The Erebonia arc continues with its third entry and overall eighth entry the Trails series, Trails of Cold Steel III. This one follows on from both Cold Steel II and Azure as the story rejoins up and continues forward past from where Azure left things. As usual with games following on directly from previous games, it’s difficult to go into story details without spoiling stuff from earlier in the arc so there will be spoilers in this review. Also with how much information the back half of Cold Steel III throws at you, there will be a dedicated spoiler section in this review for that which will be clearly marked for those who want to avoid that stuff.
Starting with gameplay stuff as usual, Cold Steel III is the first game in the series to target PS4 as its base platform and as such there’s plenty of graphical improvements from the previous Cold Steel games. Even playing the Switch port (which I did), the character models all look like a great step up and environments are large and well detailed. The Switch version does take a few hits, running at 30fps instead of 60 and models are a bit jaggy but otherwise I think it looks decent for what is a downgraded PS4 title on the platform. I did experience a handful of technical issues on Switch, twice the game got stuck loading and I had to quit out so if you’re playing on Switch I would advise you to save your progress frequently. One moment I had Juna pick up Celine only for Celine not to be loaded in until halfway through Juna’s conversation and another glitch I had was a character portrait being represented by their feet instead of their face (honestly both of these were more funny than anything else.) Overall for an 80 hour game, the Switch version was enjoyable for me but I imagine the PS4 and Steam versions are the better technical experiences if that is of importance to you.
I had some minor gripes with this game engine, like explosions look really bad and character animations are pretty stilted (there’s some moments where two characters lunge at each other to start a battle and it just looks pretty cheap). I can cut Falcom some slack for being such a small studio working on a pretty niche series so these are more observations from me rather than complaints.
Another weird thing is what dialogue they choose to voice and not voice. I’m aware that Rean’s Japanese VA is quite expensive so there’s times where he is the only character not speaking in a cutscene (something Xseed fixed with their Cold Steel 1/2 PS4 ports) but there’s also plenty of moments where only one character is voiced in a cutscene and it just comes across as a really weird decision. It’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of things but an unfortunate decision. On the brighter side of things, the voice acting is top notch. Some characters like Millium and Victor Arseid have had VA changes that can take a while to get used to, but it really is a top notch dub here. As a Scotsman I could tell immediately that Pablo is a really bad imitation of my accent but Becky however is really impressive and I can only assume it’s someone already hired for a more major character doing a Scottish accent because I can’t imagine NISA going to the trouble to get a voice actor from a completely different continent on board for a minor character. But yeah, overall a really impressive dub and characters like Rean, Jusis, and Juna get some really impressive acting in highly emotional scenes.
The UI has gotten an overhaul, with the battle UI seemingly taking inspiration from Persona 5’s single button action prompts instead of traditional menus (though having played Super Mario RPG recently, I think that’s the earliest example of this style of menu though I could be wrong). It took a little while to adapt to this new menu after 7 games using traditional menus and wheels but I do think the single button battle menus are the best thing to use for RPGs. One complaint I have with Cold Steel III’s UI is how incredibly tiny some of the text is. My eyesight is really good so on my end, I had no issue reading it but I can easily see it being a problem for a lot of other people, especially when I remember stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Fire Emblem: Three Houses being criticised for having small text because the text here is even smaller than those games for some UI elements.
On the battle side of things not a lot has changed. Enemies now have a bar below their health that if you can deplete it, you can enter the enemy into a broken state where your attacks do more damage and you’re guaranteed a follow up attack from your link partner that gives you a Brave Point. Brave Points now have a new use in Brave Orders that characters can use to bring new effects into battle for a few turns. For example, Rean has a Brave Order that increases damage output and refills the CP bar a bit as well as a more defensive Brave Order that heals your party a bit and reduces the characters damage taken by 0.5%. I think Brave Orders are a really cool addition to the battle system but I do have to say for someone who has been playing these games on easy for the most part and still finding the battles engaging enough, it is so easy to take bosses out in CS3 before they even get a chance to hit you if you use these Brave Orders well enough. Aside from a couple of late game fights there was definitely a notable decrease in difficulty from previous games in this one. Also added in this game is the new charge attack you can unleash before going into battle. In the bottom right of the screen you’ll see two purple bars and by using one of these you can initiate a battle with an enemy severely depletes their break bar and helps make standard encounters easier to get through which is much appreciated.
Other gameplay tweaks include chests now no longer containing monsters. Instead in this game powerful monsters are placed in front of chests that would’ve contained monster ambushes and overall I think I’m fine with that change. You can still tell it’s a rarer chest because big monster is nearby and you don’t get the surprise encounter you weren’t prepared for. Also this game finally makes hidden quest stuff a little less hidden. Maps now use green ! marks and star marks to mark off important things that you might want to check out which is a hugely appreciated change. Before this there was basically nothing to point that a hidden quest could be nearby outside of talking to every NPC, which can be extremely frustrating when you miss something you weren’t aware of, so yeah, well needed change at last.
Overall, a few teething problems aside, the gameplay and presentation has been well improved here and it has been cool going through this series in order and seeing it evolve game by game to the point it has most things figured out now.
Right, let's dive into some story and structure stuff now. Set a year and a half after the events of Cold Steel II and Azure, Cold Steel III follows our protagonist Rean Schwarzer, now Erebonia’s national hero - The Ashen Chevalier, who put a stop to the civil war. In the timeskip Erebonia has annexed North Ambria for the Northern Jaegers part in the razing of Celdic, adding another nation under their fold after having done the same to Crossbell at the end of Cold Steel II. Osborne has been consolidating more and more power, taking over Thors Military Academy and restructuring it so students are more likely to be brought into the army after graduating. A branch campus set up in the west by Olivert as one last act of defiance is where our now 20 year old Rean finds himself working at, as he becomes instructor for a new Class VII.
So my first worry coming into this game was being aware that we were returning to the gameplay structure of Cold Steel I, a structure that ultimately wore me out as it became very repetitive, cast bloated, and tension cutting. While Cold Steel III does return to Cold Steel I’s structure, a lot of lessons have been learned from it to provide a much better experience.
First, new Class VII is a much smaller cast, consisting of just 3 characters before being bumped up to 5 later, instead of 9 being bumped up to 11. What this means is the group dynamic is much more tightly woven than what CS1 provided. Another thing that helps with this is Rean being moved from the role of student to the role of instructor. A large problem with CS1’s Class VII was that everything revolved around Rean. Jusis and Machias won’t set aside their differences? Rean will fix it. Fie and Laura are having issues? No one else can help, we need Rean to fix it. New Class VII however benefit from their age and role difference from Rean. While they will come to him for advice and stuff, they’re also much better at sorting things out themselves without Rean. There’s a scene with Juna broken from everything she’s learned about what’s been happening to her home Crossbell and Kurt and Altina do a great job at staying with her and trying to lift her spirits. The early chapters often sees Rean leaving new Class VII behind to take on a dangerous threat and Ash and Musse do a great job at pushing the rest of Class VII into taking action for themselves and proving to Rean that they can handle themselves. It’s a much better dynamic than what we had before.
Change number 2 is only 3 chapters of school > school dungeon > panzer soldat training > field trip making for a much less repetitive structure than CS1 even if those sections are stretched out longer to cover about the same amount of time as CS1 did. What also helps is most of these chapters see you visit 2 towns on your field trip meaning you get a bit more world connectivity than you did in CS1.
Third, with this following on from CS2 and Azure taking the story to a new point after the first two CS games ran alongside the Crossbell arc, we get to see a lot of returning characters. So like how Trails from Zero made great use of Renne’s story to keep you engaged while setting up the Crossbell arc stuff, CS3 has plenty of returning characters to keep your interest while it sets up new Class VII and the next stage of the conflict in Erebonia. We have stuff like Randy now working as an instructor for the branch campus, Tita becoming a disciple for Professor Schmidt, and loosening up on the Bracer Guilds allowing Agate to make his way over to Erebonia. On top of this we have old Class VII reunions which are really great for seeing how these characters have grown over the years, like Alisa now working for the Reinford company or Emma growing into an insanely powerful witch or Elliot now being a fantastic musician whose record is lighting up the charts. It’s the type of character growth you rarely see in most other series because very few things follow characters for this long and I love it. Even more incredible is seeing other students from CS1 and 2 making their way in the world. Vivi is now a journalist, Becky is trying to make her way as a goods seller, Mint is now an engineer, Munk works for the radio, it’s just such wonderful world building and like seeing all your old friends going out into the real world and finding their way. On top of this there’s visiting important locations from previous games like Crossbell, and a moment where you visit an area with a very sombre remix from a previous game and oh my gosh, this game is so good for paying homage to previous games.
There’s also Ouroboros returning to the fold so you’ll be seeing familiar faces from their ranks again and it all really helps to keep things interesting in a way the original Cold Steel failed to. It’s not quite on the same level of Zero wrapping up Renne’s arc but nonetheless, it’s fantastic if that type of stuff appeals to you and for me it does.
In typical Trails fashion, this is a slow burn with a repetitive structure for its first three chapters and there could be an argument that not much of importance happens. The field trip structure sees you doing quests with new Class VII, Ouroboros shows up to do an experiment so Rean ditches new Class VII to fight them off with old Class VII, new Class VII end up barging in anyways so Ouroboros fire up their Aion experiment and you do a Divine Knight battle with a Panzer Soldat ally. And yeah on the surface, it can feel repetitive and pointless, especially when Ouroboros suddenly change their goal from taking back the Phantasmal Blaze plan but under the surface there’s a subtle connection being built that you don’t even truly realise until much later. For example, I didn’t think I bonded much with original Class VII, I had my favourites like Alisa and Emma but otherwise I had much more attachment to the Liberl gang and the SSS. However, when all of the old Class VII reunite in this game, it was a hugely emotional moment for me because of the time I spent in CS1 and 2 with them. They had subtly wormed their way into my heart in a way that I didn’t even realise and it’s much the same here. Like yeah in the grand scheme of things, little is happening in the main plot until like Chapter 4, but at the same time, you’re slowly witnessing Altina becoming more and more human, Juna growing less and less resentful towards Erebonians in general, Kurt and Rean trying to be more accommodating for Juna’s pride as a Crossbellan, Rean growing more and more as an instructor and learning to trust his students more. I can understand that being 3 games in on the arc, most people are probably looking for much more evenly spread out plot progression and maybe it’s because I’m a very patient person who is pretty good at adapting to slower paced things but it’s part of what I really love about this series. I don’t think I end up caring about characters like Becky and Vivi or coming around on characters like Millium if it wasn’t for these slower parts of the games, so while yeah, I do understand criticism towards Cold Steel in general taking its sweet time on delivering the heavy hitting story beats, I will always appreciate how Trails manages to get its world and characters to find their way into my heart, even when I’m not realising it at first.
Continuing on with other things I appreciated this time around, Rean as an instructor! I think the role fits him so much better as a character. His very corny speeches work so much better as a teacher trying to inspire his students but just not connecting in the way he hoped, like he’s that cringey teacher you love because you know they’re trying their best but they’re just a little out of touch. Of course his experience in battle and from the war means he can still inspire his students, especially with the power he wields, but there’s a much better balance here than in previous games and it works so well. There’s also the Northern War event that took place during the timeskip where Rean lost control of his “Ogre powers” and is back to holding back again. It feels more like an excuse to make Spirit Unification a power upgrade again than anything else for me though. Rean does still have his self confidence issues and still has moments where he questions his abilities, there’s a bit of imposter syndrome with the role of Ashen Chevalier that’s been thrust upon him. Unfortunately his character is still undermined at times with the amount of women that fawn over him and my gosh the list keeps growing to such an unbelievable degree. It wouldn’t be so bad if he actually warmed his way into people’s hearts but geez, it seems like most women fall for him before even walks onto screen and it’s like c’mon Falcom, we had such a well written romance in the Sky games, why couldn’t we have just let Rean have a dedicated partner and skip all the nonsense.
New Class VII’s members make for a decent bunch.
Juna feels like a secondary protagonist, bringing the perspective of a Crossbellan who has lost her home to the Empire and is now shipped off to a foreign military school. The strength of her character is her passion. She starts off giving Rean a tough time, makes fun of Kurt because he’s Erebonian and quickly befriends Altina to try and bring her out of her shell. Juna has a lot of pride for Crossbell and it takes her a while to warm up to her new environment.
Kurt is of Vander descent and as such he’s very serious about his sword training. With the Vanders being stripped from their duties as retainers for the Royal Family, he finds himself kind of lost on what his future holds. The serious swordsman character unfortunately doesn’t do much for me and I was hoping for a little bit more from him as a Vander.
Altina, who we met in Cold Steel II as Black Rabbit, working under the government has ended up at the branch campus as well. She’s a homunculi who has been helping Rean on his missions from the government and her whole life has been about following orders and as such, she will not do anything without being ordered to. Her character growth with Class VII is so good, Rean does a good job pushing her into finding an activity to do after classes and she ends up joining the swimming club and enjoying it. Little by little, she grows more human and emotional from her experiences and she probably has the best arc of this game.
Ash is a delinquent style character who has so much more going on under the surface than you realise. He’s a little too smart for his own good but I’m glad that he’s one of the few characters that gives Rean a little pushback and he’s great at pushing Class VII out of their comfort zone. There’s definitely more to come from him in future games and I look forward to it.
Musse is….. My least favourite character introduced to the new Class VII. 90% of her character schtick is to sexually harass Rean and everyone plays it off as a joke but like, when nearly every single conversation involves her making a sexual comment towards Rean it’s like c’mon….. Just stop please just stop. Again, there’s something more to her character, she seems very on top of the wilder situations but there’s so little this game gave me to make me like her.
Overall, I think I like new Class VII more as a group, while I like individual characters from old Class VII more. Like I would take Alisa, Emma, Fie, Jusis, Machias over most of the characters in new Class VII but I would take the group dynamic of new Class VII over the old Class VII’s dynamic. Of course old Class VII has now had 3 games to grow on me as individuals while the new ones clearly have more to offer but I can only give what I have experienced so far.
Speaking Musse and eyeroll worthy content, Cold Steel III unfortunately hits this area a bit more often than other games in the series, partly because of the amount of characters the game has. So not only do we have Musse sexually harassing Rean, we have the return of Shirley whose first action on screen is to grope Duvalie just like she did to Elie in Azure, Angelica is back and being sexually inappropriate to every single girl she meets including the Class VII students, characters are still trying push Rean and Elise into being a thing despite being step siblings and hey, how about Agate and Tita, who have very brotherly-sister bond also being shipteased by characters? Normally I have a decent tolerance to this nonsense, it happens once or twice a game, I roll my eyes and complain, then move on and forget about it but because there’s so many of these characters in the game now, it happens so much more frequently and it gets harder and harder to ignore. Why can’t we just have brother/sister like dynamics without trying to make it romantic? Why can’t we have lesbians that are just normal around women? It’s not something that severely detracts from the game for me but it’s also something worth complaining about because it’s just so damn annoying and feels so pointless to include in the game.
So without going into deep spoiler territory, I can say I loved most of what CS3 had to offer. The gameplay keeps improving, the story does enough to keep your attention until it starts going into the really big stuff and while it is very ambitious yet slightly messy, it does manage to carry itself throughout very well to create a fantastic experience. There’s other stuff I want to talk about but it will be going into heavy CS3 spoiler territory so if you don’t want to read any of that I would advise you to stop reading here and I thank you for sticking with the review to this point, for everyone else, let’s have a dive into some meatier stuff.
SPOILER SECTION
Right, the Cold Steel arc as a whole so far has been ambition and scope increasing to such a large degree that things start to get messy and while I will always appreciate ambition on this sort of scale, I do have to try and untangle things and iron out the mess that is seeping through the cracks that are developing more and more as this arc continues.
This game is where I started to struggle to keep up with what was happening. The last couple of chapters introduce so many elements and names to keep track of in two huge information dumps where it’s like could we have not spread this throughout the game a bit better? Vampires, Great Twilight, the Curse, Black Alberich, 7 Divine Knights, Gaius is a member of the Gralsritter now, two Holy Beasts and probably even more I’m forgetting about just fired at you one after another and like yeah, some of it is probably covered in the books and the Black Records but it isn’t really relevant to the story at this point so it becomes so much information to take in all at once. And this is on top of absolutely incredible stuff going on like fighting Dark Dragons and the Gral of Erebos being manifested or the insanity of Oroboros, the Black Workshop, Osborne, Zephyr, Thors Main Branch, and the Red Constellation all working together despite the first half of the game seeing much of these forces clashing against each other…. It's, yeah, a little bit messy.
Vampires. As a huge fan of the Red Moon Rose books, I was so excited to see this game introduce Crimson Roselia, the vampire hunter from those books who was also a vampire herself. Unfortunately, outside of Roselia herself, vampires in this game were very undercooked, appearing for a portion of Chapter 4, where the Calvardian secret service become vampires but all you get is a dark miasma surrounding them and very little vampire fangs which I was hoping for. It’s dealt with very quickly because once you take the Dark Dragon down, that’s the end of them which was very anticlimactic. That said I love Roselia, she was kind enough to bear her fangs at the camera, so at the very least I do have a vampire witch to look forward to in future games.
Undermining the big death of Cold Steel II. Crow’s death was a huge moment in Cold Steel II, absolutely crushing Rean to the point he looked empty inside and being the moment Osborne truly shows just what a magnificent bastard he is, by coming back from the dead himself, undoing all of Crow’s achievements and taking complete control of basically everything. Cold Steel III shows off a masked man in its opening character sequence who is so obviously Crow that is like c’mon guys, did he really need to come back? And dead characters not being dead is becoming a big thing in this arc now. Aside from Crow and Osborne, we have Rutger (Fie’s Jaeger dad who died in battle), the Steel Maiden Arianrhod (who is Lianne Sandlot from the War of the Lions 250 years ago), Franz Reinford (Alisa’s father who died in a explosion). Now with the exception of Franz, all of these characters are shown to have Divine Knights that seem to be tied to their immortality in some way (I presume Cold Steel IV will explain that), so it’s not like these characters are being resurrected for “free”, but at the same time that’s a lot of characters not staying dead, when the end of the game starts getting pretty trigger happy with killing off characters, you can’t help but wonder, how many of them are actually gonna stay dead? The emotional impact is lost a little bit unfortunately. I will give Cold Steel III credit for killing off a few big characters because of as of right now for where I’m at, yeah as far as I’m aware, they are actually dead, and if they come back in CS4, then that’s more of a detriment to what CS4 decided to do rather than what CS3 did, if that makes sense.
The Curse. Ok, this is just a hard thing to wrap my head around right now. So far the story seems a little bit conflicted on what this curse actually is. At times it’s getting the blame for literally everything bad Erebonia has done. Hamel? The curse. The civil war? The curse. The 100 days war? The curse. At other times they’re like well, no the curse isn’t solely to blame, it’s more like something urging people to give into their darkest desires which is like better I suppose but it’s still a bit messy because the curse seems to exist as something that takes responsibility for their actions away from the people committing the atrocities and I’m like… is that a good idea? Trails has done so well with its political intrigue so far with characters like Richard in Trails in the Sky and Dieter Crois in Trails to Azure, both nationalists who believed they had their countries best interests at heart, both people who with a little influence from Oroboros, were able to carry out attempts at their plans, whether it was a coup or forcing independence on a nation, the point is these characters were responsible for their actions and believed in their politics. The curse feels like a way to shift the blame, like Osborne says of those who committed the Hamel atrocities, they were good people who would’ve never done something like that. Right now at least, Osborne doesn’t seem to be under the effect of the curse, instead he’s still being a magnificent bastard who is using the curse to drive up Erebonian’s thirst for war with Calvard and I can work with that. We’ll see where CS4 takes the curse plotline but as of right now, it’s another one of those cracks starting to appear that I’m wary of.
Cold Steel and the defying of expectations in poor ways.
A little trend I’ve started to notice with Cold Steel is that it will set up this super intriguing idea and then pull the rug from under it to defy expectations but only to make the end result worse. For example, the end of CS2 put Rean in a really interesting spot. The poor lad, broken and empty from the loss of Crow, has fallen to taking orders from the government. We see him driving back Calvard to annex Crossbell and even clashing against Lloyd to try and stop him taking data from the Geofront. During the timeskip he helps annex North Ambria and while Rean justifies his actions because he’s going to these places and stopping people from getting killed, he’s ultimately still helping Erebonia take people’s homes and ruin lives. He clearly doesn’t like following Osborne’s orders but does so because he believes it’s the best way he can protect people. So I was hoping that maybe Juna would be a character who would point out to Rean that while he’s saving people, his actions are making the people of Crossbell suffer under Imperial rule. Instead what we get is Juna’s problem with Rean is her being unable to thank him for saving her and her family’s life when he was driving back Calvard from Crossbell. It just takes a much more bland and uninteresting route because no one tries to point out to Rean that helping the government get what they want is only giving Osborne more and more power and we go down the route of Rean is a saviour saving all of these people woooooo.
Same with Ouroboros. There’s an interesting dynamic at play where they want to take back the Phantasmal Blaze plan from Osborne, something that could’ve maybe lead to some sort of crazy alliance with Rean’s group as they take down the huge threat that is Osborne, instead, Ouroboros suddenly decide that actually working with Osborne makes more sense because he’s going to do the Phantasmal Blaze plan anyways.
Bouncing back to the good stuff, I mentioned it earlier but getting to visit Hamel and hearing a sombre version of Silver Will play out…. Ugh, tears in my eyes for that section. Both Class VII and Ouroboros paying their respects to Loewe before taking their fight outside of the village, there’s just a sheer level of class and respect I have for that scene that I’d be hard pressed to find an example from anything else I’ve experienced that compares to that.
Juna breaking down on Orchis Tower, screaming for people to give the people of Crossbell their free nation back, to return the pride that has been robbed from them. Easily one of the best voice acted moments in the game and a standout for when Trails does politics well, it does it damn well.
Which brings us to Sara and the Northern Jaegers in Chapter 3. Both from the recently annexed state of North Ambria, the Northern Jaegars attack Juno Naval Fortress in a suicide mission for one last attempt at revenge for their nation being annexed. When defeated, they pull out their weapons on themselves in an attempt to kill themselves because they have no pride left. Sara gives an impassioned speech that being a Northern Jaeger was never about pride but about finding money to feed the people of their poor and starving nation and helps guide them back onto the right path. It’s another incredible moment that really caps off Sara’s character so far and also incredibly well voice acted.
For those who have been playing through all the games in order, we not only have Agate, Tita, and Randy back (though Randy is unfortunately not playable), we also get Tio, and Olivier playable again as well as playable Lechter for the first time. In fact this game does a fantastic job at balancing out play time for its character roster. New Class VII get early portions of chapters, old Class VII come in for the final portions of the first 3 chapters, Chapter 4 has a section where you get a bunch of irregular characters like Lechter, Claire, and Sharon. You have two dungeons where you have to split your cast up into teams, Juno Naval Fortress sees old Class VII and new Class VII working together which helps make Juna feel like a secondary protagonist leading her squad while Rean leads the old Class VII, and in Chapter 4 you have the full squad of both old and new Class VII split into 3 teams to tackle the Heimdallr underground lair of the Dark Dragon and even tackle the boss itself in the 3 separate squad. Once again, Trails does an incredible job of not only giving you a large cast to play with but making sure you actually get a chance to play with every single character it gives you.
The final dungeon sequence follows a similar pattern to Cold Steel II’s final dungeon where you come up against some very powerful bosses along the way. In Cold Steel II, these bosses like McBurn, Xeno and Leonidas are all held off by Class VII for a while before they up the ante and take things seriously. Every case sees an immensely powerful character like Victor Arseid or Olivert and Vander step in to hold off the enemy while Class VII proceeds forward. It’s a sequence I really appreciated in CS2 because it highlights that while yes, Class VII are a powerful group for their age, they’re still just kids and going up against the likes of McBurn at this stage is just too much for them so of course characters like Victor are needed to bail them out. Having that sequence return with old Class VII now having a year and a half more experience under their belt we get to see how much they’ve grown. Arianrhod and McBurn? It’s cool, Laura has mastered her father’s fighting style and Emma is now capable of performing spells powerful enough to limit McBurn’s flames, and Gaius has inherited the power of a stigma and has become a member of the Gralsritter . Rutger, Sharon, Azure Siegfried, and Shirley? No problem, Fie has merged the experience of being an ex-jaeger and current bracer under Sara’s guidance and Alisa has used her engineering experience to build an orbal gear. The Ironbloods? Well ok, this set is more like Claire, Millium, and Lechter didn’t even want to be there but Jusis, Machias, and Elliot are experienced now to hold their own. Basically the sequence serves to show just how powerful old Class VII is now because they’re holding their own against these powerful characters to allow the new inexperienced Class VII push through.
And while we’re talking about the end sequence, can I just say how much I appreciate the game ending with the good guys losing? The Courageous is blown to pieces with Toval, Olivert, and Victor aboard (again as of now they’re dead, so even if CS4 ass pulls them back, I’m going to appreciate CS3 for having the balls to kill them off here), as far as we know, Angie has been shot dead by Copper Georg, Millium sacrifices herself to become the blade that is able to kill the Holy Beast, Rean loses his mind seeing Millium murdered before his eyes and goes absolutely ham on the Holy Beast, killing it and unleashing the curse upon the world, and Osborne pulls out his Divine Knight and picks up Valimar with Rean still inside, and says “Together, we shall write the end to this wretched fairy tale. In ink, black as despair.” and we end with an image of Valimar in chains. Like hot damn to have the balls to end a game on a note like that is something I can only stand back and appreciate. Yeah, it’s something they can get away with because it’s a continuous story so the next game will probably have everything work out in the end but at the same it’s something that so rarely happens and even it does, it happens at a point in the game where there’s enough game left for the heroes to win in the end. So yeah, no matter where the story goes from here, I have to appreciate CS3 for it does.
END OF SPOILER SECTION
Ok, that was a lot to unpack but in summary, CS3 is where the issues of the Cold Steel arc start to shine through the cracks but there are enough strong highs to distract your attention away from those cracks to deliver what is ultimately so far my favourite Cold Steel game. The return of characters for long time fans, the growth of old Class VII, the dynamic of new Class VII, the incredible way the game makes use of its large playable cast, the powerful moments in every single chapter of the game, the stunning finale that ends on a cliffhanger leaving you desperate to find out what happens next…. Yes, there are stumbles along the way and the ambitious plot with perhaps too many pieces on the chess board is showing signs of collapsing in upon itself but as of this moment, I’m enjoying the highs enough that the messier side of things doesn’t detract from my experience too much. The night is yet young and the party has only just begun…. So grab a seat and enjoy the experience while you can.
Starting with gameplay stuff as usual, Cold Steel III is the first game in the series to target PS4 as its base platform and as such there’s plenty of graphical improvements from the previous Cold Steel games. Even playing the Switch port (which I did), the character models all look like a great step up and environments are large and well detailed. The Switch version does take a few hits, running at 30fps instead of 60 and models are a bit jaggy but otherwise I think it looks decent for what is a downgraded PS4 title on the platform. I did experience a handful of technical issues on Switch, twice the game got stuck loading and I had to quit out so if you’re playing on Switch I would advise you to save your progress frequently. One moment I had Juna pick up Celine only for Celine not to be loaded in until halfway through Juna’s conversation and another glitch I had was a character portrait being represented by their feet instead of their face (honestly both of these were more funny than anything else.) Overall for an 80 hour game, the Switch version was enjoyable for me but I imagine the PS4 and Steam versions are the better technical experiences if that is of importance to you.
I had some minor gripes with this game engine, like explosions look really bad and character animations are pretty stilted (there’s some moments where two characters lunge at each other to start a battle and it just looks pretty cheap). I can cut Falcom some slack for being such a small studio working on a pretty niche series so these are more observations from me rather than complaints.
Another weird thing is what dialogue they choose to voice and not voice. I’m aware that Rean’s Japanese VA is quite expensive so there’s times where he is the only character not speaking in a cutscene (something Xseed fixed with their Cold Steel 1/2 PS4 ports) but there’s also plenty of moments where only one character is voiced in a cutscene and it just comes across as a really weird decision. It’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of things but an unfortunate decision. On the brighter side of things, the voice acting is top notch. Some characters like Millium and Victor Arseid have had VA changes that can take a while to get used to, but it really is a top notch dub here. As a Scotsman I could tell immediately that Pablo is a really bad imitation of my accent but Becky however is really impressive and I can only assume it’s someone already hired for a more major character doing a Scottish accent because I can’t imagine NISA going to the trouble to get a voice actor from a completely different continent on board for a minor character. But yeah, overall a really impressive dub and characters like Rean, Jusis, and Juna get some really impressive acting in highly emotional scenes.
The UI has gotten an overhaul, with the battle UI seemingly taking inspiration from Persona 5’s single button action prompts instead of traditional menus (though having played Super Mario RPG recently, I think that’s the earliest example of this style of menu though I could be wrong). It took a little while to adapt to this new menu after 7 games using traditional menus and wheels but I do think the single button battle menus are the best thing to use for RPGs. One complaint I have with Cold Steel III’s UI is how incredibly tiny some of the text is. My eyesight is really good so on my end, I had no issue reading it but I can easily see it being a problem for a lot of other people, especially when I remember stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Fire Emblem: Three Houses being criticised for having small text because the text here is even smaller than those games for some UI elements.
On the battle side of things not a lot has changed. Enemies now have a bar below their health that if you can deplete it, you can enter the enemy into a broken state where your attacks do more damage and you’re guaranteed a follow up attack from your link partner that gives you a Brave Point. Brave Points now have a new use in Brave Orders that characters can use to bring new effects into battle for a few turns. For example, Rean has a Brave Order that increases damage output and refills the CP bar a bit as well as a more defensive Brave Order that heals your party a bit and reduces the characters damage taken by 0.5%. I think Brave Orders are a really cool addition to the battle system but I do have to say for someone who has been playing these games on easy for the most part and still finding the battles engaging enough, it is so easy to take bosses out in CS3 before they even get a chance to hit you if you use these Brave Orders well enough. Aside from a couple of late game fights there was definitely a notable decrease in difficulty from previous games in this one. Also added in this game is the new charge attack you can unleash before going into battle. In the bottom right of the screen you’ll see two purple bars and by using one of these you can initiate a battle with an enemy severely depletes their break bar and helps make standard encounters easier to get through which is much appreciated.
Other gameplay tweaks include chests now no longer containing monsters. Instead in this game powerful monsters are placed in front of chests that would’ve contained monster ambushes and overall I think I’m fine with that change. You can still tell it’s a rarer chest because big monster is nearby and you don’t get the surprise encounter you weren’t prepared for. Also this game finally makes hidden quest stuff a little less hidden. Maps now use green ! marks and star marks to mark off important things that you might want to check out which is a hugely appreciated change. Before this there was basically nothing to point that a hidden quest could be nearby outside of talking to every NPC, which can be extremely frustrating when you miss something you weren’t aware of, so yeah, well needed change at last.
Overall, a few teething problems aside, the gameplay and presentation has been well improved here and it has been cool going through this series in order and seeing it evolve game by game to the point it has most things figured out now.
Right, let's dive into some story and structure stuff now. Set a year and a half after the events of Cold Steel II and Azure, Cold Steel III follows our protagonist Rean Schwarzer, now Erebonia’s national hero - The Ashen Chevalier, who put a stop to the civil war. In the timeskip Erebonia has annexed North Ambria for the Northern Jaegers part in the razing of Celdic, adding another nation under their fold after having done the same to Crossbell at the end of Cold Steel II. Osborne has been consolidating more and more power, taking over Thors Military Academy and restructuring it so students are more likely to be brought into the army after graduating. A branch campus set up in the west by Olivert as one last act of defiance is where our now 20 year old Rean finds himself working at, as he becomes instructor for a new Class VII.
So my first worry coming into this game was being aware that we were returning to the gameplay structure of Cold Steel I, a structure that ultimately wore me out as it became very repetitive, cast bloated, and tension cutting. While Cold Steel III does return to Cold Steel I’s structure, a lot of lessons have been learned from it to provide a much better experience.
First, new Class VII is a much smaller cast, consisting of just 3 characters before being bumped up to 5 later, instead of 9 being bumped up to 11. What this means is the group dynamic is much more tightly woven than what CS1 provided. Another thing that helps with this is Rean being moved from the role of student to the role of instructor. A large problem with CS1’s Class VII was that everything revolved around Rean. Jusis and Machias won’t set aside their differences? Rean will fix it. Fie and Laura are having issues? No one else can help, we need Rean to fix it. New Class VII however benefit from their age and role difference from Rean. While they will come to him for advice and stuff, they’re also much better at sorting things out themselves without Rean. There’s a scene with Juna broken from everything she’s learned about what’s been happening to her home Crossbell and Kurt and Altina do a great job at staying with her and trying to lift her spirits. The early chapters often sees Rean leaving new Class VII behind to take on a dangerous threat and Ash and Musse do a great job at pushing the rest of Class VII into taking action for themselves and proving to Rean that they can handle themselves. It’s a much better dynamic than what we had before.
Change number 2 is only 3 chapters of school > school dungeon > panzer soldat training > field trip making for a much less repetitive structure than CS1 even if those sections are stretched out longer to cover about the same amount of time as CS1 did. What also helps is most of these chapters see you visit 2 towns on your field trip meaning you get a bit more world connectivity than you did in CS1.
Third, with this following on from CS2 and Azure taking the story to a new point after the first two CS games ran alongside the Crossbell arc, we get to see a lot of returning characters. So like how Trails from Zero made great use of Renne’s story to keep you engaged while setting up the Crossbell arc stuff, CS3 has plenty of returning characters to keep your interest while it sets up new Class VII and the next stage of the conflict in Erebonia. We have stuff like Randy now working as an instructor for the branch campus, Tita becoming a disciple for Professor Schmidt, and loosening up on the Bracer Guilds allowing Agate to make his way over to Erebonia. On top of this we have old Class VII reunions which are really great for seeing how these characters have grown over the years, like Alisa now working for the Reinford company or Emma growing into an insanely powerful witch or Elliot now being a fantastic musician whose record is lighting up the charts. It’s the type of character growth you rarely see in most other series because very few things follow characters for this long and I love it. Even more incredible is seeing other students from CS1 and 2 making their way in the world. Vivi is now a journalist, Becky is trying to make her way as a goods seller, Mint is now an engineer, Munk works for the radio, it’s just such wonderful world building and like seeing all your old friends going out into the real world and finding their way. On top of this there’s visiting important locations from previous games like Crossbell, and a moment where you visit an area with a very sombre remix from a previous game and oh my gosh, this game is so good for paying homage to previous games.
There’s also Ouroboros returning to the fold so you’ll be seeing familiar faces from their ranks again and it all really helps to keep things interesting in a way the original Cold Steel failed to. It’s not quite on the same level of Zero wrapping up Renne’s arc but nonetheless, it’s fantastic if that type of stuff appeals to you and for me it does.
In typical Trails fashion, this is a slow burn with a repetitive structure for its first three chapters and there could be an argument that not much of importance happens. The field trip structure sees you doing quests with new Class VII, Ouroboros shows up to do an experiment so Rean ditches new Class VII to fight them off with old Class VII, new Class VII end up barging in anyways so Ouroboros fire up their Aion experiment and you do a Divine Knight battle with a Panzer Soldat ally. And yeah on the surface, it can feel repetitive and pointless, especially when Ouroboros suddenly change their goal from taking back the Phantasmal Blaze plan but under the surface there’s a subtle connection being built that you don’t even truly realise until much later. For example, I didn’t think I bonded much with original Class VII, I had my favourites like Alisa and Emma but otherwise I had much more attachment to the Liberl gang and the SSS. However, when all of the old Class VII reunite in this game, it was a hugely emotional moment for me because of the time I spent in CS1 and 2 with them. They had subtly wormed their way into my heart in a way that I didn’t even realise and it’s much the same here. Like yeah in the grand scheme of things, little is happening in the main plot until like Chapter 4, but at the same time, you’re slowly witnessing Altina becoming more and more human, Juna growing less and less resentful towards Erebonians in general, Kurt and Rean trying to be more accommodating for Juna’s pride as a Crossbellan, Rean growing more and more as an instructor and learning to trust his students more. I can understand that being 3 games in on the arc, most people are probably looking for much more evenly spread out plot progression and maybe it’s because I’m a very patient person who is pretty good at adapting to slower paced things but it’s part of what I really love about this series. I don’t think I end up caring about characters like Becky and Vivi or coming around on characters like Millium if it wasn’t for these slower parts of the games, so while yeah, I do understand criticism towards Cold Steel in general taking its sweet time on delivering the heavy hitting story beats, I will always appreciate how Trails manages to get its world and characters to find their way into my heart, even when I’m not realising it at first.
Continuing on with other things I appreciated this time around, Rean as an instructor! I think the role fits him so much better as a character. His very corny speeches work so much better as a teacher trying to inspire his students but just not connecting in the way he hoped, like he’s that cringey teacher you love because you know they’re trying their best but they’re just a little out of touch. Of course his experience in battle and from the war means he can still inspire his students, especially with the power he wields, but there’s a much better balance here than in previous games and it works so well. There’s also the Northern War event that took place during the timeskip where Rean lost control of his “Ogre powers” and is back to holding back again. It feels more like an excuse to make Spirit Unification a power upgrade again than anything else for me though. Rean does still have his self confidence issues and still has moments where he questions his abilities, there’s a bit of imposter syndrome with the role of Ashen Chevalier that’s been thrust upon him. Unfortunately his character is still undermined at times with the amount of women that fawn over him and my gosh the list keeps growing to such an unbelievable degree. It wouldn’t be so bad if he actually warmed his way into people’s hearts but geez, it seems like most women fall for him before even walks onto screen and it’s like c’mon Falcom, we had such a well written romance in the Sky games, why couldn’t we have just let Rean have a dedicated partner and skip all the nonsense.
New Class VII’s members make for a decent bunch.
Juna feels like a secondary protagonist, bringing the perspective of a Crossbellan who has lost her home to the Empire and is now shipped off to a foreign military school. The strength of her character is her passion. She starts off giving Rean a tough time, makes fun of Kurt because he’s Erebonian and quickly befriends Altina to try and bring her out of her shell. Juna has a lot of pride for Crossbell and it takes her a while to warm up to her new environment.
Kurt is of Vander descent and as such he’s very serious about his sword training. With the Vanders being stripped from their duties as retainers for the Royal Family, he finds himself kind of lost on what his future holds. The serious swordsman character unfortunately doesn’t do much for me and I was hoping for a little bit more from him as a Vander.
Altina, who we met in Cold Steel II as Black Rabbit, working under the government has ended up at the branch campus as well. She’s a homunculi who has been helping Rean on his missions from the government and her whole life has been about following orders and as such, she will not do anything without being ordered to. Her character growth with Class VII is so good, Rean does a good job pushing her into finding an activity to do after classes and she ends up joining the swimming club and enjoying it. Little by little, she grows more human and emotional from her experiences and she probably has the best arc of this game.
Ash is a delinquent style character who has so much more going on under the surface than you realise. He’s a little too smart for his own good but I’m glad that he’s one of the few characters that gives Rean a little pushback and he’s great at pushing Class VII out of their comfort zone. There’s definitely more to come from him in future games and I look forward to it.
Musse is….. My least favourite character introduced to the new Class VII. 90% of her character schtick is to sexually harass Rean and everyone plays it off as a joke but like, when nearly every single conversation involves her making a sexual comment towards Rean it’s like c’mon….. Just stop please just stop. Again, there’s something more to her character, she seems very on top of the wilder situations but there’s so little this game gave me to make me like her.
Overall, I think I like new Class VII more as a group, while I like individual characters from old Class VII more. Like I would take Alisa, Emma, Fie, Jusis, Machias over most of the characters in new Class VII but I would take the group dynamic of new Class VII over the old Class VII’s dynamic. Of course old Class VII has now had 3 games to grow on me as individuals while the new ones clearly have more to offer but I can only give what I have experienced so far.
Speaking Musse and eyeroll worthy content, Cold Steel III unfortunately hits this area a bit more often than other games in the series, partly because of the amount of characters the game has. So not only do we have Musse sexually harassing Rean, we have the return of Shirley whose first action on screen is to grope Duvalie just like she did to Elie in Azure, Angelica is back and being sexually inappropriate to every single girl she meets including the Class VII students, characters are still trying push Rean and Elise into being a thing despite being step siblings and hey, how about Agate and Tita, who have very brotherly-sister bond also being shipteased by characters? Normally I have a decent tolerance to this nonsense, it happens once or twice a game, I roll my eyes and complain, then move on and forget about it but because there’s so many of these characters in the game now, it happens so much more frequently and it gets harder and harder to ignore. Why can’t we just have brother/sister like dynamics without trying to make it romantic? Why can’t we have lesbians that are just normal around women? It’s not something that severely detracts from the game for me but it’s also something worth complaining about because it’s just so damn annoying and feels so pointless to include in the game.
So without going into deep spoiler territory, I can say I loved most of what CS3 had to offer. The gameplay keeps improving, the story does enough to keep your attention until it starts going into the really big stuff and while it is very ambitious yet slightly messy, it does manage to carry itself throughout very well to create a fantastic experience. There’s other stuff I want to talk about but it will be going into heavy CS3 spoiler territory so if you don’t want to read any of that I would advise you to stop reading here and I thank you for sticking with the review to this point, for everyone else, let’s have a dive into some meatier stuff.
SPOILER SECTION
Right, the Cold Steel arc as a whole so far has been ambition and scope increasing to such a large degree that things start to get messy and while I will always appreciate ambition on this sort of scale, I do have to try and untangle things and iron out the mess that is seeping through the cracks that are developing more and more as this arc continues.
This game is where I started to struggle to keep up with what was happening. The last couple of chapters introduce so many elements and names to keep track of in two huge information dumps where it’s like could we have not spread this throughout the game a bit better? Vampires, Great Twilight, the Curse, Black Alberich, 7 Divine Knights, Gaius is a member of the Gralsritter now, two Holy Beasts and probably even more I’m forgetting about just fired at you one after another and like yeah, some of it is probably covered in the books and the Black Records but it isn’t really relevant to the story at this point so it becomes so much information to take in all at once. And this is on top of absolutely incredible stuff going on like fighting Dark Dragons and the Gral of Erebos being manifested or the insanity of Oroboros, the Black Workshop, Osborne, Zephyr, Thors Main Branch, and the Red Constellation all working together despite the first half of the game seeing much of these forces clashing against each other…. It's, yeah, a little bit messy.
Vampires. As a huge fan of the Red Moon Rose books, I was so excited to see this game introduce Crimson Roselia, the vampire hunter from those books who was also a vampire herself. Unfortunately, outside of Roselia herself, vampires in this game were very undercooked, appearing for a portion of Chapter 4, where the Calvardian secret service become vampires but all you get is a dark miasma surrounding them and very little vampire fangs which I was hoping for. It’s dealt with very quickly because once you take the Dark Dragon down, that’s the end of them which was very anticlimactic. That said I love Roselia, she was kind enough to bear her fangs at the camera, so at the very least I do have a vampire witch to look forward to in future games.
Undermining the big death of Cold Steel II. Crow’s death was a huge moment in Cold Steel II, absolutely crushing Rean to the point he looked empty inside and being the moment Osborne truly shows just what a magnificent bastard he is, by coming back from the dead himself, undoing all of Crow’s achievements and taking complete control of basically everything. Cold Steel III shows off a masked man in its opening character sequence who is so obviously Crow that is like c’mon guys, did he really need to come back? And dead characters not being dead is becoming a big thing in this arc now. Aside from Crow and Osborne, we have Rutger (Fie’s Jaeger dad who died in battle), the Steel Maiden Arianrhod (who is Lianne Sandlot from the War of the Lions 250 years ago), Franz Reinford (Alisa’s father who died in a explosion). Now with the exception of Franz, all of these characters are shown to have Divine Knights that seem to be tied to their immortality in some way (I presume Cold Steel IV will explain that), so it’s not like these characters are being resurrected for “free”, but at the same time that’s a lot of characters not staying dead, when the end of the game starts getting pretty trigger happy with killing off characters, you can’t help but wonder, how many of them are actually gonna stay dead? The emotional impact is lost a little bit unfortunately. I will give Cold Steel III credit for killing off a few big characters because of as of right now for where I’m at, yeah as far as I’m aware, they are actually dead, and if they come back in CS4, then that’s more of a detriment to what CS4 decided to do rather than what CS3 did, if that makes sense.
The Curse. Ok, this is just a hard thing to wrap my head around right now. So far the story seems a little bit conflicted on what this curse actually is. At times it’s getting the blame for literally everything bad Erebonia has done. Hamel? The curse. The civil war? The curse. The 100 days war? The curse. At other times they’re like well, no the curse isn’t solely to blame, it’s more like something urging people to give into their darkest desires which is like better I suppose but it’s still a bit messy because the curse seems to exist as something that takes responsibility for their actions away from the people committing the atrocities and I’m like… is that a good idea? Trails has done so well with its political intrigue so far with characters like Richard in Trails in the Sky and Dieter Crois in Trails to Azure, both nationalists who believed they had their countries best interests at heart, both people who with a little influence from Oroboros, were able to carry out attempts at their plans, whether it was a coup or forcing independence on a nation, the point is these characters were responsible for their actions and believed in their politics. The curse feels like a way to shift the blame, like Osborne says of those who committed the Hamel atrocities, they were good people who would’ve never done something like that. Right now at least, Osborne doesn’t seem to be under the effect of the curse, instead he’s still being a magnificent bastard who is using the curse to drive up Erebonian’s thirst for war with Calvard and I can work with that. We’ll see where CS4 takes the curse plotline but as of right now, it’s another one of those cracks starting to appear that I’m wary of.
Cold Steel and the defying of expectations in poor ways.
A little trend I’ve started to notice with Cold Steel is that it will set up this super intriguing idea and then pull the rug from under it to defy expectations but only to make the end result worse. For example, the end of CS2 put Rean in a really interesting spot. The poor lad, broken and empty from the loss of Crow, has fallen to taking orders from the government. We see him driving back Calvard to annex Crossbell and even clashing against Lloyd to try and stop him taking data from the Geofront. During the timeskip he helps annex North Ambria and while Rean justifies his actions because he’s going to these places and stopping people from getting killed, he’s ultimately still helping Erebonia take people’s homes and ruin lives. He clearly doesn’t like following Osborne’s orders but does so because he believes it’s the best way he can protect people. So I was hoping that maybe Juna would be a character who would point out to Rean that while he’s saving people, his actions are making the people of Crossbell suffer under Imperial rule. Instead what we get is Juna’s problem with Rean is her being unable to thank him for saving her and her family’s life when he was driving back Calvard from Crossbell. It just takes a much more bland and uninteresting route because no one tries to point out to Rean that helping the government get what they want is only giving Osborne more and more power and we go down the route of Rean is a saviour saving all of these people woooooo.
Same with Ouroboros. There’s an interesting dynamic at play where they want to take back the Phantasmal Blaze plan from Osborne, something that could’ve maybe lead to some sort of crazy alliance with Rean’s group as they take down the huge threat that is Osborne, instead, Ouroboros suddenly decide that actually working with Osborne makes more sense because he’s going to do the Phantasmal Blaze plan anyways.
Bouncing back to the good stuff, I mentioned it earlier but getting to visit Hamel and hearing a sombre version of Silver Will play out…. Ugh, tears in my eyes for that section. Both Class VII and Ouroboros paying their respects to Loewe before taking their fight outside of the village, there’s just a sheer level of class and respect I have for that scene that I’d be hard pressed to find an example from anything else I’ve experienced that compares to that.
Juna breaking down on Orchis Tower, screaming for people to give the people of Crossbell their free nation back, to return the pride that has been robbed from them. Easily one of the best voice acted moments in the game and a standout for when Trails does politics well, it does it damn well.
Which brings us to Sara and the Northern Jaegers in Chapter 3. Both from the recently annexed state of North Ambria, the Northern Jaegars attack Juno Naval Fortress in a suicide mission for one last attempt at revenge for their nation being annexed. When defeated, they pull out their weapons on themselves in an attempt to kill themselves because they have no pride left. Sara gives an impassioned speech that being a Northern Jaeger was never about pride but about finding money to feed the people of their poor and starving nation and helps guide them back onto the right path. It’s another incredible moment that really caps off Sara’s character so far and also incredibly well voice acted.
For those who have been playing through all the games in order, we not only have Agate, Tita, and Randy back (though Randy is unfortunately not playable), we also get Tio, and Olivier playable again as well as playable Lechter for the first time. In fact this game does a fantastic job at balancing out play time for its character roster. New Class VII get early portions of chapters, old Class VII come in for the final portions of the first 3 chapters, Chapter 4 has a section where you get a bunch of irregular characters like Lechter, Claire, and Sharon. You have two dungeons where you have to split your cast up into teams, Juno Naval Fortress sees old Class VII and new Class VII working together which helps make Juna feel like a secondary protagonist leading her squad while Rean leads the old Class VII, and in Chapter 4 you have the full squad of both old and new Class VII split into 3 teams to tackle the Heimdallr underground lair of the Dark Dragon and even tackle the boss itself in the 3 separate squad. Once again, Trails does an incredible job of not only giving you a large cast to play with but making sure you actually get a chance to play with every single character it gives you.
The final dungeon sequence follows a similar pattern to Cold Steel II’s final dungeon where you come up against some very powerful bosses along the way. In Cold Steel II, these bosses like McBurn, Xeno and Leonidas are all held off by Class VII for a while before they up the ante and take things seriously. Every case sees an immensely powerful character like Victor Arseid or Olivert and Vander step in to hold off the enemy while Class VII proceeds forward. It’s a sequence I really appreciated in CS2 because it highlights that while yes, Class VII are a powerful group for their age, they’re still just kids and going up against the likes of McBurn at this stage is just too much for them so of course characters like Victor are needed to bail them out. Having that sequence return with old Class VII now having a year and a half more experience under their belt we get to see how much they’ve grown. Arianrhod and McBurn? It’s cool, Laura has mastered her father’s fighting style and Emma is now capable of performing spells powerful enough to limit McBurn’s flames, and Gaius has inherited the power of a stigma and has become a member of the Gralsritter . Rutger, Sharon, Azure Siegfried, and Shirley? No problem, Fie has merged the experience of being an ex-jaeger and current bracer under Sara’s guidance and Alisa has used her engineering experience to build an orbal gear. The Ironbloods? Well ok, this set is more like Claire, Millium, and Lechter didn’t even want to be there but Jusis, Machias, and Elliot are experienced now to hold their own. Basically the sequence serves to show just how powerful old Class VII is now because they’re holding their own against these powerful characters to allow the new inexperienced Class VII push through.
And while we’re talking about the end sequence, can I just say how much I appreciate the game ending with the good guys losing? The Courageous is blown to pieces with Toval, Olivert, and Victor aboard (again as of now they’re dead, so even if CS4 ass pulls them back, I’m going to appreciate CS3 for having the balls to kill them off here), as far as we know, Angie has been shot dead by Copper Georg, Millium sacrifices herself to become the blade that is able to kill the Holy Beast, Rean loses his mind seeing Millium murdered before his eyes and goes absolutely ham on the Holy Beast, killing it and unleashing the curse upon the world, and Osborne pulls out his Divine Knight and picks up Valimar with Rean still inside, and says “Together, we shall write the end to this wretched fairy tale. In ink, black as despair.” and we end with an image of Valimar in chains. Like hot damn to have the balls to end a game on a note like that is something I can only stand back and appreciate. Yeah, it’s something they can get away with because it’s a continuous story so the next game will probably have everything work out in the end but at the same it’s something that so rarely happens and even it does, it happens at a point in the game where there’s enough game left for the heroes to win in the end. So yeah, no matter where the story goes from here, I have to appreciate CS3 for it does.
END OF SPOILER SECTION
Ok, that was a lot to unpack but in summary, CS3 is where the issues of the Cold Steel arc start to shine through the cracks but there are enough strong highs to distract your attention away from those cracks to deliver what is ultimately so far my favourite Cold Steel game. The return of characters for long time fans, the growth of old Class VII, the dynamic of new Class VII, the incredible way the game makes use of its large playable cast, the powerful moments in every single chapter of the game, the stunning finale that ends on a cliffhanger leaving you desperate to find out what happens next…. Yes, there are stumbles along the way and the ambitious plot with perhaps too many pieces on the chess board is showing signs of collapsing in upon itself but as of this moment, I’m enjoying the highs enough that the messier side of things doesn’t detract from my experience too much. The night is yet young and the party has only just begun…. So grab a seat and enjoy the experience while you can.