I really wanted this game to be great since my glorious king oliver was going to appear but unfortunately most of this game felt very tropey in allot of ways. A big thing that really brings it down is that we already know so much of what happens in Erebonia from the other trails games that seeing those scenes happen in the story eliminated any shock it would of had. I also wish they kept C identity more of a mystery it was super obvious who they were. A big thing I liked about FC was how familiarized I was with Liberl by the end of the game, but I felt the opposite happened here. If you showed me a map of Erebonia and told me where Legram was located I wouldn't know what to tell you. Which I find very weird, this is a setup game I really would of liked to know the place.
I know I'm ripping into the game allot, but I really do believe that its not as bad as people say it is. I always keep up with the ludicrous amount of npcs in the other trails game, but with this one I felt way more invested in what was going on with the school. I loved seeing the characters grow and become friends. They all came from different political background, and they all still found a way to get past that.
For me Cold steel definitely had allot of issues but the characters really made me turn a blind eye for most of the game. I still very much enjoyed myself with this game, and now that were mostly caught up to where Azure left of I'm hoping the story can pick up again.