twists in the finale are once again fantastic and memorable for the most part (though I’m still struggling to take the revelation of Rean’s biological father seriously right now) and it quickly rearranges the whole civil war and the whole point of it in one fell swoop.
On top of that there’s a pretty meaty post game section that is a delightful treat for long time fans that have been playing the games in release order. The Epilogue is a nice send off for Class VII as they go their separate ways but that portion of the game drags on a bit longer than it needed (I’m not sure why they felt the need for a bunch of quests and another dungeon). By the end I had a few moments where tears had filled my eyes and when games can do that to you, they are a bit special. I loved my time with Class VII and I will miss seeing them all together as a group.

So the broad strokes of CS2s story on the surface is pretty solid and one I largely enjoyed but once you dig a little deeper there’s a lot you can pick apart here so this section is going have a lot of complaints about things that do kind of matter but at the same time didn’t stop me from loving the game.
CS2 is about a civil war but for the most part it feels kinda of…. Like a background thing? In the east of Erebonia the Noble Alliance have so much already under control that aside from a few skirmishes, there’s little to actually indicate a war is happening. One burning down of a town results in a grand total of 1 fatality and ultimately does little to sell the fact a war is happening. The Noble Alliance end up letting Class VII liberate so much of the territory they’ve claimed with no retaliation that it’s unbelievable until the bigger picture comes into view at the end. The war is apparently much more violent in the west of Erebonia and a few of the more powerful characters are off fighting over there but like CS1 that is something more interesting happening somewhere else that we don’t get to see. It’s just incredible how out of the way the game goes to limit the fact a war is happening.
Cast bloat. CS2 like CS1 has a cast of important characters to the point it doesn’t know what to do with them. Bardias and Le Guin are introduced in Act 1, leave a strong impression on Class VII and then don’t show up again until near the end of the game by which point you’re like who are these two again? Cedric, an Imperial Prince is almost completely forgotten about by the cast and even his own sister Alfin, as no one seems to care that he potentially needs to be rescued all the while Duke Cayenne is getting him ready for his schemes. Laura fades so much into the background in this game that she’s basically a talking sword. It’s just too many characters for the game to deal with.
Olivert, someone who is a very important character to Erebonia and plays a large part in the Liberl arc, is so underutilised here to the point he barely shows up in the game at all which is shocking to me. He spends most of his time fighting in the west off screen and has a couple of dramatic appearances but in a game with 17+ playable characters, HOW IS HE NOT ONE?
Class VII are supposed to be a third faction in this war but that only works if both the Noble Alliance and the Reformist Group are factions that need to be opposed, instead the Noble Alliance are the aggressor force in this war and as such Class VII is almost always working alongside the army to stop them that the whole third faction thing holds so little weight. We’re working alongside characters like Claire who has direct ties to Osborne while claiming to be neutral and having no one from the Noble Alliance side helping us outside of Rufus using us to help him deal with out of control members with the Noble Alliance.
For all the build up and importance given to the liberation of Trista and Thors Military Academy it is probably the most underwhelming moment in the game.
I understand Crow being a classmate and friend to Class VII but there's nobody wanting to hold him to account for his terrorist actions while Rean makes a big deal about trying to save Vulcan and Scarlet to make them atone for what they've done.
The story does well with what it explores and the cast of characters are fun enough to help carry it through the cracks that appear throughout. Yes, I have a lot of issues with how certain aspects were neglected but ultimately it didn’t detract from the fun I was having with the game.

On the soundtrack front this is largely the same OST from CS1 returning with a handful of new battle themes and a new opening song. The vocalised ending song was very powerful and was subtitled when it played to help drive home the emotions it was portraying.

So all in all, despite a few missteps with its story here and there, Trails of Cold Steel II was a step back up in quality after Cold Steel I for me. It manages to keep its narrative exciting and engaging throughout as well as throw in some really nice surprises for the long term fans. It manages to carry off its emotional moments well and use the foundation that Cold Steel I left for it to push most of its characters in interesting directions and leave an impact on the player.

Trails of Cold Steel, the sixth entry of the Trails series and the start of a brand new arc taking place in the nation of Erebonia.

Originally on PS Vita, Cold Steel represents a leap for the series, going full 3D for the first time. While that leap to 3D is impressive, we'll focus on the smaller tweaks to the Trails formula first before diving into the bigger stuff.
First up the battle system builds off what's come before. Instead of using a grid based system for range of movement, we now have movement range limited to a circumference which is more natural for the full 3D environments. The new ARCUS battle orbments now allow two characters to be linked in battle which means characters are able to provide follow up attacks and earn Brave Points. Brave Points can be accumulated to allow for more powerful follow up attacks with 3 points allowing a Rush attack where the two linked party members can rush an enemy for a few hits and 5 points allow a burst attack which has moved from the Crossbell games as a bonus action on a turn to here. Burst attacks basically see your party go ham on the enemies doing a good amount of damage and great for tackling larger groups of mobs. Your links can also be levelled up for even more abilities, like at level two a finishing blow unlocks meaning if you use a link attack on an enemy and bring their health down low enough, your link partner will follow up and finish off the enemy. Other abilities include stuff like Auto-Tear and Cover and overall I think it's a fantastic addition on top of Trails already fun combat. It gives you more options to work with and helps speed up the flow of regular battles which is great.

Moving onto the Orbment changes, we're mostly building off Azure here with Master Quartz returning but other elements have been simplified. Quartz now comes with Arts variants that include an art or three on them so instead of building your arts by using the right elemental combinations in your orbment, now you just need to find the quartz with the art you want and hey ho, you can use Tear. With the larger cast this game has, I can understand why the system has been simplified. Constantly trying to remember set ups for arts you want would be a pain when you're swapping between 9+ characters so I can see why you'd alleviate that by just making quartz hold spells. I did miss the fun in experimenting with quartz layouts and seeing what arts I could get but again, I can understand why the change was made.

Another gameplay tweak that I greatly appreciated is that every area now has a map for it. It was always a weird thing in the previous games for me where most dungeons didn’t have maps for some reason but thankfully Cold Steel changes that. There’s also a whole new type of battle introduced at the end of the game that I am very excited to see more of in future games but shall hold off going into here and spoiling it. I’ll just say it very much appealed to my tastes.

The core gameplay loop is very much still Trails at its heart, exploring towns, doing quests, etc to progress the story but the choice of setting this time changes up the cycle a bit this time. The Empire of Erebonia is so much larger than either Liberl or Crossbell that we’ve explored previously and the decision made was to pick one core area to keep returning to as we explore different areas. That core area? A military academy - school. Now I know most people will roll their eyes at Persona comparisons but when it feels like the inspiration for the choice of setting and when Persona and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are my core references for school settings in videogames, I think being able to use them to explain what I feel this game does right and wrong with its setting is valuable. Now Thors Military Academy being, well a military academy means this feels closer to Three Houses than Persona for me. The students here are being taught with the expectation that most of them will end up joining the military someday so for the most part the setting works. Managing to find a third way to implement the Trails rank system where you gain more points for doing more sidequests by making it a graded study report is very cool, props to them for that.
Of courses, taking inspiration from Persona means we have a calendar system introduced here. Worry not, you won’t be playing every single day of a month, instead you’ll be playing a select few days in every month. The first day takes place at school and is mostly just story stuff before moving into the second day which is your free day. Free days are split into afternoon and evening sections where you’ll get your traditional Trails sidequests to do but also Bonding Points to spend. Every month you’ll get 3 or 4 bonding points to spend on having bonding events with your classmates where you’ll get to know them better. They’re kind of inspired by Persona’s Social Links but you’re not ranking them up and continuing a narrative through them, more just seeing an extra event with that character for that month that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It does tie into your romantic partner of choice at the end of the game which changes up the final cutscene a little and who you can dance with at the school festival but otherwise, they feel very minimal and offer a little more insight to characters.
Your important quest for every free day is to visit the old school building. The old school building is a mysterious building that acts like a dungeon and every month adds a new floor to explore. Think Temple of the Ocean King from Zelda: Phantom Hourglass but without having to go through the whole thing every month, just the new floor. It mostly feels like something added to have a traditional dungeon experience for the school portions of the game and there’s very little given to the mystery to keep your interest in it outside of the fourth floor before the eventual payoff in the final chapter. It does make for a nice change of pace during the school portions and it’s also the only area for the bulk of the game where you have full control of your choice of party set up which is much appreciated.
Completing the old school building task each month transitions the day to evening and gives you one extra bonding point to spend before you return to the dorms for the day. The next day is always your Practical Exam. Basically here you’ll be given a battle to fight and often have side objectives to meet, like not letting anyone die or not using arts. These are fine and are mostly used to let characters who have tension with each other to blow off some steam and settle grievances while also building up bonds.
Finally after that you’re giving your field study destination for the month which acts as your more traditional Trails experience for the month. The class is split into two groups and sent off to different destinations to get a feel for what’s happening in Erebonia, meet the people who live in these places and help them out in a very Bracer like fashion by completing tasks. The field studies are where the more interesting story elements happen as the characters get to witness first hand the tensions between Erebonia’s Noble Faction and Reformist Faction as the flames of Civil War begin to build in the background of all the school bonding trips. The class will witness first hand the actions of the terrorist group The Imperial Liberation Front and will end up having to put a stop to them. It makes for an exciting end to each month but unfortunately because of the school system and the gameplay loop they choose to stick to so closely, rather than being able to escalate and build off these events, you’re immediately dragged back to Thors before you get to see or feel any of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on these areas and it completely takes the wind out of the plot. It’s a similar problem to what Three Houses suffer from in the first half of its game where things start to feel repetitive and the school portions start to drag on more and more as the game goes on and you want the plot to build up to something a bit more meaningful and longer lasting. It does eventually get there in the final chapter but having to go through around 60 hours of game before that point does take its toll. I think another issue comes from this game's story taking place from around late game Trails from Zero through to late game Trails to Azure. Basically throughout the game you’ll constantly be getting updates from what’s happening in Crossbell (and seeing this from the Erebonian perspective is greatly appreciated, especially with how its newspaper distorts facts to make Chancellor Osborne sound much more important to going ons in Crossbell than he actually was and dismissing the declaration of independence as a fools dream) but the issue is everything that’s happening in Crossbell sounds (and if you’ve played Zero/Azure it IS) so much more interesting than what you’re getting to see in Erebonia. So much of the political tension in Erebonia feels like it takes place off screen because these school kids are a bit too far detached from it. Sure there’s characters who have relatives who are very much involved with the quarrelling factions but they all feel like they’re kept at arm's length and are unable to give much insight to what’s happening themselves. Compare that to Elie from Zero, whose grandfather is Mayor of Crossbell and she herself has enough of an interest in politics to be able to explain to Lloyd and the player and the whole political situation of Crossbell, then it’s clear to see that we were missing someone like that in Cold Steel.

Let’s get into the cast itself then. The protagonist for this game is Rean, a young lad whose background gives him a balanced view between nobility and commoner. He ends up going to Thors Military Academy where a brand new class is being set up for a select group of students - Class VII. This class takes people from all sorts of different backgrounds and puts them together in an attempt to help people understand each other from different societal classes and try to bridge the gap between them. Including Rean the class features a total of 9 classmates to begin with which is a lot of characters to introduce at once and start building with.
We have Alisa who hides her second name and wants to take on everything herself while also looking out for everyone else. Elliot who is much more into his music than his military training. Laura, who is a noble incredibly dedicated to her training with the sword. Jusis, another noble who starts off more like the lone wolf of the group. Machias who absolutely detests nobles and wants nothing to do with them. Fie who despite being the youngest of the group, is so much more combat ready than anyone else. Emma who is the class president, top of the class but also has a mysterious air about her. And finally Gaius, a foreigner from the allied nation of Nord. On top of this we have our homeroom teacher Sara who very much opts for doing things unconventionally and loves a wee drink here and there. That’s just the opening group for the game and it’s a lot of people to manage and develop. The game does do well in trying to manage this by splitting the group up for field studies, allowing you to focus on 3 or 4 characters as well as forcing characters into groups where they’ll have to address their issues with each other (like Machias and Jusis or Fie and Laura). On top of that the field studies tend to take place in a character's hometown or somewhere where they have family connections which is great for their personal character growth. Despite the bloated cast, I did end up loving most of the characters with Alisa, Emma, and Jusis being my standouts while Gaius and Elliot unfortunately didn’t do much for me compared to the rest.
But wait there’s even more important characters! A group of second years becomes close to the group introducing us to the smartass Crow, student council president Towa, engineer George and way over the top aggressively lesbian Angelica. For the most part they’re a great bunch, I absolutely loved Crow and his dynamic with Rean though Angelica has some issues and leans way too hard into uncomfortable tropes that are yeah…. Just an overall bad representation of a lesbian character.
And hold up, there’s even more important characters like Elise - Rean’s sister, Patrick, a noble who has that noble superiority complex, Olivert and his brother and sister, more academy professors…..
Oh and we can’t forget our antagonistic group, the Imperial Liberation Front whose members like to call themselves the first letter of their name - G, S, V and the mysterious leader C who wears a black suit and mask like he’s some sort of Power Ranger fanboy (it’s cool though and he has plenty of charisma). For the bulk of the game this group really doesn't feel like much. They show up, get their asses beat off school kids and run away pretending like it was all part of the plan (which granted I’ll give C credit for his long game planning because he definitely threw me off his competency with those earlier operations)

Basically, if this feels like a lot, it’s because it is and it contributes to Cold Steel’s biggest issue - bloat. There is way too much here in terms of characters and locations to set up and in traditional Trails fashion, it’s done slowly and meticulously to make sure they truly build a world that feels alive and credit where it’s due, they do manage to accomplish that but at the same time it takes 60+ hours to do that. 60+ hours of world and character building is something that starts to drag on. I was craving for something of excitement and importance to happen because as much as I can appreciate taking your time to craft a world with great detail, I also need something to get me invested in the plot at large. I think part of the issue is the school sections take up a big chunk of play time and knock the wind out of the larger plot and bloat up the whole game while also killing the pacing. Like they are important for the camaraderie between Class VII but they do alter the balance of the traditional Trails experience in a way that I feel overall hinders the pacing. As someone who has played Three Houses the most apt comparison I can make is - imagine the academy phase of that game stretched out to 60+ hours and just as the war phase is about to begin the game ends and that’s going to be covered in the next game.
The finale of Cold Steel is fantastic, I loved the last portion of the game and everything that went down, it just took way too long meandering to that point. Take Trails in the Sky FC for example. That game is also very much focused on the slow burn of world building for the majority of the game but it does so through a much more manageable cast, with a strong focus on Estelle and Joshua at its centre as everything else is built around them and it’s last quarter gets into the exciting plot developments to make journey more memorable and it’s all done in around 40 hours. Cold Steel is juggling way too many characters without focusing on any one or two characters as its central focus and as a result everything takes so much longer to get going.

Jumping back to that transition to 3D, I will say the game does a fantastic job at bringing the scale of Erebonia to life. Cities are massive with the capital Heimdallr split into multiple districts full of massive buildings. Roer feels like Zeiss from Liberl reimagined into the full scale city it represented. The Nord Highlands bring a massive open area traversable via horse which is incredible for what is at its core a Vita game though I could’ve done with some fast travel points in that area as traversing constantly between the village and the military base to accomplish the quests in that area felt dragged out with how large it is. Ultimately though they did a fantastic job at making Erebonia feel like the massive Empire it is compared to Crossbell and Liberl. Each destination is only reachable via train as well further driving home just how massive this nation is. Some of the road areas have exits that are outside the field study boundary but signposts point out where those roads lead to which could be interesting for future games in this arc if travelling isn’t limited to trains later on.
All that to say is the world design in this game is well done and on top of that the dungeons are fun to traverse with their gimmicks like flipping switches to activate and deactivate bridges and stuff like that. The gameplay side of things really helps to keep the game being fun as it drags its heels with its narrative and for me that was greatly appreciated when my frustrations were building.

On the soundtrack side of things it’s another great offering. The upbeat sounds of school life, the atmospheric dungeon music, the heavy battle music - it’s all here to elevate the experience and help bring this world to life. The opening song is really catchy and the title screen music fits the mood of the adventure. Speaking of the title screen, I loved the neat touch of adding more characters alongside Rean on the train as the game progresses. It’s one of those little things that just make the experience a bit more special. And another little thing I think worth mentioning is this Cold Steel’s book collection Red Moon Rose - a thrilling tale of a vampire hunter and her encounter with a vampire who has been sucking the blood dry out of people during the night and I absolutely loved it. Again it’s one of those extra things that makes Trails such a great series and I love how much effort is put into those novels. On the disappointing side of things though, we do lose our funny little chest messages in this game which is a real shame.

Trails of Cold Steel is unfortunately overall, a step back from what came before it. Overly ambitious and bloated by its large cast and choice of setting, it takes way too long setting up things and not enough time paying off that build up. The finale is a great start to paying off the build up but that’s all it is - a start. Hopefully with this build up out of the way Cold Steel II can hit the ground running like the other follow up games have done in this series. The great cast of characters and fantastic gameplay makes Cold Steel still an overall enjoyable experience despite its flaws, just one that falls a bit short of what this series has managed to do before it.