meh. feels like a culmination of both the best and worst to come out of kiseki as a whole.

Liberl and Crossbell coming together after so long feels satisfying while other aspects drag it down, had my fun just happy to move on now

For an experience of 9 games in the making it dosen’t feel nearly as satisfactory as it should be to be the end of an entire saga. In regards to lore I honestly think its some of the best in the entire series, from the depictions of the divine knights to Act 3’s lore reveal regarding Arianhrod’s past preserved from the Black Records, shes one of my favourites they’ve written in the franchise in all honestly and I feel it’ll stay that way. The lore itself feels like a gift to those who played all the previous games and avoided skipping any arc beforehand.

Even in ‘Fragments’, an intermission that does sensational work for Rean’s character as a whole picks up from a holy slog that was the first act and as a whole takes a while to get its framework from the rest of the franchise. Rean's character was iffy to me at first with the idea of accepting spirit unification then forgetting it in Coldsteel 3 but the idea of him becoming a teacher was probably the best direction they could've taken him and im happy they did. Its also rather aggravating when most of new and old class 7's development or character rely solely on Rean himself instead of other avenues (a select few characters do get this its just a shame its not most of them) but decisions like giving Machias development In CS1 then proceeding to completely forget about making him a character until CS4 is bizarre to me, even the idea of giving Gaius having the dominion just feels weird an attempt to add a semblance of importance to his character but I get why they did it. Some aspects that constantly way it down are the forced inclusions of characters like George (I took out the ‘G’ from ‘Gnome’ and went with that george) Angelica and then theres Black Alberich, that brother just feels like a waste of ‘Hikori Yasumoto’s’ voice and just stayed monotone 2 whole games with no change. It's funny saying this while Coldsteel holds the best antagonist in the series so far, Osborne. He’s been teased since the culmination of the kiseki series and from start to when the curtains close he delivers. It’s a damn shame we didnt get a final 1v1 duel here instead of a simple cutscene but thats just my own preference so I dont mind that much. Even as a soundtrack it's comfortably my least favourite in the series (blame singa)

I can wake up tomorrow knowing that I dont have to touch another cold steel game, and with that im at peace