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

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

Having laid a very good foundation with Caligula Effect 1, it's clear from the off that this game was able to build off that and with a budget that wasn't actively hindering it.
This game looks and runs much better on Switch than Overdose did (some framerate drops here and there and a low resolution handheld performance still though) with nice environments and character models as well as smoother animations.
The battle system now flows much better with picking one move instead of 3 and target switching automatically when an enemy dies. There's also a neat little boost you can activate from X for more damage too.
Dungeon wise my gosh what an upgrade. Gone are the bland corridors in favour of more interactive and well designed areas inside train stations and museums with puzzles to suit each location.
So yeah gameplay wise, this an upgrade over the original in every way possible.

Story wise, it's very solid. It does a great job at throwing the player off of its late game twists, the new Go-Home Club are a fantastic bunch of characters, each with their own regrets and issues, and each one has a musician to bounce off. There's plenty of intense moments and heartwarming scenes and X as our main virtuadoll companion this time round is an absolute blast of a partner.
Unfortunately, the game's story and cast here didn't quite resonate as well with me as Overdose did. Overdose, for all its flaws, hit me with the raw ugly side of emotional trauma for its characters, further helped by having character episodes for it's musicians too which really helped let you understand the mental trauma these characters faced. It was uncomfortable, it did perhaps cross the line in some areas but it also felt real and it was something that I connected with more. 2 tends to focus more towards characters regrets, like pretending to be someone else or regretting a career choice and lost years and while the character episodes are really good (especially for Marie, Kiriko, Gin, and Niko) it doesn't quite resonate with me on the same level unfortunately. That's not to say I don't love these character episodes, Gin in particular did a much better job handling something similar from Overdose, just that I preferred those messier and uglier episodes from Overdose.
I also have a preference towards Mu and her story over Regret's. I think the ending needed a bit more time between it's revelations and a little bit more insight into Bluffman and his relationship with certain characters. I also would have liked the connections to Overdose to have been explored a little bit more. A few characters are mentioned a few times but we don't get to see much or any of them outside of the singularity point.
But yeah, those slight grievances aside, the story and characters were really good here. It did get me to cry at a few moments and while the cast might not have resonated with me as strongly as Overdose's did, they do still have a place in my heart (especially Marie who deserves the world)

Ultimately, The Caligula Effect 2 is almost a perfect sequel. My story and character preferences/stuff that resonates with me more is the only thing stopping me adding it to my 5 star collection because otherwise, this takes the foundation of the original game smashes it out of the park

Very solid WarioWare title
I wasn't sure on having multiple characters taking on the microgames at first but it adds a lot more wackiness when you're using the full crew and you have to quickly adapt to a different moveset each time. Yes some characters like 9-Volt are awful to play with but that's kinda the point. It forces you to use characters you would otherwise avoid to create more chaotic mayhem which is what WarioWare has always been about.
If you want to high score chase like usual, then you can just pick your best characters and go at it.
For me, adding the characters adds so much more charm to the cast that usually only get a handful of cutscenes to shine in and I greatly appreciate that.

While I love the dynamic and replayability that the characters bring, I do personally prefer the older style of WarioWare from a single player perspective. Being able to play the main game with 2 people though is awesome so it kinda balances out.

I love that variety pack brought back some of the multiplayer goodness that the GameCube game had, including and updated version of the balloon game but overall what's on offer here doesn't hit the heights of what came before.

And that's kinda the theme with this game. If you want a great single player WarioWare game then Touched on DS and the GBA original are better imo. If you want a great multiplayer WarioWare game then the GameCube one is your best option. However this does offer a great attempt at the best of both worlds (though for some reason lacking an online option despite Mario Party finally getting one) for those that enjoy both single and multiplayer aspects of WarioWare.

Falls a bit short of what has come before but ultimately still a great experience

After 3 entries finding it's feet, FE4 truly cements the series place as one of the greats.
Mechanically this evolves the series to the next level, introducing mechanics that would go on to become series mainstays. The weapon triangle for both regular weapons and magic are introduced here, giving different units bigger advantages over other units, like sword wielders will be more accurate and dodge axe users more easily. The skill system is added to help give units even more of an identity and help make boss units a little tougher to defeat. Items like the paragon ring essentially lets you give that unit a certain skill while the item is held in possession. The initial support system is introduced with units gaining "love points" when near each other and unlocking conversations as well as marriage and eventually children. There is so much that FE4 introduced to the series that it's impact cannot be ignored.

On top of those, FE4 has a few unique aspects too. Every map now has a starting castle where you can promote units instead of needing a specific item which I greatly appreciate. All seized castles give access to towns with shops, armories, and arenas to visit. The arena has been changed up so that if a unit loses in one, they do not die but instead leave on 1HP meaning you have to heal them up once they leave the castle again, allowing for the enemy to close in on you while you heal up units, creating a nice risk/reward feature. On top of this, with every unit having their own gold supply, the incentive to actually use the arena to gain levels and gold has never been greater. Married units can trade gold but outside of that, it's every character for themselves and I love the unique management that brings.
FE4 also does not allow units to trade items directly. Instead you have to sell something to the pawnbroker and buy it back with the unit you want to have it. While that might be frustrating for some, I think it further helps place the importance on your resource management and makes you have to consider who gets what weapon more carefully.

Speaking of weapons, they now have a new little bonus. Once a weapon gets 50 kills, it's chances of critting increases adding even more to consider in your planning. Weapons are still breakable, but now you can choose to repair them with gold which further plays into the balance of FE4s resource management.

Now probably the biggest thing people know FE4 for are it's maps. Each map in FE4 is gigantic, offering multiple objectives and having enough storybeats take place that these are essentially 3 or 4 chapters of a regular FE game put into one large map. Instead of 20-30 chapters though, this game has 12 so to play out just a bit longer than most FE games. Now I can understand why some people might find these large maps tedious to move through, on foot units take forever to get anywhere and having no deployment cap does mean there's a lot of moving to be done every turn, but I personally love the unique strategy these maps bring to the series.
More than ever you need to split your army up to cover multiple objectives. You need people to defend the castles you've taken as enemies try to retake them. You need your mounted units blazing a course to the current objective and you need another faction to prepare for the next likely objective as enemies will come out to defend their territory. You will often be keeping track of multiple things and battles happening at once and I love this. You may need to defend one castle while trying to get reinforcements to make their way over and help out or hurry over to a village to save children before enemies get there and slaughter them. These maps can take long to beat yes, but with the ability to save every turn and each castle seized bringing new story scenes, offering a perfect place to stop for a bit, I think the large maps bring something unique and interesting to the series that I personally love.

To cap off the brilliance that is FE4, we have a narrative that is so epic in scale, few FEs have come close since. Spanning two generations of characters, FE4 tells a tale of betrayal, sacrifice and the pain of trying to complete your parents legacy through dialogue and, taking a leaf from the Super Metroid book, using gameplay to tell and sell it's narrative. Now the regular dialogue scenes themselves are all very standard FE stuff doing well to set the tone and stakes at play but during battles on maps, the developers made full use of their large size to tell story elements through gameplay too. Some chapters will have multiple armies on the map at once and you'll get to see an allied or neutral force clash with an enemy while you also fight your own battles. The fights often see some important characters fall and it's great because while you're playing it makes you question if you could make it over to them in time, could you have saved them? It feels like it's trying to encourage you into going after a hopeless situation and it further drives up the intensity and scale of the conflict at hand.

FE4 is a masterpiece and one of my favourite FEs ever. It brings so much to the gameplay that has set the standard for FE for decades and it tells a narrative with an epic sense of scale that almost no other FE can match

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.

I played through this on Switch with the HD remaster and I can see why it's beloved to so many.
Baten Kaitos is an RPG created by the joint efforts of Tri-Crescendo and Monolith Soft, one clearly under budget restraints and hardware restraints (the game required two GameCube discs due to the limited size of that media) and as such the scope and ambition of the story is held back by these restraints. Outside of the opening movie there are no FMV cutscenes and the world itself is made up of 2D jpeg artwork with the characters being 3D models that move on those. Even camera work is restricted with the final scene being egregiously noticeable as instead of zooming out it continuously cuts and loads a further out picture. These things don't ruin the game but you can feel the pushback against the ambition throughout and there's a feeling of what could've been when you're aware of what Monolith Soft have accomplished with cutscene direction throughout their history.

Where Baten Kaitos shines is its story. Set in the sky after a war against a god ravaged the earth, people now live on a smattering of sky islands with toxic clouds below them to prevent them reaching the earth's surface. People also now have wings to help them get around and it is in general a really cool world setting with an interesting history that is full of surprises as you learn more and more.
Our set up for the game sees the empire trying to revive the sealed god Malpercio in an attempt to claim its power for themselves. They go around the islands in hopes of awakening the five end magnus (in Baten Kaitos all essences can be captured in cards called magnus and used later) and it's up to our party to put a stop to their plans.
Our party consists of protagonist Kalas, whose journey consists of seeking revenge against those who killed his grandfather and brother and he quite frankly couldn't care less about the wider conflict or any side quest distractions and it's actually really quite refreshing to have a protagonist like that. He is guided by a guardian spirit who is essentially the player themselves looking into the game world and we can use dialogue options to try and help push Kalas in the right direction. I believe the dialogue options affect bonuses in battle but I also think making the player themselves a guardian spirit is a really cool way to bridge the player into the game without making the protagonist a silent character.
As Kalas goes through his journey he's met by Xelha, a girl who has escaped the empire with an important pendant and he soons finds himself being dragged into the wider conflict at play. As our main heroine of the game, Xelha makes a fantastic counterpart to Kalas as she wants to help people and stop the empire's plans. The two balance each other pretty well and as the party continues to grow you end up with a pretty diverse and interesting cast of likeable characters with their own motivations and backstories.
The basis of the plot is great enough but where it really gets its hooks into you is through its many twists and turns it takes with revelations that are bound to catch you off guard and make for a memorable journey. It's not perfect, there's a lot of stuff unpacked in the last couple of scenes that feel like they could've explored earlier but when they hit, they hit strong.

Battle wise is where Baten Kaitos truly shines in its uniqueness. It's core is a turn based rpg system but battles are handled through a card system where you have a deck you've built to include attack, defence, and healing cards. Each card has its own numbers on it so you try and build combos with what you've drawn by using straights (1-2-3 etc) or pairs and the bigger combo you pull off, the better bonus damage you get and the potential for a unique combo special. Defence cards can be used to reduce damage from an opponent's attacks while healing cards do what they say on the tin. As you level up you'll be able to increase your deck size, hand size, and combo limit allowing you to pull off even mightier strikes. It's an incredibly fun battle system once you get used to it but it does come with a few drawbacks. 1. You're reliant on the draw of the cards so you can often be stuck with no attack cards or no defence cards when you need them. 2. Each character uses their own unique deck which means you'll be organising and optimising up to 6 decks and that's extremely time consuming. 3. Food cards expire with time so you'll be left with rotten cards and need to constantly swap in fresh ones which is a pain.
These drawbacks are frustrating but it doesn't stop this being an incredibly fun and unique battle system to experiment with. The HD remaster also comes with the option of turning one hit KOs on so if you do tire from it you can simplify things to push on for a bit (which I ended up doing for most standard encounters)

The card system is also used for puzzles in the overworld where you can use blank magnus to store the essence of stuff like fire or water and use them to solve puzzles you come across. There's some cool stuff like storing milk and holding onto it long for it to become cheese and yogurt which is really interesting to see.
The HD remaster includes a few new options on top of the updated visuals. Mentioned before is the one hit KO option to speed through battles and there's an option to turn off standard encounters. On top of that you can increase game speed and battle speed. These are done through menus and I'd rather have them be a button toggle because I only want to speed up animations or certain portions and going in and out of menus to do it constantly is a bit annoying.

One other area the game truly peaks at is its soundtrack. The area and town themes all provide great background music with Mira bringing a really strong bass hook. The battle themes all go really hard with electric guitars hitting some fire riffs while the Chaotic Dance boss music is all sorts of wonderfully funky. One of the last boss fights in the game has to be one of my all time favourite boss songs as it hits some incredible headbanging moments.

Baten Kaitos is a great RPG that just misses out on its potential with its ambition being held back by its budget. If you can get on board with its unique battle system then there's a great time to be had here with lovely characters and a story full of twists and turns but unfortunately it is a bit of a learning curve that may put people off.

After the critical success of Sonic Mania, Sega have finally gotten around to giving us a new classic 2D Sonic in Sonic Superstars. Developed by Arzest this time, Superstars aims to give a proper brand new classic Sonic experience that plays and feels like the Mega Drive games but with an updated look that remains true to its original style.

For the most part, I think this does deliver what it set out to achieve. Arzest were able to borrow the engine used by the Sonic Mania team to ensure the physics here are as close to the original games as possible and I think they nailed that aspect. Sonic moves with momentum and slopes and rolls effect that momentum as you would expect. There might be some minor differences here and there but for most people I think they got it pretty much bang on. They've also listened to the asks of more playable characters by bringing Tails, Knuckles, and Amy along for the ride too. Tails and Knuckles play as expect with flying and gliding moves while Amy expands on her Origins moveset by adding a double jump in addition to her charged hammer move. Everyone plays and feels like how they should and I appreciate that.

After Sonic Generations, the series has had a bad habit of dipping into nostalgia and reusing old level themes or slightly tweaking old level themes and it had worn a bit thin. Thankfully every single zone in Sonic Superstars is brand new and it feels so refreshing. From the fast paced Speed Jungle to the ring filled Golden Capital, every zone in this game is brand new, with their own unique gimmicks and it is so appreciated after years of recycled ideas. The zones have a nice mixture of new and returning badniks and all the bosses are unique and on a surface level, that is exactly what I wanted from this game.

As we start to dive a little deeper however, the wheels begin to fall off. The game starts off with a strong first impression. We have our beautiful animated cutscenes back to introduce the story which sees Eggman hire Fang (returning properly after decades on the bench) to help him find some dragon creature on the Northstar Islands. The mysterious new character Trip is along to help Fang out and throughout the game, you'll see Trip messing up plans by accident and she's very adorable. I think she fits in right at home with the classic cast of Sonic characters and that is a huge testament given how many new characters they've introduced throughout the years that have just had little impact on me. After that cutscene we're fired straight into Bridge Island Zone, where the level design feels right at home and the music has that Tee Lopes oomph to it that made Mania such a joy to listen to. Everything is hitting the right notes and then you find your first special stage ring and the first oh…. of the game happens.

Chaos Emeralds are once again found in Special Rings hidden throughout a level like how Sonic 3 & Knuckles did it. Unlike S3&K however, you can only pick up one Emerald per zone, even after you've beaten the game you can't go back to that zone to gain an emerald. This is similar to how the Advance games did it and it's more a minor annoyance but I understand it's probably to stop people collecting all the Emeralds in 2-3 zones and blasting through the game as Super Sonic so I can deal with that design decision. The Special Stages themselves however are probably the worst we've ever had. They take place in a 3D space where you have to do a homing attack like thing to latch onto blue orbs and swing yourself to a moving Emerald. You get 30 rings (though this can be extended by collecting rings) and the first four were so easy to the point I was in and out in seconds and then the 5th one required an extremely specific strategy to get it and it became very frustrating very quickly when I spent the majority of the special stages for the bulk of the game failing on this emerald. 6 and 7 felt more like the standard difficulty curve that should have been done throughout.
Chaos Emeralds now give you unique powers you can use throughout a stage and they get recharged every time you spin a checkpoint. For the most part these are very ignorable and don't offer too much outside of helping Sonic reach paths he otherwise couldn't. You've got stuff like a rocket jump or vines that give you easier access to higher areas as well as the clone power that just sends a bunch of your character running across the screen defeating anything they hit and this was probably the most handy one out of the bunch. Again for the most part these were pretty ignorable to the point I only really started using them in the last couple of zones on my first playthrough.

Bridge Island Zone is split into the traditional two act structure and at the end of act 1 you have a chase reminiscent of the Sonic Adventure dolphin chase to kind of act like a boss but it's act 2 where we see our first boss of the game and some of the bigger issues start to rear their head. Bosses use some very Sonic 4 sounding music. It's got that awful soundfont along with the very short and repetitive loop going on. And that wouldn't be too bad but the bosses here are designed in a way that I would call antithetical to how classic Sonic should play. Every single boss in this game likes to do very long drawn out attack sequences that culminate in one window of opportunity to attack and get one single hit in because the boss gains Invincibility frames to ensure it can do another long drawn out attack phase. That's not how classic Sonic bosses should work. Bosses can have long attack phases BUT they should be vulnerable most of the time to allow more skilled players to pull off an attack in exchange for the risk of being hit and that allows bosses to be defeated quickly which is very much in tune with Sonic's momentum based gameplay. The bosses in Superstars kill all momentum and it sucks. I don't think boss fights should be taking 3+ minutes in a Sonic game outside of a rare occasion. It gets worse however as a couple of late game bosses decide to throw in a second phase… with no checkpoint, meaning that if you die, you have to do all of phase 1 again and that is extremely grating when you have that annoying Sonic 4 style music looping over and over and over.

Back to the zones, Speed Jungle is second up and it's a blast zipping along the rails and jumping over enemies. You need some momentum to ride the rails properly so it isn't all automated sequences and it's a blast to run through. Speed Jungle also introduces us to a brand new concept in character specific Acts. Throughout the game you're given the opportunity to choose between a character Act or Act 2 for certain zones and these are pretty interesting. Speed Jungle gives Sonic a unique act that sees Fang chasing him down in a similar fashion to the Metal Sonic race from Sonic CD and throughout later Zones, you do get specific acts designed around each character's unique attributes and I think these are pretty cool. It does make some zones technically 3 acts long but I think it's nice that each character gets one stage dedicated to their abilities.
Then things start to get a bit weird with Sky Temple Zone. This is the first of a handful of Zones that are only one act long. To make up for this, the developers decided to make the levels super long instead, with these zones running past 7 minutes on your first run through. The issue with these zones is that they really start dragging on as level gimmicks begin to wear thin and you start seeing repetitive level design that is a little too similar to earlier parts in the stage making you feel like you're doing the same part of the level again 2 or 3 times. I'm not sure why they decided to make some very long acts but I think if Sega was concerned with length being an issue they could've done more regular size acts instead of these long ones that start to drag.

Continuing on we get some top tier zones again with Pinball Carnival providing the best music in the game and Act 2 bringing some lovely spooky vibes, Lagoon City borrowing elements from Hydrocity and Water Palace to make a good water level, and Sand Sanctuary providing a great desert level reminiscent of Sandopolis. This stretch of levels is where Sonic Superstars reaches its potential and gets to a level where I feel comfortable saying yeah, this is what I wanted from a modern classic 2D Sonic game.

And then we get to the back half of the game and everything starts falling apart. Musically the levels start going full Sonic 4 soundfont and while I still liked the music, it was a noticeable dip from the first half of the game. Level gimmicks start falling into obnoxious territory. Press Factory Act 2 for example borrows the gimmick from Sandopolis Act 2 where you have to hit a switch every few moments otherwise bad things start happening but here they decided it would be cool if they cooked Sonic to a crisp and insta kill you because that's fun right? Trying to explore a level with the threat of instant death constantly on your back is fun right?
Golden Capital Zone is where they start taking the boss lengths too far by adding in second phases to already long fights and not giving you checkpoints between phases because repeating the same portion of the fight you've clearly mastered already is fun right?
Cyber Station Zone is aesthetically the best zone in the game but suffers from being a long ass single act zone with a 2 phase boss fight at the end. It does feature fun gimmicks like becoming an octopus or a mouse and it's a memorable zone
Frozen Base zone is pretty cool though act 2 decides to incorporate a Sky Chase Zone like level and it's alright at best
The final zone, Egg Fortress zone also suffers from long and repetitive level design but the gimmick for it is really really cool and I loved seeing it for the first time. Unfortunately the final boss takes the worst aspects of long annoying attacking phases, a 2 phase fight without a checkpoint and marries it with potential insta death moments to make a really long and frustrating fight. If they hadn't taken the lives mechanic out of this game I think I might have dropped it there because all my frustrations were building up and the fun had been sucked out of the game.

However, I did persevere and was rewarded with a post game story mode. Without going into too many spoilers here, this post story mode takes inspiration from the Knuckles levels in Sonic 3&K where the level design is altered to suit a specific character and some story elements are changed up. Again, it's really cool seeing them take inspiration from things I adore about Sonic 3&K…. It's also heartbreaking seeing them fall short of hitting the potential of it. You see this post story mode has decided to act as a hard mode for the game too, so every single problem I had with the main game is exacerbated here. Level design now features tons more spikes and enemies along with classic Dimps style bottomless pits! Bosses now take even more hits to beat, wasting even more time waiting for an opportunity to attack them! The final boss is different but what if we made nearly every single attack an insta kill move? And that is where I put the game on hold. I'm just at a point in life where I don't have the time to repeatedly bash my head against a wall in hopes that I get everything right once. Having to spend 3+ minutes on phase 1 over and over every time I mess up once on phase 2 just isn't fun. I don't know why Sega have been on a recent punishing hard difficulty kink recently but stuff like this feels a little dated to me personally.

Unfortunately by not doing the post story mode, you don't unlock the last story fight with Super Sonic. I ended up watching that on YouTube and it seems alright though it does suffer from the same obnoxious stuff as other bosses in the game. I'll throw in one more nitpick before starting to wrap up my thoughts: why do Sega refuse to use the elemental shields? These are such cool power ups that reward skilled players for keeping ahold of them but Sega keeps defaulting to the plain regular shield and it's a little boring. Unfortunately I haven't tried out the multiplayer as it's mostly offline stuff and the battle stuff doesn't really interest me at all so I can't really comment on that side of things.

I picked this up on Switch so some performance notes based on my playthrough. It maintains a consistent 60fps at the cost of downgrading the background details a decent amount. I think it looks fine enough but there are some rough background and texture details here and there. Unfortunately I did find loading times between acts to take a little too long for my liking and I even had 2 game crashes while the game tried to load act 2 of a level. It's a little disappointing because you would think that 2D platformer like Sonic where it's gonna sell best on Switch most likely, the Switch version would be the base version and everything else built on top of that one but these issues do drag down the experience a bit on Switch unfortunately

Ok so I know I did a lot of ranting and complaining about the game but it comes from a place of love. I grew up with 2D Sonic to the point it is the longest thing I've loved in my life so when something comes so close to getting so much right, it hurts so much more when it falters and misses the mark. There's so much done well enough here that I can say it's a good game, it's just a shame that there's enough done poorly enough to hold it back from being great. And that's the thing with this series - every time it does a really excellent game, they always seem to stumble with the next one and then lose confidence in what they were doing right. It's frustrating being a fan sometimes but my unconditional love for Sonic means I'll be right here again when the next game drops hoping that the mistakes have been learned from and things are back on track.

This was a title I was curious about after getting into the Trails series. It was something I saw listed on the Wikipedia page of releases but yet for a large series of interconnected games with one long continuous plot thread, this one seemed to be passed over by a lot of the fans in discussion and was even named differently.
Well that's because The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails is a spin-off that seems to be at this moment (having played the first 5 Trails games) something that has a couple of references to Trails more than anything else. Mishy can be found as a strange creature and the Herschel surname of Nayuta and his family is reused for another character from the Cold Steel games from what I'm aware of. Basically, what I'm saying is despite this carrying the Trails name, it is very much an independent spin off and it's narrative should probably be judged without the expectations of it possibly maybe being intertwined with the mainline Trails series as a whole.

As a spin-off game, The Legend of Nayuta takes the opportunity to change up the gameplay and mix and match a few different elements. You have the RPG elements of leveling up and getting stronger etc with Remnant Isle being your core base of operations where most of the traditional Trails elements can be found. You can cook, take on requests including hidden requests, and meet a bunch of characters whose dialogue changes throughout the story to react to the different events that happen. It's a nice quaint place that feels very homely but it is also the whole of the traditional RPG side of things.

The bulk of the game is actually spent in this mysterious other world where things have gone haywire due to Zechst taking the gears needed to keep this place functioning correctly so Nayuta and Terra's administrator Noi team up to stop him by visiting each of the four continents and freeing the trapped guardians. It's here where we place the action stages where you run through stages taking on platforming challenges and fighting enemies through action based combat. Nayuta fights using his sword and can jump and dodge roll out of the way or guard while Noi has arts that can be used and swapped through as you unlock more equipment slots. For me, despite having a decent amount of things to unlock for the combat, it always felt very shallow, like it was lacking a punch to it. A lot of the enemies felt like I was cutting through paper and once I unlocked the gear spin ability I was literally steamrolling through enemies. The stages themselves are also very short and can be blasted through in a minute or so. They're designed this way on purpose because you can earn 3 stars through multiple objectives so if you miss anything it's quick enough to replay it and find what you're missing. The 3 objectives will always include finding the 3 large purple crystals, the hidden chest (or two chests in the larger two part stages) and a specialised objective different for each stage (defeat X enemies, fall less than X times etc). These stars can be used to further expand Nayuta's abilities through training on Remnant Isle. The other reason these stages are so short is because each stage has four variants - one based on each season. Two can be played through in the main story, one in the after story chapter and the final one unlocks on new game plus. The different seasons vary the stages up slightly but when you're playing through these stages multiple times trying to 100% them, it does start feeling awfully repetitive and draining.

Boss fights are the highlight here. Aside from a couple of really simple ones, boss fights will actually require a little bit of strategy to find when a weak point is available to be hit. The final boss and one of the after story bosses in particular are really cool and spectacular and were more like what I was hoping for from the game. Once the guardians have been freed, each one gives Noi an ability to help Nayuta out and explore previously inaccessible areas of stages. You get stuff like being able to swing to floating gear points or use a shield to traverse through harmful areas and they're pretty fun to use.

The story itself is alright. The characters believe the world is flat and random parts of large debris fall from the sky and people believe that's from Lost Heaven so there's some good stuff that ends up explaining what all that is actually about. I really enjoyed Noi's character growth going from hating humans and being extremely wary of them to growing alongside Nayuta and coming to love people and wanting to protect. It's pretty simple but also effective. Everything else kinda fell a little flat for me though. Like I liked Cygna and Lyra and Eartha but I can't really say I was ever truly attached to them in a meaningful way which was unfortunate. With bouncing between the two worlds so often and neither side having a lot of depth to it, I don't think the game manages to build a deep connection between the player and the characters, definitely not in a way like the namesake it borrows from does.

I don't think The Legend of Nayuta does anything I would call outright bad but I think it lacks the depth to reach the potential it has. It's an enjoyable experience with an incredible soundtrack, and is probably one of the most this is alright games I've played.