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.

Having finally found out about a translation for this I decided to try it and..... yeah Custom Robo rocks!!!

Story wise, it's very similar to Pokemon in that you compete in tournaments and have to stop an evil team but it's such a fun time.
Custom Robo shines in it's battles and it's cool to see how much it nailed in it's first outing. Mechanically there's basically everything from the GCN/DS games just a bit more polygony haha.
It is a little disappointing that it's only 1 on 1 battles but I know V2 brings in 2 on 2 battles so I can kinda understand wanting to focus on 1 on 1 in the first title and making sure it ran well.
The characters are fun, the combat is engaging and the story is decent enough and it all makes for an incredibly solid first outing for an extremely underrated and underappreciated series

This one is split into two "books"
Book 1 is a remake of FE1 albeit with a handful of cut chapters and characters (due to cartridge space limitations) while Book 2 is a full sequel to FE1. Despite the cut chapters/characters, it is really nice having Marth's full story in one place so I can appreciate the effort put in there.
Gameplay wise we're back to standard FE after Gaidens little deviation. Breakable weapons and map to map progression are back meaning no opportunities to level grind characters. You can now click enemies to see their movement range (though it doesn't include attack range) and there are early battle forecast windows though you'll have to do the math for damage via the attack/defence numbers.
Unfortunately we're back to multiple items for promotions like the Elysian Whip, Guiding Ring etc which I'm not a huge fan of. We also have a new dismount feature for mounted units which can be handy for pegasus knights in a little archer pinch, but dismounting is forced for all indoor maps limiting movement and changing lance users into sword users.

Book 1 is a solid remake of FE1 with the updated mechanics making it more enjoyable to play. Book 2 features some more interesting recruitment objectives that help makes some maps feel more creative. It also has a true ending though in which you're required to collect 12 pieces of the shattered Starsphere, as well as all 5 spheres for the Binding Shield which can be extremely frustrating if you miss JUST ONE of them and find yourself locked out of the last few chapters. Now most of them are easy enough to pick up regularly but there are a couple that enemies are holding and you have to be quick to catch them. I am not a huge fan of FE locking an ending behind a "collect macguffins" requirement as you can't go back and try again if you realise later on you missed one in an earlier chapter.

Aside from a couple of missteps, this is a very solid title and feels a lot more playable than the Famicom titles before it. Its unique features also allow it to stand out from the later DS remakes and offer a charm that some people might prefer over those games

Another Code: Recollection brings back the Another Code games from DS and Wii and remakes the experiences into one new package on Switch. Another Code: Two Memories (known as Trace Memory in the North American market) originally released on Nintendo DS in 2005 and Another Code: R - A Journey into Lost Memories (which was never released in North America but we Europeans did get a localised release) originally released on Wii in 2009 are the two games that have been redone here on Nintendo Switch. The series is a relatively unknown Nintendo ip, originally developed by Cing who unfortunately went bankrupt in 2010 and for many of us, we thought that was the end of the Another Code games as well as their other Nintendo ip, the Kyle Hyde games (Hotel Dusk and Last Window on DS) but thankfully, a group of ex-Cing developers have found their way to Arc System Works and have worked with Nintendo on bringing Recollection to life, making sure the memory of Cing lives on which is very fitting for the Another Code series.

So what is Another Code exactly? Well the games were originally point and click puzzle adventure games that made excellent use of the unique DS and Wii hardware for some pretty memorable puzzles (like there's one puzzle in the DS game where you have to reflect the bottom screen image onto the top screen to find an answer by slightly closing your DS) and this was the core charm of the games. The games follow a teenage girl called Ashley Mizuki Robins as she attempts to uncover mysteries surrounding her family and a top secret project they worked on that can alter people's memories (hence both subtitles referring to memories).

Bringing the games to Switch has meant a lot of that unique hardware puzzle charm has been lost. Puzzles are now a bit more simpler and traditional in style, more focusing on you having to pick up on subtle hints to figure out how the game wants you to progress rather than play with something clever. There are a couple of motion controlled puzzles, one early one sees you turn a chair to try and guide a key through a maze to obtain it, which can be a bit finicky, but otherwise most puzzles are long the lines of you figuring out a number combination or turning a dial to the right position. There's a couple where what's expected of you is a little bit obtuse compared to what you would be thinking and while a hint system has been added to this remake, I found that it told me what I already knew rather than point me in the direction I needed. The puzzles otherwise get their job done, help break up the heavy story segments but like many other DS games brought to newer hardware, like Zero Escape or The Word Ends With You, a little bit of the charm has been lost with the difficulty of adapting a unique dual screen experience.

The other main gameplay addition to this remake is a navigation assist option. By turning this on, an arrow will appear around Ashley’s waist to point you in the right direction. I never had much use for it during Two Memories but I pulled it out in the more open Lost Memories where it did what I needed.
Graphically the game is passable but it's clearly been a very budgeted release for a niche ip. The model work all looked great, I loved the character models and the art style fit them well but the texture work did not look great at all and the animations at times was very robotic like and you can tell how limited they were in areas. It's understandable because we're lucky to even get a release like this these days, let alone one with a physical release and full of voice acting so it's more of a minor point of contention for me.

Rather than let you choose which game you want to play from the off on the menu, Recollection has instead combined the two games into one cohesive narrative with a timeskip. The option to play whichever game you wanted would've been nice but I can see why the chose to do it this way, especially when some of the late game reveals in Lost Memories call back to stuff in Two Memories. And it's not like it's a long game either, with the whole package being beatable with 20 hours and Two Memories clocking in between 6 and 7 hours, I think it makes sense to make sure players experience the whole story in one narrative.

Two Memories takes place in 2005 where the day before Ashley's 14th birthday, she receives a package from her father whom she believed was dead, containing a mysterious device called a DAS (Dual Another System, which in the original looked more like a DS, updated here to look like a Switch) and an invitation to meet him on Blood Edward Island where apparently he's been conducting research on something all alone since Ashley's mother died when she was 3. Arriving on the island with her Aunt Jessica who quickly goes missing, Ashley meets a ghost called D who has almost no memories of his life and together the two must solve the mysteries of Blood Edward Island while also figuring out just what Ashley's father has been up to for all these years. The bulk of this game sees you exploring and solving puzzles in the old Edward mansion and it's a very lonely atmosphere as you uncover more and more about the Edward family and some of the more sinister going ons behind the scenes. Ashley and D’s two plotlines work well together and the bond they form throughout is very heartwarming. Two Memories is very well paced, full of impactful moments and while my knowledge of the story from playing the DS game did lessen the impact of some of the twists, it's nonetheless still a really lovely story to experience.

Journey into Lost Memories (the R and A dropped from the title in this release) picks things up two years later with a now 16 year old Ashley who has since struggled to connect with her father who has once again prioritised his work over his daughter and the pair haven't seen each other for months. In an attempt to reconnect, Ashley's father invites her on a camping trip to Lake Julliet where his work is based. Immediately upon arriving there Ashley has her bag stolen and begins experiencing flashbacks to lost memories of her mother from when they visited together when she was 3, and with that you have the perfect storm for an emotionally charged teenage girl who is in a place where she doesn't want to be. The supporting cast is much bigger in this game, with research workers and campsite workers as well as other teenagers for Ashley to bounce off, giving the game a much more cosy vibe to contrast the lonely vibe of Two Memories. Ashley ends up meeting a young boy called Matthew who is looking for his dad after he disappeared a few years back and the two team up to uncover the mysteries of Lake Julliet, including how the lake's contamination came about. Ashley and Matthew develop a similar relationship to how things panned out with D, with their stories intertwining throughout the game. Unlike D however, Matthew's story wraps up a couple of chapters before the end of the game and he disappears for the rest of it, leaving a very weird feeling while you go through the climax of the game. The climax itself is pretty wild and intense, a far cry from the cosy camp vibes the game initially gives off but it's fantastic nonetheless.
My familiarity with the original Wii version of Lost Memories isn't the best, I never finished that version of the game, only getting about two or three chapters in. From what I've read with people more familiar with that game, this version streamlines things a bit and it makes for a much better paced adventure which is good. The door hacking puzzles seem to have been reduced to mere button pressing sequences which is a shame, I'm assuming they wanted a cohesiveness between both Two Memories and Lost Memories so they didn't go full in on replicating the Wii remote puzzles which the Switch would've been capable of, instead going for something simpler that could be enjoyed on a handheld without too much motion stuff involved.

I have a preference towards Two Memories and it's focused feel on the mansion and D, where it nails the loneliness vibe very well. Aside from losing the DS specific puzzles, I think this version still has an enjoyable charm to it. Lost Memories doesn't quite hit the same heights and I feel like they push Matthew aside a bit too early in the story, however it's still a great experience and a lovely follow up and conclusion to the Another Code story. Ashley is the core of the experience and I think in her they made a very relatable character whose shoes are easy to place yourself in.

I'm grateful to Arc System Works and Nintendo for bringing these games back and allowing a new audience to experience the story of Ashley Mizuki Robins. While a little bit of the charm has been lost transitioning the games from DS and Wii hardware to Switch hardware, there's still a wonderful and heartwarming tale to experience with Recollection that carries a powerful message that sums up this release perfectly: As long as someone carries your memories, you will never truly die. Here's to the memory of Cing living on in this release.

From the creative minds that brought us Danganronpa, we have a brand IP in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code
A lot of stuff has been lifted over from Danganronpa. A quick glance at the character designs will let you see the unique style from Danganronpa has been carried over with expressive 2D portraits but also beautifully translated into 3D with its character models. Masafumi Takada has returned to do the soundtrack having done murder mystery and detective style soundtracks through Danganronpa and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and of course Kazutaka Kodaka is on writing duties.

Rain Code takes place in the mysterious city full of mysteries, Kanai Ward. Our protagonist, Yuma Kokohead wakes up with no previous memories having signed a pact with a death god called Shinigami with only a letter on him telling him to board the Amaterasu Express train to Kanai Ward and we're eased into this games gameplay cycle of story, a murdered body discovered, investigation, and then off into the mystery labyrinth to solve the mystery with the information picked up from the investigation.
It's a gameplay loop very much inspired by Danganronpa while putting its own spin on it.
The lead up to a body being discovered has you running through town, meeting new characters that will be important to the upcoming case and you have the opportunity to tackle quick sidequests that help flesh out the world of Kanai Ward. Having full movement from a third person perspective is nice and the city of Kanai Ward is beautifully realised in Unreal Engine, giving a pretty impressive looking title for the Nintendo Switch. The constant rain soaked and purple lit atmosphere of Kanai Ward is very well realised with the undertones of characters feeling the oppression of the Peacekeepers and the control Amaterasu Corporation has over their lives.

Investigation gameplay sees you going around an area clicking on things to pick up information that can be used as solution keys in the mystery labyrinth later. It's during these sequences that you will often work alongside a master detective who will have a unique forte ability to help you out, like being able to replicate the crime scene as it was discovered or creating 1:1 disguises to allow you to gather information you otherwise couldn't yourself.

Finally we have the mystery labyrinth's where the solving of the case is done. These are otherworldly areas created by Shinigami to get Yuma out of a bind so he can have time to figure out the case. Aesthetically the labyrinths are incredibly beautiful, bringing to life some really weird and unsettling environments. The labyrinths see you playing a variety of minigames in a similar vein to Danganronpa's class trials. You have Reasoning Death Matches against mystery phantoms (phantoms that take the shape of someone obstructing Yuma solving the case) where you dodge statements until you find one you can prove wrong with a solution key you picked up. There's Shinigami Puzzles where you spell out a missing word in a statement by throwing swords at a spinning barrel Shinigami is in. You've got your quick time events and a God Shinigami game where she runs towards a fortress knocking obstacles out of the way and jumping over things. It's clearly influenced by the Danganronpa DNA and very much trying to find its own identity to mixed results. For example the labyrinth's have portions of running in a straight line until the dialogue is finished which seems to be them mostly showing off what they did with the engine as the background constantly transforms but the pacing is hampered by Yuma going over things that are obvious. Likewise the RDMs are cool but are almost always one on one so you don't quite get the same level of intriguing and misleading debate the class trials provided from having a group of people.
It feels like a foundation onto a new thing but also held back a little by the roots of Danganronpa.
Each mystery labyrinth also ends with a deduction denouement which sees you going through the case and filling in blank spots in a scrapbook and once done Yuma will recap the whole case and announce the culprit, very similar to how the Danganronpa cases would end except it doesn't work quite as well when he's talking to a mystery phantom and not the real person. Solving the case requires Shinigami to reap the soul of the culprit, thus killing them in real life which does lead to some interesting internal debate within Yuma.
The gameplay loop works well despite a couple of issues holding it back and by the time you get to Chapter 4 and 5, it feels like they eventually get a good grasp on how to make everything work and flow well, as well keeping the mystery intriguing.

The story and characters are really good too. Each master detective has that Danganronpa brand of zaniness from Fubuki who is a rich girl who is so sheltered she comes out with hilarious stuff like being unable to count past 3, or Vivia who loves laying down in fireplaces or under pianos. Yuma is your typical lead who wants to help everyone with a good drop of naivete and works well as a counterpart to Shinigami who unfortunately straddles the Danganronpa line of juvenile humour. There's points in the game where Shinigami is jealous of any girl who talks to Yuma, calling Fubuki a sheltered skank, or Kurumi a flatty and it's just why? Chapter 2 is at its worst when Shinigami is constantly calling Kurumi names and Desuhiko is being creepy towards every girl he can. Thankfully it doesn't get as bad as Danganronpa 2 did with Mikan but it's still an annoying thing nonetheless. Same with the Shinigami puzzles resulting in her making a suggestive pose in a bikini when you get the right answer. It's bound to put some people off an otherwise really good game.
The story itself is really good once it gets into its swing. I do have some issues with the pacing and characters repeating points over and over, especially when you've already got a good idea of the answer to the case and Yuma is still going through every option trying to piece things together. When the cases are well thought out and subverting your expectations, the game truly shines. There's some good moments in Chapter 2 with its case but it's Chapters 4 and 5 where everything truly clicks and you see the true potential for Rain Code. The mysteries that unravel in Chapter 5 particularly were a highlight for me and exactly the type of thing I was hoping for.

One last issue to discuss is the performance. The Switch is really starting to show its age with some games and while Rain Code does look fantastic for the hardware it's on, it does come at a cost of performance. Most notably in cutscenes with 3 or more character models in view, the framerate takes notable dips. It's nothing game ruining but it is a noticeable distraction. I also had a couple of occasions in mystery labyrinths where when running forward there would be noticeable jumps and skips which again were more distracting than game breaking. The game does perform reasonably well for the most part and provides an enjoyable experience for the most part.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code provides a solid foundation to build a truly exciting series out of. While it leans a bit too often on its Danganronpa roots and has some pacing issues, it does provide a fantastic detective mystery experience that truly shines on its own footing by the late game, showing the potential this series could have if they build off this experience in future.

This has been a game I've started so many times but because I didn't pick it up until the early DS era, I've always ended up dropping it around the first lighthouse due to new releases distracting me. Finally though, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, I dedicated time to see this classic through to the post credits

First, I have to say the games music and atmosphere do a brilliant job at sucking you into its world. The opening scene is intense and dramatic with so much going on it's easy to be intrigued by the plot it's setting up.

While the characters aren't the deepest around, the little emotes and animations they do give just enough for you to get attached to them throughout the journey.

I absolutely adore the Psyenergy mechanics. They kind of remind me of Pokemon's HMs but done right. Each character has their Psyenergy abilities which are used to solve overworld puzzles, like moving rocks, lifting boulders, growing plants, etc. These are always available and the odd time you might not have one, all it takes is moving Djinni (I'll get to them soon) here or there. This is a fantastic system because it allows the overworld and dungeons to have some really good puzzles without ever becoming tedious because you didn't have the right Psyenergy to move forward.

Now Djinn are another excellent part of the Golden Sun experience. These little creatures can be set to each character to offer buffs, debuffs, and attacks they wouldn't normally have access to. Each Djinn is a specific element type and you can give them to the character that matches that element or..... you can experiment with different combinations. And when you use a Djinn in battle you can summon an elemental move of incredible depending on the amount of Djinn used (the max summon is 4). These summons are spectacular and I love watching them.

My only nitpick with the game is that the ending is kinda unsatisfactory for me personally. Now I know the game makes it clear that the story is to be continued in The Lost Age but it clearly stops at the halfway point with so many questions left unanswered that it leaves me a little unfulfilled in a way. It's clear that the two GBA titles are essentially meant to be played back to back and I don't mind having a story split into two parts, but I do need a little bit more than just hooks for the second part (though those hooks are good and I am very excited to finally play The Lost Age)

All in all, this has become one of my favourite GBA games and I now understand why it has such a passionate following. It's a charming and excellent JRPG adventure that I would highly recommend.

The second Baten Kaitos game and a prequel story to the original game. This one was never released in Europe the first time round so the HD remaster on Switch was my first time playing it and the version that forms the basis of this review.

Baten Kaitos Origins takes the foundations laid by the original game and instead of building upon them, decides to simplify things a bit to make for a smoother experience. The battle system is where this can be seen at its most prominent. Like the original game, this game uses a card based battle system where you have a deck of cards and your hand determines what actions you can do during your turn. In Origins things have been simplified to make for a smoother experience. Here we have just one deck of a maximum of 60 cards that all party members pull from. You can build multiple decks and switch them in and out for whatever you feel you need at the time. The cards themselves have also been simplified with each card having a number ranging from 0-6. 0 cards now provide your defence options rather than it being a separate turn, or can provide elemental effects to attacks and stuff like that. The defence cards provide damage reduction for a set amount of attacks and all 0 cards can be used at the start of a turn to kick off a combo. Cards numbered 1-3 are standard attacks while 4-6 require the level meter to be filled to the right level to use and that bar is filled from doing combos.
Combos are built from using the cards in numerical order. You can start with whatever number you like but you can only combo into a card with a higher numerical value than the one you used. The ideal scenario is having a hand that lets you go from 0-6 but it's difficult when each character has their own 0 cards and specials 4-6 cards. Each card you use draws a new one from the deck and you only get a second or so to carry on your combo before your turn ends so you're frantically scanning your hand and planning your attacks before you run out of time.
As you progress through the game you'll end up with a maximum deck of 60 cards, 7 cards in a hand, and the ability to discard more and more cards during a turn. At first I was kinda disappointed with the new battle system as I felt like it removed a lot of the depth of the original system but once I got a hang of it and learned how to do relay combos where characters can continue a previous combo and is doable for all 3 party members, as well as taking advantage of Milly's unique +1 and +2 cards to build even longer combos, I came to appreciate the much faster paced battles and loved seeing how crazy a combo I could build up in a single turn.

Other simplifications this game does is cut your playable cast in half to just 3 characters: Sagi, Guillo, and Milly. Honestly, this was kinda disappointing after having a great time with the cast in Baten Kaitos 1 and felt like an overcorrection when the battle system changes already solved the biggest issue with having so many characters in 1 by cutting out the deck management for each character.
Sagi is an alright character, a very standard Japanese RPG protagonist and unfortunately didn't do much for me.
Guillo is this cool machina who has no filter on what they say and often clashes with Milly who is our feisty kick ass girl of the group. I enjoyed Milly and Guillo a lot but the group didn't do a whole lot for me and honestly felt a little flat and lacking.

Which brings us onto the story for Origins itself. A prequel story set around 20 years before the events of BK1, Sagi ends up being tasked with stopping the Empire machinanising the other continents as well as stopping them collecting the remnants of Malparcio, the evil god they were reviving in the first game. The bulk of the first half of the game is visiting each continent, trying to stop the Empire and falling, and getting a flashback after a remnant of Malparcio is defeated. The flashbacks take Sagi and co back to 1000 years ago and detail the events that lead into the War of the Gods we heard so much about in BK1. The past sections had the more interesting story for me as it was cool learning more about such a huge event spoken about in the first game, the main story felt a little flat, repetitive and uninteresting outside of seeing some cameos from characters in the original game. The fact you gain your whole party very early in the game means that repeating the same core story beats 4 times in a row starts to fall flat very quickly. There's some cool plot twists after that section and I like how the Spiriters are utilised in this game but then so much of the back half of the game feels like optional content that shouldn't be optional. Freeing each continent from machination and wrapping up the War of the Gods scenario (which needs to be done to fight the true final boss) are unvoiced and optional with no real build up to them and it kinda sucks because the pacing and urgency of those situations just falls completely off a cliff when they should've been some of the more epic portions of the game.

And ultimately that's the biggest flaw of Baten Kaitos Origins - it takes the original game and fails to truly build on its foundations, instead spinning its wheels in place and doesn't really go anywhere exciting. What we end up with is a solid enough game that is consistently fine but struggles to hit the highs that the first game did.

Very faithful remake of the two GBA Advance Wars titles, with everything feeling mechanically similar with an updated graphical style.
I can understand the decision to go with a toybox visual style for the battles, it's very reminiscent of the Japanese artwork but personally it didn't quite vibe with me. The character artwork and the handful of cutscenes are genuinely incredible and show the potential of how Advance Wars could look.
There's been a handful additions to this package. We have some voice acting which is nice to have. Andy shares his VA with Ash Ketchum and it's hard to tell them apart at times!
A casual mode for newcomers is included. From what I can tell this doesn't really change much. Depending on the map, casual mode either gives you an additional unit or two at the start, an additional property or two, or downgrades one or two enemy units (like a Medium Tank being a regular Tank instead). It's helpful but I don't think it makes the game that much more accessible. I feel like scaling the damage would be nice as well but it's a difficult balance to find.
They also added a turn rewind. It's nice to have but it literally resets you back to the start of that turn which is pretty limiting and frustrating when you only want to undo one move and not your whole turn. I feel like this is something they should have had right when Fire Emblem has a pretty in depth turn rewind.
There's also online play added but it's limited to 1v1 while local multiplayer allows for 4 player matches.

So the new additions are nice, though I feel they should've went a little bit further, the rest of the package is where it shines though. Advance Wars 1+2 are two fantastic strategy focused games with colourful casts and plenty of content. AW1 spends the bulk of it's time introducing players to its mechanics and various units. AW2 takes everything from AW1, rebalances CO powers and diversifies the map design with new gimmicks and objectives that really gets the brain working. No doubt there are two fantastic strategy titles on offer here and it's nice the series has been given another chance to shine.

While the new additions don't quite hit expectations, there's plenty to love here and a lot of love and charm has been put into remaking these games. Fans of the GBA titles will find a familiar experience with a new coat of paint while newcomers have two top notch strategy games to dive in to

A remake of the SNES classic, Super Mario RPG sticks very close to its roots to bring Mario’s very first foray into the RPG genre to a whole new audience on Switch.

What that means is that the core experience and charm of the 1996 original is left intact for this remake. All the original dialogue and jokes are left the same, the level design is the same and the character designs are left the same with the updated visuals keeping the very same squished chibi-esque look of Mario and co.
The handful of additions that have been made to this remake have been done with care and with an attempt to entice first time RPG players into the genre.
A breezy difficulty mode has been added for newcomers and a few additions to the battle system do lower the difficulty a bit. Like the original game, pressing the action button at the right time during an attack will do extra damage but here, the more accurate you time the button press, you can gain the addition of splash damage that hits all enemies. While this does make battles easier because you're damaging several enemies at once, I really like that it's based on your skill with the battle system and therefore you're being rewarded for playing well rather than just being gifted bonus damage. Timing your attacks well now also fills up a special gauge that can be used to pull off a flashy and well animated special attack that does major damage. Again it does make the game easier but I don't really mind that myself and I loved seeing the special animation for each party setup.

Changes elsewhere include a remastered soundtrack that perfectly captures the feel of the original game, the button icons now being based off the red/blue/green/yellow EU/JP SNES colour scheme instead of the horrible purple US version (which was probably the case for the Japanese original anyways), new post game boss rematches for those looking for a challenge, and brand new CG cutscenes throughout the story which brings me to my sole complaint of the game - the lack of any dialogue sound effects.
I don't need full voice acting in my Mario games but I do need a little more than pure silent text screen boxes and cutscene subtitles in my modern games. Something like the Mario & Luigi games unintelligible gibberish or the odd wahoo just to liven the reading up a little bit or even a text sound effect like Undertale does. There's points where Bowser does his signature roars which is what I feel was missing from Mario and Peach in particular. It's a minor nitpick in an otherwise really well done remake.

For those who haven't experienced Mario’s first RPG adventure I highly recommend this. A lot of the core DNA from the Mario & Luigi series and the Paper Mario series (which was even titled Mario RPG 2 in development!) can be found here. Bowser's very funny and heartwarming personality, the unique takes on classic Mario characters to give them even more personality like Boshi the Yoshi, the unique races brought into the Mario universe like the cloud people, the platforming elements and minigame challenges, the bonus stats you can attribute after levelling up, the well paced story that just keeps moving at a good pace, all encounters being seen on the overworld, the action battle system - it's all here and it's all very well done.

Super Mario RPG is a fantastic entry point to the RPG genre and is still a fun and charming adventure to this day.

The second new generation of Pokemon on a console is usually the one that takes the series forward, is bold enough to experiment, and gives us more memorable characters and story beats and Scarlet/Violet delivers on all of these. Gen 9 has the ambition to take Pokemon into a fully open world for the first time after Legends Arceus experimented with open zones but is it a step too much for Game Freak to handle in their constant development cycles that sees them pump out new games every year?

Well the open world experience on offer here is fantastic. It works so well with Pokemon’s addictive core gameplay of catching and battling Pokemon that it’s so easy to spend hours hunting for Pokemon to add to your team, picking up the random items dotted all over the map. While the world itself looks uh not great, there is a good diversity of aesthetics on show, from grassy plains to snowy mountains, rocky caves to open seas, all fully of Pokemon shown in the overworld with no random encounters that you’ll find yourself being drawn to Pokemon you need for your dex and catching them. Unfortunately, none of the catching mechanics from PLA were brought forward here, it’s all the classic style of battling to weaken Pokemon and throwing balls through a menu. It’s a shame you can’t just lock onto Pokemon and throw a ball at them because that gameplay loop in PLA was so smooth and fast that it made catching Pokemon even more addictive. There is a lock on function here in Gen 9 but it’s limited to throwing your own Pokemon out to battle which sort of sums up my feelings with these games: two steps forward, one step back.

So, open world, you can go anywhere and do any task in any order. Gen 9 decides to give you 3 main objectives to set out upon: The gym challenge (standard Pokemon affair of defeating 8 gym leaders and earning badges to take on the Elite Four and Champion) The titans (defeating super sized Pokemon that are similar to Totem Pokemon from Gen 7 to earn Herba Mystica for your fancy Legendary Pokemon bike that essentially act as HMs like surf and rock climb) and defeating Team Star (kind of like the enemy team of the game but nowhere near as world ending threatening like your Magmas and Galactics)
And this is fantastic, it adds up to 18 challenges - one for every single Pokemon type to truly test your squads and you can do these in any order! That’s great right? Well unfortunately, the levels don’t scale for these challenges, so you could challenge something like the Ice gym, finding yourself up against Level 50ish Pokemon, training to overcome that challenge and finding that you’re incredibly overleveled for the rest of the game because none of these fights scale - the bug gym will always be around level 15 and the obvious place to start, so it’s like yeah, this is open world but there is still a set order to be doing things in based on levels and that’s a shame because this is such a great foundation for taking the series forward in areas where it has long stagnated.

Mechanically, there’s been a lot of convenience added to these games. All the stuff needed to build competitive teams, like bottle caps and items like flame orbs can be bought in stores for regular Pokemoney and that is another huge step forward in opening up the competitive aspect to more players. Breeding can now be done anywhere via setting up picnics. The new Tera Raids (replacing Dynamax raids from Gen 8) can be found all over the map instead of a dedicated area. Trainer battles are initiated by talking to a trainer rather than being seen by one. All little conveniences that add up to a much smoother experience for the player but then you’ve got the usual weird decisions…. Like why remove set mode? Why limit clothing to just four uniforms? Why not allow players to manipulate the time of day like Xenoblade does? It’s these little things that niggle away in the back of the mind, always reminding you, that yes, while this is a fantastic experience in so many regards, there are obvious places in which this experience could be closer to perfection.

The new gimmick of this gen is Tera Pokemon. Basically by pressing R in battle you can change your Pokemon into a crystalised version that can alter its typing if its tera type is different. For example, you could change your Electric type Pikachu into a Flying type, completely altering its weaknesses and resistances, flipping a matchup on its head. I genuinely think this is my favourite gimmick they’ve come up with but it’s woefully underutilised in the single player. Every gym leader has a Pokemon that doesn’t fit into their type (eg, the Grass gym has the Rock type Sudowoodo) and they change their Pokemon into the Tera type of that gym which means all they’ve done is switched a Pokemon’s weaknesses into a type you’ve already come prepared for. Imagine going up against the Grass gym and they terastallized their Grass type Pokemon into a Water type, completely resisting the Fire type you’ve probably brought to the gym. They could’ve been so unpredictable and truly shown off the potential of Terastalizing but unfortunately they picked the most predictable thing they could’ve done. Basically, a fantastic idea and one I can’t wait to see used in competitive fights, just not implemented well in single player fights.

The multiplayer component has been expanded upon here. You’ve got your usual battles, trades and raids but in addition now you can fully explore each other's worlds in a party of up to 4 players. There’s not much to do that’s actually dedicated to having multiple players, but you can all carry on with your own adventures while also having the company of your friends, seeing the same wild Pokemon and exploring together. It’s a nice addition and a welcome one. In fact, I’ve already seen people attempting to do Soul Link runs with having each other in the same world and that is such a cool thing that you can do now without having to do any unique modifications.

So storywise, once again the second new gen on a console steps things up and shows the potential Pokemon has at delivering something fun and engaging while also having memorable characters. Each of the three stories star a fantastic character, searching for their own treasure, whether it’s Nemona hoping to find a rival that can match her strength, or Arven, searching for the Herba Mystica to heal his dying Pokemon, the characters shine on a level up there with the likes of N in Gen 5 or Lillie in Gen 7. The culmination of all three story arcs is genuinely one of the best endgame stories done in Pokemon as you’re finally able to delve into Area Zero and discover the mysteries of the Paldea region and your fancy Legendary Pokemon bike. It’s incredible, it’s what I hoped that the Ultra Beasts story would’ve been like in Gen 7 and I’m happy to see Pokemon be ambitious with its story and characters again.

So yeah, with all this, despite a few niggles here and there, I would’ve put this game up there with Gens 2/5/7 as one of my favourite Pokemon experiences ever but now we come to the Donphan in the room…… The technical performance of the game. In all my years of playing Nintendo published games I have never played one that so brazenly does not hit the “Nintendo Seal of Quality” The performance of this game on a technical level is quite frankly embarrassing. There’s no excuse for a game that is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch and therefore BUILT WITH ITS LIMITATIONS IN MIND, to run like this. I am all for ambition, and to be fair to Pokemon, this open world does feature a good number of fully populated towns with no loading which must have been difficult to accomplish on Switch but…. Like it’s constantly stuttering, locking up at moment, background elements can run as low as 2fps, characters can pop in and out of existence, some wild tera Pokemon won’t load in despite the golden glow being there, there’s dev placeholder Pokeballs in some buildings and caves, the camera can clip through the ground during battles, sometimes catching Pokemon can cause the backgrounds to struggle to load and slow the game to a crawl, there’s areas where the framerate dips heavily like the lake and there’s just so much here that is obviously the cracks showing from the limited dev time Game Freak implements on itself. I can take a handful of issues and overlook them in isolation, like the framerate dips in the Master Sword area in Breath of the Wild, or the framerate dips in Erythia Sea in Xenoblade 3 - these are isolated events in ambitious and beautiful games that are pushing the Nintendo Switch to its limits. Pokemon on the other hand…. Looks nowhere near as good as these games and suffers these issues on a far more consistent basis that it’s impossible to overlook these flaws. When you’re playing a game where you are constantly aware that it could crash at any moment, then it detracts from the experience and that’s a shame because it’s obvious that Game Freak do care about what they’re making, they are listening to aspects and trying to take things forward but man, you can’t be pumping out games that need around 5 years development time in 3 years with half a team because the other half were working on your open zone experiment that released just 11 months earlier. I know this is a bit of a rant but I’m sorry, there’s a base level of functionality that should be getting hit and this falls way below that and it’s unacceptable, especially for something that is a juggernaut like Pokemon. These technical failings will come back to bite them eventually if they don’t do something about it and they are lucky that the core gameplay of Pokemon could carry them through this technical mess of a game.

So, Gen 9 every step forward the series has been needing in areas with a handful of steps back in others that, at its core is up there with series highs like Gen 5 but one ultimately held back an embarrassing technical performance that makes it hard to recommend on a general level because how much fun you will have with these games will come down to how much you are able deal with the issues you face while playing the game. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Paldea, I love the potential that open world Pokemon has but I am reaching my limit on how poor these games run and look compared to the rest of Nintendo’s offerings.

Digimon is a fascinating series in that it is one that always likes to change things up. It's anime series constantly refreshes it's casts, settings, and even the very rules we think Digimon abides by while the games have dipped their toes into all sorts of genres, only recently settling into two distinct mainline titles: the World games that use the Tamagotchi base for your partner Digimon meaning they have a regenerating life cycle and need to be taken care of, and the Story games that are typical JRPG affairs allowing you to collect and battle monsters in turned based combat. For long time fans like myself, Digimon never resting on its laurels is part of the appeal so when Survive was shown to be a Visual Novel hybrid with Tactical RPG battles, I was very excited to see how it turned out. The Digimon games have started to hit a standard of quality that can appeal to a broader audience than its core audience who grew up with the anime so it makes new projects all the more exciting.

So Survive itself is around 70/30 visual novel to trpg which means the bulk of the gameplay is exploring backgrounds and talking to characters in order to progress the story. These kinds of games live and die by their stories and characters and thankfully Digimon Survive strongly excels in this aspect. Celebrating the animes 20th anniversary, Survive feels strongly influenced by the original Digimon Adventure anime. 8 kids going to a summer camp get transported to a mysterious world full of dangerous monsters and end up meeting partner Digimon as they unravel the mystery of the world to return home is basically the exact same set up. Hell, even the 5 male 3 female split is the exact same! Thankfully what Survive does though is put more of a focus on the survival aspect of being trapped in an unknown world. These kids never feel safe, they struggle for supplies, constantly argue amongst themselves on the best way forward, and the tolls of this struggle actually effect these characters mentally in a realistic way. Missing their parents, the fear of being killed, the struggle of connecting with a monster that is supposed to be your destined partner all end up causing characters to lose their compsure, make mistakes and even end up losing their lives.
Yep, once again the games are free to explore things in a more bold way than the anime is and it results in an intense, gripping narrative. With the "golden route" locked to a New Game + run, you're going to see characters die on your first playthrough and it makes the survival aspect all the more real. How the characters react to seeing their friends die is what makes this an interesting and gripping Digimon tale. It takes conventions laid out by the Digimon Adventure anime and pushes out into exploring things the anime put less focus into. And yes as mentioned earlier, the game does have multiple endings. The dialogue choices that affect your endings are unfortunately colour coded into red, green, and yellow which unfortunately makes it clear where your choices are leading to which I think should only be viewable on a NG+ run, let us be blind on our first playthrough of the story.

On the actual characters themselves, I love the cast. Not everyone is likable, some treat their Digimon horribly but I like that there are people in the group that start off like that. It's realistic that not everyone is going to accept a monster that follows them around everywhere when other monsters are literally trying to kill them. It's realistic that the group are going to clash in their opinions despite everyone wanting the same end goal. The kids are a great cast, each with their own flaws and things they excel in and once you get to learn about their backstories and stuff, you can truly appreciate each individual for who they are. The Digimon partners are great counterparts to their partners here. While they keep the tradition of being extensions of their partners, they have enough individuality to balance out their partners flaws. Aoi constantly struggles with her self confidence but Labramon is always there to support her and give her belief in herself. Minoru is always joking and struggling to take things seriously but Falcomon does his best to bring back down to Earth and isn't afraid to call him out for overstepping the mark. What we get here are some of the best human/Digimon partnerships in the series.

Continuing on with the visual novel gameplay, dialogue choices not only change what ending you'll get but also Takuma's Agumon evolution. Choices can be either Moral, Harmony, or Wrathful which are tied into the Vaccine, Data, or Virus types of Digimon. That means depending on what choices you make more of, Agumon's evolution will follow the path of either a Vaccine, Data, or Virus Digimon. I won't spoil all the evolutions but it's clear the Vaccine line is Agumon's standard Greymon line but the other lines include some really neat Digimon choices and that is another fantastic thing about this game.
The choices of Digimon chosen to be in this game is so good. The focus is mainly on a lot of the original Digimon designs from the Adventure era, and while that does mean the usual suspects of Agumon, Gabumon, Patamon, the Dark Masters, etc appearing we also get a lot of rarely used Digimon, like the original design of Falcomon and the return of Kunemon. We've got stuff like Floramon and Syakomon as partners and evolution lines include some really neat picks. It's nice seeing fresh faces over the recent need to include every Royal Knight and Demon Lord Digimon in the game.

Now the weakest aspect of Survive is the tactical rpg side of things unfortunately. The map designs are simple, objectives rarely deviate from "kill all/certain enemies" and conbat itself mainly falls to trying to pull of side/back attacks. Normal difficulty rarely provides a challenge and it's the second highest difficulty in the game.
While I would've liked a deeper combat experience, I do appreciate that its simplicity makes this a lot easier to recommend to newcomers of the genre. Stuff like Fire Emblem or Triangle Strategy can so many moving parts that they're off-putting for those unfamiliar with the genre while with Survive you only really need to keep track of SP and basic positioning as well as your two equipment slots.
I really like how evolution works in tandem with the combat. It's closer to the anime in that you can evolve whenever in battle but only for as long as you have SP, run out of that and you revert back to Rookie level. Higher evolution level monsters drain 5/10/15 SP per turn and use more SP for specials so it discourages relying on pulverising everything with one Mega Digimon. That said, the SP drops aren't enough to make this a consistent thing to worry about. There was only a handful of occasions where I felt the need to drop back down to Rookie to rebuild my SP supply. I think the foundation of the tactical RPG battles is solid here, it does an excellent job of making fights feel more mechanically in line with the anime, it just unfortunately lacks the depth required to be anything other than a nice way to break up the visual novel segments.

I played this game on the Switch and while for the most part it runs fine and looks great (having Toei work on the animation side of things means the art style replicates the anime very well) there are a couple of minor performance issues. Any fog like effects cause the framerate to drop, which considering these are mostly static backgrounds with animated characters is a bit frustrating and poorly optimised. Loading times for going into battle feel too long to the point it can be off putting doing the free battles multiple times in a row because it eats up so much time. Aside from that the performance is fine from my experience.

Digimon Survive is another fantastic Digimon game in a recent line up of great titles. It captures the spirit of the original Adventure anime series and uses it to tell a more serious tale of the dangers of kids being lost in another world full of montsers that can and will kill them. Digimon is always willing to try new things and I am glad this passion project turned out so well after years of development issues. Here's hoping the team have a chance to build off the foundation they laid here sometime in the future.

The more I think about this game, the more everything clicks in my head about it. The way Xenoblade Chronicles 3 chooses to tell it's story means that by the end, I think a decent amount of people will be unsatisfied with aspects because the game chooses to insuate things rather than go into a massive lore dump about everything and for me personally, I love that. I love that since beating the main game I have been joining the dots with all the information floating around in my head and forming my own conclusions on things. I love that I can read how other people have interpreted things and have that further build upon my thoughts. The approach to storytelling in XC3 feels very similar to XCX but only that it gives you enough information to form conclusions that feel right for you. I think it's the perfect way to wrap up a trilogy focused on seizing your own future.

The other themes of being afraid of the end and trying to maintain an endless now to avoid an uncertain future also struck a chord with me. I think that while a lot of the villains fell a bit flat for me, Consul N explored this theme expertly and I absolutely loved his parallel to Noah. I think Z was also a great final villain, drawing some inspiration from Xenosaga that is nicely tied up to the whole trilogy in some post game dialogue.

So yeah, while I don't think the story will satisfy every fan, for me personally, the bits it does well are done so well that they resonate with me on a deeply personal level and the bits that let me join the dots for myself I adore. The emotional rollercoaster I went through at the end of Chapter 5/the start of Chapter 6 is by far the craziest ride I've been on in a videogame. When I finished Chapter 5 I had to take a break to emotionally recover from what I just witnessed, absolutely sobbing my heart out, struggling to find the will to push forward and nothing has ever done that to me before. It was truly incredible and probably my favourite set of scenes in anything ever.

One last bit with the story, I really appreciate how the aspects from XC1/2 are handled. The cast of XC3 are allowed to shine while fans of 1 and 2 get their moments without overshadowing this game.

Speaking of the cast in XC3, this is my favourite group in the series. While the villains were hit and miss for me, the core group 6 party members and the Hero characters were all wonderfully done. Noah is a solid protagonist who has his own ideals but he has his doubts and moments of weakness. Mio is the perfect counterpart, living on a mere 3 months to go trying to make her mark on the world before her time is up. Eunie is the sassiest High Entia ever and I fucking love her to pieces. Taion overthinks too much and is super analytical, often too afraid to put his own opinion forward out of fear. Lanz is a lovable muscle head struggling to move on from the past and Sena is a lovable muscle head struggling to be herself, too worried about pleasing others. By having these 6 constantly together from near the beginning, it allows for a lot neat moments and character dynamic building that has at times fell a little short in other Xenoblade games. I didn't even notice heart to hearts weren't in this game because I was getting the interactions I wanted from the main story.

Hero characters are a fantastic addition, taking the good idea of the Blades in XC2, removing the gacha nonsense, and implementating them into the world in a far more natural way. Their quests further build upon the world of Aionios and they give the main 6 characters someone new to bounce off every now and then to help keep the party fresh.

Now speaking of the world of Aionios, a lot of its sense of wonder is very dependent on having played XC1/2 I feel. Unlike 1 or 2 where you're on the back of these giant titans and it's easy to be like whoa, this is incredible, XC3's environment is a lot less interesting at a first glance. The magic and wonder of Aionios comes from having played both XC1 and 2. Recognising landmarks in a completely different way and figuring out what two areas are combined, that is the drive to exploration in this game. Seeing the Mechonis sword and Urayan titan in the background means little to newcomers but for long time fans it drives you to visit these areas to see what's changed, to try and put together what happened. This is what drives the sense of wonder in Aionios.

The world building is very well done too and that is thanks to the Side quests and Hero quests. Nearly every quest in this game helps give further context to the world, it's characters and the situation. Every colony has its own needs to survive and the quests do such a great job at showing you those. I have never cared so much about seeing the outcome of a potato farm before but damn did I get invested in that quest here! The side quests are so good that I had to force myself to stop doing them so I could actually finish the main story and I am someone who is usually too happy to just leave side quests alone and focus on the far more interesting main story but here though, it all works in tandem to deliver a far richer experience than I have had in most games.

Exploring the world itself is mostly the same Xenoblade experience. Massive landscapes full of enemies on a wide scale of levels and secrets to be discovered. The field skills from XC2 make a return but again, XC3 fixes every issue XC2 had with them. Field skills are now taught through certain characters and the bulk of them are in the story. What this does now is change it into something more akin to Metroid where the world opens up more as you gain new field skills and you return back to previous areas able to discover new places. There's no faffing about trying to get the right characters with the right abilities into your party, once you have the field skill that's it set for the rest of the game and that is a million times better. Traversal is still locked to on foot with the exception of one later area in the game (which calls back to one of my favourite games ever and I love it). It's unfortunate there isn't anything like Skells from XCX to help make travel a bit quicker because these land masses are absolutely huge and taking a detour can mean a lot of running is involved. Quick travel points are always nice but nothing beats having a mech that transforms into a car for some speedy travel.

The battle system is an excellent fusion of XC1 and XC2. It's a beautiful combination where by fusing arts of both XC1 and XC2 origin, you can charge up your new Ouroboros form quicker and wail on enemies for a limited time. Ouroboros are a fantastic addition where a Kevesi (XC1) and an Agnian (XC2) fuse into the closest thing we're getting to playable mechs in the numbered Xenoblade games. They look incredible, have flashy specials and deal massive damage. Of course chain attacks are still here with them changing functionally where you pick characters to attack to try and build TP to over 100% to launch a special attack. It's simple on the surface level but the depth comes from tryinf to find the order that will all you to hit 4 or 5 chains. Personally XC2 still has my favourite battle system in the series but what is offered here is a fantastic alternative.

Once again, the music is outstanding. Area themes a less bombastic and more atmospheric than what XC1/2 offered but they work well and will often aspects of songs from XC1/2 hidden in them. The battle songs go harder than ever and there are so many different ones that it's incredible how they came up on where to use them all. The Moebius battle theme has an incredible choir throughout it and there's some story specific fights that use a more somber battle song that makes for an incredibly emotional fight. The vocal songs are used to help bring tears to even the dryest eyes and the Weight of Life, while used incredibly sparingly, brings home the most epic scenes with the sound they deserve.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes the best of XC1 and XC2 and fuses them together to make an incredible experience. A little bit of dna from Xenogears, Xenosaga, and Xenoblade Chronicles X sprinkled in too means most fans will probably be able to take away something they love from this game. It has its own flaws sure, but they pale in comparison to what this game gets right. How people will feel about it will be dependant on what they wanted from it but there is no doubt that this is another fantastic entry into the series and an excellent point for us to leave this arc behind and look forward to an unknown future with a content smile on our faces