This review contains spoilers
I have complicated feelings about this game. As someone who has played from the Sky games up to now, I often heard people ridicule CS as a downgrade, or at the very least, not as good as what came before.
Now, while I certainly have some problems with the game, there are also things that I was pleasantly surprised by.
For one, I liked the new additions to combat. ARCUS, weapon types, and balance were all really cool to use and take advantage of. They changed the quartz system which I'm sure is controversial with a lot of older fans but as someone who never got too into it, it doesn't bother me that much.
What really grinds my gears about this game is the pacing and the structure. It's okay at first, but eventually the monotony and pacing of going to (blank) location followed by doing set amount of tasks starts getting really monotonous and repetitive. I understand why the game spends so much time with smaller scale stuff building up the characters and the world, but it didn't really grip me most of the time. I like the main cast, but most of them came off as pretty tropey and a lot of writing made me roll my eyes. It's Trails but with modern anime tropes instead of 2000s tropes. Yay.
By the end of the game, I was just waiting for it to fucking end. It doesn't help I extended my playtime by talking to every NPC at Thors and Trista every time the story moved forward so I had hours of just doing the rounds before I even got to do anything. I also marathoned the game by the end because I was under time crunch. All of those things are my fault though, so I can't really blame the game for that.
At the very least all the build up led to that EPIC ending. Trails loves doing that thing where shit gets real by the end and you're dying to see what happens next (most of the time). That final fight with the mechs though.... that credits song though..... THAT ENDING though.... singlehandedly bumped my rating up a bit.
There was a lot of times where I found CS1 boring, with glimmers of interest sprinkled in-between. Mix that with some tropey high school anime writing and I wasn't entirely always with the game. I'm glad that by the end it manages to pull off some massive twists and turns. I'm optimistic for CS2 when I get around to it.
Now, while I certainly have some problems with the game, there are also things that I was pleasantly surprised by.
For one, I liked the new additions to combat. ARCUS, weapon types, and balance were all really cool to use and take advantage of. They changed the quartz system which I'm sure is controversial with a lot of older fans but as someone who never got too into it, it doesn't bother me that much.
What really grinds my gears about this game is the pacing and the structure. It's okay at first, but eventually the monotony and pacing of going to (blank) location followed by doing set amount of tasks starts getting really monotonous and repetitive. I understand why the game spends so much time with smaller scale stuff building up the characters and the world, but it didn't really grip me most of the time. I like the main cast, but most of them came off as pretty tropey and a lot of writing made me roll my eyes. It's Trails but with modern anime tropes instead of 2000s tropes. Yay.
By the end of the game, I was just waiting for it to fucking end. It doesn't help I extended my playtime by talking to every NPC at Thors and Trista every time the story moved forward so I had hours of just doing the rounds before I even got to do anything. I also marathoned the game by the end because I was under time crunch. All of those things are my fault though, so I can't really blame the game for that.
At the very least all the build up led to that EPIC ending. Trails loves doing that thing where shit gets real by the end and you're dying to see what happens next (most of the time). That final fight with the mechs though.... that credits song though..... THAT ENDING though.... singlehandedly bumped my rating up a bit.
There was a lot of times where I found CS1 boring, with glimmers of interest sprinkled in-between. Mix that with some tropey high school anime writing and I wasn't entirely always with the game. I'm glad that by the end it manages to pull off some massive twists and turns. I'm optimistic for CS2 when I get around to it.