wiill64
From the development team that brought us a return to peak 2D Sonic with Sonic Mania, comes Penny's Big Breakaway, an original IP and an attempt to test their skills in 3D platforming.
Well for a first attempt, this is pretty good once you adapt to the limited control scheme. There's no camera movement and the shoulder and face buttons do the same things. Playing on a Switch controller for example, you can jump with B or R, attack with your yo-yo with Y or the Right Stick, and pseudo spin dash on the yo-yo with A or ZR. The yo-yo attack can offer a spin attack or a dash if you double tap the button and that's all the stuff you get. Working with a fixed camera can be difficult at first, especially when you're trying to dash in a direction but it's clear the team here understood what they wanted first and foremost - momentum.
I'll be honest and say I picked up the game because I knew it was from the Sonic Mania devs and when I saw it in the Nintendo Direct, I wanted to see how they handled a momentum based platformer. Well the answer is really, really well actually! Once you get used to how the camera works and how the level design works, you'll be dashing and riding the yo-yo down slopes at a brisk pace. The levels incorporate plenty of ramps so when you do gather a good bit of momentum you can really feel the height difference when launching off those ramps. It's incredible stuff and done with a level of control over Penny that I haven't felt from a momentum based 3D platformer like this since the Sonic Adventure days.
Nearly everything compliments the core design theme of momentum well. Every level's main objective is reaching the end goal. There's 3 hidden honeycomb-like objects that you can usually find just off the beaten path or in a higher path reached by maintaining a good bit of speed. There's also side objectives from the citizens of the worlds but even these are usually designed with keeping you moving forward in mind as they tend to require you to collect objects or deliver an object through a platforming challenge. The only thing I personally didn't like that much was the annoying penguins who hunt you down every level, slowing you down if they grab onto you and capturing you if enough of them grab you at once. It's a pressure I don't think a game like this needs in the majority of its levels.
On the boss battle front, these are fine and do the job they need to. There's one really inventive one that stood out which I won't spoil. The final boss has the annoying two phases and if you die in the second phase you have to do all of the first phase thing that I've grown to dislike more and more as I've gotten older. Like I've proven I can do the first phase fine, just let me do the phase I keep dying on please. But yeah, otherwise bosses are mostly enjoyable here and provide a break from the platforming.
I wasn't a huge fan of the character designs when I first saw them, they didn't appeal to my aesthetic tastes but over time they did grow on me a little bit. The artistic design of the levels, especially the colour choices, really make the levels pop. And the soundtrack is very good here too, which is to be expected when Tee Lopes is involved, that man really knows how to do catchy music.
There's a light story to the game too, involving Penny being accused of breaking the law or something, it's fine for giving a background on what's happening but it's not something that really held my attention, few platformer stories do that for me however so it's not a big point against the game. There's plenty of extras as incentives to collect everything and stuff to do, time attack modes and the like to keep you playing, so all in all a very complete platformer package.
On the technical side of things the Switch version did have a couple of issues I experienced. There were two or three occasions where I clipped through the level and got stuck in some geometry, thankfully restarting from the last checkpoint is quick and easy to do if you do find yourself stuck. The Switch version also runs at a locked 30fps which is fine for me personally. There is a 60fps patch on the way at the time of writing but as long as I have a solid framerate I find 30fps to be perfectly ok to play with. Some of the backgrounds do get a bit fuzzy, particularly when there's a lot happening which seems to be a design choice as I've seen it in footage of the game running on other platforms but it's not something I particularly like. Minor issues aside, the game is fluid and responsive which are the two most important aspects of a platformer in my opinion.
All in all it's a great 3D platformer from a relatively new development studio. They managed to nail momentum based movement in a 3D environment - something that many devs struggle with to this day - to bring a fun and charming platformer. There's room for improvement here and there but Penny's Big Breakaway leaves me excited to see how Evening Star builds upon this.
Well for a first attempt, this is pretty good once you adapt to the limited control scheme. There's no camera movement and the shoulder and face buttons do the same things. Playing on a Switch controller for example, you can jump with B or R, attack with your yo-yo with Y or the Right Stick, and pseudo spin dash on the yo-yo with A or ZR. The yo-yo attack can offer a spin attack or a dash if you double tap the button and that's all the stuff you get. Working with a fixed camera can be difficult at first, especially when you're trying to dash in a direction but it's clear the team here understood what they wanted first and foremost - momentum.
I'll be honest and say I picked up the game because I knew it was from the Sonic Mania devs and when I saw it in the Nintendo Direct, I wanted to see how they handled a momentum based platformer. Well the answer is really, really well actually! Once you get used to how the camera works and how the level design works, you'll be dashing and riding the yo-yo down slopes at a brisk pace. The levels incorporate plenty of ramps so when you do gather a good bit of momentum you can really feel the height difference when launching off those ramps. It's incredible stuff and done with a level of control over Penny that I haven't felt from a momentum based 3D platformer like this since the Sonic Adventure days.
Nearly everything compliments the core design theme of momentum well. Every level's main objective is reaching the end goal. There's 3 hidden honeycomb-like objects that you can usually find just off the beaten path or in a higher path reached by maintaining a good bit of speed. There's also side objectives from the citizens of the worlds but even these are usually designed with keeping you moving forward in mind as they tend to require you to collect objects or deliver an object through a platforming challenge. The only thing I personally didn't like that much was the annoying penguins who hunt you down every level, slowing you down if they grab onto you and capturing you if enough of them grab you at once. It's a pressure I don't think a game like this needs in the majority of its levels.
On the boss battle front, these are fine and do the job they need to. There's one really inventive one that stood out which I won't spoil. The final boss has the annoying two phases and if you die in the second phase you have to do all of the first phase thing that I've grown to dislike more and more as I've gotten older. Like I've proven I can do the first phase fine, just let me do the phase I keep dying on please. But yeah, otherwise bosses are mostly enjoyable here and provide a break from the platforming.
I wasn't a huge fan of the character designs when I first saw them, they didn't appeal to my aesthetic tastes but over time they did grow on me a little bit. The artistic design of the levels, especially the colour choices, really make the levels pop. And the soundtrack is very good here too, which is to be expected when Tee Lopes is involved, that man really knows how to do catchy music.
There's a light story to the game too, involving Penny being accused of breaking the law or something, it's fine for giving a background on what's happening but it's not something that really held my attention, few platformer stories do that for me however so it's not a big point against the game. There's plenty of extras as incentives to collect everything and stuff to do, time attack modes and the like to keep you playing, so all in all a very complete platformer package.
On the technical side of things the Switch version did have a couple of issues I experienced. There were two or three occasions where I clipped through the level and got stuck in some geometry, thankfully restarting from the last checkpoint is quick and easy to do if you do find yourself stuck. The Switch version also runs at a locked 30fps which is fine for me personally. There is a 60fps patch on the way at the time of writing but as long as I have a solid framerate I find 30fps to be perfectly ok to play with. Some of the backgrounds do get a bit fuzzy, particularly when there's a lot happening which seems to be a design choice as I've seen it in footage of the game running on other platforms but it's not something I particularly like. Minor issues aside, the game is fluid and responsive which are the two most important aspects of a platformer in my opinion.
All in all it's a great 3D platformer from a relatively new development studio. They managed to nail momentum based movement in a 3D environment - something that many devs struggle with to this day - to bring a fun and charming platformer. There's room for improvement here and there but Penny's Big Breakaway leaves me excited to see how Evening Star builds upon this.
This review contains spoilers
This is going to be a spoiler filled review so be warned. Trails of Cold Steel IV is not only the end of 4 games worth of storytelling in the Erebonia arc, but also the culmination of 9 games worth of plot threads and story arcs, with many returning characters in what is subtitled “End of Saga” in the Japanese title. With all that weighing on its shoulders, I think it's incredibly difficult to give Cold Steel IV a proper review without going into full spoiler territory and as such, spoilers will be throughout this whole review as I go through the rollercoaster ride that is Cold Steel IV.
To begin with I'll do my usual and go through the gameplay stuff first. As the follow up in the typical Trails pairs of games, Cold Steel IV builds upon what came before. Orbments get their second enhancement slots again, BP is now capped at 7pts, Lost Arts make a return from Cold Steel II and you've got all your usual Cold Steel battle system in place with combat links and follow up attacks, and master quartz and all that fun stuff that has kept the combat engaging throughout the many hours these games take. The Brave Order system from CS3 also returns and thankfully seems to have been adjusted to try and balance things a bit better because I wasn't cutting through enemies like paper this time round which was much appreciated.
Divine Knight battles haven't changed much and honestly, as much as I love mechs, I definitely felt like these battles had outstayed their welcome by this point. It's the same core “target the right weak point for the stance to get a follow up attack” and once you find the weak points, they seem impossible to lose. Over the course of all four Cold Steel games I have never once had a Divine Knight or Soldat lose all its HP on me. The battles just seem kind of stagnant compared to the core battle system and once the spectacle has worn off, they become a little too formulaic, which is a problem when the game has a plot point that sees you taking on 6 Divine Knights throughout the game with little differing up the fights other than how many partners you get with you. It's a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things but I wouldn't have minded if they had tried a more action oriented approach to Divine Knight battles, just to try and freshen things up a bit.
On the location front, it's the usual handful of new areas within the familiarity of the previous game. There's the witches village Eryn, and a few more areas of Crossbell modelled now, as well as plenty of new dungeon areas to explore which is nice. They even bring over some CS1/2 locations for a few scenes (though not playable in) which is nice. Ambition and scope certainly outpaced time and money because there's stuff happening in areas like Liberl, Jurai, and North Ambria but because these areas don't have full scale 3D models done for them, you only get to see them on the map as events are talked about. It's a shame but at the same time, I can commend the sheer scale and scope of what they're doing, especially for a company the size of Falcom. I can always appreciate ambition even if it doesn't quite hit the mark.
On the technical side of things, I played this on Switch and there's a handful of unfortunate issues to report. Positives first, there wasn't any time the game got stuck loading at a point like CS3 did for me, and for the most part it runs consistently and looks good enough. Unfortunately there are times where the large amount of characters on screen at times drags the framerate down and load times here are kinda long. I don't know if the in game clock tracks the loading screen times or not but my playtime on my save file was around 5 hours less than the playtime my Switch was tracking so I can only assume that was load times being added up throughout my whole 90+ hour playthrough which uh….. yeah, the 10ish seconds per load screen really adds up. There's a handful of other issues carried over from CS3, like the incredibly tiny text in some areas.
Aside from the load times, these issues didn't bother me too much but everyone has different tolerances to these things so it's important to note.
Right, let's get into the wild highs and lows of the story side of things because wow, there is a lot to go through in this one.
Following on directly from CS3 where Rean lost control over himself after seeing Millium die in front of him, he finds himself captured and restrained in the Gnomes Black Workshop having slayed the fallen Holy Beast and released the Black Twilight upon the world, giving the curse of Erebonia even more strength than before. On top of that, following the shooting of the Emperor by Ash, Erebonia had declared war on Calvard. With not only the future of Erebonia at stake but the world, we need heroes from all over to pitch in and help and CS4 begins things off on an excellent note by giving you control of Estelle, Joshua, Renne, Lloyd, Elie, and KeA - heroes from the Liberl and Crossbell arcs of this long running narrative. They've taken it upon themselves to invade Orchis Tower in Crossbell to try and get some idea on what exactly is happening in the world. It's a great way to kick off the game, putting you directly into the action without resorting to the old “play a later part of the game at the beginning” thing that's been done a few times before in this series. It also gives them a chance to introduce our new Third Anguis of Ouroboros - Mariabelle Crois - friend of Elie and daughter of the man who had seized Crossbell’s independence through his own less than savoury means. She's replaced the fallen Third Anguis - Weissman - who was killed by Kevin at the end of Sky SC and this kind of stuff is why Trails is such a cool series. The world is continuingly moving forward and characters are finding themselves in new roles and positions as they grow and seize their own ambitions in the ever changing world they live in.
Following on from the Prologue, Act 1 takes us back to Class VII, who having lost Rean and split up from a few other characters after the events at the Gral, they find themselves waking up at the hidden village of Eryn, a place that witches have kept hidden in Erebonia. Having lost Millium through her sacrifice to become the Sword of the End and lost Rean to the Gnomes, Class VII are understandably dejected and lost on what they want to do. Alisa has found out that not only is her father still alive, he's Black Alberich, the leader of the Gnomes. Jusis had become especially close to Millium, forming a sibling-like bond with her and losing her has hit him hard. Laura has watched the airship her father was on get blown to pieces and is grieving the loss of her father. On the new Class VII side of things, Ash has disappeared after shooting the Emperor and Musse has vanished too, the loss of Millium has also hit Altina hard as the pair were like sisters and Kurt is struggling with seeing what Cedric has become. With so many people lost and crushed from the events of the Gral, it takes someone special to snap the group out their funk and that someone special is Juna, carrying the pride of Crossbell in her veins as well as her experiences in Erebonia, she knows just how important it is to pick yourself back up, and so, with the absence of Rean, Juna takes the role leader and gives a rousing speech, not pulling any punches, to inspire Class VII out their funks and to kick their butt into gear for a rescue mission unlike any other they've done before. It's a brilliant start to the game and I loved seeing how all these different losses hit each character but also seeing Juna pick up everyone was really cool. She was my favourite member of New Class VII from CS3 and she does an incredible job taking the role of leader here in uncertain times.
The bulk of Act 1 sees Class VII and allies searching through Erebonia to find the location of the Black Workshop as well as trying to find Musse and Ash. Of course, we see the likes of Ouroboros showing up to impede their progress too. Ash finds himself going back to visit his hometown of Hamel as he struggles with what he's done while Musse has all of a sudden become one of the most powerful people in the world, gathering people like Vita and Aurelia to her side and having the absolutely ludicrous skill of being able to predict literally everything that's happened and she's putting together a counter operation to stop Osborne's Operation Jormungandr (his plan to swallow the world whole through war) with Operation Mille Mirage, essentially a plan that while would be able to stop Osborne, it would do so at the cost of many millions of lives. Uncomfortable with her plan, Musse decides to re-join up with Class VII to search for Rean and another way to bring a stop to the strife that is about to engulf the world.
Act 1 ends with a spectacular trek through the Black Workshop with the cast split up into two teams working together to save Rean and help bring him out of the curse’s grasp. Along the way we see the culmination of Duvalie’s doubts about the path she's been following as she joins up with Class VII and Crow manages to shake off the Azure Siegfried persona that had been forced upon him. It's all great stuff and on its own would've been an excellent game but there's so much more to this fairytale.
Act 1 does have a couple of issues mind you. Roselia becomes the latest character to take part in the extremely disgusting boob groping trope this series is increasingly becoming marred in and annoyingly the first of many death fake outs is confirmed with Angelica coming back under the Gnomes control. It doesn't help that Angelica is a character I personally don't like seeing her come back after being led to believe she was dead was a personal annoyance.
After the relatively consistent high of Act 1 we bridge into Act 2 with the Rivalries being introduced. The Rivalries are a series of battles between Divine Knights where the winner absorbs the other Knight and once all 7 are merged back into one, the Great One can be reformed. Rean and Crow get the jump on this and duke it out to try and figure out what exactly a Rivalry is. As the Ashen Knight begins absorbing the Azure Knight, we find out that Crow is an Immortal whose life is tied to his Divine Knight and losing his knight would mean he dies again. I don't mind revivals like this because it's a special circumstance and his life is tied to something he could lose at any moment. Having to go through a second death scene for Crow though, only to have Valimar restore Ordine and take him as a squire, thereby saving Crow is a little bit more annoying. Well the second death scene anyways, I like Crow knowing he is living on borrowed time and doing all he can to help before his time is up.
Act 2 is where the game suffers a massive dip unfortunately. They remember that this is a Cold Steel game and as such it must have Bonding Events and so they bring them back but decide to implement in the worst way yet. You see, nearly every single female character now has “special memory” bonding events with Rean where if you do that Bonding Event, you unlock a heart towards Rean becoming romantically involved with that character. What's worse is that these events tend to be ones with character notes unlocked through them, meaning that you are probably missing out on important character stuff if you skip them. So wanting to see what Fie’s first event was like to find out what I could be missing out on by skipping most of them, I did Fie’s first bonding event and was rewarded with some of the worst character assassination I've seen as Fie just compared herself to the other Class VII girls in hopes that Rean liked her over all the others. It was awful seeing this ex-jaeger, now bracer, pining for the affection of a man she's shown zero romantic interest in previously. So with that I decided to skip all special memory bonding events with the exception of Alisa as that's who I've picked in every Cold Steel game so far (her first event is actually pretty cool because she decides to break up with Rean as she tries to deal with everything else going on in her life, realising she isn't able to give Rean the relationship he deserves and not wanting to be selfish and drag him into her problems. She still ends up getting back with him anyways which honestly I would've preferred if they had waited until the end of this game or did in a future game, once everything was resolved with her family)
The biggest issue with Act 2 is just how much of it feels like a waste of time. The core of it is going from place to place to rescue characters like Towa and Tio who went missing after everything went down at the Gral. They're being held hostage by characters like General Craig and Neithardt only they aren't really hostages though. No they're under protection and are free to go but instead of handing them over to Rean, these characters instead want to “test your resolve” by making you go through dungeons and fighting them even though at this point, everyone's resolve should be clear. Main Class VII fought in the Civil War and now contain people like Gaius (member of the Gralsritter), Fie (a high ranking bracer), and Emma (a powerful witch capable of lowering the strength of McBurn’s flames), I think their resolve is clear by now, especially with Rean back. On the new Class VII side, THEY HAD JUST STORMED THE BLACK WORKSHOP AND RESCUED REAN, whose resolve is needing to be tested here??? WHY DO THEY NEED TO BE TESTED THREE TIMES??? I would've understood it more if General Craig was like, “I'm sorry but as a General of Erebonia I must follow orders and I cannot allow these people out of our custody” or something because at least that would make a bit more sense.
At least it ends on a higher note with the full reveal of just how big Operation Mille Mirage actually is, bringing together characters from Liberl, Remiferia, and Calvard in a bid to stop the Empire by fighting them head on in what would be a war on a scale like no other. Our heroes from Liberl, Crossbell, and Erebonia however choose to find a third path, one that honours the late Prince Olivert, in what is an incredibly touching moment. Of course the Pantagruel ends up being invaded by Osborne's group of villains and we get another cool team split dungeon sequence as both teams work together to make their way to the deck of the Pantagruel to face the enemy. It's all thrilling stuff, it's going so well and then the wheels start to fall off again. Our heroes end up with their backs against the wall with the sheer numbers that Cedric has brought with him and so to bail them out at the eleventh hour is none other than the new Courageous II, with a few crew members who were supposed to be blown up on the original Courageous. Yup, the very Act that had characters honouring the legacy of Olivert sees Olivert and Toval both come back from what should've been certain death. Turns out George is just an absolutely useless character with zero conviction and so he delayed the bomb and gave Olivert's crew a warning before the bombs could detonate. On the cooler side of things, Blueblanc did not want his rival to die so he helped in saving them which is a cool character moment for him but yet again, characters not actually dying and getting fake out deaths is a problem because it kills the tension in the conflicts. If there's no risk or sense of belief that the main characters can lose or be killed if they mess up then the fights start to feel predictable and less dramatic. Even more frustrating in this sequence is the amount of characters hopping over to whatever side they feel like with little consequence. The RMP’s Major Michael Irving had switched from the Branch campus of Thors to aid the Main Campus with Prince Cedric and Shirley only to hop right back over to Oliverts side as a member of his crew. Professor Schmidt does whatever he likes and helps whoever benefits his research which was annoying in the first place but he also hops over to the enemy for a bit along with Alisa’s mother Irina. Then we have Victor Arseid who dons a mind control mask, claims he's acting of his own free will, then characters claim it's the curse affecting him, on the side of the enemy because??? It's just too much side swapping at such a late stage in the plot with little to no build up and it's more annoying than exciting or interesting. At least the likes of Duvalie and Bleublanc get a build up where the payoff is them finding the conviction to follow their beliefs and ideals.
But yeah that is the mess that is Act 2 that felt like a giant waste of time, started building a good climax and then lost the plot for a bit.
Act 3 starts to get things back on track with lore revelations detailing what exactly the curse is and how Dreichels had resisted it for many years. We get a bit silly again with reincarnation being brought in out of nowhere to make Osborne the reincarnation of Dreichels for some reason but it did clear up some issues I had with the curse and got me to understand it better. The curse is the Ebon Knight Ishmelga and he likes to take advantage of people when they're at their weakest. Osborne losing Rean, Rean seeing Millium sacrifice herself, Ash giving into his desire for revenge for Hamel… those moments allowed the curse to take hold and amplify the darkest desires of those people. Rean completely loses his mind and seeks revenge against those who forced Millium into sacrificing herself, Ash tries to assassinate the Emperor for his part in the Hamel tragedy. These actions are merely the darkest desires of those people amplified by the curse after having lost their will to resist it. Dreichels resisted the curse for 250 years, even through reincarnation until as Osborne he lost his son and wanted him back. That shows that with enough willpower, you can resist the curse and that while the curse plays a part in amplifying the dark desires of the people of Erebonia, those desires and actions are ultimately still the responsibility of those people. The frustrating things with the curse is some characters using it as an excuse to shift blame off people, like Class VII with Ash, and how unsubtle it can be with its influence at times. Characters like Ash who were under the influence of the curse though do recognise it was their own weakness that allowed them to do the things they did and that goes a long way to making the curse a much more digestible plot point than it was when it was getting the blame for literally every atrocity Erebonia committed. It's still an overall messy plot element and I can understand why it rubs people up the wrong way.
The core of Act 3 is the countdown towards September 1st and the beginning of the war with our heroes deciding to try and knock out a couple more Rivalries in hopes of getting Rutger and Lianne on their side like Crow. Before you get to challenge them however, Black Alberich decides to put up barriers surrounding their locations so you get to have fun going through more dungeons and boss fights. Oh and remember all those characters like Schmidt, Irina, and Victor whose side swapping felt out of nowhere and pointless? Guess who ends up swapping sides again :) Victor is the most egregious here because for someone apparently acting on his own will and not under mind control from the Gnome mask, he sure does join up pretty fast after you knock that mask off his face. At least there's a good side swap within it all with Alisa finally getting through to Sharon that she is a loved and valued member of the family. The better part of Act 3 is the Rivalry battles that while unfortunately didn't quite pan out the way I expected, they did give some great character moments. Fie and Rutger getting a proper father daughter bond moment was incredibly heartwarming and Rufus coming in to kill steal Lianne just as we had convinced her to stay alive a bit longer, further emphasising just how much of calculating bastard he is and showing why he is the best of the Ironbloods.
Before the war and the finale begins we get a moment of respite as the gang decide to go to Mishelam together to spend one last evening of peace before the world descends into war. It's a moment to put the fears of the unknown to one side and spend time with loved ones and it makes sense to have something like that here. The highlight is Olivert proposing to Schera, another great thing that shows just how cool it is watching these characters grow together through multiple games spanning multiple years. There's other cool stuff like Rean gaining mastery over the seventh form of the eight leaves one blade school and you get a silly quest with Sara inviting a bunch of women into having a drinking contest together.
Ultimately there's still a finale to get through and with Black Alberich bringing 5 Salt Pales and the Empyreal Fortress into Erebonia to set the stage for the final few Rivalries. Trails does the cool thing Trails can do and gives you FIVE different party setups to explore each of the pales, including a lot of first time playable characters like the rest of the Stahlritter and Zephyr, making for a really cool final set of dungeons before the actual final dungeon with Class VII. The Empyreal Fortress is a suitable final dungeon with not only the final Rivalries to get through but a few other boss fights with high importance.
The first battle is against Lechter and Claire who have both fallen so far from where I expected them to be. I understand that the death of Millium has hit both of them hard and they've lost a lot of their conviction but man, Lechter came in at Sky the 3rd, talking a big game, telling Osborne that he will surpass him. Claire since Cold Steel I has been showing unease about the path she's been on, doubts about following Osborne… to see both of them like this is just sad and disappointing.
The Rivalry against Cedric is pretty cool as you see an unlikely bond has formed between Shirley and Cedric which works surprisingly well for both characters. Cedric himself has a lot of issues to work through and nearly falls into the trap of using the curse as an excuse for his actions before Shirley hits him with a few home truths.
Mariabelle and Campanella show up and do what Ouroboros does, say some vague crap and leave as Juna puts it. Juna gets another moment of badassery though as she tears through them with a ton of questions. Of course we don't get many answers from them, the focus being the Phantasmal Blaze Plan and why they stopped trying to take it back (which I feel like it was obvious to put together that Osborne was enacting the plan anyways so it made sense for Ouroboros to join up with him?) More interestingly though they go into what Vita was trying to do which gives some insight into why she left and drop some vague stuff about the “truth of the world” itself as well as insinuating that Professor Epstein is aware of the truth. There's a post credits scene with Ouroboros that alludes to what their goal might actually be and with some theorising, a lot of their actions and condemnation of Weissman start to make a bit more sense. On the surface the organisation seems like a huge mess with members free to do what they want and leave without much consequence but underneath it all there does seem to be some method to their madness.
After that there's the penultimate Rivalry with Rufus who seems to be the only one who understood what it meant to be an Ironblood. His goal is basically to amass power until he's able to surpass Osborne and he'll do whatever it takes to get there. He actually has strength in his convictions, knows what he wants, and isn't afraid of being an asshole to get there and that makes him such a fantastic character. The fact his voice actor fits him so well only further enhances the aura surrounding him and it's magnificent. Having a character you love to hate makes it so much more satisfying for when you do take them down and Rufus fits the bill perfectly.
Before the final Rivalry though there's still McBurn to take care of and honestly at this point, the amount of times you've fought him only for him to be like “next time I might have to unleash my true power” does make going into this fight feel a bit like a chore at first but he's finally in the mood to give you some answers and hoo boy, there are some wild implications about Zemuria itself. You see, McBurn isn't even from this world and upon his arrival to this world, he became mixed with some sort of devil creature and has been holding back in his fights so that he can find out exactly what it is he has merged with by pushing himself against tougher and tougher opponents so that he can awaken his devil side without burning the entire world to cinders. What's even more interesting is that the church and the witches are aware of the truth of Zemuria, that no one seems to be able to leave the continent and that people are restricted in what they know by following the teachings of Aidios. Then there's the fact that the DG Cult who came up with the Gnosis drug in Zero are pretty close to the truth themselves and all of a sudden you have a lot of implications about the religion and state of Zemuria that is going to be really interesting to explore in the future. It makes so much more sense why Phantasma was being brought up so often throughout the game and why there were a couple of late game quests with devils popping up like they were cryptids. Really interesting set up for the future of the series. Back to McBurn himself, yeah his true form is some sort of giant devil creature which is more sorts of crazy added into the mix. Reaching that form allowed him to rediscover his lost memories and it seems he's realised that Campanella and Ouroboros were using him but what exactly they told him remains up in the air. Again, a lot of good intrigue built up from that encounter with McBurn that does a lot of good for the lore of the world and his personal character development.
Finally we meet with Osborne and the stage is set for the final Rivalry. Osborne is the epitome of my biggest issue with the Cold Steel arc - building towards something interesting and doing something way less interesting instead. For the bulk of 8ish games, Osborne has been built up as this magnificent mastermind, grabbing power and leading Erebonia towards dominating the world through a political masterclass of annexing nations by both economical pressure and outright warfare. His technique of backing nations into a corner by self sabotaging the Empire's own property and people and staging it as the work of others has backed many a nation into a corner, forcing them to give up their independence and become a part of his Empire. He wormed his way into Jurai’s favour by economically manipulating them, ousting Crow's grandfather in the process which created a terrorist organisation with the goal of assassinating him. He took Crossbell by force, using his own son as a pawn to drive Calvard out of Crossbell. He took North Ambria by force, yet again using his own son as a pawn in the process. The whole set up to this game's war is Osborne pinning an assassination attempt on Calvard and forcing conscription upon his citizens. This man has done so much damage to Western Zemuria so when we get the big reveal that um actually, no he was just playing the villain in order to bring about the chance of destroying the curse, I'm just like wow… way to undermine over a decade of set up for such a vanilla outcome. The parallel with Rean and throwing his life away to become the ultimate self sacrifice is cool and all but man, to take a political mastermind who had been built up to be the perfect final villain for this arc, and throw it away to make Ishmelga the typical “I'm humanity’s desire for growth through strife given physical form” instead is just so much missed potential. It could've been so much cooler if Osborne was just using Ishmelga’s curse to further expand his goal to conquer Zemuria or something rather than the whole Emperor Dreichels reincarnated hero nonsense. Credit where it's due, the boss fight against Osborne was a pretty tough fight and I was on the ropes for most of it (partially because I was lazy and hadn't sorted out my set ups for most of Class VII but hey, the game just about punished me for it so it's cool) The Divine Knight fight against Ishmelga carries the usual Divine Knight fight issue of all spectacle, little depth, made worse by an item that McBurn gives you that can fully restore your full party if you do end up in a pinch.
But yeah after winning the fight the game ends with the curse becoming too strong for Rean to hold back anymore and so he, Crow, and Millium decide to take it up into the atmosphere and blow it up in the ultimate self sacrifice move. I actually like this ending for Rean himself as even though he gives intl to his tendency to put his life on the line to save everyone else, this time he at least lets Crow and Millium help him, no longer taking the burden on himself all the time. Other than that though, this ending is kind of flat and lacking so good news that there's actually a true ending!
Yup, I believe if you do every single quest in the game you'll gain access to the ??? quest that gives you the Earthen Prison item and if you load your save file after beating the game and having that item, you're given the choice of another ending if you so please. It's one of those true ending flags that is kind of a cool reward for doing quests. Anyways the true ending sees Franz free from control of the Black Alberich persona (I haven't even touched upon that plot thread because to be honest, there's too much shenanigans surrounding what Ishmelga is capable of and reincarnation and stuff so I kinda stopped caring about trying to understand the whole Black Alberich situation) come up with a way to destroy the curse for good. You see, that Earthen Prison item can trap Ishmelga on their plane long enough to give our heroes a chance to kill it. And so we get our giant final boss as per Trails tradition and everyone comes back for the final fight. There's a whopping 39 characters you can sort into 3 teams of 8 as Trails flexes its cast size muscles on the rest of RPGs. It's a cool boss fight where Teams A and B destroy parts of Ishmelga to lower its shields to allow Rean's team to damage and kill the boss. Not that difficult but it's a much more fitting spectacle for the game dubbed “End of Saga”.
With the curse gone for good, and Crow's and Millium’s time coming to an end, Franz decides to ass pull out some thing he's figured out as ancestor to the Earth clan or something and Roselia joins him as they ramble on and the Divine Knights do a “one and only time” miracle that revives Crow. Yeah through the whole Cold Steel saga, Crow has literally died 3 times and has been brought back every single time. I didn't mind the Immortal one because it had rules to follow and a few others got the same deal. The Valimar squire revival was fine because Crow knew he was on borrowed time and that he was done after everything was over. To bring this guy back from the dead 3 times though…. Just let him rest in peace man, his work here was done. There's also the asspull to revive Millium because Franz has somehow had time to control his body long enough without Ishmelga realising to create a new body for Millium's spirit to be transferred in. Sure yeah, whatever. And with all these revivals guess what happens to Franz after Alisa finally has her dad back? He reveals that he was somehow an Immortal too and unlike Crow he's been one for too long now and can't be revived so uh…. Happy reunion Alisa yay! Genuinely do not know what she did to be screwed over by the writers so much but damn.
Anyways Rean goes into narration mode to explain a few events that happen post this story. Stuff like how despite freeing itself from the curse, Erebonia has a lot of rebuilding to do as well as grovelling to the other nations, especially Calvard, for the damages it's done. There's a bit about how the Bracer Guild has been reinstated in Erebonia, how Rufus has gone to prison to allow Lechter and Claire to help out in the rebuilding of Erebonia, and how the Royal Family eventually wins back the trust of the people. All that stuff is very good, a nice framing of how the balance of Zemuria has shifted since the Great Twilight. A little bit disappointing is the explanation of how Crossbell won its independence back. I would've been more annoyed about that if I didn't know Reverie existed and that it probably deals with that event but I can imagine Crossbell fans being let down by this resolution when CS4 first came out. North Ambria also gets shafted. Rean explains that after Crossbell won its independence back, the question naturally arises in Jurai and North Ambria. Jurai gets a little explanation stating that they've enjoyed their economic prosperity as part of the Empire and that the question of independence would pose some issues, North Ambria however just gets completely blanked after its first mention which sucks when Sara and the Northern Jaeger's had a lot of history being from North Ambria.
The credits are really sweet, we get to see Olivert and Schera get married and a bunch of characters celebrating, even those who unfortunately didn't make it into CS4s main story like Kevin, Ries, Wazy, and Noel. It's a nice send off and despite CS4 not pulling at my heartstrings as well as Sky SC and Azure did, the credits did get me to tear up a little seeing everyone so happy.
There's one last post credits scene you only get if you reload your save and skip through all the final scenes again. A little bit more insight into Ouroboros is given with them happy that the Sept-Terrions of Earth and Fire are no longer in reach of humanity’s hands. We also get to finally see the Grandmaster for the first time who states the world may have expanded its lifespan a little by driving back the Great Twilight but it still has around only 3 more years left. On top of that she announces the move to the next plan - the Eternal Recurrence Plan. It's a really intriguing set up for the future of the series and some of the wording used can lead to some theories of what Ouroboros is trying to do and I love that. It has me excited for the potential of what's to come and where things might go from this point.
So CS4 overall is a great game with a heavily flawed story where its highs are really good but its lows drag things down a wee bit. And I know I've had a lot of complaints throughout the story section here but a lot of it is more frustration at the missed potential and the way things went despite how they had built up my expectations. I can completely understand why CS4 seems to be such a divisive game but at the same time, for all its flaws, for all my issues with it, I still had a good time. The coming together of heroes to take down a world threat, seeing Estelle, Joshua, and Renne again, seeing the whole core of the SSS back together again, seeing Juna step up to the plate and inspire Class VII into action, Rufus being the best villain in a game where no one wants to be a villain, Crow paying his respects to each of his former comrades and pushing forward despite his limited time, Bleublanc going on a redemption arc I didn't think was possible, the way the game manages to utilise a huge cast and gives you reasons to use nearly every single playable character at least once…. For all its flaws, there are a lot of memorable and fantastic moments in CS4 that shouldn't be overlooked either. Yeah, it's messy at times and it can be frustrating too but it's also ambitious and full of the charm that makes the Trails series special and it's important to recognise that too.
To begin with I'll do my usual and go through the gameplay stuff first. As the follow up in the typical Trails pairs of games, Cold Steel IV builds upon what came before. Orbments get their second enhancement slots again, BP is now capped at 7pts, Lost Arts make a return from Cold Steel II and you've got all your usual Cold Steel battle system in place with combat links and follow up attacks, and master quartz and all that fun stuff that has kept the combat engaging throughout the many hours these games take. The Brave Order system from CS3 also returns and thankfully seems to have been adjusted to try and balance things a bit better because I wasn't cutting through enemies like paper this time round which was much appreciated.
Divine Knight battles haven't changed much and honestly, as much as I love mechs, I definitely felt like these battles had outstayed their welcome by this point. It's the same core “target the right weak point for the stance to get a follow up attack” and once you find the weak points, they seem impossible to lose. Over the course of all four Cold Steel games I have never once had a Divine Knight or Soldat lose all its HP on me. The battles just seem kind of stagnant compared to the core battle system and once the spectacle has worn off, they become a little too formulaic, which is a problem when the game has a plot point that sees you taking on 6 Divine Knights throughout the game with little differing up the fights other than how many partners you get with you. It's a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things but I wouldn't have minded if they had tried a more action oriented approach to Divine Knight battles, just to try and freshen things up a bit.
On the location front, it's the usual handful of new areas within the familiarity of the previous game. There's the witches village Eryn, and a few more areas of Crossbell modelled now, as well as plenty of new dungeon areas to explore which is nice. They even bring over some CS1/2 locations for a few scenes (though not playable in) which is nice. Ambition and scope certainly outpaced time and money because there's stuff happening in areas like Liberl, Jurai, and North Ambria but because these areas don't have full scale 3D models done for them, you only get to see them on the map as events are talked about. It's a shame but at the same time, I can commend the sheer scale and scope of what they're doing, especially for a company the size of Falcom. I can always appreciate ambition even if it doesn't quite hit the mark.
On the technical side of things, I played this on Switch and there's a handful of unfortunate issues to report. Positives first, there wasn't any time the game got stuck loading at a point like CS3 did for me, and for the most part it runs consistently and looks good enough. Unfortunately there are times where the large amount of characters on screen at times drags the framerate down and load times here are kinda long. I don't know if the in game clock tracks the loading screen times or not but my playtime on my save file was around 5 hours less than the playtime my Switch was tracking so I can only assume that was load times being added up throughout my whole 90+ hour playthrough which uh….. yeah, the 10ish seconds per load screen really adds up. There's a handful of other issues carried over from CS3, like the incredibly tiny text in some areas.
Aside from the load times, these issues didn't bother me too much but everyone has different tolerances to these things so it's important to note.
Right, let's get into the wild highs and lows of the story side of things because wow, there is a lot to go through in this one.
Following on directly from CS3 where Rean lost control over himself after seeing Millium die in front of him, he finds himself captured and restrained in the Gnomes Black Workshop having slayed the fallen Holy Beast and released the Black Twilight upon the world, giving the curse of Erebonia even more strength than before. On top of that, following the shooting of the Emperor by Ash, Erebonia had declared war on Calvard. With not only the future of Erebonia at stake but the world, we need heroes from all over to pitch in and help and CS4 begins things off on an excellent note by giving you control of Estelle, Joshua, Renne, Lloyd, Elie, and KeA - heroes from the Liberl and Crossbell arcs of this long running narrative. They've taken it upon themselves to invade Orchis Tower in Crossbell to try and get some idea on what exactly is happening in the world. It's a great way to kick off the game, putting you directly into the action without resorting to the old “play a later part of the game at the beginning” thing that's been done a few times before in this series. It also gives them a chance to introduce our new Third Anguis of Ouroboros - Mariabelle Crois - friend of Elie and daughter of the man who had seized Crossbell’s independence through his own less than savoury means. She's replaced the fallen Third Anguis - Weissman - who was killed by Kevin at the end of Sky SC and this kind of stuff is why Trails is such a cool series. The world is continuingly moving forward and characters are finding themselves in new roles and positions as they grow and seize their own ambitions in the ever changing world they live in.
Following on from the Prologue, Act 1 takes us back to Class VII, who having lost Rean and split up from a few other characters after the events at the Gral, they find themselves waking up at the hidden village of Eryn, a place that witches have kept hidden in Erebonia. Having lost Millium through her sacrifice to become the Sword of the End and lost Rean to the Gnomes, Class VII are understandably dejected and lost on what they want to do. Alisa has found out that not only is her father still alive, he's Black Alberich, the leader of the Gnomes. Jusis had become especially close to Millium, forming a sibling-like bond with her and losing her has hit him hard. Laura has watched the airship her father was on get blown to pieces and is grieving the loss of her father. On the new Class VII side of things, Ash has disappeared after shooting the Emperor and Musse has vanished too, the loss of Millium has also hit Altina hard as the pair were like sisters and Kurt is struggling with seeing what Cedric has become. With so many people lost and crushed from the events of the Gral, it takes someone special to snap the group out their funk and that someone special is Juna, carrying the pride of Crossbell in her veins as well as her experiences in Erebonia, she knows just how important it is to pick yourself back up, and so, with the absence of Rean, Juna takes the role leader and gives a rousing speech, not pulling any punches, to inspire Class VII out their funks and to kick their butt into gear for a rescue mission unlike any other they've done before. It's a brilliant start to the game and I loved seeing how all these different losses hit each character but also seeing Juna pick up everyone was really cool. She was my favourite member of New Class VII from CS3 and she does an incredible job taking the role of leader here in uncertain times.
The bulk of Act 1 sees Class VII and allies searching through Erebonia to find the location of the Black Workshop as well as trying to find Musse and Ash. Of course, we see the likes of Ouroboros showing up to impede their progress too. Ash finds himself going back to visit his hometown of Hamel as he struggles with what he's done while Musse has all of a sudden become one of the most powerful people in the world, gathering people like Vita and Aurelia to her side and having the absolutely ludicrous skill of being able to predict literally everything that's happened and she's putting together a counter operation to stop Osborne's Operation Jormungandr (his plan to swallow the world whole through war) with Operation Mille Mirage, essentially a plan that while would be able to stop Osborne, it would do so at the cost of many millions of lives. Uncomfortable with her plan, Musse decides to re-join up with Class VII to search for Rean and another way to bring a stop to the strife that is about to engulf the world.
Act 1 ends with a spectacular trek through the Black Workshop with the cast split up into two teams working together to save Rean and help bring him out of the curse’s grasp. Along the way we see the culmination of Duvalie’s doubts about the path she's been following as she joins up with Class VII and Crow manages to shake off the Azure Siegfried persona that had been forced upon him. It's all great stuff and on its own would've been an excellent game but there's so much more to this fairytale.
Act 1 does have a couple of issues mind you. Roselia becomes the latest character to take part in the extremely disgusting boob groping trope this series is increasingly becoming marred in and annoyingly the first of many death fake outs is confirmed with Angelica coming back under the Gnomes control. It doesn't help that Angelica is a character I personally don't like seeing her come back after being led to believe she was dead was a personal annoyance.
After the relatively consistent high of Act 1 we bridge into Act 2 with the Rivalries being introduced. The Rivalries are a series of battles between Divine Knights where the winner absorbs the other Knight and once all 7 are merged back into one, the Great One can be reformed. Rean and Crow get the jump on this and duke it out to try and figure out what exactly a Rivalry is. As the Ashen Knight begins absorbing the Azure Knight, we find out that Crow is an Immortal whose life is tied to his Divine Knight and losing his knight would mean he dies again. I don't mind revivals like this because it's a special circumstance and his life is tied to something he could lose at any moment. Having to go through a second death scene for Crow though, only to have Valimar restore Ordine and take him as a squire, thereby saving Crow is a little bit more annoying. Well the second death scene anyways, I like Crow knowing he is living on borrowed time and doing all he can to help before his time is up.
Act 2 is where the game suffers a massive dip unfortunately. They remember that this is a Cold Steel game and as such it must have Bonding Events and so they bring them back but decide to implement in the worst way yet. You see, nearly every single female character now has “special memory” bonding events with Rean where if you do that Bonding Event, you unlock a heart towards Rean becoming romantically involved with that character. What's worse is that these events tend to be ones with character notes unlocked through them, meaning that you are probably missing out on important character stuff if you skip them. So wanting to see what Fie’s first event was like to find out what I could be missing out on by skipping most of them, I did Fie’s first bonding event and was rewarded with some of the worst character assassination I've seen as Fie just compared herself to the other Class VII girls in hopes that Rean liked her over all the others. It was awful seeing this ex-jaeger, now bracer, pining for the affection of a man she's shown zero romantic interest in previously. So with that I decided to skip all special memory bonding events with the exception of Alisa as that's who I've picked in every Cold Steel game so far (her first event is actually pretty cool because she decides to break up with Rean as she tries to deal with everything else going on in her life, realising she isn't able to give Rean the relationship he deserves and not wanting to be selfish and drag him into her problems. She still ends up getting back with him anyways which honestly I would've preferred if they had waited until the end of this game or did in a future game, once everything was resolved with her family)
The biggest issue with Act 2 is just how much of it feels like a waste of time. The core of it is going from place to place to rescue characters like Towa and Tio who went missing after everything went down at the Gral. They're being held hostage by characters like General Craig and Neithardt only they aren't really hostages though. No they're under protection and are free to go but instead of handing them over to Rean, these characters instead want to “test your resolve” by making you go through dungeons and fighting them even though at this point, everyone's resolve should be clear. Main Class VII fought in the Civil War and now contain people like Gaius (member of the Gralsritter), Fie (a high ranking bracer), and Emma (a powerful witch capable of lowering the strength of McBurn’s flames), I think their resolve is clear by now, especially with Rean back. On the new Class VII side, THEY HAD JUST STORMED THE BLACK WORKSHOP AND RESCUED REAN, whose resolve is needing to be tested here??? WHY DO THEY NEED TO BE TESTED THREE TIMES??? I would've understood it more if General Craig was like, “I'm sorry but as a General of Erebonia I must follow orders and I cannot allow these people out of our custody” or something because at least that would make a bit more sense.
At least it ends on a higher note with the full reveal of just how big Operation Mille Mirage actually is, bringing together characters from Liberl, Remiferia, and Calvard in a bid to stop the Empire by fighting them head on in what would be a war on a scale like no other. Our heroes from Liberl, Crossbell, and Erebonia however choose to find a third path, one that honours the late Prince Olivert, in what is an incredibly touching moment. Of course the Pantagruel ends up being invaded by Osborne's group of villains and we get another cool team split dungeon sequence as both teams work together to make their way to the deck of the Pantagruel to face the enemy. It's all thrilling stuff, it's going so well and then the wheels start to fall off again. Our heroes end up with their backs against the wall with the sheer numbers that Cedric has brought with him and so to bail them out at the eleventh hour is none other than the new Courageous II, with a few crew members who were supposed to be blown up on the original Courageous. Yup, the very Act that had characters honouring the legacy of Olivert sees Olivert and Toval both come back from what should've been certain death. Turns out George is just an absolutely useless character with zero conviction and so he delayed the bomb and gave Olivert's crew a warning before the bombs could detonate. On the cooler side of things, Blueblanc did not want his rival to die so he helped in saving them which is a cool character moment for him but yet again, characters not actually dying and getting fake out deaths is a problem because it kills the tension in the conflicts. If there's no risk or sense of belief that the main characters can lose or be killed if they mess up then the fights start to feel predictable and less dramatic. Even more frustrating in this sequence is the amount of characters hopping over to whatever side they feel like with little consequence. The RMP’s Major Michael Irving had switched from the Branch campus of Thors to aid the Main Campus with Prince Cedric and Shirley only to hop right back over to Oliverts side as a member of his crew. Professor Schmidt does whatever he likes and helps whoever benefits his research which was annoying in the first place but he also hops over to the enemy for a bit along with Alisa’s mother Irina. Then we have Victor Arseid who dons a mind control mask, claims he's acting of his own free will, then characters claim it's the curse affecting him, on the side of the enemy because??? It's just too much side swapping at such a late stage in the plot with little to no build up and it's more annoying than exciting or interesting. At least the likes of Duvalie and Bleublanc get a build up where the payoff is them finding the conviction to follow their beliefs and ideals.
But yeah that is the mess that is Act 2 that felt like a giant waste of time, started building a good climax and then lost the plot for a bit.
Act 3 starts to get things back on track with lore revelations detailing what exactly the curse is and how Dreichels had resisted it for many years. We get a bit silly again with reincarnation being brought in out of nowhere to make Osborne the reincarnation of Dreichels for some reason but it did clear up some issues I had with the curse and got me to understand it better. The curse is the Ebon Knight Ishmelga and he likes to take advantage of people when they're at their weakest. Osborne losing Rean, Rean seeing Millium sacrifice herself, Ash giving into his desire for revenge for Hamel… those moments allowed the curse to take hold and amplify the darkest desires of those people. Rean completely loses his mind and seeks revenge against those who forced Millium into sacrificing herself, Ash tries to assassinate the Emperor for his part in the Hamel tragedy. These actions are merely the darkest desires of those people amplified by the curse after having lost their will to resist it. Dreichels resisted the curse for 250 years, even through reincarnation until as Osborne he lost his son and wanted him back. That shows that with enough willpower, you can resist the curse and that while the curse plays a part in amplifying the dark desires of the people of Erebonia, those desires and actions are ultimately still the responsibility of those people. The frustrating things with the curse is some characters using it as an excuse to shift blame off people, like Class VII with Ash, and how unsubtle it can be with its influence at times. Characters like Ash who were under the influence of the curse though do recognise it was their own weakness that allowed them to do the things they did and that goes a long way to making the curse a much more digestible plot point than it was when it was getting the blame for literally every atrocity Erebonia committed. It's still an overall messy plot element and I can understand why it rubs people up the wrong way.
The core of Act 3 is the countdown towards September 1st and the beginning of the war with our heroes deciding to try and knock out a couple more Rivalries in hopes of getting Rutger and Lianne on their side like Crow. Before you get to challenge them however, Black Alberich decides to put up barriers surrounding their locations so you get to have fun going through more dungeons and boss fights. Oh and remember all those characters like Schmidt, Irina, and Victor whose side swapping felt out of nowhere and pointless? Guess who ends up swapping sides again :) Victor is the most egregious here because for someone apparently acting on his own will and not under mind control from the Gnome mask, he sure does join up pretty fast after you knock that mask off his face. At least there's a good side swap within it all with Alisa finally getting through to Sharon that she is a loved and valued member of the family. The better part of Act 3 is the Rivalry battles that while unfortunately didn't quite pan out the way I expected, they did give some great character moments. Fie and Rutger getting a proper father daughter bond moment was incredibly heartwarming and Rufus coming in to kill steal Lianne just as we had convinced her to stay alive a bit longer, further emphasising just how much of calculating bastard he is and showing why he is the best of the Ironbloods.
Before the war and the finale begins we get a moment of respite as the gang decide to go to Mishelam together to spend one last evening of peace before the world descends into war. It's a moment to put the fears of the unknown to one side and spend time with loved ones and it makes sense to have something like that here. The highlight is Olivert proposing to Schera, another great thing that shows just how cool it is watching these characters grow together through multiple games spanning multiple years. There's other cool stuff like Rean gaining mastery over the seventh form of the eight leaves one blade school and you get a silly quest with Sara inviting a bunch of women into having a drinking contest together.
Ultimately there's still a finale to get through and with Black Alberich bringing 5 Salt Pales and the Empyreal Fortress into Erebonia to set the stage for the final few Rivalries. Trails does the cool thing Trails can do and gives you FIVE different party setups to explore each of the pales, including a lot of first time playable characters like the rest of the Stahlritter and Zephyr, making for a really cool final set of dungeons before the actual final dungeon with Class VII. The Empyreal Fortress is a suitable final dungeon with not only the final Rivalries to get through but a few other boss fights with high importance.
The first battle is against Lechter and Claire who have both fallen so far from where I expected them to be. I understand that the death of Millium has hit both of them hard and they've lost a lot of their conviction but man, Lechter came in at Sky the 3rd, talking a big game, telling Osborne that he will surpass him. Claire since Cold Steel I has been showing unease about the path she's been on, doubts about following Osborne… to see both of them like this is just sad and disappointing.
The Rivalry against Cedric is pretty cool as you see an unlikely bond has formed between Shirley and Cedric which works surprisingly well for both characters. Cedric himself has a lot of issues to work through and nearly falls into the trap of using the curse as an excuse for his actions before Shirley hits him with a few home truths.
Mariabelle and Campanella show up and do what Ouroboros does, say some vague crap and leave as Juna puts it. Juna gets another moment of badassery though as she tears through them with a ton of questions. Of course we don't get many answers from them, the focus being the Phantasmal Blaze Plan and why they stopped trying to take it back (which I feel like it was obvious to put together that Osborne was enacting the plan anyways so it made sense for Ouroboros to join up with him?) More interestingly though they go into what Vita was trying to do which gives some insight into why she left and drop some vague stuff about the “truth of the world” itself as well as insinuating that Professor Epstein is aware of the truth. There's a post credits scene with Ouroboros that alludes to what their goal might actually be and with some theorising, a lot of their actions and condemnation of Weissman start to make a bit more sense. On the surface the organisation seems like a huge mess with members free to do what they want and leave without much consequence but underneath it all there does seem to be some method to their madness.
After that there's the penultimate Rivalry with Rufus who seems to be the only one who understood what it meant to be an Ironblood. His goal is basically to amass power until he's able to surpass Osborne and he'll do whatever it takes to get there. He actually has strength in his convictions, knows what he wants, and isn't afraid of being an asshole to get there and that makes him such a fantastic character. The fact his voice actor fits him so well only further enhances the aura surrounding him and it's magnificent. Having a character you love to hate makes it so much more satisfying for when you do take them down and Rufus fits the bill perfectly.
Before the final Rivalry though there's still McBurn to take care of and honestly at this point, the amount of times you've fought him only for him to be like “next time I might have to unleash my true power” does make going into this fight feel a bit like a chore at first but he's finally in the mood to give you some answers and hoo boy, there are some wild implications about Zemuria itself. You see, McBurn isn't even from this world and upon his arrival to this world, he became mixed with some sort of devil creature and has been holding back in his fights so that he can find out exactly what it is he has merged with by pushing himself against tougher and tougher opponents so that he can awaken his devil side without burning the entire world to cinders. What's even more interesting is that the church and the witches are aware of the truth of Zemuria, that no one seems to be able to leave the continent and that people are restricted in what they know by following the teachings of Aidios. Then there's the fact that the DG Cult who came up with the Gnosis drug in Zero are pretty close to the truth themselves and all of a sudden you have a lot of implications about the religion and state of Zemuria that is going to be really interesting to explore in the future. It makes so much more sense why Phantasma was being brought up so often throughout the game and why there were a couple of late game quests with devils popping up like they were cryptids. Really interesting set up for the future of the series. Back to McBurn himself, yeah his true form is some sort of giant devil creature which is more sorts of crazy added into the mix. Reaching that form allowed him to rediscover his lost memories and it seems he's realised that Campanella and Ouroboros were using him but what exactly they told him remains up in the air. Again, a lot of good intrigue built up from that encounter with McBurn that does a lot of good for the lore of the world and his personal character development.
Finally we meet with Osborne and the stage is set for the final Rivalry. Osborne is the epitome of my biggest issue with the Cold Steel arc - building towards something interesting and doing something way less interesting instead. For the bulk of 8ish games, Osborne has been built up as this magnificent mastermind, grabbing power and leading Erebonia towards dominating the world through a political masterclass of annexing nations by both economical pressure and outright warfare. His technique of backing nations into a corner by self sabotaging the Empire's own property and people and staging it as the work of others has backed many a nation into a corner, forcing them to give up their independence and become a part of his Empire. He wormed his way into Jurai’s favour by economically manipulating them, ousting Crow's grandfather in the process which created a terrorist organisation with the goal of assassinating him. He took Crossbell by force, using his own son as a pawn to drive Calvard out of Crossbell. He took North Ambria by force, yet again using his own son as a pawn in the process. The whole set up to this game's war is Osborne pinning an assassination attempt on Calvard and forcing conscription upon his citizens. This man has done so much damage to Western Zemuria so when we get the big reveal that um actually, no he was just playing the villain in order to bring about the chance of destroying the curse, I'm just like wow… way to undermine over a decade of set up for such a vanilla outcome. The parallel with Rean and throwing his life away to become the ultimate self sacrifice is cool and all but man, to take a political mastermind who had been built up to be the perfect final villain for this arc, and throw it away to make Ishmelga the typical “I'm humanity’s desire for growth through strife given physical form” instead is just so much missed potential. It could've been so much cooler if Osborne was just using Ishmelga’s curse to further expand his goal to conquer Zemuria or something rather than the whole Emperor Dreichels reincarnated hero nonsense. Credit where it's due, the boss fight against Osborne was a pretty tough fight and I was on the ropes for most of it (partially because I was lazy and hadn't sorted out my set ups for most of Class VII but hey, the game just about punished me for it so it's cool) The Divine Knight fight against Ishmelga carries the usual Divine Knight fight issue of all spectacle, little depth, made worse by an item that McBurn gives you that can fully restore your full party if you do end up in a pinch.
But yeah after winning the fight the game ends with the curse becoming too strong for Rean to hold back anymore and so he, Crow, and Millium decide to take it up into the atmosphere and blow it up in the ultimate self sacrifice move. I actually like this ending for Rean himself as even though he gives intl to his tendency to put his life on the line to save everyone else, this time he at least lets Crow and Millium help him, no longer taking the burden on himself all the time. Other than that though, this ending is kind of flat and lacking so good news that there's actually a true ending!
Yup, I believe if you do every single quest in the game you'll gain access to the ??? quest that gives you the Earthen Prison item and if you load your save file after beating the game and having that item, you're given the choice of another ending if you so please. It's one of those true ending flags that is kind of a cool reward for doing quests. Anyways the true ending sees Franz free from control of the Black Alberich persona (I haven't even touched upon that plot thread because to be honest, there's too much shenanigans surrounding what Ishmelga is capable of and reincarnation and stuff so I kinda stopped caring about trying to understand the whole Black Alberich situation) come up with a way to destroy the curse for good. You see, that Earthen Prison item can trap Ishmelga on their plane long enough to give our heroes a chance to kill it. And so we get our giant final boss as per Trails tradition and everyone comes back for the final fight. There's a whopping 39 characters you can sort into 3 teams of 8 as Trails flexes its cast size muscles on the rest of RPGs. It's a cool boss fight where Teams A and B destroy parts of Ishmelga to lower its shields to allow Rean's team to damage and kill the boss. Not that difficult but it's a much more fitting spectacle for the game dubbed “End of Saga”.
With the curse gone for good, and Crow's and Millium’s time coming to an end, Franz decides to ass pull out some thing he's figured out as ancestor to the Earth clan or something and Roselia joins him as they ramble on and the Divine Knights do a “one and only time” miracle that revives Crow. Yeah through the whole Cold Steel saga, Crow has literally died 3 times and has been brought back every single time. I didn't mind the Immortal one because it had rules to follow and a few others got the same deal. The Valimar squire revival was fine because Crow knew he was on borrowed time and that he was done after everything was over. To bring this guy back from the dead 3 times though…. Just let him rest in peace man, his work here was done. There's also the asspull to revive Millium because Franz has somehow had time to control his body long enough without Ishmelga realising to create a new body for Millium's spirit to be transferred in. Sure yeah, whatever. And with all these revivals guess what happens to Franz after Alisa finally has her dad back? He reveals that he was somehow an Immortal too and unlike Crow he's been one for too long now and can't be revived so uh…. Happy reunion Alisa yay! Genuinely do not know what she did to be screwed over by the writers so much but damn.
Anyways Rean goes into narration mode to explain a few events that happen post this story. Stuff like how despite freeing itself from the curse, Erebonia has a lot of rebuilding to do as well as grovelling to the other nations, especially Calvard, for the damages it's done. There's a bit about how the Bracer Guild has been reinstated in Erebonia, how Rufus has gone to prison to allow Lechter and Claire to help out in the rebuilding of Erebonia, and how the Royal Family eventually wins back the trust of the people. All that stuff is very good, a nice framing of how the balance of Zemuria has shifted since the Great Twilight. A little bit disappointing is the explanation of how Crossbell won its independence back. I would've been more annoyed about that if I didn't know Reverie existed and that it probably deals with that event but I can imagine Crossbell fans being let down by this resolution when CS4 first came out. North Ambria also gets shafted. Rean explains that after Crossbell won its independence back, the question naturally arises in Jurai and North Ambria. Jurai gets a little explanation stating that they've enjoyed their economic prosperity as part of the Empire and that the question of independence would pose some issues, North Ambria however just gets completely blanked after its first mention which sucks when Sara and the Northern Jaeger's had a lot of history being from North Ambria.
The credits are really sweet, we get to see Olivert and Schera get married and a bunch of characters celebrating, even those who unfortunately didn't make it into CS4s main story like Kevin, Ries, Wazy, and Noel. It's a nice send off and despite CS4 not pulling at my heartstrings as well as Sky SC and Azure did, the credits did get me to tear up a little seeing everyone so happy.
There's one last post credits scene you only get if you reload your save and skip through all the final scenes again. A little bit more insight into Ouroboros is given with them happy that the Sept-Terrions of Earth and Fire are no longer in reach of humanity’s hands. We also get to finally see the Grandmaster for the first time who states the world may have expanded its lifespan a little by driving back the Great Twilight but it still has around only 3 more years left. On top of that she announces the move to the next plan - the Eternal Recurrence Plan. It's a really intriguing set up for the future of the series and some of the wording used can lead to some theories of what Ouroboros is trying to do and I love that. It has me excited for the potential of what's to come and where things might go from this point.
So CS4 overall is a great game with a heavily flawed story where its highs are really good but its lows drag things down a wee bit. And I know I've had a lot of complaints throughout the story section here but a lot of it is more frustration at the missed potential and the way things went despite how they had built up my expectations. I can completely understand why CS4 seems to be such a divisive game but at the same time, for all its flaws, for all my issues with it, I still had a good time. The coming together of heroes to take down a world threat, seeing Estelle, Joshua, and Renne again, seeing the whole core of the SSS back together again, seeing Juna step up to the plate and inspire Class VII into action, Rufus being the best villain in a game where no one wants to be a villain, Crow paying his respects to each of his former comrades and pushing forward despite his limited time, Bleublanc going on a redemption arc I didn't think was possible, the way the game manages to utilise a huge cast and gives you reasons to use nearly every single playable character at least once…. For all its flaws, there are a lot of memorable and fantastic moments in CS4 that shouldn't be overlooked either. Yeah, it's messy at times and it can be frustrating too but it's also ambitious and full of the charm that makes the Trails series special and it's important to recognise that too.
A remake of the GBA classic, Mario Vs Donkey Kong is a return to what the series used to be before the Mini Marios took over and turned it into a Lemmings clone.
Mario Vs Donkey Kong is a puzzle platforming game where you must guide Mario through obstacles and solve puzzles to make your way forward to find a key and exit a level while the second half of a level sees those same design principles put in place as you try to reach a Mini Mario toy. It is, in essence, an evolution of the original Donkey Kong game. Levels also contain 3 present boxes and collecting all 3 will 100% a level, earning you a star that collecting enough of will unlock expert levels in the post game.
To get through these levels, you'll be controlling a Mario who is a bit more sluggish than his usual platforming self but with the benefit of being slightly more acrobatic, gaining the ability to handstand and then bounce jump higher out of that. Mario also does not defeat enemies by jumping on them, instead mechanics brought in from Super Mario Bros 2 sees you being able to stand on top of enemies and pick them up and throw them. Everything plays into the puzzle aspect, so you'll be hitting coloured switches to open and close new paths, throwing enemies on to spikes to allow yourself safe passage across and handstanding to deflect falling debris from hitting Mario on the head. All of these mechanics are put into play as you try to guide the key to the exit door as well. Keys have a 12 second time limit when out of Mario's hands as well before they return to their original location and you'll be using things like moving platforms that will push that time limit to its limit.
Once you clear the main levels in a world, you'll gain access to a Mini Mario level where Mario has to guide the six Mini Marios he found into a toy box. The Minis are AI controlled and follow Mario but can access smaller gaps while not being to jump as high so you have to puzzle your way through levels and make sure the Minis don't get hit along the way. It's all great stuff and a brilliant evolution on the core design principles of the Arcade Donkey Kong game, testing both your platforming and puzzle solving abilities.
After clearing those levels you'll come up against Donkey Kong in a boss fight. These see Mario needing to carry an object up to a point where he can throw it at Donkey Kong. At the same time Donkey Kong will be throwing barrels and hitting switches to make your life more difficult. Clearing the fight without taking damage gains you a star as well to further help unlock those expert levels. It's all great stuff and does a great job at expanding the Arcade classic into a much fuller experience.
The remake does little to mess with what the GBA classic brought to the table. Fall damage is gone meaning you don't die from falling off at a certain height and a Casual Mode has been added to give Mario a couple of extra hits before dying and removing the timer as well. Two new worlds have seamlessly been added to the game, bringing their own level mechanics that fit right in with the rest of the game, showing that NST still knows what they're doing with the classic Mario Vs Donkey Kong all these years on. Other than that it's mostly just redoing the graphics and music for a modern platform and fleshing things out with full cutscenes based off the original games storyboard sequences.
It's a solid experience offering some great puzzle platforming fun though never really hitting any high and memorable points. Mario Vs Donkey Kong was always an interesting evolution on the original Donkey Kong game and hopefully this time the team at NTSC will be able to build off it this time and see what potential this gameplay style can truly offer.
Mario Vs Donkey Kong is a puzzle platforming game where you must guide Mario through obstacles and solve puzzles to make your way forward to find a key and exit a level while the second half of a level sees those same design principles put in place as you try to reach a Mini Mario toy. It is, in essence, an evolution of the original Donkey Kong game. Levels also contain 3 present boxes and collecting all 3 will 100% a level, earning you a star that collecting enough of will unlock expert levels in the post game.
To get through these levels, you'll be controlling a Mario who is a bit more sluggish than his usual platforming self but with the benefit of being slightly more acrobatic, gaining the ability to handstand and then bounce jump higher out of that. Mario also does not defeat enemies by jumping on them, instead mechanics brought in from Super Mario Bros 2 sees you being able to stand on top of enemies and pick them up and throw them. Everything plays into the puzzle aspect, so you'll be hitting coloured switches to open and close new paths, throwing enemies on to spikes to allow yourself safe passage across and handstanding to deflect falling debris from hitting Mario on the head. All of these mechanics are put into play as you try to guide the key to the exit door as well. Keys have a 12 second time limit when out of Mario's hands as well before they return to their original location and you'll be using things like moving platforms that will push that time limit to its limit.
Once you clear the main levels in a world, you'll gain access to a Mini Mario level where Mario has to guide the six Mini Marios he found into a toy box. The Minis are AI controlled and follow Mario but can access smaller gaps while not being to jump as high so you have to puzzle your way through levels and make sure the Minis don't get hit along the way. It's all great stuff and a brilliant evolution on the core design principles of the Arcade Donkey Kong game, testing both your platforming and puzzle solving abilities.
After clearing those levels you'll come up against Donkey Kong in a boss fight. These see Mario needing to carry an object up to a point where he can throw it at Donkey Kong. At the same time Donkey Kong will be throwing barrels and hitting switches to make your life more difficult. Clearing the fight without taking damage gains you a star as well to further help unlock those expert levels. It's all great stuff and does a great job at expanding the Arcade classic into a much fuller experience.
The remake does little to mess with what the GBA classic brought to the table. Fall damage is gone meaning you don't die from falling off at a certain height and a Casual Mode has been added to give Mario a couple of extra hits before dying and removing the timer as well. Two new worlds have seamlessly been added to the game, bringing their own level mechanics that fit right in with the rest of the game, showing that NST still knows what they're doing with the classic Mario Vs Donkey Kong all these years on. Other than that it's mostly just redoing the graphics and music for a modern platform and fleshing things out with full cutscenes based off the original games storyboard sequences.
It's a solid experience offering some great puzzle platforming fun though never really hitting any high and memorable points. Mario Vs Donkey Kong was always an interesting evolution on the original Donkey Kong game and hopefully this time the team at NTSC will be able to build off it this time and see what potential this gameplay style can truly offer.
2024
When Persona 3 Reload was first announced, I was a little anxious and worried about it. I had gotten into the Persona series in 2017 when Persona 5 released and was completely enamoured with the series, playing through every title throughout that year. Persona 3 FES however stood out above all the rest. Its story, themes, characters, and the way they wove it all into the gameplay captured my imagination and heart in a way like few other games have or ever will. I also played through Persona 3 Portable and loved the alternative take through the eyes of the female protagonist, seeing new sides to my favourite characters and finding even more to love about Persona 3. It’s a game that I love so much that I’ve beaten FES twice and Portable twice (doing the Male MC route in the 2023 port release to see any more differences between it and FES). Persona 3 is a special game to me so when the remake was finally announced, it had a lot of expectations to live up to. I had worries that modern Atlus would try and inject P5 sensibilities and writing into the game considering how successful it was, I was disappointed to find out that The Answer from FES (which I know many don’t like but for me it is an incredibly important piece of the story that made Yukari my favourite character of all time) and that the female protagonist from Portable wouldn’t be included. The dream was always to have a definitive Persona 3 that includes all the content but I now realise how idealistic I was being. There will never be a definitive version of Persona 3 and that’s ok. Playing Reload made me realise that every version of P3 has its strengths and weaknesses, that each journey is its own unique take on the same incredible story and that your own tastes will determine which version will become your favourite.
Let’s get the elephant out of the room first. The omissions from this remake are disappointing and I totally get why many are disappointed from them but I also understand what Atlus have decided to do here. Reload is very much focused on the core journey story from the original Persona 3 and trying to make it the best possible version of that first and foremost. What that means is that while stuff like The Answer and FeMC did not make the cut, The Journey from the Male Protagonist viewpoint has been very meticulously expanded upon, including nearly everything that FES and Portable added to that portion of the game, like Aigis’ Social Link and people wandering into Tartarus to be saved. On top of that, there’s been a bunch of additions and tweaks that ultimately makes this arguable the perfect base to build upon like they did with FES and Portable in the past (and at the time of writing, rumours do suggest that The Answer is coming via DLC, further strengthening my thoughts). Reload is about remaking The Journey at its core to be the best it can be and while I share the disappointment in omissions, I think Atlus choosing to focus on the core of Persona 3 was ultimately the right decision, as much as missing out on the other stuff hurts.
Back to the initial worries and fear of how much influence P5 and modern Atlus would have on this remake. I am very glad to say that I was wrong on that front. While there are some fumbles and missteps here and there (especially if you’re like me and adore P3 to the point you’ll pick up on many nitpicks), the new content in Reload very much shows that the team on this understood and loved P3 like the rest of us. Yeah some things are lost in translation and effected by the evolution of modern technology, like how bright the dorm is now or how some things like having the option to choose swimming or kendo have been cut for just track and field but the new content, ooooo the new content expands upon my favourites that tickle the brainworms in ways that only Persona 3 could and that’s what I love.
The Male route had a few flaws with it being the first game to introduce Social Links, the most notable being the lack of Links for your male party members like Junpei and Akihiko. Reload has taken the opportunity to introduce new Linked Episodes for Junpei, Akihiko, Ken, Shinjiro, and Koromaru that will appear throughout the story. They’re very much character hangouts that expand upon each character in ways that are very much appreciated. Getting to have a closer look into how Shinjiro and Ken are feeling before their big Full Moon mission, hearing Akihiko talk more about his sister, and helping Junpei get through his rough patch are all wonderful things that make each of these characters more endearing and the writing fits right at home with these characters core identities. Yeah, a little bit of subtlety is unfortunately lost with Shinjiro and Ken but it’s definitely made up for with just how well these hangouts are written. Strega also get additional scenes in a similar manner that expands mostly upon Takaya’s character, giving him a new fascination with the Protagonist and his ability wield multiple Personas which I think really fits Takaya well, especially with how he views the Dark Hour and Personas as gifts bestowed upon the chosen few.
New night events have been added as well. The original P3 very quickly ran out of night time activities if you knew what you were doing, and so these new events are another great addition. Every party member now has two different night time hangouts with 3 events on each that unlocks abilities for them as well as expands upon their character. For example you can cook or watch DVDs with Yukari or attend to the plants or read manga with Junpei. I had a lot of fun reading Yakuza novels with Aigis and seeing Yukari want to become strong and kind like the female protagonist in the show she watches. Again, the writing expands upon the characters in ways that truly fit with the characters and that’s all I could ever ask for. The abilities you unlock for doing these include stuff like reducing the SP cost of healing for Yukari which is a nice bonus.
These new bonding events and linked episodes do not replace any of the old Social Links. The team at Atlus made sure to preserve all the original Social Links with minimal changes and yeah while some like Magician and Moon kinda suck, I have come to appreciate them more now. In life we don’t just spend time with people we like, we often find times where we end up stuck with people who we know are kinda awful people but I think it’s important to have those experiences as well as the good ones. Our journeys through life lead us to meet all sorts of people and they shape who we are. For every cult following advantage taking Moon, there’s a Sun whose brightness shines all the stronger because we can appreciate the good more from having experienced the bad. Persona 3 never shies away from showing us the highs and lows of life and I’m glad the remake chose to keep that intact despite all the shouts calling for some Social Links to be replaced by the male party members.
One thing I’m glad they did change with the Social Links though is the romance aspect. In the original, nearly every girl was written in a way that they fall in love with the protagonist and automatically enter a relationship with him by Rank 10. It was an incredibly outdated view of the world even back in 2006, where Katsura Hashino mentioned in an interview that he believed men and women couldn’t be friends. Thankfully now those Social Links have been altered, and while characters like Yuko and Chihiro still clearly fall in love with the protagonist, you can now guide the link towards a platonic outcome and with characters like Fuuka and Mitsuru, I think the new rewrites work pretty well. Outside of that though, the Social Links remain relatively unchanged and I think that’s a good thing.
Over to the combat side of things, Reload has modernised things for better and worse. I am someone who saw the vision with the FES battle system, where party members were controlled by AI and you could issue general tactics to them. Yeah it was kinda annoying early on when your options are limited but the trade off is a brilliant story/gameplay integration where, as SEES gets closer and closer through their battles and become more experienced, you gain access to more tactic options, allowing better control of the AI members and signifying the growth of the bonds in the team. Reload goes with the modern approach of full party control and the stripped back AI mode as an option, which while it is more fun gameplay wise, you lose that beautiful synergy between narrative and gameplay which is something I think the medium should be more confident in itself exploring.
Thankfully unlike Portable, the game's enemies and bosses have been designed around you having full party control meaning it isn’t quite a cakewalk. It’s still easier on FES and the new Theurgy mechanic is something else that tips the balance more towards the player’s favour. Theurgy attacks are special attacks that can be used when a bar is filled from doing certain actions (like using a Persona for the Protagonist, or using healing skills for Yukari). Once full you can unleash a devastating attack that does an insane amount of damage. I don’t think they’re quite as broken as the Showtime attacks introduced in Persona 5 Royal but when you can hold onto 4 of them between battles to unleash on a Tartarus boss to sweep it in a turn, the difficulty becomes somewhat of a joke. If you’re not playing optimally, I do think there’s still a decent challenge from Tartarus bosses but it’s definitely up to player discretion and you’re given more options than ever to just tear the difficulty apart if you wanted to.
Speaking of Tartarus, there’s been a handful of tweaks to it. While still randomly generated, the aesthetic has been given a massive glow up and the possible layouts are now much more varied compared to the original corridor-like layouts. It leads to a more engaging place to explore though you’ll start to recognise the randomly generated patterns of each block soonish if you’re paying attention. There’s a few new things added like being able to chase down a massive rare shadow, enemies on a floor being inflicted by a random ailment, and dark floors. The Reaper can now follow you up to higher levels and the new twilight fragments you can find lying around can be used to unlock special chests which will eventually spawn a massive clock to allow party members who have fallen behind in levels a chance to catch up now. The fragments can also be used on the P3P style clocks to fully heal HP and SP though it is pretty costly compared to P3P. As someone who knew about the trick of not being forced out of Tartarus when tired the night before a full moon and being able to restore SP by returning to the entrance, I’ve never had a problem with other methods being introduced to restore SP in P3 though I do understand how it undermines the balance of managing resources and exploring Tartarus. Reload’s way and my general stinginess with limited resources meant I did get more of that resource/exploration balance than I did in FES or Portable.
Full Moon missions remain relatively untouched. The bosses have a few tweaks in attacks here and there but otherwise each mission plays out pretty similar to how they did before.
Voice acting in the English dub has seen a changing of the guard with the main cast getting new VA’s but the old VA’s are still around in more minor roles as a nice touch. Like Akihiko’s old VA Liam O’Brien is now Kurosawa the police officer while Yuri Lowenthall, the old VA for the Protagonist is now Yukari’s dad. Tara Platt even manages to come back as Elizabeth despite no longer being Mitsuru. The new cast have the benefit of much better voice direction leading to a much better sounding dub. As iconic as Michelle Ruff’s performance as Yukari is to me, and as much as I did love the way she put a harshness in her voice for her portrayal, I do think at times it was a little too strong, leading people to misread Yukari’s more sarcastic playful side as a general meanness. It took me a while to adapt to Heather’s performance but I think it does fit Yukari better overall as a character. While it’s much softer, she still manages to bring out the harsher tones when it's called for and I think she hits the softer side to her in such a sweet and lovely way. Junpei and Mitusru’s new VAs are perfect fits while Fuuka’s new VA elevates her character to new heights. Akihiko and Shinjiro have much more difficult performances to improve upon and I think the new VAs there, while they do a perfectly fine job, don’t quite hit the highs of the past. Ken and Aigis also have brilliant new performances further elevating the new dub.
Another good change is making sure the main VAs aren’t doing multiple roles. Like Derek Stephen Prince has a pretty distinct voice and in the original game he voiced Takaya, the principal, Mitusur’s father, and some delinquents and it’s a bit much. Reload uses a much larger voice cast and is all the better for it.
On the music front, the whole soundtrack has been reworked, again for better and worse. New songs like the advantage battle theme It’s Going Down Now and the new nighttime song are brilliant additions that would fit right at home with the original P3 and that’s the highest praise possible. A lot of the old songs are remixed to a level where I’d say they’re about equal with the original soundtrack and then there’s Mass Destruction which has been given an entirely new verse where Lotus Juice shows just how far he’s come with his raps as he starts firing through bars much quicker than I’ve heard him do before. Lotus Juice however…. Has potentially been given a little bit too much freedom…. Perhaps. The new dorm lyrics are a step down from before (Minding my biz, so mind your own biz? Where’s my so dance, wanna put you in a trance?) Burn Your Dread - Final Battle sees him trying to do the heavy rap he does so well in Mass Destruction but I don’t think it works quite as well here, in fact I think I would’ve rather they just used the Future Arrangement included in the movie soundtrack instead. It might be one of those things where I hold the original stuff in such high regard that I’m nitpicking at any small change because the music is still good, it’s another great Persona soundtrack, I just think it’s a little bit weaker in some places and stronger in others.
That’s about it for new stuff so let’s talk a bit about why Persona 3 is the best Persona game. This game was designed with the calendar system in mind. Where in P4/5 you’re given a deadline to finish a dungeon and finishing it early puts the story to a complete halt, Persona 3 uses the Full Moon deadline to go, this is the date the next boss is coming, it’s up to you how you well spend your time preparing for this. It allows them to keep moving the plot towards that mission, giving characters moments of growth and tension as the plot slowly unveils itself. It’s a slow burn through design, letting you grow accustomed to its many mechanics and systems while also getting you attached to its cast. Having every party member staying at the same dorm allows you to speak with them every day, watching them grow, seeing them worry, seeing the little animations they do like Fuuka being on her laptop or Junpei playing videogames, paying attention to little details of how often Yukari likes to sit on her own at the beginning. Having characters become unavailable for Tartarus or Social Links when big events hit them hard because everybody is dealing with their own stuff and the world doesn’t revolve around you. Having Persona evolutions being tied to huge plot related character moments instead of Social Links, where those characters find a new resolve to push forward through their lowest moments. Having characters like Junpei and Yukari not only be relevant at the beginning of the game but also manage to keep giving them moments throughout the whole story right through to the end.
The core theme of Persona 3, memento mori - remember you will die, delivers a powerful experience. Death is inevitable, it awaits every single one of us at the end of our journey no matter who we are, but it’s what we do with the gift of life that makes the journey through it special. Persona 3 shows just how impactful losing someone is. Whether it’s a friend, a parent, or an acquaintance, losing the people you love is something we all go through so it’s important to remember to make the most of your time with them. It’s important to grab life and find the resolve to make it through the hard times and fully embrace the highlights. That is the power of Persona 3, every connection you make helps you grow on your journey and the more impactful your journey is, the more you can look back as the end arrives and smile through the tears, knowing that you’ve not only had a fulfilling life yourself, but also enriched the lives of many others. It doesn’t matter whether it’s FES, Portable, or Reload, that core is there in every version of Persona 3 and each game has its own unique take on the journey of life and I think that’s beautiful. There is no definitive version of Persona 3 because there is no definitive version of life, we all follow our own unique journeys.
For every step backward Reload takes, there’s two steps forwards that made re-experiencing Persona 3 for a fifth time worth it. I adore the additions to the characters I love, I respect the desire to keep as much of the original game intact as possible while expanding upon it in other ways that fit within its core themes. Persona 3 is one of my favourite games of all time and I’m glad Reload has given me a chance to refresh my love of this wonderful experience and given many new things to love in the process.
Let’s get the elephant out of the room first. The omissions from this remake are disappointing and I totally get why many are disappointed from them but I also understand what Atlus have decided to do here. Reload is very much focused on the core journey story from the original Persona 3 and trying to make it the best possible version of that first and foremost. What that means is that while stuff like The Answer and FeMC did not make the cut, The Journey from the Male Protagonist viewpoint has been very meticulously expanded upon, including nearly everything that FES and Portable added to that portion of the game, like Aigis’ Social Link and people wandering into Tartarus to be saved. On top of that, there’s been a bunch of additions and tweaks that ultimately makes this arguable the perfect base to build upon like they did with FES and Portable in the past (and at the time of writing, rumours do suggest that The Answer is coming via DLC, further strengthening my thoughts). Reload is about remaking The Journey at its core to be the best it can be and while I share the disappointment in omissions, I think Atlus choosing to focus on the core of Persona 3 was ultimately the right decision, as much as missing out on the other stuff hurts.
Back to the initial worries and fear of how much influence P5 and modern Atlus would have on this remake. I am very glad to say that I was wrong on that front. While there are some fumbles and missteps here and there (especially if you’re like me and adore P3 to the point you’ll pick up on many nitpicks), the new content in Reload very much shows that the team on this understood and loved P3 like the rest of us. Yeah some things are lost in translation and effected by the evolution of modern technology, like how bright the dorm is now or how some things like having the option to choose swimming or kendo have been cut for just track and field but the new content, ooooo the new content expands upon my favourites that tickle the brainworms in ways that only Persona 3 could and that’s what I love.
The Male route had a few flaws with it being the first game to introduce Social Links, the most notable being the lack of Links for your male party members like Junpei and Akihiko. Reload has taken the opportunity to introduce new Linked Episodes for Junpei, Akihiko, Ken, Shinjiro, and Koromaru that will appear throughout the story. They’re very much character hangouts that expand upon each character in ways that are very much appreciated. Getting to have a closer look into how Shinjiro and Ken are feeling before their big Full Moon mission, hearing Akihiko talk more about his sister, and helping Junpei get through his rough patch are all wonderful things that make each of these characters more endearing and the writing fits right at home with these characters core identities. Yeah, a little bit of subtlety is unfortunately lost with Shinjiro and Ken but it’s definitely made up for with just how well these hangouts are written. Strega also get additional scenes in a similar manner that expands mostly upon Takaya’s character, giving him a new fascination with the Protagonist and his ability wield multiple Personas which I think really fits Takaya well, especially with how he views the Dark Hour and Personas as gifts bestowed upon the chosen few.
New night events have been added as well. The original P3 very quickly ran out of night time activities if you knew what you were doing, and so these new events are another great addition. Every party member now has two different night time hangouts with 3 events on each that unlocks abilities for them as well as expands upon their character. For example you can cook or watch DVDs with Yukari or attend to the plants or read manga with Junpei. I had a lot of fun reading Yakuza novels with Aigis and seeing Yukari want to become strong and kind like the female protagonist in the show she watches. Again, the writing expands upon the characters in ways that truly fit with the characters and that’s all I could ever ask for. The abilities you unlock for doing these include stuff like reducing the SP cost of healing for Yukari which is a nice bonus.
These new bonding events and linked episodes do not replace any of the old Social Links. The team at Atlus made sure to preserve all the original Social Links with minimal changes and yeah while some like Magician and Moon kinda suck, I have come to appreciate them more now. In life we don’t just spend time with people we like, we often find times where we end up stuck with people who we know are kinda awful people but I think it’s important to have those experiences as well as the good ones. Our journeys through life lead us to meet all sorts of people and they shape who we are. For every cult following advantage taking Moon, there’s a Sun whose brightness shines all the stronger because we can appreciate the good more from having experienced the bad. Persona 3 never shies away from showing us the highs and lows of life and I’m glad the remake chose to keep that intact despite all the shouts calling for some Social Links to be replaced by the male party members.
One thing I’m glad they did change with the Social Links though is the romance aspect. In the original, nearly every girl was written in a way that they fall in love with the protagonist and automatically enter a relationship with him by Rank 10. It was an incredibly outdated view of the world even back in 2006, where Katsura Hashino mentioned in an interview that he believed men and women couldn’t be friends. Thankfully now those Social Links have been altered, and while characters like Yuko and Chihiro still clearly fall in love with the protagonist, you can now guide the link towards a platonic outcome and with characters like Fuuka and Mitsuru, I think the new rewrites work pretty well. Outside of that though, the Social Links remain relatively unchanged and I think that’s a good thing.
Over to the combat side of things, Reload has modernised things for better and worse. I am someone who saw the vision with the FES battle system, where party members were controlled by AI and you could issue general tactics to them. Yeah it was kinda annoying early on when your options are limited but the trade off is a brilliant story/gameplay integration where, as SEES gets closer and closer through their battles and become more experienced, you gain access to more tactic options, allowing better control of the AI members and signifying the growth of the bonds in the team. Reload goes with the modern approach of full party control and the stripped back AI mode as an option, which while it is more fun gameplay wise, you lose that beautiful synergy between narrative and gameplay which is something I think the medium should be more confident in itself exploring.
Thankfully unlike Portable, the game's enemies and bosses have been designed around you having full party control meaning it isn’t quite a cakewalk. It’s still easier on FES and the new Theurgy mechanic is something else that tips the balance more towards the player’s favour. Theurgy attacks are special attacks that can be used when a bar is filled from doing certain actions (like using a Persona for the Protagonist, or using healing skills for Yukari). Once full you can unleash a devastating attack that does an insane amount of damage. I don’t think they’re quite as broken as the Showtime attacks introduced in Persona 5 Royal but when you can hold onto 4 of them between battles to unleash on a Tartarus boss to sweep it in a turn, the difficulty becomes somewhat of a joke. If you’re not playing optimally, I do think there’s still a decent challenge from Tartarus bosses but it’s definitely up to player discretion and you’re given more options than ever to just tear the difficulty apart if you wanted to.
Speaking of Tartarus, there’s been a handful of tweaks to it. While still randomly generated, the aesthetic has been given a massive glow up and the possible layouts are now much more varied compared to the original corridor-like layouts. It leads to a more engaging place to explore though you’ll start to recognise the randomly generated patterns of each block soonish if you’re paying attention. There’s a few new things added like being able to chase down a massive rare shadow, enemies on a floor being inflicted by a random ailment, and dark floors. The Reaper can now follow you up to higher levels and the new twilight fragments you can find lying around can be used to unlock special chests which will eventually spawn a massive clock to allow party members who have fallen behind in levels a chance to catch up now. The fragments can also be used on the P3P style clocks to fully heal HP and SP though it is pretty costly compared to P3P. As someone who knew about the trick of not being forced out of Tartarus when tired the night before a full moon and being able to restore SP by returning to the entrance, I’ve never had a problem with other methods being introduced to restore SP in P3 though I do understand how it undermines the balance of managing resources and exploring Tartarus. Reload’s way and my general stinginess with limited resources meant I did get more of that resource/exploration balance than I did in FES or Portable.
Full Moon missions remain relatively untouched. The bosses have a few tweaks in attacks here and there but otherwise each mission plays out pretty similar to how they did before.
Voice acting in the English dub has seen a changing of the guard with the main cast getting new VA’s but the old VA’s are still around in more minor roles as a nice touch. Like Akihiko’s old VA Liam O’Brien is now Kurosawa the police officer while Yuri Lowenthall, the old VA for the Protagonist is now Yukari’s dad. Tara Platt even manages to come back as Elizabeth despite no longer being Mitsuru. The new cast have the benefit of much better voice direction leading to a much better sounding dub. As iconic as Michelle Ruff’s performance as Yukari is to me, and as much as I did love the way she put a harshness in her voice for her portrayal, I do think at times it was a little too strong, leading people to misread Yukari’s more sarcastic playful side as a general meanness. It took me a while to adapt to Heather’s performance but I think it does fit Yukari better overall as a character. While it’s much softer, she still manages to bring out the harsher tones when it's called for and I think she hits the softer side to her in such a sweet and lovely way. Junpei and Mitusru’s new VAs are perfect fits while Fuuka’s new VA elevates her character to new heights. Akihiko and Shinjiro have much more difficult performances to improve upon and I think the new VAs there, while they do a perfectly fine job, don’t quite hit the highs of the past. Ken and Aigis also have brilliant new performances further elevating the new dub.
Another good change is making sure the main VAs aren’t doing multiple roles. Like Derek Stephen Prince has a pretty distinct voice and in the original game he voiced Takaya, the principal, Mitusur’s father, and some delinquents and it’s a bit much. Reload uses a much larger voice cast and is all the better for it.
On the music front, the whole soundtrack has been reworked, again for better and worse. New songs like the advantage battle theme It’s Going Down Now and the new nighttime song are brilliant additions that would fit right at home with the original P3 and that’s the highest praise possible. A lot of the old songs are remixed to a level where I’d say they’re about equal with the original soundtrack and then there’s Mass Destruction which has been given an entirely new verse where Lotus Juice shows just how far he’s come with his raps as he starts firing through bars much quicker than I’ve heard him do before. Lotus Juice however…. Has potentially been given a little bit too much freedom…. Perhaps. The new dorm lyrics are a step down from before (Minding my biz, so mind your own biz? Where’s my so dance, wanna put you in a trance?) Burn Your Dread - Final Battle sees him trying to do the heavy rap he does so well in Mass Destruction but I don’t think it works quite as well here, in fact I think I would’ve rather they just used the Future Arrangement included in the movie soundtrack instead. It might be one of those things where I hold the original stuff in such high regard that I’m nitpicking at any small change because the music is still good, it’s another great Persona soundtrack, I just think it’s a little bit weaker in some places and stronger in others.
That’s about it for new stuff so let’s talk a bit about why Persona 3 is the best Persona game. This game was designed with the calendar system in mind. Where in P4/5 you’re given a deadline to finish a dungeon and finishing it early puts the story to a complete halt, Persona 3 uses the Full Moon deadline to go, this is the date the next boss is coming, it’s up to you how you well spend your time preparing for this. It allows them to keep moving the plot towards that mission, giving characters moments of growth and tension as the plot slowly unveils itself. It’s a slow burn through design, letting you grow accustomed to its many mechanics and systems while also getting you attached to its cast. Having every party member staying at the same dorm allows you to speak with them every day, watching them grow, seeing them worry, seeing the little animations they do like Fuuka being on her laptop or Junpei playing videogames, paying attention to little details of how often Yukari likes to sit on her own at the beginning. Having characters become unavailable for Tartarus or Social Links when big events hit them hard because everybody is dealing with their own stuff and the world doesn’t revolve around you. Having Persona evolutions being tied to huge plot related character moments instead of Social Links, where those characters find a new resolve to push forward through their lowest moments. Having characters like Junpei and Yukari not only be relevant at the beginning of the game but also manage to keep giving them moments throughout the whole story right through to the end.
The core theme of Persona 3, memento mori - remember you will die, delivers a powerful experience. Death is inevitable, it awaits every single one of us at the end of our journey no matter who we are, but it’s what we do with the gift of life that makes the journey through it special. Persona 3 shows just how impactful losing someone is. Whether it’s a friend, a parent, or an acquaintance, losing the people you love is something we all go through so it’s important to remember to make the most of your time with them. It’s important to grab life and find the resolve to make it through the hard times and fully embrace the highlights. That is the power of Persona 3, every connection you make helps you grow on your journey and the more impactful your journey is, the more you can look back as the end arrives and smile through the tears, knowing that you’ve not only had a fulfilling life yourself, but also enriched the lives of many others. It doesn’t matter whether it’s FES, Portable, or Reload, that core is there in every version of Persona 3 and each game has its own unique take on the journey of life and I think that’s beautiful. There is no definitive version of Persona 3 because there is no definitive version of life, we all follow our own unique journeys.
For every step backward Reload takes, there’s two steps forwards that made re-experiencing Persona 3 for a fifth time worth it. I adore the additions to the characters I love, I respect the desire to keep as much of the original game intact as possible while expanding upon it in other ways that fit within its core themes. Persona 3 is one of my favourite games of all time and I’m glad Reload has given me a chance to refresh my love of this wonderful experience and given many new things to love in the process.
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.
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.
The Erebonia arc continues with its third entry and overall eighth entry the Trails series, Trails of Cold Steel III. This one follows on from both Cold Steel II and Azure as the story rejoins up and continues forward past from where Azure left things. As usual with games following on directly from previous games, it’s difficult to go into story details without spoiling stuff from earlier in the arc so there will be spoilers in this review. Also with how much information the back half of Cold Steel III throws at you, there will be a dedicated spoiler section in this review for that which will be clearly marked for those who want to avoid that stuff.
Starting with gameplay stuff as usual, Cold Steel III is the first game in the series to target PS4 as its base platform and as such there’s plenty of graphical improvements from the previous Cold Steel games. Even playing the Switch port (which I did), the character models all look like a great step up and environments are large and well detailed. The Switch version does take a few hits, running at 30fps instead of 60 and models are a bit jaggy but otherwise I think it looks decent for what is a downgraded PS4 title on the platform. I did experience a handful of technical issues on Switch, twice the game got stuck loading and I had to quit out so if you’re playing on Switch I would advise you to save your progress frequently. One moment I had Juna pick up Celine only for Celine not to be loaded in until halfway through Juna’s conversation and another glitch I had was a character portrait being represented by their feet instead of their face (honestly both of these were more funny than anything else.) Overall for an 80 hour game, the Switch version was enjoyable for me but I imagine the PS4 and Steam versions are the better technical experiences if that is of importance to you.
I had some minor gripes with this game engine, like explosions look really bad and character animations are pretty stilted (there’s some moments where two characters lunge at each other to start a battle and it just looks pretty cheap). I can cut Falcom some slack for being such a small studio working on a pretty niche series so these are more observations from me rather than complaints.
Another weird thing is what dialogue they choose to voice and not voice. I’m aware that Rean’s Japanese VA is quite expensive so there’s times where he is the only character not speaking in a cutscene (something Xseed fixed with their Cold Steel 1/2 PS4 ports) but there’s also plenty of moments where only one character is voiced in a cutscene and it just comes across as a really weird decision. It’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of things but an unfortunate decision. On the brighter side of things, the voice acting is top notch. Some characters like Millium and Victor Arseid have had VA changes that can take a while to get used to, but it really is a top notch dub here. As a Scotsman I could tell immediately that Pablo is a really bad imitation of my accent but Becky however is really impressive and I can only assume it’s someone already hired for a more major character doing a Scottish accent because I can’t imagine NISA going to the trouble to get a voice actor from a completely different continent on board for a minor character. But yeah, overall a really impressive dub and characters like Rean, Jusis, and Juna get some really impressive acting in highly emotional scenes.
The UI has gotten an overhaul, with the battle UI seemingly taking inspiration from Persona 5’s single button action prompts instead of traditional menus (though having played Super Mario RPG recently, I think that’s the earliest example of this style of menu though I could be wrong). It took a little while to adapt to this new menu after 7 games using traditional menus and wheels but I do think the single button battle menus are the best thing to use for RPGs. One complaint I have with Cold Steel III’s UI is how incredibly tiny some of the text is. My eyesight is really good so on my end, I had no issue reading it but I can easily see it being a problem for a lot of other people, especially when I remember stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Fire Emblem: Three Houses being criticised for having small text because the text here is even smaller than those games for some UI elements.
On the battle side of things not a lot has changed. Enemies now have a bar below their health that if you can deplete it, you can enter the enemy into a broken state where your attacks do more damage and you’re guaranteed a follow up attack from your link partner that gives you a Brave Point. Brave Points now have a new use in Brave Orders that characters can use to bring new effects into battle for a few turns. For example, Rean has a Brave Order that increases damage output and refills the CP bar a bit as well as a more defensive Brave Order that heals your party a bit and reduces the characters damage taken by 0.5%. I think Brave Orders are a really cool addition to the battle system but I do have to say for someone who has been playing these games on easy for the most part and still finding the battles engaging enough, it is so easy to take bosses out in CS3 before they even get a chance to hit you if you use these Brave Orders well enough. Aside from a couple of late game fights there was definitely a notable decrease in difficulty from previous games in this one. Also added in this game is the new charge attack you can unleash before going into battle. In the bottom right of the screen you’ll see two purple bars and by using one of these you can initiate a battle with an enemy severely depletes their break bar and helps make standard encounters easier to get through which is much appreciated.
Other gameplay tweaks include chests now no longer containing monsters. Instead in this game powerful monsters are placed in front of chests that would’ve contained monster ambushes and overall I think I’m fine with that change. You can still tell it’s a rarer chest because big monster is nearby and you don’t get the surprise encounter you weren’t prepared for. Also this game finally makes hidden quest stuff a little less hidden. Maps now use green ! marks and star marks to mark off important things that you might want to check out which is a hugely appreciated change. Before this there was basically nothing to point that a hidden quest could be nearby outside of talking to every NPC, which can be extremely frustrating when you miss something you weren’t aware of, so yeah, well needed change at last.
Overall, a few teething problems aside, the gameplay and presentation has been well improved here and it has been cool going through this series in order and seeing it evolve game by game to the point it has most things figured out now.
Right, let's dive into some story and structure stuff now. Set a year and a half after the events of Cold Steel II and Azure, Cold Steel III follows our protagonist Rean Schwarzer, now Erebonia’s national hero - The Ashen Chevalier, who put a stop to the civil war. In the timeskip Erebonia has annexed North Ambria for the Northern Jaegers part in the razing of Celdic, adding another nation under their fold after having done the same to Crossbell at the end of Cold Steel II. Osborne has been consolidating more and more power, taking over Thors Military Academy and restructuring it so students are more likely to be brought into the army after graduating. A branch campus set up in the west by Olivert as one last act of defiance is where our now 20 year old Rean finds himself working at, as he becomes instructor for a new Class VII.
So my first worry coming into this game was being aware that we were returning to the gameplay structure of Cold Steel I, a structure that ultimately wore me out as it became very repetitive, cast bloated, and tension cutting. While Cold Steel III does return to Cold Steel I’s structure, a lot of lessons have been learned from it to provide a much better experience.
First, new Class VII is a much smaller cast, consisting of just 3 characters before being bumped up to 5 later, instead of 9 being bumped up to 11. What this means is the group dynamic is much more tightly woven than what CS1 provided. Another thing that helps with this is Rean being moved from the role of student to the role of instructor. A large problem with CS1’s Class VII was that everything revolved around Rean. Jusis and Machias won’t set aside their differences? Rean will fix it. Fie and Laura are having issues? No one else can help, we need Rean to fix it. New Class VII however benefit from their age and role difference from Rean. While they will come to him for advice and stuff, they’re also much better at sorting things out themselves without Rean. There’s a scene with Juna broken from everything she’s learned about what’s been happening to her home Crossbell and Kurt and Altina do a great job at staying with her and trying to lift her spirits. The early chapters often sees Rean leaving new Class VII behind to take on a dangerous threat and Ash and Musse do a great job at pushing the rest of Class VII into taking action for themselves and proving to Rean that they can handle themselves. It’s a much better dynamic than what we had before.
Change number 2 is only 3 chapters of school > school dungeon > panzer soldat training > field trip making for a much less repetitive structure than CS1 even if those sections are stretched out longer to cover about the same amount of time as CS1 did. What also helps is most of these chapters see you visit 2 towns on your field trip meaning you get a bit more world connectivity than you did in CS1.
Third, with this following on from CS2 and Azure taking the story to a new point after the first two CS games ran alongside the Crossbell arc, we get to see a lot of returning characters. So like how Trails from Zero made great use of Renne’s story to keep you engaged while setting up the Crossbell arc stuff, CS3 has plenty of returning characters to keep your interest while it sets up new Class VII and the next stage of the conflict in Erebonia. We have stuff like Randy now working as an instructor for the branch campus, Tita becoming a disciple for Professor Schmidt, and loosening up on the Bracer Guilds allowing Agate to make his way over to Erebonia. On top of this we have old Class VII reunions which are really great for seeing how these characters have grown over the years, like Alisa now working for the Reinford company or Emma growing into an insanely powerful witch or Elliot now being a fantastic musician whose record is lighting up the charts. It’s the type of character growth you rarely see in most other series because very few things follow characters for this long and I love it. Even more incredible is seeing other students from CS1 and 2 making their way in the world. Vivi is now a journalist, Becky is trying to make her way as a goods seller, Mint is now an engineer, Munk works for the radio, it’s just such wonderful world building and like seeing all your old friends going out into the real world and finding their way. On top of this there’s visiting important locations from previous games like Crossbell, and a moment where you visit an area with a very sombre remix from a previous game and oh my gosh, this game is so good for paying homage to previous games.
There’s also Ouroboros returning to the fold so you’ll be seeing familiar faces from their ranks again and it all really helps to keep things interesting in a way the original Cold Steel failed to. It’s not quite on the same level of Zero wrapping up Renne’s arc but nonetheless, it’s fantastic if that type of stuff appeals to you and for me it does.
In typical Trails fashion, this is a slow burn with a repetitive structure for its first three chapters and there could be an argument that not much of importance happens. The field trip structure sees you doing quests with new Class VII, Ouroboros shows up to do an experiment so Rean ditches new Class VII to fight them off with old Class VII, new Class VII end up barging in anyways so Ouroboros fire up their Aion experiment and you do a Divine Knight battle with a Panzer Soldat ally. And yeah on the surface, it can feel repetitive and pointless, especially when Ouroboros suddenly change their goal from taking back the Phantasmal Blaze plan but under the surface there’s a subtle connection being built that you don’t even truly realise until much later. For example, I didn’t think I bonded much with original Class VII, I had my favourites like Alisa and Emma but otherwise I had much more attachment to the Liberl gang and the SSS. However, when all of the old Class VII reunite in this game, it was a hugely emotional moment for me because of the time I spent in CS1 and 2 with them. They had subtly wormed their way into my heart in a way that I didn’t even realise and it’s much the same here. Like yeah in the grand scheme of things, little is happening in the main plot until like Chapter 4, but at the same time, you’re slowly witnessing Altina becoming more and more human, Juna growing less and less resentful towards Erebonians in general, Kurt and Rean trying to be more accommodating for Juna’s pride as a Crossbellan, Rean growing more and more as an instructor and learning to trust his students more. I can understand that being 3 games in on the arc, most people are probably looking for much more evenly spread out plot progression and maybe it’s because I’m a very patient person who is pretty good at adapting to slower paced things but it’s part of what I really love about this series. I don’t think I end up caring about characters like Becky and Vivi or coming around on characters like Millium if it wasn’t for these slower parts of the games, so while yeah, I do understand criticism towards Cold Steel in general taking its sweet time on delivering the heavy hitting story beats, I will always appreciate how Trails manages to get its world and characters to find their way into my heart, even when I’m not realising it at first.
Continuing on with other things I appreciated this time around, Rean as an instructor! I think the role fits him so much better as a character. His very corny speeches work so much better as a teacher trying to inspire his students but just not connecting in the way he hoped, like he’s that cringey teacher you love because you know they’re trying their best but they’re just a little out of touch. Of course his experience in battle and from the war means he can still inspire his students, especially with the power he wields, but there’s a much better balance here than in previous games and it works so well. There’s also the Northern War event that took place during the timeskip where Rean lost control of his “Ogre powers” and is back to holding back again. It feels more like an excuse to make Spirit Unification a power upgrade again than anything else for me though. Rean does still have his self confidence issues and still has moments where he questions his abilities, there’s a bit of imposter syndrome with the role of Ashen Chevalier that’s been thrust upon him. Unfortunately his character is still undermined at times with the amount of women that fawn over him and my gosh the list keeps growing to such an unbelievable degree. It wouldn’t be so bad if he actually warmed his way into people’s hearts but geez, it seems like most women fall for him before even walks onto screen and it’s like c’mon Falcom, we had such a well written romance in the Sky games, why couldn’t we have just let Rean have a dedicated partner and skip all the nonsense.
New Class VII’s members make for a decent bunch.
Juna feels like a secondary protagonist, bringing the perspective of a Crossbellan who has lost her home to the Empire and is now shipped off to a foreign military school. The strength of her character is her passion. She starts off giving Rean a tough time, makes fun of Kurt because he’s Erebonian and quickly befriends Altina to try and bring her out of her shell. Juna has a lot of pride for Crossbell and it takes her a while to warm up to her new environment.
Kurt is of Vander descent and as such he’s very serious about his sword training. With the Vanders being stripped from their duties as retainers for the Royal Family, he finds himself kind of lost on what his future holds. The serious swordsman character unfortunately doesn’t do much for me and I was hoping for a little bit more from him as a Vander.
Altina, who we met in Cold Steel II as Black Rabbit, working under the government has ended up at the branch campus as well. She’s a homunculi who has been helping Rean on his missions from the government and her whole life has been about following orders and as such, she will not do anything without being ordered to. Her character growth with Class VII is so good, Rean does a good job pushing her into finding an activity to do after classes and she ends up joining the swimming club and enjoying it. Little by little, she grows more human and emotional from her experiences and she probably has the best arc of this game.
Ash is a delinquent style character who has so much more going on under the surface than you realise. He’s a little too smart for his own good but I’m glad that he’s one of the few characters that gives Rean a little pushback and he’s great at pushing Class VII out of their comfort zone. There’s definitely more to come from him in future games and I look forward to it.
Musse is….. My least favourite character introduced to the new Class VII. 90% of her character schtick is to sexually harass Rean and everyone plays it off as a joke but like, when nearly every single conversation involves her making a sexual comment towards Rean it’s like c’mon….. Just stop please just stop. Again, there’s something more to her character, she seems very on top of the wilder situations but there’s so little this game gave me to make me like her.
Overall, I think I like new Class VII more as a group, while I like individual characters from old Class VII more. Like I would take Alisa, Emma, Fie, Jusis, Machias over most of the characters in new Class VII but I would take the group dynamic of new Class VII over the old Class VII’s dynamic. Of course old Class VII has now had 3 games to grow on me as individuals while the new ones clearly have more to offer but I can only give what I have experienced so far.
Speaking Musse and eyeroll worthy content, Cold Steel III unfortunately hits this area a bit more often than other games in the series, partly because of the amount of characters the game has. So not only do we have Musse sexually harassing Rean, we have the return of Shirley whose first action on screen is to grope Duvalie just like she did to Elie in Azure, Angelica is back and being sexually inappropriate to every single girl she meets including the Class VII students, characters are still trying push Rean and Elise into being a thing despite being step siblings and hey, how about Agate and Tita, who have very brotherly-sister bond also being shipteased by characters? Normally I have a decent tolerance to this nonsense, it happens once or twice a game, I roll my eyes and complain, then move on and forget about it but because there’s so many of these characters in the game now, it happens so much more frequently and it gets harder and harder to ignore. Why can’t we just have brother/sister like dynamics without trying to make it romantic? Why can’t we have lesbians that are just normal around women? It’s not something that severely detracts from the game for me but it’s also something worth complaining about because it’s just so damn annoying and feels so pointless to include in the game.
So without going into deep spoiler territory, I can say I loved most of what CS3 had to offer. The gameplay keeps improving, the story does enough to keep your attention until it starts going into the really big stuff and while it is very ambitious yet slightly messy, it does manage to carry itself throughout very well to create a fantastic experience. There’s other stuff I want to talk about but it will be going into heavy CS3 spoiler territory so if you don’t want to read any of that I would advise you to stop reading here and I thank you for sticking with the review to this point, for everyone else, let’s have a dive into some meatier stuff.
SPOILER SECTION
Right, the Cold Steel arc as a whole so far has been ambition and scope increasing to such a large degree that things start to get messy and while I will always appreciate ambition on this sort of scale, I do have to try and untangle things and iron out the mess that is seeping through the cracks that are developing more and more as this arc continues.
This game is where I started to struggle to keep up with what was happening. The last couple of chapters introduce so many elements and names to keep track of in two huge information dumps where it’s like could we have not spread this throughout the game a bit better? Vampires, Great Twilight, the Curse, Black Alberich, 7 Divine Knights, Gaius is a member of the Gralsritter now, two Holy Beasts and probably even more I’m forgetting about just fired at you one after another and like yeah, some of it is probably covered in the books and the Black Records but it isn’t really relevant to the story at this point so it becomes so much information to take in all at once. And this is on top of absolutely incredible stuff going on like fighting Dark Dragons and the Gral of Erebos being manifested or the insanity of Oroboros, the Black Workshop, Osborne, Zephyr, Thors Main Branch, and the Red Constellation all working together despite the first half of the game seeing much of these forces clashing against each other…. It's, yeah, a little bit messy.
Vampires. As a huge fan of the Red Moon Rose books, I was so excited to see this game introduce Crimson Roselia, the vampire hunter from those books who was also a vampire herself. Unfortunately, outside of Roselia herself, vampires in this game were very undercooked, appearing for a portion of Chapter 4, where the Calvardian secret service become vampires but all you get is a dark miasma surrounding them and very little vampire fangs which I was hoping for. It’s dealt with very quickly because once you take the Dark Dragon down, that’s the end of them which was very anticlimactic. That said I love Roselia, she was kind enough to bear her fangs at the camera, so at the very least I do have a vampire witch to look forward to in future games.
Undermining the big death of Cold Steel II. Crow’s death was a huge moment in Cold Steel II, absolutely crushing Rean to the point he looked empty inside and being the moment Osborne truly shows just what a magnificent bastard he is, by coming back from the dead himself, undoing all of Crow’s achievements and taking complete control of basically everything. Cold Steel III shows off a masked man in its opening character sequence who is so obviously Crow that is like c’mon guys, did he really need to come back? And dead characters not being dead is becoming a big thing in this arc now. Aside from Crow and Osborne, we have Rutger (Fie’s Jaeger dad who died in battle), the Steel Maiden Arianrhod (who is Lianne Sandlot from the War of the Lions 250 years ago), Franz Reinford (Alisa’s father who died in a explosion). Now with the exception of Franz, all of these characters are shown to have Divine Knights that seem to be tied to their immortality in some way (I presume Cold Steel IV will explain that), so it’s not like these characters are being resurrected for “free”, but at the same time that’s a lot of characters not staying dead, when the end of the game starts getting pretty trigger happy with killing off characters, you can’t help but wonder, how many of them are actually gonna stay dead? The emotional impact is lost a little bit unfortunately. I will give Cold Steel III credit for killing off a few big characters because of as of right now for where I’m at, yeah as far as I’m aware, they are actually dead, and if they come back in CS4, then that’s more of a detriment to what CS4 decided to do rather than what CS3 did, if that makes sense.
The Curse. Ok, this is just a hard thing to wrap my head around right now. So far the story seems a little bit conflicted on what this curse actually is. At times it’s getting the blame for literally everything bad Erebonia has done. Hamel? The curse. The civil war? The curse. The 100 days war? The curse. At other times they’re like well, no the curse isn’t solely to blame, it’s more like something urging people to give into their darkest desires which is like better I suppose but it’s still a bit messy because the curse seems to exist as something that takes responsibility for their actions away from the people committing the atrocities and I’m like… is that a good idea? Trails has done so well with its political intrigue so far with characters like Richard in Trails in the Sky and Dieter Crois in Trails to Azure, both nationalists who believed they had their countries best interests at heart, both people who with a little influence from Oroboros, were able to carry out attempts at their plans, whether it was a coup or forcing independence on a nation, the point is these characters were responsible for their actions and believed in their politics. The curse feels like a way to shift the blame, like Osborne says of those who committed the Hamel atrocities, they were good people who would’ve never done something like that. Right now at least, Osborne doesn’t seem to be under the effect of the curse, instead he’s still being a magnificent bastard who is using the curse to drive up Erebonian’s thirst for war with Calvard and I can work with that. We’ll see where CS4 takes the curse plotline but as of right now, it’s another one of those cracks starting to appear that I’m wary of.
Cold Steel and the defying of expectations in poor ways.
A little trend I’ve started to notice with Cold Steel is that it will set up this super intriguing idea and then pull the rug from under it to defy expectations but only to make the end result worse. For example, the end of CS2 put Rean in a really interesting spot. The poor lad, broken and empty from the loss of Crow, has fallen to taking orders from the government. We see him driving back Calvard to annex Crossbell and even clashing against Lloyd to try and stop him taking data from the Geofront. During the timeskip he helps annex North Ambria and while Rean justifies his actions because he’s going to these places and stopping people from getting killed, he’s ultimately still helping Erebonia take people’s homes and ruin lives. He clearly doesn’t like following Osborne’s orders but does so because he believes it’s the best way he can protect people. So I was hoping that maybe Juna would be a character who would point out to Rean that while he’s saving people, his actions are making the people of Crossbell suffer under Imperial rule. Instead what we get is Juna’s problem with Rean is her being unable to thank him for saving her and her family’s life when he was driving back Calvard from Crossbell. It just takes a much more bland and uninteresting route because no one tries to point out to Rean that helping the government get what they want is only giving Osborne more and more power and we go down the route of Rean is a saviour saving all of these people woooooo.
Same with Ouroboros. There’s an interesting dynamic at play where they want to take back the Phantasmal Blaze plan from Osborne, something that could’ve maybe lead to some sort of crazy alliance with Rean’s group as they take down the huge threat that is Osborne, instead, Ouroboros suddenly decide that actually working with Osborne makes more sense because he’s going to do the Phantasmal Blaze plan anyways.
Bouncing back to the good stuff, I mentioned it earlier but getting to visit Hamel and hearing a sombre version of Silver Will play out…. Ugh, tears in my eyes for that section. Both Class VII and Ouroboros paying their respects to Loewe before taking their fight outside of the village, there’s just a sheer level of class and respect I have for that scene that I’d be hard pressed to find an example from anything else I’ve experienced that compares to that.
Juna breaking down on Orchis Tower, screaming for people to give the people of Crossbell their free nation back, to return the pride that has been robbed from them. Easily one of the best voice acted moments in the game and a standout for when Trails does politics well, it does it damn well.
Which brings us to Sara and the Northern Jaegers in Chapter 3. Both from the recently annexed state of North Ambria, the Northern Jaegars attack Juno Naval Fortress in a suicide mission for one last attempt at revenge for their nation being annexed. When defeated, they pull out their weapons on themselves in an attempt to kill themselves because they have no pride left. Sara gives an impassioned speech that being a Northern Jaeger was never about pride but about finding money to feed the people of their poor and starving nation and helps guide them back onto the right path. It’s another incredible moment that really caps off Sara’s character so far and also incredibly well voice acted.
For those who have been playing through all the games in order, we not only have Agate, Tita, and Randy back (though Randy is unfortunately not playable), we also get Tio, and Olivier playable again as well as playable Lechter for the first time. In fact this game does a fantastic job at balancing out play time for its character roster. New Class VII get early portions of chapters, old Class VII come in for the final portions of the first 3 chapters, Chapter 4 has a section where you get a bunch of irregular characters like Lechter, Claire, and Sharon. You have two dungeons where you have to split your cast up into teams, Juno Naval Fortress sees old Class VII and new Class VII working together which helps make Juna feel like a secondary protagonist leading her squad while Rean leads the old Class VII, and in Chapter 4 you have the full squad of both old and new Class VII split into 3 teams to tackle the Heimdallr underground lair of the Dark Dragon and even tackle the boss itself in the 3 separate squad. Once again, Trails does an incredible job of not only giving you a large cast to play with but making sure you actually get a chance to play with every single character it gives you.
The final dungeon sequence follows a similar pattern to Cold Steel II’s final dungeon where you come up against some very powerful bosses along the way. In Cold Steel II, these bosses like McBurn, Xeno and Leonidas are all held off by Class VII for a while before they up the ante and take things seriously. Every case sees an immensely powerful character like Victor Arseid or Olivert and Vander step in to hold off the enemy while Class VII proceeds forward. It’s a sequence I really appreciated in CS2 because it highlights that while yes, Class VII are a powerful group for their age, they’re still just kids and going up against the likes of McBurn at this stage is just too much for them so of course characters like Victor are needed to bail them out. Having that sequence return with old Class VII now having a year and a half more experience under their belt we get to see how much they’ve grown. Arianrhod and McBurn? It’s cool, Laura has mastered her father’s fighting style and Emma is now capable of performing spells powerful enough to limit McBurn’s flames, and Gaius has inherited the power of a stigma and has become a member of the Gralsritter . Rutger, Sharon, Azure Siegfried, and Shirley? No problem, Fie has merged the experience of being an ex-jaeger and current bracer under Sara’s guidance and Alisa has used her engineering experience to build an orbal gear. The Ironbloods? Well ok, this set is more like Claire, Millium, and Lechter didn’t even want to be there but Jusis, Machias, and Elliot are experienced now to hold their own. Basically the sequence serves to show just how powerful old Class VII is now because they’re holding their own against these powerful characters to allow the new inexperienced Class VII push through.
And while we’re talking about the end sequence, can I just say how much I appreciate the game ending with the good guys losing? The Courageous is blown to pieces with Toval, Olivert, and Victor aboard (again as of now they’re dead, so even if CS4 ass pulls them back, I’m going to appreciate CS3 for having the balls to kill them off here), as far as we know, Angie has been shot dead by Copper Georg, Millium sacrifices herself to become the blade that is able to kill the Holy Beast, Rean loses his mind seeing Millium murdered before his eyes and goes absolutely ham on the Holy Beast, killing it and unleashing the curse upon the world, and Osborne pulls out his Divine Knight and picks up Valimar with Rean still inside, and says “Together, we shall write the end to this wretched fairy tale. In ink, black as despair.” and we end with an image of Valimar in chains. Like hot damn to have the balls to end a game on a note like that is something I can only stand back and appreciate. Yeah, it’s something they can get away with because it’s a continuous story so the next game will probably have everything work out in the end but at the same it’s something that so rarely happens and even it does, it happens at a point in the game where there’s enough game left for the heroes to win in the end. So yeah, no matter where the story goes from here, I have to appreciate CS3 for it does.
END OF SPOILER SECTION
Ok, that was a lot to unpack but in summary, CS3 is where the issues of the Cold Steel arc start to shine through the cracks but there are enough strong highs to distract your attention away from those cracks to deliver what is ultimately so far my favourite Cold Steel game. The return of characters for long time fans, the growth of old Class VII, the dynamic of new Class VII, the incredible way the game makes use of its large playable cast, the powerful moments in every single chapter of the game, the stunning finale that ends on a cliffhanger leaving you desperate to find out what happens next…. Yes, there are stumbles along the way and the ambitious plot with perhaps too many pieces on the chess board is showing signs of collapsing in upon itself but as of this moment, I’m enjoying the highs enough that the messier side of things doesn’t detract from my experience too much. The night is yet young and the party has only just begun…. So grab a seat and enjoy the experience while you can.
Starting with gameplay stuff as usual, Cold Steel III is the first game in the series to target PS4 as its base platform and as such there’s plenty of graphical improvements from the previous Cold Steel games. Even playing the Switch port (which I did), the character models all look like a great step up and environments are large and well detailed. The Switch version does take a few hits, running at 30fps instead of 60 and models are a bit jaggy but otherwise I think it looks decent for what is a downgraded PS4 title on the platform. I did experience a handful of technical issues on Switch, twice the game got stuck loading and I had to quit out so if you’re playing on Switch I would advise you to save your progress frequently. One moment I had Juna pick up Celine only for Celine not to be loaded in until halfway through Juna’s conversation and another glitch I had was a character portrait being represented by their feet instead of their face (honestly both of these were more funny than anything else.) Overall for an 80 hour game, the Switch version was enjoyable for me but I imagine the PS4 and Steam versions are the better technical experiences if that is of importance to you.
I had some minor gripes with this game engine, like explosions look really bad and character animations are pretty stilted (there’s some moments where two characters lunge at each other to start a battle and it just looks pretty cheap). I can cut Falcom some slack for being such a small studio working on a pretty niche series so these are more observations from me rather than complaints.
Another weird thing is what dialogue they choose to voice and not voice. I’m aware that Rean’s Japanese VA is quite expensive so there’s times where he is the only character not speaking in a cutscene (something Xseed fixed with their Cold Steel 1/2 PS4 ports) but there’s also plenty of moments where only one character is voiced in a cutscene and it just comes across as a really weird decision. It’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of things but an unfortunate decision. On the brighter side of things, the voice acting is top notch. Some characters like Millium and Victor Arseid have had VA changes that can take a while to get used to, but it really is a top notch dub here. As a Scotsman I could tell immediately that Pablo is a really bad imitation of my accent but Becky however is really impressive and I can only assume it’s someone already hired for a more major character doing a Scottish accent because I can’t imagine NISA going to the trouble to get a voice actor from a completely different continent on board for a minor character. But yeah, overall a really impressive dub and characters like Rean, Jusis, and Juna get some really impressive acting in highly emotional scenes.
The UI has gotten an overhaul, with the battle UI seemingly taking inspiration from Persona 5’s single button action prompts instead of traditional menus (though having played Super Mario RPG recently, I think that’s the earliest example of this style of menu though I could be wrong). It took a little while to adapt to this new menu after 7 games using traditional menus and wheels but I do think the single button battle menus are the best thing to use for RPGs. One complaint I have with Cold Steel III’s UI is how incredibly tiny some of the text is. My eyesight is really good so on my end, I had no issue reading it but I can easily see it being a problem for a lot of other people, especially when I remember stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Fire Emblem: Three Houses being criticised for having small text because the text here is even smaller than those games for some UI elements.
On the battle side of things not a lot has changed. Enemies now have a bar below their health that if you can deplete it, you can enter the enemy into a broken state where your attacks do more damage and you’re guaranteed a follow up attack from your link partner that gives you a Brave Point. Brave Points now have a new use in Brave Orders that characters can use to bring new effects into battle for a few turns. For example, Rean has a Brave Order that increases damage output and refills the CP bar a bit as well as a more defensive Brave Order that heals your party a bit and reduces the characters damage taken by 0.5%. I think Brave Orders are a really cool addition to the battle system but I do have to say for someone who has been playing these games on easy for the most part and still finding the battles engaging enough, it is so easy to take bosses out in CS3 before they even get a chance to hit you if you use these Brave Orders well enough. Aside from a couple of late game fights there was definitely a notable decrease in difficulty from previous games in this one. Also added in this game is the new charge attack you can unleash before going into battle. In the bottom right of the screen you’ll see two purple bars and by using one of these you can initiate a battle with an enemy severely depletes their break bar and helps make standard encounters easier to get through which is much appreciated.
Other gameplay tweaks include chests now no longer containing monsters. Instead in this game powerful monsters are placed in front of chests that would’ve contained monster ambushes and overall I think I’m fine with that change. You can still tell it’s a rarer chest because big monster is nearby and you don’t get the surprise encounter you weren’t prepared for. Also this game finally makes hidden quest stuff a little less hidden. Maps now use green ! marks and star marks to mark off important things that you might want to check out which is a hugely appreciated change. Before this there was basically nothing to point that a hidden quest could be nearby outside of talking to every NPC, which can be extremely frustrating when you miss something you weren’t aware of, so yeah, well needed change at last.
Overall, a few teething problems aside, the gameplay and presentation has been well improved here and it has been cool going through this series in order and seeing it evolve game by game to the point it has most things figured out now.
Right, let's dive into some story and structure stuff now. Set a year and a half after the events of Cold Steel II and Azure, Cold Steel III follows our protagonist Rean Schwarzer, now Erebonia’s national hero - The Ashen Chevalier, who put a stop to the civil war. In the timeskip Erebonia has annexed North Ambria for the Northern Jaegers part in the razing of Celdic, adding another nation under their fold after having done the same to Crossbell at the end of Cold Steel II. Osborne has been consolidating more and more power, taking over Thors Military Academy and restructuring it so students are more likely to be brought into the army after graduating. A branch campus set up in the west by Olivert as one last act of defiance is where our now 20 year old Rean finds himself working at, as he becomes instructor for a new Class VII.
So my first worry coming into this game was being aware that we were returning to the gameplay structure of Cold Steel I, a structure that ultimately wore me out as it became very repetitive, cast bloated, and tension cutting. While Cold Steel III does return to Cold Steel I’s structure, a lot of lessons have been learned from it to provide a much better experience.
First, new Class VII is a much smaller cast, consisting of just 3 characters before being bumped up to 5 later, instead of 9 being bumped up to 11. What this means is the group dynamic is much more tightly woven than what CS1 provided. Another thing that helps with this is Rean being moved from the role of student to the role of instructor. A large problem with CS1’s Class VII was that everything revolved around Rean. Jusis and Machias won’t set aside their differences? Rean will fix it. Fie and Laura are having issues? No one else can help, we need Rean to fix it. New Class VII however benefit from their age and role difference from Rean. While they will come to him for advice and stuff, they’re also much better at sorting things out themselves without Rean. There’s a scene with Juna broken from everything she’s learned about what’s been happening to her home Crossbell and Kurt and Altina do a great job at staying with her and trying to lift her spirits. The early chapters often sees Rean leaving new Class VII behind to take on a dangerous threat and Ash and Musse do a great job at pushing the rest of Class VII into taking action for themselves and proving to Rean that they can handle themselves. It’s a much better dynamic than what we had before.
Change number 2 is only 3 chapters of school > school dungeon > panzer soldat training > field trip making for a much less repetitive structure than CS1 even if those sections are stretched out longer to cover about the same amount of time as CS1 did. What also helps is most of these chapters see you visit 2 towns on your field trip meaning you get a bit more world connectivity than you did in CS1.
Third, with this following on from CS2 and Azure taking the story to a new point after the first two CS games ran alongside the Crossbell arc, we get to see a lot of returning characters. So like how Trails from Zero made great use of Renne’s story to keep you engaged while setting up the Crossbell arc stuff, CS3 has plenty of returning characters to keep your interest while it sets up new Class VII and the next stage of the conflict in Erebonia. We have stuff like Randy now working as an instructor for the branch campus, Tita becoming a disciple for Professor Schmidt, and loosening up on the Bracer Guilds allowing Agate to make his way over to Erebonia. On top of this we have old Class VII reunions which are really great for seeing how these characters have grown over the years, like Alisa now working for the Reinford company or Emma growing into an insanely powerful witch or Elliot now being a fantastic musician whose record is lighting up the charts. It’s the type of character growth you rarely see in most other series because very few things follow characters for this long and I love it. Even more incredible is seeing other students from CS1 and 2 making their way in the world. Vivi is now a journalist, Becky is trying to make her way as a goods seller, Mint is now an engineer, Munk works for the radio, it’s just such wonderful world building and like seeing all your old friends going out into the real world and finding their way. On top of this there’s visiting important locations from previous games like Crossbell, and a moment where you visit an area with a very sombre remix from a previous game and oh my gosh, this game is so good for paying homage to previous games.
There’s also Ouroboros returning to the fold so you’ll be seeing familiar faces from their ranks again and it all really helps to keep things interesting in a way the original Cold Steel failed to. It’s not quite on the same level of Zero wrapping up Renne’s arc but nonetheless, it’s fantastic if that type of stuff appeals to you and for me it does.
In typical Trails fashion, this is a slow burn with a repetitive structure for its first three chapters and there could be an argument that not much of importance happens. The field trip structure sees you doing quests with new Class VII, Ouroboros shows up to do an experiment so Rean ditches new Class VII to fight them off with old Class VII, new Class VII end up barging in anyways so Ouroboros fire up their Aion experiment and you do a Divine Knight battle with a Panzer Soldat ally. And yeah on the surface, it can feel repetitive and pointless, especially when Ouroboros suddenly change their goal from taking back the Phantasmal Blaze plan but under the surface there’s a subtle connection being built that you don’t even truly realise until much later. For example, I didn’t think I bonded much with original Class VII, I had my favourites like Alisa and Emma but otherwise I had much more attachment to the Liberl gang and the SSS. However, when all of the old Class VII reunite in this game, it was a hugely emotional moment for me because of the time I spent in CS1 and 2 with them. They had subtly wormed their way into my heart in a way that I didn’t even realise and it’s much the same here. Like yeah in the grand scheme of things, little is happening in the main plot until like Chapter 4, but at the same time, you’re slowly witnessing Altina becoming more and more human, Juna growing less and less resentful towards Erebonians in general, Kurt and Rean trying to be more accommodating for Juna’s pride as a Crossbellan, Rean growing more and more as an instructor and learning to trust his students more. I can understand that being 3 games in on the arc, most people are probably looking for much more evenly spread out plot progression and maybe it’s because I’m a very patient person who is pretty good at adapting to slower paced things but it’s part of what I really love about this series. I don’t think I end up caring about characters like Becky and Vivi or coming around on characters like Millium if it wasn’t for these slower parts of the games, so while yeah, I do understand criticism towards Cold Steel in general taking its sweet time on delivering the heavy hitting story beats, I will always appreciate how Trails manages to get its world and characters to find their way into my heart, even when I’m not realising it at first.
Continuing on with other things I appreciated this time around, Rean as an instructor! I think the role fits him so much better as a character. His very corny speeches work so much better as a teacher trying to inspire his students but just not connecting in the way he hoped, like he’s that cringey teacher you love because you know they’re trying their best but they’re just a little out of touch. Of course his experience in battle and from the war means he can still inspire his students, especially with the power he wields, but there’s a much better balance here than in previous games and it works so well. There’s also the Northern War event that took place during the timeskip where Rean lost control of his “Ogre powers” and is back to holding back again. It feels more like an excuse to make Spirit Unification a power upgrade again than anything else for me though. Rean does still have his self confidence issues and still has moments where he questions his abilities, there’s a bit of imposter syndrome with the role of Ashen Chevalier that’s been thrust upon him. Unfortunately his character is still undermined at times with the amount of women that fawn over him and my gosh the list keeps growing to such an unbelievable degree. It wouldn’t be so bad if he actually warmed his way into people’s hearts but geez, it seems like most women fall for him before even walks onto screen and it’s like c’mon Falcom, we had such a well written romance in the Sky games, why couldn’t we have just let Rean have a dedicated partner and skip all the nonsense.
New Class VII’s members make for a decent bunch.
Juna feels like a secondary protagonist, bringing the perspective of a Crossbellan who has lost her home to the Empire and is now shipped off to a foreign military school. The strength of her character is her passion. She starts off giving Rean a tough time, makes fun of Kurt because he’s Erebonian and quickly befriends Altina to try and bring her out of her shell. Juna has a lot of pride for Crossbell and it takes her a while to warm up to her new environment.
Kurt is of Vander descent and as such he’s very serious about his sword training. With the Vanders being stripped from their duties as retainers for the Royal Family, he finds himself kind of lost on what his future holds. The serious swordsman character unfortunately doesn’t do much for me and I was hoping for a little bit more from him as a Vander.
Altina, who we met in Cold Steel II as Black Rabbit, working under the government has ended up at the branch campus as well. She’s a homunculi who has been helping Rean on his missions from the government and her whole life has been about following orders and as such, she will not do anything without being ordered to. Her character growth with Class VII is so good, Rean does a good job pushing her into finding an activity to do after classes and she ends up joining the swimming club and enjoying it. Little by little, she grows more human and emotional from her experiences and she probably has the best arc of this game.
Ash is a delinquent style character who has so much more going on under the surface than you realise. He’s a little too smart for his own good but I’m glad that he’s one of the few characters that gives Rean a little pushback and he’s great at pushing Class VII out of their comfort zone. There’s definitely more to come from him in future games and I look forward to it.
Musse is….. My least favourite character introduced to the new Class VII. 90% of her character schtick is to sexually harass Rean and everyone plays it off as a joke but like, when nearly every single conversation involves her making a sexual comment towards Rean it’s like c’mon….. Just stop please just stop. Again, there’s something more to her character, she seems very on top of the wilder situations but there’s so little this game gave me to make me like her.
Overall, I think I like new Class VII more as a group, while I like individual characters from old Class VII more. Like I would take Alisa, Emma, Fie, Jusis, Machias over most of the characters in new Class VII but I would take the group dynamic of new Class VII over the old Class VII’s dynamic. Of course old Class VII has now had 3 games to grow on me as individuals while the new ones clearly have more to offer but I can only give what I have experienced so far.
Speaking Musse and eyeroll worthy content, Cold Steel III unfortunately hits this area a bit more often than other games in the series, partly because of the amount of characters the game has. So not only do we have Musse sexually harassing Rean, we have the return of Shirley whose first action on screen is to grope Duvalie just like she did to Elie in Azure, Angelica is back and being sexually inappropriate to every single girl she meets including the Class VII students, characters are still trying push Rean and Elise into being a thing despite being step siblings and hey, how about Agate and Tita, who have very brotherly-sister bond also being shipteased by characters? Normally I have a decent tolerance to this nonsense, it happens once or twice a game, I roll my eyes and complain, then move on and forget about it but because there’s so many of these characters in the game now, it happens so much more frequently and it gets harder and harder to ignore. Why can’t we just have brother/sister like dynamics without trying to make it romantic? Why can’t we have lesbians that are just normal around women? It’s not something that severely detracts from the game for me but it’s also something worth complaining about because it’s just so damn annoying and feels so pointless to include in the game.
So without going into deep spoiler territory, I can say I loved most of what CS3 had to offer. The gameplay keeps improving, the story does enough to keep your attention until it starts going into the really big stuff and while it is very ambitious yet slightly messy, it does manage to carry itself throughout very well to create a fantastic experience. There’s other stuff I want to talk about but it will be going into heavy CS3 spoiler territory so if you don’t want to read any of that I would advise you to stop reading here and I thank you for sticking with the review to this point, for everyone else, let’s have a dive into some meatier stuff.
SPOILER SECTION
Right, the Cold Steel arc as a whole so far has been ambition and scope increasing to such a large degree that things start to get messy and while I will always appreciate ambition on this sort of scale, I do have to try and untangle things and iron out the mess that is seeping through the cracks that are developing more and more as this arc continues.
This game is where I started to struggle to keep up with what was happening. The last couple of chapters introduce so many elements and names to keep track of in two huge information dumps where it’s like could we have not spread this throughout the game a bit better? Vampires, Great Twilight, the Curse, Black Alberich, 7 Divine Knights, Gaius is a member of the Gralsritter now, two Holy Beasts and probably even more I’m forgetting about just fired at you one after another and like yeah, some of it is probably covered in the books and the Black Records but it isn’t really relevant to the story at this point so it becomes so much information to take in all at once. And this is on top of absolutely incredible stuff going on like fighting Dark Dragons and the Gral of Erebos being manifested or the insanity of Oroboros, the Black Workshop, Osborne, Zephyr, Thors Main Branch, and the Red Constellation all working together despite the first half of the game seeing much of these forces clashing against each other…. It's, yeah, a little bit messy.
Vampires. As a huge fan of the Red Moon Rose books, I was so excited to see this game introduce Crimson Roselia, the vampire hunter from those books who was also a vampire herself. Unfortunately, outside of Roselia herself, vampires in this game were very undercooked, appearing for a portion of Chapter 4, where the Calvardian secret service become vampires but all you get is a dark miasma surrounding them and very little vampire fangs which I was hoping for. It’s dealt with very quickly because once you take the Dark Dragon down, that’s the end of them which was very anticlimactic. That said I love Roselia, she was kind enough to bear her fangs at the camera, so at the very least I do have a vampire witch to look forward to in future games.
Undermining the big death of Cold Steel II. Crow’s death was a huge moment in Cold Steel II, absolutely crushing Rean to the point he looked empty inside and being the moment Osborne truly shows just what a magnificent bastard he is, by coming back from the dead himself, undoing all of Crow’s achievements and taking complete control of basically everything. Cold Steel III shows off a masked man in its opening character sequence who is so obviously Crow that is like c’mon guys, did he really need to come back? And dead characters not being dead is becoming a big thing in this arc now. Aside from Crow and Osborne, we have Rutger (Fie’s Jaeger dad who died in battle), the Steel Maiden Arianrhod (who is Lianne Sandlot from the War of the Lions 250 years ago), Franz Reinford (Alisa’s father who died in a explosion). Now with the exception of Franz, all of these characters are shown to have Divine Knights that seem to be tied to their immortality in some way (I presume Cold Steel IV will explain that), so it’s not like these characters are being resurrected for “free”, but at the same time that’s a lot of characters not staying dead, when the end of the game starts getting pretty trigger happy with killing off characters, you can’t help but wonder, how many of them are actually gonna stay dead? The emotional impact is lost a little bit unfortunately. I will give Cold Steel III credit for killing off a few big characters because of as of right now for where I’m at, yeah as far as I’m aware, they are actually dead, and if they come back in CS4, then that’s more of a detriment to what CS4 decided to do rather than what CS3 did, if that makes sense.
The Curse. Ok, this is just a hard thing to wrap my head around right now. So far the story seems a little bit conflicted on what this curse actually is. At times it’s getting the blame for literally everything bad Erebonia has done. Hamel? The curse. The civil war? The curse. The 100 days war? The curse. At other times they’re like well, no the curse isn’t solely to blame, it’s more like something urging people to give into their darkest desires which is like better I suppose but it’s still a bit messy because the curse seems to exist as something that takes responsibility for their actions away from the people committing the atrocities and I’m like… is that a good idea? Trails has done so well with its political intrigue so far with characters like Richard in Trails in the Sky and Dieter Crois in Trails to Azure, both nationalists who believed they had their countries best interests at heart, both people who with a little influence from Oroboros, were able to carry out attempts at their plans, whether it was a coup or forcing independence on a nation, the point is these characters were responsible for their actions and believed in their politics. The curse feels like a way to shift the blame, like Osborne says of those who committed the Hamel atrocities, they were good people who would’ve never done something like that. Right now at least, Osborne doesn’t seem to be under the effect of the curse, instead he’s still being a magnificent bastard who is using the curse to drive up Erebonian’s thirst for war with Calvard and I can work with that. We’ll see where CS4 takes the curse plotline but as of right now, it’s another one of those cracks starting to appear that I’m wary of.
Cold Steel and the defying of expectations in poor ways.
A little trend I’ve started to notice with Cold Steel is that it will set up this super intriguing idea and then pull the rug from under it to defy expectations but only to make the end result worse. For example, the end of CS2 put Rean in a really interesting spot. The poor lad, broken and empty from the loss of Crow, has fallen to taking orders from the government. We see him driving back Calvard to annex Crossbell and even clashing against Lloyd to try and stop him taking data from the Geofront. During the timeskip he helps annex North Ambria and while Rean justifies his actions because he’s going to these places and stopping people from getting killed, he’s ultimately still helping Erebonia take people’s homes and ruin lives. He clearly doesn’t like following Osborne’s orders but does so because he believes it’s the best way he can protect people. So I was hoping that maybe Juna would be a character who would point out to Rean that while he’s saving people, his actions are making the people of Crossbell suffer under Imperial rule. Instead what we get is Juna’s problem with Rean is her being unable to thank him for saving her and her family’s life when he was driving back Calvard from Crossbell. It just takes a much more bland and uninteresting route because no one tries to point out to Rean that helping the government get what they want is only giving Osborne more and more power and we go down the route of Rean is a saviour saving all of these people woooooo.
Same with Ouroboros. There’s an interesting dynamic at play where they want to take back the Phantasmal Blaze plan from Osborne, something that could’ve maybe lead to some sort of crazy alliance with Rean’s group as they take down the huge threat that is Osborne, instead, Ouroboros suddenly decide that actually working with Osborne makes more sense because he’s going to do the Phantasmal Blaze plan anyways.
Bouncing back to the good stuff, I mentioned it earlier but getting to visit Hamel and hearing a sombre version of Silver Will play out…. Ugh, tears in my eyes for that section. Both Class VII and Ouroboros paying their respects to Loewe before taking their fight outside of the village, there’s just a sheer level of class and respect I have for that scene that I’d be hard pressed to find an example from anything else I’ve experienced that compares to that.
Juna breaking down on Orchis Tower, screaming for people to give the people of Crossbell their free nation back, to return the pride that has been robbed from them. Easily one of the best voice acted moments in the game and a standout for when Trails does politics well, it does it damn well.
Which brings us to Sara and the Northern Jaegers in Chapter 3. Both from the recently annexed state of North Ambria, the Northern Jaegars attack Juno Naval Fortress in a suicide mission for one last attempt at revenge for their nation being annexed. When defeated, they pull out their weapons on themselves in an attempt to kill themselves because they have no pride left. Sara gives an impassioned speech that being a Northern Jaeger was never about pride but about finding money to feed the people of their poor and starving nation and helps guide them back onto the right path. It’s another incredible moment that really caps off Sara’s character so far and also incredibly well voice acted.
For those who have been playing through all the games in order, we not only have Agate, Tita, and Randy back (though Randy is unfortunately not playable), we also get Tio, and Olivier playable again as well as playable Lechter for the first time. In fact this game does a fantastic job at balancing out play time for its character roster. New Class VII get early portions of chapters, old Class VII come in for the final portions of the first 3 chapters, Chapter 4 has a section where you get a bunch of irregular characters like Lechter, Claire, and Sharon. You have two dungeons where you have to split your cast up into teams, Juno Naval Fortress sees old Class VII and new Class VII working together which helps make Juna feel like a secondary protagonist leading her squad while Rean leads the old Class VII, and in Chapter 4 you have the full squad of both old and new Class VII split into 3 teams to tackle the Heimdallr underground lair of the Dark Dragon and even tackle the boss itself in the 3 separate squad. Once again, Trails does an incredible job of not only giving you a large cast to play with but making sure you actually get a chance to play with every single character it gives you.
The final dungeon sequence follows a similar pattern to Cold Steel II’s final dungeon where you come up against some very powerful bosses along the way. In Cold Steel II, these bosses like McBurn, Xeno and Leonidas are all held off by Class VII for a while before they up the ante and take things seriously. Every case sees an immensely powerful character like Victor Arseid or Olivert and Vander step in to hold off the enemy while Class VII proceeds forward. It’s a sequence I really appreciated in CS2 because it highlights that while yes, Class VII are a powerful group for their age, they’re still just kids and going up against the likes of McBurn at this stage is just too much for them so of course characters like Victor are needed to bail them out. Having that sequence return with old Class VII now having a year and a half more experience under their belt we get to see how much they’ve grown. Arianrhod and McBurn? It’s cool, Laura has mastered her father’s fighting style and Emma is now capable of performing spells powerful enough to limit McBurn’s flames, and Gaius has inherited the power of a stigma and has become a member of the Gralsritter . Rutger, Sharon, Azure Siegfried, and Shirley? No problem, Fie has merged the experience of being an ex-jaeger and current bracer under Sara’s guidance and Alisa has used her engineering experience to build an orbal gear. The Ironbloods? Well ok, this set is more like Claire, Millium, and Lechter didn’t even want to be there but Jusis, Machias, and Elliot are experienced now to hold their own. Basically the sequence serves to show just how powerful old Class VII is now because they’re holding their own against these powerful characters to allow the new inexperienced Class VII push through.
And while we’re talking about the end sequence, can I just say how much I appreciate the game ending with the good guys losing? The Courageous is blown to pieces with Toval, Olivert, and Victor aboard (again as of now they’re dead, so even if CS4 ass pulls them back, I’m going to appreciate CS3 for having the balls to kill them off here), as far as we know, Angie has been shot dead by Copper Georg, Millium sacrifices herself to become the blade that is able to kill the Holy Beast, Rean loses his mind seeing Millium murdered before his eyes and goes absolutely ham on the Holy Beast, killing it and unleashing the curse upon the world, and Osborne pulls out his Divine Knight and picks up Valimar with Rean still inside, and says “Together, we shall write the end to this wretched fairy tale. In ink, black as despair.” and we end with an image of Valimar in chains. Like hot damn to have the balls to end a game on a note like that is something I can only stand back and appreciate. Yeah, it’s something they can get away with because it’s a continuous story so the next game will probably have everything work out in the end but at the same it’s something that so rarely happens and even it does, it happens at a point in the game where there’s enough game left for the heroes to win in the end. So yeah, no matter where the story goes from here, I have to appreciate CS3 for it does.
END OF SPOILER SECTION
Ok, that was a lot to unpack but in summary, CS3 is where the issues of the Cold Steel arc start to shine through the cracks but there are enough strong highs to distract your attention away from those cracks to deliver what is ultimately so far my favourite Cold Steel game. The return of characters for long time fans, the growth of old Class VII, the dynamic of new Class VII, the incredible way the game makes use of its large playable cast, the powerful moments in every single chapter of the game, the stunning finale that ends on a cliffhanger leaving you desperate to find out what happens next…. Yes, there are stumbles along the way and the ambitious plot with perhaps too many pieces on the chess board is showing signs of collapsing in upon itself but as of this moment, I’m enjoying the highs enough that the messier side of things doesn’t detract from my experience too much. The night is yet young and the party has only just begun…. So grab a seat and enjoy the experience while you can.
Trails of Cold Steel II is a direct sequel to the original Cold Steel game and as usual with these Trails games reviews, talking about the story without spoiling elements from the first game is nigh on impossible so if you haven’t played Cold Steel I to the end, the best avoid reading this review for now.
Right with that out of the way, Cold Steel II (CS2) is the second Trails entry originally released for the PlayStation Vita. Its story picks up directly from where CS1 finished and in typical Trails fashion, this game heavily reuses assets and elements from the first game and builds on top of that with a few things to keep the game interesting and change things up a little.
The regular battle system now has the Overdrive mechanic, similar to the burst mechanic from Azure where once you build up a gauge, you can unleash a series of attacks without response. In CS2 it also guarantees unbalancing the enemy and allowing a follow up attack to happen as well as eventually giving you two Overdrive gauges to fill.
For those who finished CS1 you’ll know about a special kind of battle introduced right at the end of that game and here in CS2 we get to experience a lot more of them! Divine Knight battles sees Rean piloting a giant mech and clashing with other giant mechs in battles that are pretty simple in nature but something I loved because I am weak for giant mechs. Divine Knight battles basically boil down to figuring which part of your opponent to hit depending on what stance they’re taking. You can target the head, body, arms and if you pick the right part you can unbalance the enemy and hit a follow up attack but if you choose wrong you can end up missing and being hit with a counterattack. Eventually you’ll gain access to having a character assist you by using Arts and powering up your mech, Valimar, with his own unique Orbments but ultimately as I said, the battles are pretty simple and basic in nature.
Other new aspects include new towns like Rean’s hometown Ymir (a place where an event took place during the first game but only covered in a Drama CD and referred to multiple times in this game), plenty of new and well crafted dungeons to explore, and the best thing of all - A SNOWBOARDING MINIGAME! No joke, I beat every course for it because it’s probably one of my favourite minigames in an RPG ever. Aside from that, this game is more about continuing the narrative they built from CS1 than doing a bunch of new things.
So story, after C revealed his true identity, killed Chancellor Osborne, and occupied Thors Military Academy by kicking Rean’s ass so bad he had to flee for his life, the tensions in Erebonia have boiled over into civil war breaking out. The Noble Alliance led by Duke Cayenne has teamed up with the Imperial Liberation Front, Ouroboros, and Jaeger group Zephyr in an attempt to wrestle control of Erebonia from the Reformist Faction and in the month that Rean has spent out cold after fleeing Thors, the Noble Alliance have managed to occupy a large portion of eastern Erebonia as well as take the Imperial Royal family hostage.
It’s a very interesting set up to the story and one that sees many of Class VII’s families on opposing sides and leading to our characters having to make tough decisions. Jusis in particular has it tough with his brother being one of the key figures in the Noble Alliance and his father pushing his luck in trying to become the leader of the group.
As for Class VII themselves, they’ve ended up split up after having to flee Thors and the first portion of the game is centred around regrouping with Rean’s classmates. This is where the very long build up of the first game started to pay some dividends for me as I found a lot of the reunions to be very touching because of how much time I had spent with Class VII. Seeing Rean bear hug Machias put tears in my eyes and Alisa pouring her heart out to Rean was such an emotional moment. It’s also nice seeing Class VII out of their school uniforms and in unique clothing, being free to show off their own styles and personalities a bit more.
Aside from gathering all of Class VII, Act 1 of the game shows off a few clashes between the two armies at places like Garrelia Fortress (spotting a lovely new destroyed look after Crossbell annihilated it) and the Nord Highlands, and Ymir village gets attacked by some Jaegers. We also get to have some clashes with Ouroboros and the Noble Alliance as the game spends time introducing a lot of new characters like Ouroboros Enforcer McBurn who exudes a massive amount of power and Zephyr’s Xeno and Leonidas who are part of the Jaeger group that Fie was once a part of.
After the whole of Class VII have reunited we get an Intermission chapter which serves to let us find out a little more about the many people working with the Noble Alliance as well as get Rean to a point where he can control his unique power the game lovingly dubs “ogre power”. We caught a glimpse of it in the first game but it’s more prominent here. Ogre power basically changes Rean’s appearance to have white hair and red eyes and essentially it gives him a few turns of having boosted stats in battle.
Act 2 of the game focuses more on gathering up all the other students from Thors Military Academy and liberating places like Celdic and Roer from the Noble Alliance. These missions were my favourite part of the game as it was great seeing characters either rescuing their families from being held captive or standing up to their families for the atrocities they’ve been causing. It’s not perfect, the clashes with V and S sum up the Imperial Liberation Front as the biggest set of underwhelming villains I’ve seen so far (C is the only interesting about that group for me) but ultimately the freedom introduced from being able to go anywhere in the east of the country and liberation missions made this portion of the game a lot fun for me. I also really liked that the game allows you to walk from one town to another if you want to. You could see that the world was designed to be connected in CS1 but the field trip limitations meant the world felt disjointed while in CS2 as you progress further and further, the limitations on where you can travel are loosened and it really starts to make Erebonia feel a bit more like Crossbell and Liberl when you can walk (or use the motorcycle introduced as a transport option in this game) from place to place.
It ends on a high note with a great set of battles between Rean and C as the two fight for their ideals and we have to deal with Duke Cayenne’s mischief as he ends up feeling a little bit left out because he’s another kinda meh and backgroundy villain. The revelations and twists in the finale are once again fantastic and memorable for the most part (though I’m still struggling to take the revelation of Rean’s biological father seriously right now) and it quickly rearranges the whole civil war and the whole point of it in one fell swoop.
On top of that there’s a pretty meaty post game section that is a delightful treat for long time fans that have been playing the games in release order. The Epilogue is a nice send off for Class VII as they go their separate ways but that portion of the game drags on a bit longer than it needed (I’m not sure why they felt the need for a bunch of quests and another dungeon). By the end I had a few moments where tears had filled my eyes and when games can do that to you, they are a bit special. I loved my time with Class VII and I will miss seeing them all together as a group.
So the broad strokes of CS2s story on the surface is pretty solid and one I largely enjoyed but once you dig a little deeper there’s a lot you can pick apart here so this section is going have a lot of complaints about things that do kind of matter but at the same time didn’t stop me from loving the game.
CS2 is about a civil war but for the most part it feels kinda of…. Like a background thing? In the east of Erebonia the Noble Alliance have so much already under control that aside from a few skirmishes, there’s little to actually indicate a war is happening. One burning down of a town results in a grand total of 1 fatality and ultimately does little to sell the fact a war is happening. The Noble Alliance end up letting Class VII liberate so much of the territory they’ve claimed with no retaliation that it’s unbelievable until the bigger picture comes into view at the end. The war is apparently much more violent in the west of Erebonia and a few of the more powerful characters are off fighting over there but like CS1 that is something more interesting happening somewhere else that we don’t get to see. It’s just incredible how out of the way the game goes to limit the fact a war is happening.
Cast bloat. CS2 like CS1 has a cast of important characters to the point it doesn’t know what to do with them. Bardias and Le Guin are introduced in Act 1, leave a strong impression on Class VII and then don’t show up again until near the end of the game by which point you’re like who are these two again? Cedric, an Imperial Prince is almost completely forgotten about by the cast and even his own sister Alfin, as no one seems to care that he potentially needs to be rescued all the while Duke Cayenne is getting him ready for his schemes. Laura fades so much into the background in this game that she’s basically a talking sword. It’s just too many characters for the game to deal with.
Olivert, someone who is a very important character to Erebonia and plays a large part in the Liberl arc, is so underutilised here to the point he barely shows up in the game at all which is shocking to me. He spends most of his time fighting in the west off screen and has a couple of dramatic appearances but in a game with 17+ playable characters, HOW IS HE NOT ONE?
Class VII are supposed to be a third faction in this war but that only works if both the Noble Alliance and the Reformist Group are factions that need to be opposed, instead the Noble Alliance are the aggressor force in this war and as such Class VII is almost always working alongside the army to stop them that the whole third faction thing holds so little weight. We’re working alongside characters like Claire who has direct ties to Osborne while claiming to be neutral and having no one from the Noble Alliance side helping us outside of Rufus using us to help him deal with out of control members with the Noble Alliance.
For all the build up and importance given to the liberation of Trista and Thors Military Academy it is probably the most underwhelming moment in the game.
I understand Crow being a classmate and friend to Class VII but there's nobody wanting to hold him to account for his terrorist actions while Rean makes a big deal about trying to save Vulcan and Scarlet to make them atone for what they've done.
The story does well with what it explores and the cast of characters are fun enough to help carry it through the cracks that appear throughout. Yes, I have a lot of issues with how certain aspects were neglected but ultimately it didn’t detract from the fun I was having with the game.
On the soundtrack front this is largely the same OST from CS1 returning with a handful of new battle themes and a new opening song. The vocalised ending song was very powerful and was subtitled when it played to help drive home the emotions it was portraying.
So all in all, despite a few missteps with its story here and there, Trails of Cold Steel II was a step back up in quality after Cold Steel I for me. It manages to keep its narrative exciting and engaging throughout as well as throw in some really nice surprises for the long term fans. It manages to carry off its emotional moments well and use the foundation that Cold Steel I left for it to push most of its characters in interesting directions and leave an impact on the player.
Right with that out of the way, Cold Steel II (CS2) is the second Trails entry originally released for the PlayStation Vita. Its story picks up directly from where CS1 finished and in typical Trails fashion, this game heavily reuses assets and elements from the first game and builds on top of that with a few things to keep the game interesting and change things up a little.
The regular battle system now has the Overdrive mechanic, similar to the burst mechanic from Azure where once you build up a gauge, you can unleash a series of attacks without response. In CS2 it also guarantees unbalancing the enemy and allowing a follow up attack to happen as well as eventually giving you two Overdrive gauges to fill.
For those who finished CS1 you’ll know about a special kind of battle introduced right at the end of that game and here in CS2 we get to experience a lot more of them! Divine Knight battles sees Rean piloting a giant mech and clashing with other giant mechs in battles that are pretty simple in nature but something I loved because I am weak for giant mechs. Divine Knight battles basically boil down to figuring which part of your opponent to hit depending on what stance they’re taking. You can target the head, body, arms and if you pick the right part you can unbalance the enemy and hit a follow up attack but if you choose wrong you can end up missing and being hit with a counterattack. Eventually you’ll gain access to having a character assist you by using Arts and powering up your mech, Valimar, with his own unique Orbments but ultimately as I said, the battles are pretty simple and basic in nature.
Other new aspects include new towns like Rean’s hometown Ymir (a place where an event took place during the first game but only covered in a Drama CD and referred to multiple times in this game), plenty of new and well crafted dungeons to explore, and the best thing of all - A SNOWBOARDING MINIGAME! No joke, I beat every course for it because it’s probably one of my favourite minigames in an RPG ever. Aside from that, this game is more about continuing the narrative they built from CS1 than doing a bunch of new things.
So story, after C revealed his true identity, killed Chancellor Osborne, and occupied Thors Military Academy by kicking Rean’s ass so bad he had to flee for his life, the tensions in Erebonia have boiled over into civil war breaking out. The Noble Alliance led by Duke Cayenne has teamed up with the Imperial Liberation Front, Ouroboros, and Jaeger group Zephyr in an attempt to wrestle control of Erebonia from the Reformist Faction and in the month that Rean has spent out cold after fleeing Thors, the Noble Alliance have managed to occupy a large portion of eastern Erebonia as well as take the Imperial Royal family hostage.
It’s a very interesting set up to the story and one that sees many of Class VII’s families on opposing sides and leading to our characters having to make tough decisions. Jusis in particular has it tough with his brother being one of the key figures in the Noble Alliance and his father pushing his luck in trying to become the leader of the group.
As for Class VII themselves, they’ve ended up split up after having to flee Thors and the first portion of the game is centred around regrouping with Rean’s classmates. This is where the very long build up of the first game started to pay some dividends for me as I found a lot of the reunions to be very touching because of how much time I had spent with Class VII. Seeing Rean bear hug Machias put tears in my eyes and Alisa pouring her heart out to Rean was such an emotional moment. It’s also nice seeing Class VII out of their school uniforms and in unique clothing, being free to show off their own styles and personalities a bit more.
Aside from gathering all of Class VII, Act 1 of the game shows off a few clashes between the two armies at places like Garrelia Fortress (spotting a lovely new destroyed look after Crossbell annihilated it) and the Nord Highlands, and Ymir village gets attacked by some Jaegers. We also get to have some clashes with Ouroboros and the Noble Alliance as the game spends time introducing a lot of new characters like Ouroboros Enforcer McBurn who exudes a massive amount of power and Zephyr’s Xeno and Leonidas who are part of the Jaeger group that Fie was once a part of.
After the whole of Class VII have reunited we get an Intermission chapter which serves to let us find out a little more about the many people working with the Noble Alliance as well as get Rean to a point where he can control his unique power the game lovingly dubs “ogre power”. We caught a glimpse of it in the first game but it’s more prominent here. Ogre power basically changes Rean’s appearance to have white hair and red eyes and essentially it gives him a few turns of having boosted stats in battle.
Act 2 of the game focuses more on gathering up all the other students from Thors Military Academy and liberating places like Celdic and Roer from the Noble Alliance. These missions were my favourite part of the game as it was great seeing characters either rescuing their families from being held captive or standing up to their families for the atrocities they’ve been causing. It’s not perfect, the clashes with V and S sum up the Imperial Liberation Front as the biggest set of underwhelming villains I’ve seen so far (C is the only interesting about that group for me) but ultimately the freedom introduced from being able to go anywhere in the east of the country and liberation missions made this portion of the game a lot fun for me. I also really liked that the game allows you to walk from one town to another if you want to. You could see that the world was designed to be connected in CS1 but the field trip limitations meant the world felt disjointed while in CS2 as you progress further and further, the limitations on where you can travel are loosened and it really starts to make Erebonia feel a bit more like Crossbell and Liberl when you can walk (or use the motorcycle introduced as a transport option in this game) from place to place.
It ends on a high note with a great set of battles between Rean and C as the two fight for their ideals and we have to deal with Duke Cayenne’s mischief as he ends up feeling a little bit left out because he’s another kinda meh and backgroundy villain. The revelations and twists in the finale are once again fantastic and memorable for the most part (though I’m still struggling to take the revelation of Rean’s biological father seriously right now) and it quickly rearranges the whole civil war and the whole point of it in one fell swoop.
On top of that there’s a pretty meaty post game section that is a delightful treat for long time fans that have been playing the games in release order. The Epilogue is a nice send off for Class VII as they go their separate ways but that portion of the game drags on a bit longer than it needed (I’m not sure why they felt the need for a bunch of quests and another dungeon). By the end I had a few moments where tears had filled my eyes and when games can do that to you, they are a bit special. I loved my time with Class VII and I will miss seeing them all together as a group.
So the broad strokes of CS2s story on the surface is pretty solid and one I largely enjoyed but once you dig a little deeper there’s a lot you can pick apart here so this section is going have a lot of complaints about things that do kind of matter but at the same time didn’t stop me from loving the game.
CS2 is about a civil war but for the most part it feels kinda of…. Like a background thing? In the east of Erebonia the Noble Alliance have so much already under control that aside from a few skirmishes, there’s little to actually indicate a war is happening. One burning down of a town results in a grand total of 1 fatality and ultimately does little to sell the fact a war is happening. The Noble Alliance end up letting Class VII liberate so much of the territory they’ve claimed with no retaliation that it’s unbelievable until the bigger picture comes into view at the end. The war is apparently much more violent in the west of Erebonia and a few of the more powerful characters are off fighting over there but like CS1 that is something more interesting happening somewhere else that we don’t get to see. It’s just incredible how out of the way the game goes to limit the fact a war is happening.
Cast bloat. CS2 like CS1 has a cast of important characters to the point it doesn’t know what to do with them. Bardias and Le Guin are introduced in Act 1, leave a strong impression on Class VII and then don’t show up again until near the end of the game by which point you’re like who are these two again? Cedric, an Imperial Prince is almost completely forgotten about by the cast and even his own sister Alfin, as no one seems to care that he potentially needs to be rescued all the while Duke Cayenne is getting him ready for his schemes. Laura fades so much into the background in this game that she’s basically a talking sword. It’s just too many characters for the game to deal with.
Olivert, someone who is a very important character to Erebonia and plays a large part in the Liberl arc, is so underutilised here to the point he barely shows up in the game at all which is shocking to me. He spends most of his time fighting in the west off screen and has a couple of dramatic appearances but in a game with 17+ playable characters, HOW IS HE NOT ONE?
Class VII are supposed to be a third faction in this war but that only works if both the Noble Alliance and the Reformist Group are factions that need to be opposed, instead the Noble Alliance are the aggressor force in this war and as such Class VII is almost always working alongside the army to stop them that the whole third faction thing holds so little weight. We’re working alongside characters like Claire who has direct ties to Osborne while claiming to be neutral and having no one from the Noble Alliance side helping us outside of Rufus using us to help him deal with out of control members with the Noble Alliance.
For all the build up and importance given to the liberation of Trista and Thors Military Academy it is probably the most underwhelming moment in the game.
I understand Crow being a classmate and friend to Class VII but there's nobody wanting to hold him to account for his terrorist actions while Rean makes a big deal about trying to save Vulcan and Scarlet to make them atone for what they've done.
The story does well with what it explores and the cast of characters are fun enough to help carry it through the cracks that appear throughout. Yes, I have a lot of issues with how certain aspects were neglected but ultimately it didn’t detract from the fun I was having with the game.
On the soundtrack front this is largely the same OST from CS1 returning with a handful of new battle themes and a new opening song. The vocalised ending song was very powerful and was subtitled when it played to help drive home the emotions it was portraying.
So all in all, despite a few missteps with its story here and there, Trails of Cold Steel II was a step back up in quality after Cold Steel I for me. It manages to keep its narrative exciting and engaging throughout as well as throw in some really nice surprises for the long term fans. It manages to carry off its emotional moments well and use the foundation that Cold Steel I left for it to push most of its characters in interesting directions and leave an impact on the player.
Trails of Cold Steel, the sixth entry of the Trails series and the start of a brand new arc taking place in the nation of Erebonia.
Originally on PS Vita, Cold Steel represents a leap for the series, going full 3D for the first time. While that leap to 3D is impressive, we'll focus on the smaller tweaks to the Trails formula first before diving into the bigger stuff.
First up the battle system builds off what's come before. Instead of using a grid based system for range of movement, we now have movement range limited to a circumference which is more natural for the full 3D environments. The new ARCUS battle orbments now allow two characters to be linked in battle which means characters are able to provide follow up attacks and earn Brave Points. Brave Points can be accumulated to allow for more powerful follow up attacks with 3 points allowing a Rush attack where the two linked party members can rush an enemy for a few hits and 5 points allow a burst attack which has moved from the Crossbell games as a bonus action on a turn to here. Burst attacks basically see your party go ham on the enemies doing a good amount of damage and great for tackling larger groups of mobs. Your links can also be levelled up for even more abilities, like at level two a finishing blow unlocks meaning if you use a link attack on an enemy and bring their health down low enough, your link partner will follow up and finish off the enemy. Other abilities include stuff like Auto-Tear and Cover and overall I think it's a fantastic addition on top of Trails already fun combat. It gives you more options to work with and helps speed up the flow of regular battles which is great.
Moving onto the Orbment changes, we're mostly building off Azure here with Master Quartz returning but other elements have been simplified. Quartz now comes with Arts variants that include an art or three on them so instead of building your arts by using the right elemental combinations in your orbment, now you just need to find the quartz with the art you want and hey ho, you can use Tear. With the larger cast this game has, I can understand why the system has been simplified. Constantly trying to remember set ups for arts you want would be a pain when you're swapping between 9+ characters so I can see why you'd alleviate that by just making quartz hold spells. I did miss the fun in experimenting with quartz layouts and seeing what arts I could get but again, I can understand why the change was made.
Another gameplay tweak that I greatly appreciated is that every area now has a map for it. It was always a weird thing in the previous games for me where most dungeons didn’t have maps for some reason but thankfully Cold Steel changes that. There’s also a whole new type of battle introduced at the end of the game that I am very excited to see more of in future games but shall hold off going into here and spoiling it. I’ll just say it very much appealed to my tastes.
The core gameplay loop is very much still Trails at its heart, exploring towns, doing quests, etc to progress the story but the choice of setting this time changes up the cycle a bit this time. The Empire of Erebonia is so much larger than either Liberl or Crossbell that we’ve explored previously and the decision made was to pick one core area to keep returning to as we explore different areas. That core area? A military academy - school. Now I know most people will roll their eyes at Persona comparisons but when it feels like the inspiration for the choice of setting and when Persona and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are my core references for school settings in videogames, I think being able to use them to explain what I feel this game does right and wrong with its setting is valuable. Now Thors Military Academy being, well a military academy means this feels closer to Three Houses than Persona for me. The students here are being taught with the expectation that most of them will end up joining the military someday so for the most part the setting works. Managing to find a third way to implement the Trails rank system where you gain more points for doing more sidequests by making it a graded study report is very cool, props to them for that.
Of courses, taking inspiration from Persona means we have a calendar system introduced here. Worry not, you won’t be playing every single day of a month, instead you’ll be playing a select few days in every month. The first day takes place at school and is mostly just story stuff before moving into the second day which is your free day. Free days are split into afternoon and evening sections where you’ll get your traditional Trails sidequests to do but also Bonding Points to spend. Every month you’ll get 3 or 4 bonding points to spend on having bonding events with your classmates where you’ll get to know them better. They’re kind of inspired by Persona’s Social Links but you’re not ranking them up and continuing a narrative through them, more just seeing an extra event with that character for that month that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It does tie into your romantic partner of choice at the end of the game which changes up the final cutscene a little and who you can dance with at the school festival but otherwise, they feel very minimal and offer a little more insight to characters.
Your important quest for every free day is to visit the old school building. The old school building is a mysterious building that acts like a dungeon and every month adds a new floor to explore. Think Temple of the Ocean King from Zelda: Phantom Hourglass but without having to go through the whole thing every month, just the new floor. It mostly feels like something added to have a traditional dungeon experience for the school portions of the game and there’s very little given to the mystery to keep your interest in it outside of the fourth floor before the eventual payoff in the final chapter. It does make for a nice change of pace during the school portions and it’s also the only area for the bulk of the game where you have full control of your choice of party set up which is much appreciated.
Completing the old school building task each month transitions the day to evening and gives you one extra bonding point to spend before you return to the dorms for the day. The next day is always your Practical Exam. Basically here you’ll be given a battle to fight and often have side objectives to meet, like not letting anyone die or not using arts. These are fine and are mostly used to let characters who have tension with each other to blow off some steam and settle grievances while also building up bonds.
Finally after that you’re giving your field study destination for the month which acts as your more traditional Trails experience for the month. The class is split into two groups and sent off to different destinations to get a feel for what’s happening in Erebonia, meet the people who live in these places and help them out in a very Bracer like fashion by completing tasks. The field studies are where the more interesting story elements happen as the characters get to witness first hand the tensions between Erebonia’s Noble Faction and Reformist Faction as the flames of Civil War begin to build in the background of all the school bonding trips. The class will witness first hand the actions of the terrorist group The Imperial Liberation Front and will end up having to put a stop to them. It makes for an exciting end to each month but unfortunately because of the school system and the gameplay loop they choose to stick to so closely, rather than being able to escalate and build off these events, you’re immediately dragged back to Thors before you get to see or feel any of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on these areas and it completely takes the wind out of the plot. It’s a similar problem to what Three Houses suffer from in the first half of its game where things start to feel repetitive and the school portions start to drag on more and more as the game goes on and you want the plot to build up to something a bit more meaningful and longer lasting. It does eventually get there in the final chapter but having to go through around 60 hours of game before that point does take its toll. I think another issue comes from this game's story taking place from around late game Trails from Zero through to late game Trails to Azure. Basically throughout the game you’ll constantly be getting updates from what’s happening in Crossbell (and seeing this from the Erebonian perspective is greatly appreciated, especially with how its newspaper distorts facts to make Chancellor Osborne sound much more important to going ons in Crossbell than he actually was and dismissing the declaration of independence as a fools dream) but the issue is everything that’s happening in Crossbell sounds (and if you’ve played Zero/Azure it IS) so much more interesting than what you’re getting to see in Erebonia. So much of the political tension in Erebonia feels like it takes place off screen because these school kids are a bit too far detached from it. Sure there’s characters who have relatives who are very much involved with the quarrelling factions but they all feel like they’re kept at arm's length and are unable to give much insight to what’s happening themselves. Compare that to Elie from Zero, whose grandfather is Mayor of Crossbell and she herself has enough of an interest in politics to be able to explain to Lloyd and the player and the whole political situation of Crossbell, then it’s clear to see that we were missing someone like that in Cold Steel.
Let’s get into the cast itself then. The protagonist for this game is Rean, a young lad whose background gives him a balanced view between nobility and commoner. He ends up going to Thors Military Academy where a brand new class is being set up for a select group of students - Class VII. This class takes people from all sorts of different backgrounds and puts them together in an attempt to help people understand each other from different societal classes and try to bridge the gap between them. Including Rean the class features a total of 9 classmates to begin with which is a lot of characters to introduce at once and start building with.
We have Alisa who hides her second name and wants to take on everything herself while also looking out for everyone else. Elliot who is much more into his music than his military training. Laura, who is a noble incredibly dedicated to her training with the sword. Jusis, another noble who starts off more like the lone wolf of the group. Machias who absolutely detests nobles and wants nothing to do with them. Fie who despite being the youngest of the group, is so much more combat ready than anyone else. Emma who is the class president, top of the class but also has a mysterious air about her. And finally Gaius, a foreigner from the allied nation of Nord. On top of this we have our homeroom teacher Sara who very much opts for doing things unconventionally and loves a wee drink here and there. That’s just the opening group for the game and it’s a lot of people to manage and develop. The game does do well in trying to manage this by splitting the group up for field studies, allowing you to focus on 3 or 4 characters as well as forcing characters into groups where they’ll have to address their issues with each other (like Machias and Jusis or Fie and Laura). On top of that the field studies tend to take place in a character's hometown or somewhere where they have family connections which is great for their personal character growth. Despite the bloated cast, I did end up loving most of the characters with Alisa, Emma, and Jusis being my standouts while Gaius and Elliot unfortunately didn’t do much for me compared to the rest.
But wait there’s even more important characters! A group of second years becomes close to the group introducing us to the smartass Crow, student council president Towa, engineer George and way over the top aggressively lesbian Angelica. For the most part they’re a great bunch, I absolutely loved Crow and his dynamic with Rean though Angelica has some issues and leans way too hard into uncomfortable tropes that are yeah…. Just an overall bad representation of a lesbian character.
And hold up, there’s even more important characters like Elise - Rean’s sister, Patrick, a noble who has that noble superiority complex, Olivert and his brother and sister, more academy professors…..
Oh and we can’t forget our antagonistic group, the Imperial Liberation Front whose members like to call themselves the first letter of their name - G, S, V and the mysterious leader C who wears a black suit and mask like he’s some sort of Power Ranger fanboy (it’s cool though and he has plenty of charisma). For the bulk of the game this group really doesn't feel like much. They show up, get their asses beat off school kids and run away pretending like it was all part of the plan (which granted I’ll give C credit for his long game planning because he definitely threw me off his competency with those earlier operations)
Basically, if this feels like a lot, it’s because it is and it contributes to Cold Steel’s biggest issue - bloat. There is way too much here in terms of characters and locations to set up and in traditional Trails fashion, it’s done slowly and meticulously to make sure they truly build a world that feels alive and credit where it’s due, they do manage to accomplish that but at the same time it takes 60+ hours to do that. 60+ hours of world and character building is something that starts to drag on. I was craving for something of excitement and importance to happen because as much as I can appreciate taking your time to craft a world with great detail, I also need something to get me invested in the plot at large. I think part of the issue is the school sections take up a big chunk of play time and knock the wind out of the larger plot and bloat up the whole game while also killing the pacing. Like they are important for the camaraderie between Class VII but they do alter the balance of the traditional Trails experience in a way that I feel overall hinders the pacing. As someone who has played Three Houses the most apt comparison I can make is - imagine the academy phase of that game stretched out to 60+ hours and just as the war phase is about to begin the game ends and that’s going to be covered in the next game.
The finale of Cold Steel is fantastic, I loved the last portion of the game and everything that went down, it just took way too long meandering to that point. Take Trails in the Sky FC for example. That game is also very much focused on the slow burn of world building for the majority of the game but it does so through a much more manageable cast, with a strong focus on Estelle and Joshua at its centre as everything else is built around them and it’s last quarter gets into the exciting plot developments to make journey more memorable and it’s all done in around 40 hours. Cold Steel is juggling way too many characters without focusing on any one or two characters as its central focus and as a result everything takes so much longer to get going.
Jumping back to that transition to 3D, I will say the game does a fantastic job at bringing the scale of Erebonia to life. Cities are massive with the capital Heimdallr split into multiple districts full of massive buildings. Roer feels like Zeiss from Liberl reimagined into the full scale city it represented. The Nord Highlands bring a massive open area traversable via horse which is incredible for what is at its core a Vita game though I could’ve done with some fast travel points in that area as traversing constantly between the village and the military base to accomplish the quests in that area felt dragged out with how large it is. Ultimately though they did a fantastic job at making Erebonia feel like the massive Empire it is compared to Crossbell and Liberl. Each destination is only reachable via train as well further driving home just how massive this nation is. Some of the road areas have exits that are outside the field study boundary but signposts point out where those roads lead to which could be interesting for future games in this arc if travelling isn’t limited to trains later on.
All that to say is the world design in this game is well done and on top of that the dungeons are fun to traverse with their gimmicks like flipping switches to activate and deactivate bridges and stuff like that. The gameplay side of things really helps to keep the game being fun as it drags its heels with its narrative and for me that was greatly appreciated when my frustrations were building.
On the soundtrack side of things it’s another great offering. The upbeat sounds of school life, the atmospheric dungeon music, the heavy battle music - it’s all here to elevate the experience and help bring this world to life. The opening song is really catchy and the title screen music fits the mood of the adventure. Speaking of the title screen, I loved the neat touch of adding more characters alongside Rean on the train as the game progresses. It’s one of those little things that just make the experience a bit more special. And another little thing I think worth mentioning is this Cold Steel’s book collection Red Moon Rose - a thrilling tale of a vampire hunter and her encounter with a vampire who has been sucking the blood dry out of people during the night and I absolutely loved it. Again it’s one of those extra things that makes Trails such a great series and I love how much effort is put into those novels. On the disappointing side of things though, we do lose our funny little chest messages in this game which is a real shame.
Trails of Cold Steel is unfortunately overall, a step back from what came before it. Overly ambitious and bloated by its large cast and choice of setting, it takes way too long setting up things and not enough time paying off that build up. The finale is a great start to paying off the build up but that’s all it is - a start. Hopefully with this build up out of the way Cold Steel II can hit the ground running like the other follow up games have done in this series. The great cast of characters and fantastic gameplay makes Cold Steel still an overall enjoyable experience despite its flaws, just one that falls a bit short of what this series has managed to do before it.
Originally on PS Vita, Cold Steel represents a leap for the series, going full 3D for the first time. While that leap to 3D is impressive, we'll focus on the smaller tweaks to the Trails formula first before diving into the bigger stuff.
First up the battle system builds off what's come before. Instead of using a grid based system for range of movement, we now have movement range limited to a circumference which is more natural for the full 3D environments. The new ARCUS battle orbments now allow two characters to be linked in battle which means characters are able to provide follow up attacks and earn Brave Points. Brave Points can be accumulated to allow for more powerful follow up attacks with 3 points allowing a Rush attack where the two linked party members can rush an enemy for a few hits and 5 points allow a burst attack which has moved from the Crossbell games as a bonus action on a turn to here. Burst attacks basically see your party go ham on the enemies doing a good amount of damage and great for tackling larger groups of mobs. Your links can also be levelled up for even more abilities, like at level two a finishing blow unlocks meaning if you use a link attack on an enemy and bring their health down low enough, your link partner will follow up and finish off the enemy. Other abilities include stuff like Auto-Tear and Cover and overall I think it's a fantastic addition on top of Trails already fun combat. It gives you more options to work with and helps speed up the flow of regular battles which is great.
Moving onto the Orbment changes, we're mostly building off Azure here with Master Quartz returning but other elements have been simplified. Quartz now comes with Arts variants that include an art or three on them so instead of building your arts by using the right elemental combinations in your orbment, now you just need to find the quartz with the art you want and hey ho, you can use Tear. With the larger cast this game has, I can understand why the system has been simplified. Constantly trying to remember set ups for arts you want would be a pain when you're swapping between 9+ characters so I can see why you'd alleviate that by just making quartz hold spells. I did miss the fun in experimenting with quartz layouts and seeing what arts I could get but again, I can understand why the change was made.
Another gameplay tweak that I greatly appreciated is that every area now has a map for it. It was always a weird thing in the previous games for me where most dungeons didn’t have maps for some reason but thankfully Cold Steel changes that. There’s also a whole new type of battle introduced at the end of the game that I am very excited to see more of in future games but shall hold off going into here and spoiling it. I’ll just say it very much appealed to my tastes.
The core gameplay loop is very much still Trails at its heart, exploring towns, doing quests, etc to progress the story but the choice of setting this time changes up the cycle a bit this time. The Empire of Erebonia is so much larger than either Liberl or Crossbell that we’ve explored previously and the decision made was to pick one core area to keep returning to as we explore different areas. That core area? A military academy - school. Now I know most people will roll their eyes at Persona comparisons but when it feels like the inspiration for the choice of setting and when Persona and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are my core references for school settings in videogames, I think being able to use them to explain what I feel this game does right and wrong with its setting is valuable. Now Thors Military Academy being, well a military academy means this feels closer to Three Houses than Persona for me. The students here are being taught with the expectation that most of them will end up joining the military someday so for the most part the setting works. Managing to find a third way to implement the Trails rank system where you gain more points for doing more sidequests by making it a graded study report is very cool, props to them for that.
Of courses, taking inspiration from Persona means we have a calendar system introduced here. Worry not, you won’t be playing every single day of a month, instead you’ll be playing a select few days in every month. The first day takes place at school and is mostly just story stuff before moving into the second day which is your free day. Free days are split into afternoon and evening sections where you’ll get your traditional Trails sidequests to do but also Bonding Points to spend. Every month you’ll get 3 or 4 bonding points to spend on having bonding events with your classmates where you’ll get to know them better. They’re kind of inspired by Persona’s Social Links but you’re not ranking them up and continuing a narrative through them, more just seeing an extra event with that character for that month that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It does tie into your romantic partner of choice at the end of the game which changes up the final cutscene a little and who you can dance with at the school festival but otherwise, they feel very minimal and offer a little more insight to characters.
Your important quest for every free day is to visit the old school building. The old school building is a mysterious building that acts like a dungeon and every month adds a new floor to explore. Think Temple of the Ocean King from Zelda: Phantom Hourglass but without having to go through the whole thing every month, just the new floor. It mostly feels like something added to have a traditional dungeon experience for the school portions of the game and there’s very little given to the mystery to keep your interest in it outside of the fourth floor before the eventual payoff in the final chapter. It does make for a nice change of pace during the school portions and it’s also the only area for the bulk of the game where you have full control of your choice of party set up which is much appreciated.
Completing the old school building task each month transitions the day to evening and gives you one extra bonding point to spend before you return to the dorms for the day. The next day is always your Practical Exam. Basically here you’ll be given a battle to fight and often have side objectives to meet, like not letting anyone die or not using arts. These are fine and are mostly used to let characters who have tension with each other to blow off some steam and settle grievances while also building up bonds.
Finally after that you’re giving your field study destination for the month which acts as your more traditional Trails experience for the month. The class is split into two groups and sent off to different destinations to get a feel for what’s happening in Erebonia, meet the people who live in these places and help them out in a very Bracer like fashion by completing tasks. The field studies are where the more interesting story elements happen as the characters get to witness first hand the tensions between Erebonia’s Noble Faction and Reformist Faction as the flames of Civil War begin to build in the background of all the school bonding trips. The class will witness first hand the actions of the terrorist group The Imperial Liberation Front and will end up having to put a stop to them. It makes for an exciting end to each month but unfortunately because of the school system and the gameplay loop they choose to stick to so closely, rather than being able to escalate and build off these events, you’re immediately dragged back to Thors before you get to see or feel any of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on these areas and it completely takes the wind out of the plot. It’s a similar problem to what Three Houses suffer from in the first half of its game where things start to feel repetitive and the school portions start to drag on more and more as the game goes on and you want the plot to build up to something a bit more meaningful and longer lasting. It does eventually get there in the final chapter but having to go through around 60 hours of game before that point does take its toll. I think another issue comes from this game's story taking place from around late game Trails from Zero through to late game Trails to Azure. Basically throughout the game you’ll constantly be getting updates from what’s happening in Crossbell (and seeing this from the Erebonian perspective is greatly appreciated, especially with how its newspaper distorts facts to make Chancellor Osborne sound much more important to going ons in Crossbell than he actually was and dismissing the declaration of independence as a fools dream) but the issue is everything that’s happening in Crossbell sounds (and if you’ve played Zero/Azure it IS) so much more interesting than what you’re getting to see in Erebonia. So much of the political tension in Erebonia feels like it takes place off screen because these school kids are a bit too far detached from it. Sure there’s characters who have relatives who are very much involved with the quarrelling factions but they all feel like they’re kept at arm's length and are unable to give much insight to what’s happening themselves. Compare that to Elie from Zero, whose grandfather is Mayor of Crossbell and she herself has enough of an interest in politics to be able to explain to Lloyd and the player and the whole political situation of Crossbell, then it’s clear to see that we were missing someone like that in Cold Steel.
Let’s get into the cast itself then. The protagonist for this game is Rean, a young lad whose background gives him a balanced view between nobility and commoner. He ends up going to Thors Military Academy where a brand new class is being set up for a select group of students - Class VII. This class takes people from all sorts of different backgrounds and puts them together in an attempt to help people understand each other from different societal classes and try to bridge the gap between them. Including Rean the class features a total of 9 classmates to begin with which is a lot of characters to introduce at once and start building with.
We have Alisa who hides her second name and wants to take on everything herself while also looking out for everyone else. Elliot who is much more into his music than his military training. Laura, who is a noble incredibly dedicated to her training with the sword. Jusis, another noble who starts off more like the lone wolf of the group. Machias who absolutely detests nobles and wants nothing to do with them. Fie who despite being the youngest of the group, is so much more combat ready than anyone else. Emma who is the class president, top of the class but also has a mysterious air about her. And finally Gaius, a foreigner from the allied nation of Nord. On top of this we have our homeroom teacher Sara who very much opts for doing things unconventionally and loves a wee drink here and there. That’s just the opening group for the game and it’s a lot of people to manage and develop. The game does do well in trying to manage this by splitting the group up for field studies, allowing you to focus on 3 or 4 characters as well as forcing characters into groups where they’ll have to address their issues with each other (like Machias and Jusis or Fie and Laura). On top of that the field studies tend to take place in a character's hometown or somewhere where they have family connections which is great for their personal character growth. Despite the bloated cast, I did end up loving most of the characters with Alisa, Emma, and Jusis being my standouts while Gaius and Elliot unfortunately didn’t do much for me compared to the rest.
But wait there’s even more important characters! A group of second years becomes close to the group introducing us to the smartass Crow, student council president Towa, engineer George and way over the top aggressively lesbian Angelica. For the most part they’re a great bunch, I absolutely loved Crow and his dynamic with Rean though Angelica has some issues and leans way too hard into uncomfortable tropes that are yeah…. Just an overall bad representation of a lesbian character.
And hold up, there’s even more important characters like Elise - Rean’s sister, Patrick, a noble who has that noble superiority complex, Olivert and his brother and sister, more academy professors…..
Oh and we can’t forget our antagonistic group, the Imperial Liberation Front whose members like to call themselves the first letter of their name - G, S, V and the mysterious leader C who wears a black suit and mask like he’s some sort of Power Ranger fanboy (it’s cool though and he has plenty of charisma). For the bulk of the game this group really doesn't feel like much. They show up, get their asses beat off school kids and run away pretending like it was all part of the plan (which granted I’ll give C credit for his long game planning because he definitely threw me off his competency with those earlier operations)
Basically, if this feels like a lot, it’s because it is and it contributes to Cold Steel’s biggest issue - bloat. There is way too much here in terms of characters and locations to set up and in traditional Trails fashion, it’s done slowly and meticulously to make sure they truly build a world that feels alive and credit where it’s due, they do manage to accomplish that but at the same time it takes 60+ hours to do that. 60+ hours of world and character building is something that starts to drag on. I was craving for something of excitement and importance to happen because as much as I can appreciate taking your time to craft a world with great detail, I also need something to get me invested in the plot at large. I think part of the issue is the school sections take up a big chunk of play time and knock the wind out of the larger plot and bloat up the whole game while also killing the pacing. Like they are important for the camaraderie between Class VII but they do alter the balance of the traditional Trails experience in a way that I feel overall hinders the pacing. As someone who has played Three Houses the most apt comparison I can make is - imagine the academy phase of that game stretched out to 60+ hours and just as the war phase is about to begin the game ends and that’s going to be covered in the next game.
The finale of Cold Steel is fantastic, I loved the last portion of the game and everything that went down, it just took way too long meandering to that point. Take Trails in the Sky FC for example. That game is also very much focused on the slow burn of world building for the majority of the game but it does so through a much more manageable cast, with a strong focus on Estelle and Joshua at its centre as everything else is built around them and it’s last quarter gets into the exciting plot developments to make journey more memorable and it’s all done in around 40 hours. Cold Steel is juggling way too many characters without focusing on any one or two characters as its central focus and as a result everything takes so much longer to get going.
Jumping back to that transition to 3D, I will say the game does a fantastic job at bringing the scale of Erebonia to life. Cities are massive with the capital Heimdallr split into multiple districts full of massive buildings. Roer feels like Zeiss from Liberl reimagined into the full scale city it represented. The Nord Highlands bring a massive open area traversable via horse which is incredible for what is at its core a Vita game though I could’ve done with some fast travel points in that area as traversing constantly between the village and the military base to accomplish the quests in that area felt dragged out with how large it is. Ultimately though they did a fantastic job at making Erebonia feel like the massive Empire it is compared to Crossbell and Liberl. Each destination is only reachable via train as well further driving home just how massive this nation is. Some of the road areas have exits that are outside the field study boundary but signposts point out where those roads lead to which could be interesting for future games in this arc if travelling isn’t limited to trains later on.
All that to say is the world design in this game is well done and on top of that the dungeons are fun to traverse with their gimmicks like flipping switches to activate and deactivate bridges and stuff like that. The gameplay side of things really helps to keep the game being fun as it drags its heels with its narrative and for me that was greatly appreciated when my frustrations were building.
On the soundtrack side of things it’s another great offering. The upbeat sounds of school life, the atmospheric dungeon music, the heavy battle music - it’s all here to elevate the experience and help bring this world to life. The opening song is really catchy and the title screen music fits the mood of the adventure. Speaking of the title screen, I loved the neat touch of adding more characters alongside Rean on the train as the game progresses. It’s one of those little things that just make the experience a bit more special. And another little thing I think worth mentioning is this Cold Steel’s book collection Red Moon Rose - a thrilling tale of a vampire hunter and her encounter with a vampire who has been sucking the blood dry out of people during the night and I absolutely loved it. Again it’s one of those extra things that makes Trails such a great series and I love how much effort is put into those novels. On the disappointing side of things though, we do lose our funny little chest messages in this game which is a real shame.
Trails of Cold Steel is unfortunately overall, a step back from what came before it. Overly ambitious and bloated by its large cast and choice of setting, it takes way too long setting up things and not enough time paying off that build up. The finale is a great start to paying off the build up but that’s all it is - a start. Hopefully with this build up out of the way Cold Steel II can hit the ground running like the other follow up games have done in this series. The great cast of characters and fantastic gameplay makes Cold Steel still an overall enjoyable experience despite its flaws, just one that falls a bit short of what this series has managed to do before it.
2023
Yet another Persona 5 spin off but while Phantom Thieves fatigue has been well and truly setting in, this spin off does offer a lot to love about it.
Atlus have decided to dip their toes into the tactics genre this time, blending their excellent RPG mechanics into a grid based tactics experience that is similar to Mario + Rabbids. By that, I mean that battles take place in grid based maps with a low camera angle where cover is your best friend. High cover will protect you from incoming fire from most directions while low cover will reduce the damage you take and this makes guns your main weapon of choice as you can shoot from behind cover to attack enemies at a distance. Being out in the open leaves you vulnerable to being knocked down like a critical hit would do in mainline Persona giving out the One More status to allow the enemy to move and attack again. By running up next to an enemy you can use a physical attack to push them out of cover and leave them in a vulnerable state for a teammate to knock down.
By knocking an enemy down you can activate an all out attack and do major damage by moving your characters into a triangle formation with the downed enemy in it. There's a lot of strategy to be found in trying to get as many enemies in the all out attack as possible, especially when characters that have already used their action can't move and you can't walk through any enemy or party member on the map.
Personas are your spell based attacks and these have been altered to carry an effect. Garu skills will blow an enemy away a few spaces, Zio skills inflict the shocked status, Psio skills pull an enemy towards you, etc. Basically most skills will assist in making an enemy vulnerable to being downed. Tactica also allows every character (except Erina who can't use a Persona) to have a sub Persona which grants additional skills to be used as well as providing more hp/sp or extra effects like increased melee damage. All your Persona fusion also returns with the Velvet Room and you gain new Personas just by defeating enemies and beating maps.
Maps are very well designed featuring different gimmicks throughout like opening doors or raising platforms via buttons, or being able to climb ladders to reach higher ground and being able to move all your characters as much as you want before using an action means there's a lot of puzzle like elements to maps as you try to find your way forward through them.
On top of that there's varied objectives too! Most maps are enemy rout objectives but there's also escape maps, survive maps and even an escort map and you also get bonus objectives to complete too. The bonus objectives tend to be the same 3 things every map (beat it in a certain amount of turns, don't let any party member die, and clearing the stage) and doing these increases the amount of money you earn for all your Persona summoning and weapon needs. Basically Atlus have managed to come up with an in depth and well thought out tactical game experience that compliments the traditional Persona game experience to build yet another excellent spin off in the gameplay department.
In the story department, this is yet another adventure with the Phantom Thieves taking place not long after the events of Persona 5/Royal (and if you haven't played either of those then be aware that the characters do make reference to events of those games throughout). For me personally, I was really hoping for a spin off story to dive into something like the Persona 4 Arena games did where the cast of 4 got to meet an older cast of 3 because at this point, the Phantom Thieves don't really have much to offer in terms of character growth, especially at the point of not long post their P5 adventure. And it seems like Atlus was aware of this because the story here is very much focused on new characters Toshiro and Erina with the Phantom Thieves acting more as a support role for these two newcomers. After being transported to a mysterious world that is very similar to the metaverse, the Phantom Thieves meet Erina who is trying to stage a rebellion against Marie who has made the Kingdom (basically a Palace) into a place to worship her and build her a perfect wedding venue. Erina is trying to free the citizens of this world from Marie's oppression and is overall a character who symbolises the fire of rebellion in one's heart which is very fitting for Persona 5 where the core theme of rebellion is what caused the original gang to awaken to their Personas in the first place.
Eventually the gang meet and free Toshiro from Marie's dungeon. Toshiro is a politician from the real world who had recently disappeared and went missing. He's a character who has very much lost the fire of rebellion in his heart as he's grown older, finding setback after setback that has scarred his heart and now his first instinct is to run from all conflict. Despite this, Toshiro is still great at rousing speeches and planning ahead so he ends up becoming more of a tactician for the group who tries to bring some level headedness to proceedings.
So the core of the story is basically trying to free each Kingdom from an oppressive ruler while also helping Toshiro rediscover the flame of rebellion in his heart with the Phantom Thieves being able to relate to some of the things he has experienced in life with their own situations from the original P5 game. It's a great group dynamic and Toshiro makes for an excellent character as a rare Persona experience of looking into an adult character whose life experience has caused him to lose his way. His dynamic with Erina in particular is very well done and I absolutely love where the game goes with those two. Seeing Toshiro’s growth throughout the game is very well done and it's clear to see a lot of work and care went into his character in particular.
With this being a Persona spin off, it does also have its more eye roll worthy moments of writing too. The game very much makes sure to hit you over the head with its theme of rebellion, losing a lot of nuance with it and we also have some character tropes exaggerated and repeated throughout the adventure. Yes, I get Morgana is NOT a cat, yes I get Yusuke is a starving artist, I don't need reminding of that multiple times throughout the story and with Makoto, I have no idea where her sudden “quick to violence” trope has come from because her whole awakening scene in Persona 5 is her literally bottling up all of her anger at being used and following the rules too strictly to the point she has her outburst that causes her awakening. Outside of that she's still very much a calm, collected, and reserved person so seeing her portrayal in this spin off at times was very much uh… what are they doing to my favourite character kind of thing.
But yeah, outside of those instances, P5T does manage to provide a thrilling and engaging tale of an adult trying to rediscover the fire in his heart and it's one I very much appreciate.
The game peaks at the third Kingdom before the final kingdom drags things down a little bit by reusing map gimmicks and boss fights from the initial three Kingdoms and the story runs out of steam a bit. It kinda feels like they just threw in some Persona tropes for the sake of it instead of wrapping the game up at an ideal point. We do get a fantastic ending however, that manages to hit some very strong emotional beats and I think it's the first time a Persona spin off has managed to make me cry so full props to that.
On the soundtrack front, Lyn once again knocks it out of the park with her vocal songs, from the powerful opening song, Revolution in Your Heart, to the very beautiful ending song, To My Dear, So Far Away. She provides some fantastic battle themes too while the non vocal themes lean more on the guitar front that provides some great riffs though can feel like they play in a more generic loop compared to most Persona soundtracks. Overall it's another fantastic soundtrack from the Atlus sound team.
On the performance front I played the Nintendo Switch version and it definitely feels like the game was built around that platform first, with its chibi Persona Q esque artstyle and boxy map design very much complimenting the weaker hardware. The game runs at a solid 30fps and looks great for a Switch title which is all you need really. Glancing at the other platforms it seems you get 60fps and a higher resolution instead so platform choice basically comes down to where you would prefer playing it.
So despite going into this one pretty tepidly and feeling burnt out on the Phantom Thieves and the whole Persona 5 aesthetic, I managed to come out of it thoroughly enjoying myself and falling in love with the new characters. The few setbacks the game has doesn't detract that overall this is a great tactics game with an engaging story to tell and one that explores a few unique things compared to most Persona titles.
Atlus have decided to dip their toes into the tactics genre this time, blending their excellent RPG mechanics into a grid based tactics experience that is similar to Mario + Rabbids. By that, I mean that battles take place in grid based maps with a low camera angle where cover is your best friend. High cover will protect you from incoming fire from most directions while low cover will reduce the damage you take and this makes guns your main weapon of choice as you can shoot from behind cover to attack enemies at a distance. Being out in the open leaves you vulnerable to being knocked down like a critical hit would do in mainline Persona giving out the One More status to allow the enemy to move and attack again. By running up next to an enemy you can use a physical attack to push them out of cover and leave them in a vulnerable state for a teammate to knock down.
By knocking an enemy down you can activate an all out attack and do major damage by moving your characters into a triangle formation with the downed enemy in it. There's a lot of strategy to be found in trying to get as many enemies in the all out attack as possible, especially when characters that have already used their action can't move and you can't walk through any enemy or party member on the map.
Personas are your spell based attacks and these have been altered to carry an effect. Garu skills will blow an enemy away a few spaces, Zio skills inflict the shocked status, Psio skills pull an enemy towards you, etc. Basically most skills will assist in making an enemy vulnerable to being downed. Tactica also allows every character (except Erina who can't use a Persona) to have a sub Persona which grants additional skills to be used as well as providing more hp/sp or extra effects like increased melee damage. All your Persona fusion also returns with the Velvet Room and you gain new Personas just by defeating enemies and beating maps.
Maps are very well designed featuring different gimmicks throughout like opening doors or raising platforms via buttons, or being able to climb ladders to reach higher ground and being able to move all your characters as much as you want before using an action means there's a lot of puzzle like elements to maps as you try to find your way forward through them.
On top of that there's varied objectives too! Most maps are enemy rout objectives but there's also escape maps, survive maps and even an escort map and you also get bonus objectives to complete too. The bonus objectives tend to be the same 3 things every map (beat it in a certain amount of turns, don't let any party member die, and clearing the stage) and doing these increases the amount of money you earn for all your Persona summoning and weapon needs. Basically Atlus have managed to come up with an in depth and well thought out tactical game experience that compliments the traditional Persona game experience to build yet another excellent spin off in the gameplay department.
In the story department, this is yet another adventure with the Phantom Thieves taking place not long after the events of Persona 5/Royal (and if you haven't played either of those then be aware that the characters do make reference to events of those games throughout). For me personally, I was really hoping for a spin off story to dive into something like the Persona 4 Arena games did where the cast of 4 got to meet an older cast of 3 because at this point, the Phantom Thieves don't really have much to offer in terms of character growth, especially at the point of not long post their P5 adventure. And it seems like Atlus was aware of this because the story here is very much focused on new characters Toshiro and Erina with the Phantom Thieves acting more as a support role for these two newcomers. After being transported to a mysterious world that is very similar to the metaverse, the Phantom Thieves meet Erina who is trying to stage a rebellion against Marie who has made the Kingdom (basically a Palace) into a place to worship her and build her a perfect wedding venue. Erina is trying to free the citizens of this world from Marie's oppression and is overall a character who symbolises the fire of rebellion in one's heart which is very fitting for Persona 5 where the core theme of rebellion is what caused the original gang to awaken to their Personas in the first place.
Eventually the gang meet and free Toshiro from Marie's dungeon. Toshiro is a politician from the real world who had recently disappeared and went missing. He's a character who has very much lost the fire of rebellion in his heart as he's grown older, finding setback after setback that has scarred his heart and now his first instinct is to run from all conflict. Despite this, Toshiro is still great at rousing speeches and planning ahead so he ends up becoming more of a tactician for the group who tries to bring some level headedness to proceedings.
So the core of the story is basically trying to free each Kingdom from an oppressive ruler while also helping Toshiro rediscover the flame of rebellion in his heart with the Phantom Thieves being able to relate to some of the things he has experienced in life with their own situations from the original P5 game. It's a great group dynamic and Toshiro makes for an excellent character as a rare Persona experience of looking into an adult character whose life experience has caused him to lose his way. His dynamic with Erina in particular is very well done and I absolutely love where the game goes with those two. Seeing Toshiro’s growth throughout the game is very well done and it's clear to see a lot of work and care went into his character in particular.
With this being a Persona spin off, it does also have its more eye roll worthy moments of writing too. The game very much makes sure to hit you over the head with its theme of rebellion, losing a lot of nuance with it and we also have some character tropes exaggerated and repeated throughout the adventure. Yes, I get Morgana is NOT a cat, yes I get Yusuke is a starving artist, I don't need reminding of that multiple times throughout the story and with Makoto, I have no idea where her sudden “quick to violence” trope has come from because her whole awakening scene in Persona 5 is her literally bottling up all of her anger at being used and following the rules too strictly to the point she has her outburst that causes her awakening. Outside of that she's still very much a calm, collected, and reserved person so seeing her portrayal in this spin off at times was very much uh… what are they doing to my favourite character kind of thing.
But yeah, outside of those instances, P5T does manage to provide a thrilling and engaging tale of an adult trying to rediscover the fire in his heart and it's one I very much appreciate.
The game peaks at the third Kingdom before the final kingdom drags things down a little bit by reusing map gimmicks and boss fights from the initial three Kingdoms and the story runs out of steam a bit. It kinda feels like they just threw in some Persona tropes for the sake of it instead of wrapping the game up at an ideal point. We do get a fantastic ending however, that manages to hit some very strong emotional beats and I think it's the first time a Persona spin off has managed to make me cry so full props to that.
On the soundtrack front, Lyn once again knocks it out of the park with her vocal songs, from the powerful opening song, Revolution in Your Heart, to the very beautiful ending song, To My Dear, So Far Away. She provides some fantastic battle themes too while the non vocal themes lean more on the guitar front that provides some great riffs though can feel like they play in a more generic loop compared to most Persona soundtracks. Overall it's another fantastic soundtrack from the Atlus sound team.
On the performance front I played the Nintendo Switch version and it definitely feels like the game was built around that platform first, with its chibi Persona Q esque artstyle and boxy map design very much complimenting the weaker hardware. The game runs at a solid 30fps and looks great for a Switch title which is all you need really. Glancing at the other platforms it seems you get 60fps and a higher resolution instead so platform choice basically comes down to where you would prefer playing it.
So despite going into this one pretty tepidly and feeling burnt out on the Phantom Thieves and the whole Persona 5 aesthetic, I managed to come out of it thoroughly enjoying myself and falling in love with the new characters. The few setbacks the game has doesn't detract that overall this is a great tactics game with an engaging story to tell and one that explores a few unique things compared to most Persona titles.
2023
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.
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.
2023
The second WarioWare title on Switch focuses on the motion control aspect of the joy cons, delivering a pseudo-sequel of sorts to the Wiis Smooth Moves.
We have the return of forms where you have to hold the joy con in a specific way as instructed. There's plenty of classic poses like sword fighter where you hold one joy con on top of the other like you're holding a sword or weightlifter where you have your arms lifted up like you're holding weights but we also have our wacky stuff too like ba-kaw where you hold one joy con at your nose and the other at your butt to become like a chicken and it's peak WarioWare silliness. Each form also has a humourous fully voiced tutorial accompanying it as this title hits the return to form of WarioWare humour.
With two joy con and more degrees of motion detectable by them compared to the original Wiimote, Move It takes the opportunity to make more complex motion based microgames. A few reviews from media outlets complained about the motion controls not working properly but played every single microgame in this title numerous times, I think what happened was more of a misunderstanding with what was expected of the player rather than the motion controls not working. If you have held the joy con correctly in the pose shown before a microgame then I found the motion controls to be perfectly accurate, with the only issues I had was me not holding my joy con properly before a microgame started. The main issue I had was not realising just how much this game wanted me to break form during a microgame and I think that's what stumped a few outlets. One microgame in particular asks you to assume the ba-kaw position and then you have to make the mountaineer walk up the mountain. I thought I had to bob up and down to make him walk but instead you have to break the ba-kaw form and mimic walking by moving your arms up and down. There's a handful of microgames like that and I can see why they cause issues but once you understand how to play them then they work well. It does go against WarioWares usually simplistic nature that is easy to pick up but I think going in this direction helps set it apart from Smooth Moves.
There's also a handful of microgames that use the ir camera and those were the ones I had more issues with as I struggled to get it to recognise the symbol I was making a lot of the time. I don't know if it was because my hand was too big the the joy con strap doesn't let me pull it away far enough or if the lighting was too dark at times but unfortunately I did have issues with a couple of the ir camera microgames.
I was genuinely surprised to see how inventive some of the microgames were. For the first time since I picked up a Switch at launch in 2017, I had to actually use the joy con straps because there's some microgames that ask you to drop the joy con and these are really cool. One sees you drop the joy con to drop food in a fryer and you have to pull them back up when they're done. It's the type of experimentation with the hardware that I've loved from WarioWare since discovering the series with Touched on DS.
Elsewhere we have our usual postgame challenge levels and more fleshed out minigames and we have a selection of really good multiplayer modes including the Listen to the Doctor one from the GameCube making its return. There isn't quite enough here to surpass that title on the multiplayer front but I'm happy to see the series continue to build up a multiplayer offering as well as its single player content.
Unfortunately you're not getting Gold levels of collectibles and extras but what's on offer is still a very strong WarioWare experience.
A return to a more traditional style of WarioWare after Get it Together, Move It brings the return of Smooth Moves motion based microgames while also maximising the amount depth the controllers offer in motion based gameplay. In doing so, a degree of simplicity has been sacrificed and a larger barrier of entry introduced, but once you get to grips with what's expected of you then there's another fantastic WarioWare experience to discover here with a very solid multiplayer offering on top of that too.
We have the return of forms where you have to hold the joy con in a specific way as instructed. There's plenty of classic poses like sword fighter where you hold one joy con on top of the other like you're holding a sword or weightlifter where you have your arms lifted up like you're holding weights but we also have our wacky stuff too like ba-kaw where you hold one joy con at your nose and the other at your butt to become like a chicken and it's peak WarioWare silliness. Each form also has a humourous fully voiced tutorial accompanying it as this title hits the return to form of WarioWare humour.
With two joy con and more degrees of motion detectable by them compared to the original Wiimote, Move It takes the opportunity to make more complex motion based microgames. A few reviews from media outlets complained about the motion controls not working properly but played every single microgame in this title numerous times, I think what happened was more of a misunderstanding with what was expected of the player rather than the motion controls not working. If you have held the joy con correctly in the pose shown before a microgame then I found the motion controls to be perfectly accurate, with the only issues I had was me not holding my joy con properly before a microgame started. The main issue I had was not realising just how much this game wanted me to break form during a microgame and I think that's what stumped a few outlets. One microgame in particular asks you to assume the ba-kaw position and then you have to make the mountaineer walk up the mountain. I thought I had to bob up and down to make him walk but instead you have to break the ba-kaw form and mimic walking by moving your arms up and down. There's a handful of microgames like that and I can see why they cause issues but once you understand how to play them then they work well. It does go against WarioWares usually simplistic nature that is easy to pick up but I think going in this direction helps set it apart from Smooth Moves.
There's also a handful of microgames that use the ir camera and those were the ones I had more issues with as I struggled to get it to recognise the symbol I was making a lot of the time. I don't know if it was because my hand was too big the the joy con strap doesn't let me pull it away far enough or if the lighting was too dark at times but unfortunately I did have issues with a couple of the ir camera microgames.
I was genuinely surprised to see how inventive some of the microgames were. For the first time since I picked up a Switch at launch in 2017, I had to actually use the joy con straps because there's some microgames that ask you to drop the joy con and these are really cool. One sees you drop the joy con to drop food in a fryer and you have to pull them back up when they're done. It's the type of experimentation with the hardware that I've loved from WarioWare since discovering the series with Touched on DS.
Elsewhere we have our usual postgame challenge levels and more fleshed out minigames and we have a selection of really good multiplayer modes including the Listen to the Doctor one from the GameCube making its return. There isn't quite enough here to surpass that title on the multiplayer front but I'm happy to see the series continue to build up a multiplayer offering as well as its single player content.
Unfortunately you're not getting Gold levels of collectibles and extras but what's on offer is still a very strong WarioWare experience.
A return to a more traditional style of WarioWare after Get it Together, Move It brings the return of Smooth Moves motion based microgames while also maximising the amount depth the controllers offer in motion based gameplay. In doing so, a degree of simplicity has been sacrificed and a larger barrier of entry introduced, but once you get to grips with what's expected of you then there's another fantastic WarioWare experience to discover here with a very solid multiplayer offering on top of that too.
My reviews for each individual game in this collection can be found on their original GameCube release pages, here I'll go through what the HD remaster brings to the table.
The HD remaster makes two GameCube classic games more widely available, with Baten Kaitos Origins getting it's first ever European release. Along with updated visuals, a handful of options have been added:
The ability to turn off encounters (very handy for when you just want to explore a dungeon, especially when enemies respawn every time the screen reloads)
The ability to one hit KO enemies (very handy to stop battles dragging on for standard encounters)
Increase game and battle speed (I wish this was a button toggle rather than a menu option you have to constantly adjust because it isn't fun to use despite how handy it can be for certain sections)
An auto battle function (never used this in my playthrough but I can imagine it having its uses)
The games run ok on Switch though some sections do see the framerate drop unfortunately which is kinda disappointing for GameCube remasters. Elsewhere the English voice over is not included in this release (presumably due to cartridge limitations more than anything else) and European language options are not included in Origins (presumably because it never released here and Bandai Namco didn't want to fork out on translations)
While it does fall short of its potential as an HD remaster and fails to include everything that it should, at the end of the day the two games included here are goof to great games and being able to play them on a more available format is greatly welcome
The HD remaster makes two GameCube classic games more widely available, with Baten Kaitos Origins getting it's first ever European release. Along with updated visuals, a handful of options have been added:
The ability to turn off encounters (very handy for when you just want to explore a dungeon, especially when enemies respawn every time the screen reloads)
The ability to one hit KO enemies (very handy to stop battles dragging on for standard encounters)
Increase game and battle speed (I wish this was a button toggle rather than a menu option you have to constantly adjust because it isn't fun to use despite how handy it can be for certain sections)
An auto battle function (never used this in my playthrough but I can imagine it having its uses)
The games run ok on Switch though some sections do see the framerate drop unfortunately which is kinda disappointing for GameCube remasters. Elsewhere the English voice over is not included in this release (presumably due to cartridge limitations more than anything else) and European language options are not included in Origins (presumably because it never released here and Bandai Namco didn't want to fork out on translations)
While it does fall short of its potential as an HD remaster and fails to include everything that it should, at the end of the day the two games included here are goof to great games and being able to play them on a more available format is greatly welcome
2006
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.
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.
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.
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.
2023
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.
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.