Can't believe what I've finished playing yesterday. I'm still processing all that happened, but I'm ASHAMED that took me this long to play this masterpiece.

The characters are charismatic, the plot is beautifully written and the change of pace in CD2 didn't bother me. Even I thank for a more straight-forward change to start explaining everything that the game built in the almost first 50h.

The gameplay is addictive. It isn't complex, but the accessories and Gear equipment let you adapt to every situation and even do a kinda "glass cannon" build. Getting all the Deathblows for Fei and Citan (my faves for combat) was fun and did a bunch of sidequest that really liked (that Emeralda sidequest was very good even tho short).

Can't wait to keep diving in the Xeno world, as I've played (and loved) Xenoblade and now Xenogears.

Yes, I'm looking at you Xenosaga ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Cold Steel II is a weird one, because I think I had more fun with the first game, but when looked at objectively, there’s almost nothing the first game does better than its sequel.

Almost from the moment the game starts, Cold Steel II fixes my two major problems from the first game. One, the stakes are established immediately, meaning that the narrative can start when the game starts, rather than 20 hours in; and two, combat links set automatically upon rearranging the party, meaning I actually got to utilize them during gameplay. Not satisfied with merely fixing Cold Steel I’s combat though, Cold Steel II also introduces mech battles (okay, fine, technically they were introduced in Cold Steel I, but there was literally only one, so I don’t really count it) and though they are mostly spectacle—I think there were maybe two genuinely challenging mech fights in the entire game—they do a good job at being spectacle. What can I say? It’s fun demolishing enemies as a giant robot.

Unfortunately, harsh as it may sound, fixing Cold Steel I’s problems without really innovating anywhere in the writing department just means that Cold Steel II achieves the bare minimum of what could be considered a decent JRPG. As I said, it starts off promising. Act 1 does a good job raising tensions throughout, and the Class VII reunions are all surprisingly earnest. The intermission chapter even dares to do something interesting with its writing by having you interact with most of the game’s main antagonists, allowing you to get to know them and realize that most of them aren’t actually evil at heart, but then act 2 completely drops the ball in terms of momentum, having you undertake various odd jobs in preparation for the final battle instead of pursuing something that would lead to meaningful story development. It kind of picks back up during the finale but by then I had sort of lost interest.

I realize from the tone it might sound like I hate Cold Steel II, I really don’t, but it just surprises me how apathetic I ended up being towards the story after its strong opening hours. Apparently I played this game every day for a week and a half? Didn’t feel like it, I can barely remember playing this thing.

I have similarly mixed feelings on the characters. In a strange twist of fate, this is probably Ouroboros’ most entertaining showing yet. Sharon has solidified herself as one of my top three favorite characters in the series so far, having gone from being aggressively suspicious to not even trying to hide the fact that she’s an eldritch horror in a maid outfit; my favorite chaotic-neutral goober Bleublanc gets a ton of screen time; and McBurn’s aloofness turned out to be really funny. Sure, Duvalie is an overzealous brat who isn’t even evil enough to become an Enforcer, and I’m not sure why people like her, but hey, if I’m only complaining about one member of Ouroboros being lame, then that makes Cold Steel II a marked improvement over its predecessors in the antagonist department. Rean also gets a ton of development, which is nice, because despite Cold Steel I’s writing team focusing all of their efforts on the characters, Rean only got the seeds of his arc planted in the first game.

My main issue with Cold Steel II’s characters (besides Duvalie) is that unlike Rean, the rest of Class VII pretty much gets backseated from act 2 onwards. Millium has a nice moment at the very end of the game, but that’s about it. It’s frustrating, because despite the fact that most of them had arcs in the first game, none of them had quite enough screen time to make me really fall in love with the characters. I thought that, now free from the structure of the field studies, this would be the game where Class VII would really grow on me, but apparently not.

In the end, Cold Steel II does enough well to be considered competent, but not enough well to be considered excellent. After playing five and a half Trails games in a row, I think I’m finally ready to take a break. Cold Steel so far as an arc has not been the trainwreck that I was warned it would be, but it has been woefully underwhelming. I’m hoping things will pick up with all the returning characters in III and IV, but for now I want to put down the series and recharge, lest I get burnt out.

Before I go on break though, so to speak, I want to address a couple complaints that apply to the whole series, but that I haven’t mentioned yet in a review. First and foremost, we have to talk about the deus ex machinas. I’ve heard people call deus ex machinas lazy writing, personally I think they can be fun in moderation, but Trails as a series is anything but moderate, and my God, are the deus ex machinas in this series bad. I understand what they’re going for, sometimes you want to illustrate to your audience that the protagonists still have room to grow, but when they have to be bailed out from every moderately difficult fight—I mean really, it’d be one thing if it was just in fights with the big bad, but sometimes in this series the main party needs to be saved from even the B-tier villains—you end up illustrating that the party is weak and pathetic instead. It’s gotten worse throughout the series too; I mean, I thought they were starting to get annoying in the Crossbell games, but at this point it’s just ridiculous. Class VII needed to be rescued three boss battles in a row during the climax of the story, and frankly I’m not even convinced that Viscount Arseid could beat McBurn in a fight. Sure, the game hyped Arseid up as being a good swordsman, but not to the extent that he demonstrated when he showed up to distract McBurn. It’s almost laughable—they accidently made McBurn so powerful that I don’t even believe the game when it tells me that there’s someone who can hold him off. I’ve gotten a little off-track now, but you get my point.

Also, these games are famously wordy, but guys, not everyone needs to comment everytime the protagonist says something. I’m sure Sky and Crossbell did it too, but it’s especially grating in Cold Steel because the main party consists of like, ten people. At that point it’s just filler text, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to resist the urge to mash through it.

And for my last series-wide complaint, this is more of a nitpick, but what is up with the chapter division in these games? They figured it out back in Second Chapter—just have ten-ish chapters of about five hours in length—but then they decided to go back and keep screwing with it for some reason. Now we in Cold Steel II have arcs instead of chapters, even though the game still has chapters, although not really because they’re only denoted in menus, except also Cold Steel III goes back to chapters but whoops, Cold Steel IV goes back to arcs, and guys, what are we doing? These games are all about the same length. Please, learn what pacing is!

In conclusion, I’m going to see this series through to the end, but you, the reader, should just play the Crossbell games. It’s safer that way.

Trails of Cold Steel II is a JRPG with traditional turn-based battle system. It has large futuristic fantasy world, in a steam punk style. The best part of the game is definitely the story and characters, the legend of heroes is overall a huge series with interconnected lore, but you can well play this after the cold steel 1 without rest of the series. On top of main story-arc that tells a story of a war, the game contains persona style character interaction parts where you can develop relationships between the protagonist team, who are military academy students, in other words it's also a teen drama coming of life kind of stuff. While Cold Steel 1 was rather linear travel through the school trips, Cold Steel 2 is quite a bit more open world, allowing you to travel around the world in each chapter and sub-chapter parts, within limits (the characters will refuse to go too far at any given time). This doesn't mean that all parts of the game still aren't about systematically talking to every single npc at any point of game, then doing all the quests leaving the story quests / events last, every single time. The battle system is quite traditional turn-based JRPG, a lot of people seem to like it and its somewhat unique feature of moving and placing your characters on the battle field but I didn't really care for that. On normal difficulty the battles on the field are way too easy to need any tactics, and the boss battles are impossibly difficult unless you equip everyone with exactly the stuff to counter bosses' special attacks and status changes and still cheese the boss battles with some boring combos, I really do not like the battle system that much. The equipment and crafting is unbalanced as well, the weapons are just to grind and buy best for everyone (there's ever only one at a time) and there's like 10 times too much crap you can craft for me to care otherwise, but if you really like crafting and tweaking it's probably good for you. The pacing of story and battles I think was better in cold steel 1 even though it was more predictable. All in all the story is captivating enough to keep me playing 100+ hours even when the battle system is getting so boring towards the end.

So, I was sick in bed these past few days and have been going through this. At times it was the perfect thing to distract me as I got better, and at other times I genuinely think it gave me a worse migraine and fatigue than being sick ever did.

CS2 is weird because its peaks are higher than CS1's right from the beginning with its awesome premise, but it meanders more than CS1 or any of the Sky games ever did. You have so many similar dungeons that go on and on and on, with the game often involving repetition of slightly similar events or places in other areas in the middle of the game, as well as its later portion. Also, the game seems to never want to end, there's an epilogue after the credits to the finale, and then the intermission before the actual finale. I didn't mind it that much though because I really liked the Intermission and Divertissement chapters, but the actual last chapter being that long was unjustified. At least it was pretty emotional near the end, and the point it was trying to deliver was interesting. Rean's rival of sorts is pretty nice too, but I wish they had more screen time.

Overall a fun game, I'd put it above CS1. It is more ambitious than CS1, but more flawed for sure. I did play the intro to CS3 and the graphical upgrades that come with Falcom moving on from the PS Vita and years of technical advancement, as well as the improved gameplay and insane music have me very excited to play more.

It took 5 games, but I finally found what I thought was impossible: a Xeno game that feels like a complete, coherent experience in one package.

Xenoblade doesn't really revolutionize anything, but it executes so well most of its ambition. A likeable cast of characters (special props to Shulk being an amazing MC!), fantastic world design, great music and a strong story with very enganging twists, ending with a meaningful message.

If I had to point out one thing I didn't like about the game, it was the difficulty balance towards the end - the way the combat system handles level gaps is deeply frustrating, pushing you towards grinding. Even with that, it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the overall package.

I'm curious to see where this series goes after this one. I hope I can play the sequels at some point!