A huge step forward for both the series and Falcom, the first of Cold Steel saga is relatively a mixed bag compared to two very strong entries that came just before. However, that also is due to the role the game plays in the series, both the Erebonian arc and the Trails series as a whole.
I remember playing this after Persona 4 Golden, and thinking its school setting and the academic schedule structure were a poor man's imitation at what Atlus had done with the two Persona games up to that point. However, playing it now after the Crossbell arc, it is essentially a evolution of the Zero and Azure way of storytelling--one big event happens once about a month, and one chapter covers that. In a way, the school setting itself is superficial and misleading; one can even say that visually announcing its structure like that made it so rigid that it becomes even more codified and standardized, which works against the game. However, beneath that false expectation lies an evolution of the Crossbell games in terms of structure.
Instead of everything happening in a single state, each chapter has (half of) the crew travel to another place in the Empire. If the Crossbell games allowed the region itself to be a character of its own, which fed into the Azure's late game stories better, the Erebonian Empire of the Cold Steel saga is a massive place. I'm not talking about the physical size of the map here: the storytelling structure, the regions themselves and how the characters from different parts of the country all interact with each other build towards just how massive Erebonian Empire is as a concept.
People joke about how this is 70-80 hour prologue of a game, but it is true--in a good way. Those hours are not just used to introduce characters or meander in low-stakes events, but they build a world where so many pawns are at play with differing interests that are not revolving around the main cast. When you leave a region, unlike most RPGs, you know that socio-political issues you experienced there does not end. You know that those regions have their own life almost, and they interact with others in the system. If Crossbell is portrayed as a character you want to protect, Erebonia is a sleeping monster you know is about to wake soon--and everyone in it is trying to align their interests desperately to what's to come. In that sense, the school setting also makes sense--this is not a high school like Persona, this is more like the academy in Fire Emblem Three Houses, where people from different backgrounds gather in a melting pot of a place, bringing all their baggages and troubles. It serves as a nice comparison to the local regions the party visits throughout the game, which in turn adds to the world building further. I don't give a f-ck about my school in Persona, but yeah, I would give my life to protect Thors.
Cold Steel gets a lot of flak (some deserved) for an aesthetic style that is "too anime" but beneath all that, this kind of world building is still there, and the game uses most of those hours to build them up. Only Trails would dare to have an entire game this long as a prologue, and I would say they pulled it off.
I remember playing this after Persona 4 Golden, and thinking its school setting and the academic schedule structure were a poor man's imitation at what Atlus had done with the two Persona games up to that point. However, playing it now after the Crossbell arc, it is essentially a evolution of the Zero and Azure way of storytelling--one big event happens once about a month, and one chapter covers that. In a way, the school setting itself is superficial and misleading; one can even say that visually announcing its structure like that made it so rigid that it becomes even more codified and standardized, which works against the game. However, beneath that false expectation lies an evolution of the Crossbell games in terms of structure.
Instead of everything happening in a single state, each chapter has (half of) the crew travel to another place in the Empire. If the Crossbell games allowed the region itself to be a character of its own, which fed into the Azure's late game stories better, the Erebonian Empire of the Cold Steel saga is a massive place. I'm not talking about the physical size of the map here: the storytelling structure, the regions themselves and how the characters from different parts of the country all interact with each other build towards just how massive Erebonian Empire is as a concept.
People joke about how this is 70-80 hour prologue of a game, but it is true--in a good way. Those hours are not just used to introduce characters or meander in low-stakes events, but they build a world where so many pawns are at play with differing interests that are not revolving around the main cast. When you leave a region, unlike most RPGs, you know that socio-political issues you experienced there does not end. You know that those regions have their own life almost, and they interact with others in the system. If Crossbell is portrayed as a character you want to protect, Erebonia is a sleeping monster you know is about to wake soon--and everyone in it is trying to align their interests desperately to what's to come. In that sense, the school setting also makes sense--this is not a high school like Persona, this is more like the academy in Fire Emblem Three Houses, where people from different backgrounds gather in a melting pot of a place, bringing all their baggages and troubles. It serves as a nice comparison to the local regions the party visits throughout the game, which in turn adds to the world building further. I don't give a f-ck about my school in Persona, but yeah, I would give my life to protect Thors.
Cold Steel gets a lot of flak (some deserved) for an aesthetic style that is "too anime" but beneath all that, this kind of world building is still there, and the game uses most of those hours to build them up. Only Trails would dare to have an entire game this long as a prologue, and I would say they pulled it off.