So, here we are. The worst Trails game. I will never understand how there are people out there stupid enough to try and defend this shit, but the Falcom fanbase already feels like it's made up entirely of braindead simps so I don't know why I'm surprised. I could sum this whole thing up by saying that I genuinely cannot think of a game, JRPG or otherwise, that's as disappointing to me as this one. That this was my reaction to the series as a whole once I finished CS IV. But for an actual explanation as to why Cold Steel IV is one of the worst games I have ever played, here we go.

First off, I'm skipping over the good section because Falcom does not get credit for anything in this game that's good. The overall gameplay and combat are identical to how it was in CS III, both on foot and in your Divine Knights, so they don't get points for that. You don't get to say "Hey they fucked up the story but at least they didn't fuck up the gameplay too!" and act like that's not the bare minimum. And when you market your game as a story focused RPG, with literal hours upon hours of cutscenes, and your story feels like it was written by a 10 year old, then you have failed at what you set out to do.

The writing in this game is some of the worst shit that I have ever seen in my life. In any form of media. I have read literal fucking fanfiction that is better than this. I don't know what happened between this and CS III, but every character is an idiot now. They all either waste their time with shit that doesn't matter while the actual plot advances offscreen, or they just constantly talk about how much they want to fuck Rean. Rean has been turned from a deconstruction of the stock Light Novel/Anime hero, to just being the stock Light/Novel Anime hero. They have stopped trying to do anything interesting with his character anymore and just turned him into what everyone who hated him said he was. This is capped off by him getting a God-awful redesign that looks like someone's Deviantart OC circa 2006.

They continue to use the Curse as a crutch so every villain sucks and has the same exact "they were just brainwashed" motivation. And making things even worse is that the pacing is somehow worse than CS I! The first 2 Acts of this game do not matter. They are pure filler built around bullshit fetch quests and saving Elise, who I am now calling the single worst character in the entire franchise. Elise Schwarzer is Estelle Bright if Estelle Bright was completely unlikable and written by a dude who is jacking off to Lolicon as we speak. She is every creepy anime incest trope rolled into one insufferable package. So of course, she's perfect for this game.

The only time anything remotely interesting happens is during Fragments, which is ruined when Catgirl Celine shows up because you've got to get that money from the Furry crowd apparently, and Eventide. Eventide feels like what the rest of this game should have been, and it's nice solely because you get to see this massive cast of characters actually interact with each other like people for one of the first times in the series. But even this is immediately undermined by how contrived and poorly written the Finale is.

First off, Osborne's motivations in this game win a special award for managing to out nonsense everyone else in this garbage plot and ruins the ending of Azure in the process. If everything he was trying to do was to free Erebonia and the world from the Curse, and if the Curse only affected the people of Erebonia, THEN WHY DID HE NEED TO ANNEX CROSSBELL? The entire emotional crux of the ending of Azure was Crossbell getting annexed by the Empire despite everything and then it turns out that not only was the occupation not that bad if you go off how everyone acts in CS III, but it apparently only happened because the people making the decisions are the dumbest motherfuckers on the face of the planet. Osborne was originally written to be an Otto von Bismarck/Napoleon expy who loved his country and wanted to annex Crossbell because he wanted Erebonia to eventually rule over the entire continent. Them trying to pivot to all of this being a big plan to stop the Curse not only turns one of Trails best villains into a dumbass, but it feels like a massive retcon that only happened to make this specific game fit in with the rest of the series.

In the end, to borrow a quote from the RPG Site Review, Trails of Cold Steel was a mistake. It took everything that could have made this the series best arc and fucked it all into the dirt beyond the point of redemption. CS I & II, when taken on their own, are worth experiencing since they're at least coherent and feel like they're building up to something. CS III is good as long as you stop right before you finish Chapter 4. But I cannot think of a single reason for anyone to play this game other than sunk cost fallacy. The writing is terrible, the characters have been bastardized to the point that they might as well be different people, the plot makes no sense if you put even a moment of thought into it, and the whole thing feels more like it exists out of obligation rather than as the "climatic finale" to the Erebonia arc that it was supposed to be. I'm going to see Trails through to the end, but every game that I play going forward will be with a massive amount of hesitation in the back of my mind. Because after seeing this and the ending of CS III, I know now that Falcom can fuck it up at any time.

Cold Steel IV, despite being structured like Cold Steel II, is pretty much its direct predecessor, Cold Steel III, on steroids. It has all the same strengths and weaknesses, but cranked up to eleven in both directions, right down to luring you into a false sense of security with an act one that stands as one of the better parts of the series in isolation, but is held back by the slow-moving trainwreck that follows it.

Starting with the good things Cold Steel IV lifts from Cold Steel III, the character moments are on-point. Anytime a character starts monologuing, you know you’re in for something good. The stars of Cold Steel IV are definitely Juna, Crow, and Cedric. Juna slots right into the protagonist role during act one so smoothly that she manages to stop the group dynamic from slacking in Rean’s absence. Her speech to the old Class VII motivating them to go rescue Rean was one of the game’s major highlights. I was actually surprised we got Crow back. I probably shouldn’t have been, considering how the Cold Steel arc follows every other major trope of the genre, so logically Crow’s redemption wouldn’t be any different, but what can I say? He spent most of Cold Steel II and III being adversarial, so I figured he was just going to stay that way. I’m glad he did return to the party though, because my opinion of him increased considerably with this entry. The resolution of his conflict with Rean was a long time coming, but was all the more satisfying for it. As for Cedric, he’s a character I probably should’ve singled out for praise in my Cold Steel III review, so allow me to remedy that here: Cedric has been one of the most interesting characters to watch develop over the course of the Cold Steel arc because his progression from bystander to full-on antagonist is shown to the player essentially in full, making him very easy to empathize with despite the side he chooses to take.

Unfortunately, that was my one point of praise for Cold Steel III, and so it is also my one point of praise for Cold Steel IV. Remember how I thought Cold Steel III was bloated both lore and cast-wise and how that brought down the game significantly in my regards? Yeah, it gets worse here.

In Cold Steel III, I was frustrated with the curse because it felt out-of-place with the pre-established lore. In retrospect, that was an objectively incorrect statement: magic like that has been part of the series since the Crossbell arc. Cold Steel IV provides me with a more valid reason to dislike it though, namely in how it robs almost all the antagonists of their agency, right down to the main antagonist of the Cold Steel arc and arguably the first half of the series as a whole: Chancellor Osborne. Turns out, he’s actually the reincarnation of Emperor Dreichels (the mechanics of which is never explained) and is a loving family man. Personally, I thought Osborne was great as a pure evil, power hungry villain, but this twist completely spits in the face of that by essentially saying that he can’t be held accountable for his actions. Admittedly, they do say later that the curse only amplifies the malice that already exists within the people it affects, but it still makes them do things they would never do otherwise, so I’m calling your bluff game: that was a bad writing decision.

Then there’s the matter of the narrative itself being way too bloated. It’s never been a secret that the writers have a skeleton outline of the series’ plot going forward at best, and that story beats are inserted and changed as necessary, but by the end of the Cold Steel arc the fact that these games are written one at a time becomes painfully obvious. I am confident that if the writers planned the whole arc out in advance, the whole story could’ve been covered in two games instead of four. So much time across the Cold Steel arc is spent either on field studies or doing glorified fetch quests to save kidnapped characters, both of which easily could’ve been cut down on or axed entirely with a little more foresight. If you assume an average of 60 hours per game, that’s 240 hours for the entire arc. There are definitely not 240 hours of necessary story content here, and if that’s not bad enough, there’s still more! A third of Reverie, at least as far as I’m aware, is devoted to wrapping up the Cold Steel arc. They’ve spent four full-length RPGs telling this story and apparently it still isn’t enough. Trails games can feel slow sometimes, but realizations like these are what really put the phrase “Trails games are poorly-paced” into context.

And of course, with a bloated plot comes a bloated cast. It’s actually absurd getting full party shots in the middle of dungeons and seeing like, twenty characters just standing there. It was during one of these full party shots when I was struck with the realization that Machias has not done anything since Cold Steel I. But he’s part of Class VII, so he has to be there! Duavile, who has spent the last three games being absolutely insufferable, decides that she’s had a change of heart and joins the party, only to be immediately backseated until the confrontation with Arianrhod towards the end of the game. Thirty plus playable characters sounds cool on paper, but the impracticality of it becomes obvious in execution. They didn’t even have time to properly finish Rean’s character arc—he’s a self-sacrificing hero with low self-esteem to the bitter end.

So that’s it then. I’ve played through four Cold Steel games and spent the entire time complaining. Why do I like these games? That’s not a facetious statement, I’m genuinely confused. I’ve said in the past that this series has a lot of potential, but out of the nine games I’ve played so far, only two of them have really lived up to that potential. I come to these games for the writing, come out of each one saying that it was poorly written, and then eagerly jump into the next one hoping that this time they’ll finally get it right. Am I just a sucker for JRPG tropes? Or maybe I’m really just that enamored with the idea of an overarching narrative. Maybe my real takeaway from the Cold Steel arc is that I’m allowed to like bad writing. I mean, I did enjoy the game. It never felt like a slog to get through or anything, it was just really easy to point and laugh at during some crucial moments, which is not something you usually want from your grand fantasy epic. I might very well come back to these games in a couple of months and decide to knock all their ratings down a few pegs, but for now, something in me is still enjoying them.

Before I close, there were a couple smaller points I wanted to bring up. One, I’ve been doing most if not all of the sidequests in each of these games since the Crossbell arc, and I have to say, Cold Steel IV has one of the series’ better batches. Especially during act three, a lot of them tie back into the lore or wrap up character subplots, which are always fun things to include in optional content. Two, I have to say, the soundtracks of this series really fell off. The Sky arc and especially First Chapter were littered with these bouncy jazz-fusion tracks that were strong across the board. Then the Crossbell arc hit and all of a sudden each game had like, one or two memorable songs each. Cold Steel I had at least a handful of songs to add to the playlist, but the rest were major letdowns. Third and finally, I made a comment in my Cold Steel III review about how I thought Cold Steel IV was going to turn my opinion on Musse around, but unfortunately, it didn’t. They did give us the info dump they were teasing, but it wasn’t anything particularly surprising and her personality largely remained the same, she was just less mysterious. It’s not a major point against the game, I just wanted to give the follow-up.

I’m a little nervous going into Reverie. Of the Trails games currently available in the west, it’s one of the three I see most consistently singled out for praise alongside Second Chapter and Azure. I’ve seen some fandom takes go as far as to say that it ties up all of the loose ends from the Cold Steel arc to give it a more satisfying conclusion. I want to buy into the hype, but I also thought the aforementioned other two games were not among the series’ best, so I don’t know. I already have the game, so I’ll probably jump right in just to see how this all ends, since I’m basically already there. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Ce jeu est honnêtement LE PIRE JEU QUE J'AI JAMAIS JOUÉ. Cold steel 1 et 2 j'ai kiffé même s'ils sont un peu meh par rapport aux jeux crossbell / liberl, cold steel 3 était déjà assez merdique MAIS PURÉE... CE JEU EST COMPLÈTEMENT DE LA MERDE...

Le scénario est complètement incompréhensible, FALCOM A ESSAYÉ DE RACHETER TOUS LES ANTAGONISTES MÊME S'ILS ONT COMMIS DES CRIMES EXTRÊMEMENT GRAVES COMME LE MEURTRE ET LE TERRORISME, Osborne a été absolument détruit niveau writing. Le "writing" dans ce jeu est TELLEMENT merdique, les persos commencent à agir comme des idiots tout à coup et l'explication c'est "AH NON MAIS C'EST LA FAUTE DE LA MALÉDICTION D'EREBONIA" (d'ailleurs cette soi-disant malédiction est le pire plot point que j'ai vu dans n'importe quel jeu), Rean a TOUJOURS pas même un peu de character development du tout (il est le pire protagoniste de tous les RPGs auxquels j'ai joué, sérieux), toujours extrêmement chiant... En plus, il y a une "vraie fin" alors on est obligé à jouer au jeu encore plus pour obtenir une fin tellement stupide où tout le monde est magiquement vivant 💀

Genre, c'est censé être UNE GUERRE CIVILE BON SANG, et vous comptez me dire que tout le monde a survécu sans même un seul mort ??? C'est quoi ce bordel ??? Même les persos qui étaient censés être morts SONT REVENUS À LA VIE, GENRE POURQUOI WTF ??? Ce genre de truc élimine complètement les conséquences dans le scénario, après avoir vu ça j'ai pas pu prendre l'histoire au sérieux du tout. Le scénario et la fin du jeu sont tellement merdiques que j'ai commencé à détester Cold steel 3 encore plus qu'avant, C'EST VRAIMENT SI MAL QUE ÇA.

Bref, je déteste Rean, je déteste Crow, je déteste Erebonia. Quelle sacrée perte de temps putain, QUATRE JEUX + REVERIE, ÇA A PAS VALU LE COUP. Ce jeu est pas seulement le pire jeu kiseki de loin, mais c'est aussi le pire RPG que j'ai fait. SVP, touchez pas à ce jeu sauf si vous vous détestez.

I played all of cold steel in 2 months. Apparently I have a problem. I agree with the individuals who said I do. Then let me answer a few basic questions from this predicament.
Do I like cold steel? Ya, its alright. Certainly the weakest between the 3 main arcs so far. Do I have praises for the arc? Sure I do! Some of my favorite moments in kiseki now come from CS. Is there problems I want to address? Well…funny you say that..
Before I go on my rampant tangent of my issues, ill first go off on complimenting the series.
Gotta say this before hand
THERE IS GOING TO BE SPOILERS, so if rando #354 complains on why im talking about certain scenes they haven’t seen yet from a future game, that’s all on u buddy.
To start off, CS3 has one of my favorite finales in kiseki. The fact they had the balls to kill off one of the casts most beloved characters AND have the good guys lose with such a dramatic build up? That was fantastic. From that standpoint, it looked like “how tf they gonna salvage the end of the world upon them lmao” Killing off millium hurt, she was by far the best class 7 member. She had that energy that literally everyone else lacked. I stayed up until like…5am I think, finishing CS3, that’s how invested it got me in from the finale starting.
CS2 I liked consistently. Each chapter had you revisit previous areas of the first game, but fixing shit that went wrong due to the actions of CS1. Each moment had something of note and value to the story, whether it be minimum or massive. The finale segments of CS2 was also one of my favorites with how they concluded old class 7s time together. That and on top of the mini crossbell segment that certainly was a jumpscare, meshed perfectly for how to exit the first half of cold steel.
CS4s first act was by far the best act out of the non-finale segments in all of cold steel. The entire segment without Rean? And the characters learning how to deal on situations without him while on the search for him? Was wonderfully done. There was some really great character moments, like with Musse and Ash coming to terms on how they deal with themselves with all they have been through.
My favorite fight in all of kiseki, after some thinking on this, has to be the boss fight between all of the Iron Bloods. Decisive Collision SAR is already probably my favorite track in cold steel, but adding a whole lot of other story elements that feel very attaching, damn fantastic fight. Jusis has really grown on me, he grew from some pompus prick noble who feels holier than thou, to one of the few class 7 members who actually is suffering, the only other one I can think of is Alisa (not counting rean bc its very obvious at that point). Jusis has known a lack of love from his father since he was born of a commoner, but held high regard for his brother, Rufus, for always sticking up for him. Eventually, with adding Millium to the picture, Jusis gained another person he can show his softer side for, since Millium does not mind bringing out her most playful side with him. With CS2, Jusis felt torn about Rufus’s decision on joining the noble alliance and being an enemy of his father since he does not wish to follow his footsteps. By CS3, Jusis learns the hard truth that Rufus isn’t even blood related at all, and that his father has been neglecting the wrong child, but wanted to keep up appearances. On top of the iron bloods actions and severe confrontation with Rufus, Jusis had to deal with fighting Millium, which they both did not want to do. With Millium dying also, Jusis was torn lmao. He has basically no family left, and I love those moments of character suffering, when they have very little to no power to fix anything. Glad the series was not afraid to go this route.
With Alisa, she probably has the award of the worst parents of kiseki. While rean has the worst dad, both of his mothers are very nice and irrelevant people. Alisa has a bitch of a mom who was willing to fuck over the world if it was really her old husband she was dealing with. But with the reveal that it was his alter ego, she dipped out. But please realize she was willing to 100% follow through, if it was her original husbands personality who decided all that. And as for that husband/ father of alisa. Ya where to begin: war criminal, crimes against humanity, terrorist, disregard for his daughter and wife, the list goes on. So Alisa had a very shitty parental issue, and adding salt on the wound, with her best friend and maid going back to the dark side bc….a contract im still having trouble understanding the legalities of, Alisa was also in a very dark spot with all of her close members basically becoming her enemy.
On a different topic, music has always been something I put something important to me when I rate or talk about a game or series. Each kiseki game has their absolute bangers. Sky Fc having sophisticated fight, SC silver will, 3rd Silver will forma de death (Defeat me, that is all), Zero having getting over the barrier, Ao having azure arbitrator, cs1 having their op [I like it ] cs2 having their final final boss theme, cs3 having the godsend that is decisive collision SAR, and CS4 having the final dungeon theme. I feel its fair to say that each of the kiseki games pre CS had very notable themes for each area, Like off of memory, I can remember the theme of the port town from Sky. I can remember both the hospital theme and the main city themes of all of the crossbell games. Each of the fortresses had very militaristic vibes, very memorable.
The cold steel games did not have very memorable tracks aside from some of the battle themes. A lot of them felt like…filler music. I honestly cannot remember an area theme aside from cs4 final dungeon theme (thanks to recent playing), and maybe the ehil fortress theme. A lot of it was “that sure was an area theme” that serves the purpose to having an area theme. The music composer change was apparent. The new composer definitely had some bangers, but everything else was, lack of a better word, unremarkable. Which is sad, bc I love hearing an entire ost full of heaters.
Onto another subject, holy fuck is cold steel easy. For the first two games, I played on Hard, thinking I would like some challenge since ive played this series for a while now. I switched to Nightmare for the last two games and still did not feel fulfilled in how baffling easy these games are. I should have limited myself to like, not using brave orders or not using ex orbs, or not using certain strats or characters, etc..
The biggest and most notable example for how I found the games were too easy, was in CS3 against both Campanella and McBurn during the crossbell final fight. They both were heavy ass dealing magic users who had the capability to nuke my party whenever they so wished…Emmas brave order allows me to absorb magic attacks for 10 turns. Both mcburn and campanella do NOTHING but magic attacks on both basic and craft arts. The difficulty went from a 9 to a 1. Should I have not done it? Maybe. Should they have had that function in the game? No. Brave orders trivialize almost every fight. The few times I was screwed over was during cs4 when them fuckass ironbloods have brave orders of their own, cancelling out mine, but from there I do way too much damage and take too little to care regardless. On nightmare the game was too easy. On the Very Hard mode of their series, about…10 games in, their game was too easy. They added way too much and had too many gimmicks to charatcters for difficulty to mean anything. This creates another issue I hear which is abyss mode, which is just too hard, and that you have to resort to the most cheese strats to even manage a standing chance. Balance does not feel efficient in this series now, which is unfortunate bc I liked the difficulty standing in the crossbell games, even though if those had the starting problem with how busted you can be. Even that does not compare to what you can accomplish by in cs4.

So onto da meat and ‘tatoes of my biggest issues: the story and Rean problem.
So this is a bit of a weird, yet understandable situation that sort of makes sense, but is still very asinine to see. Ill give a few examples. Musse is a phenomenal character who shows the true ideals she stands her guns on, dealing with the political world and the brunt of stress she had the potential of dealing with. Juna is a victim of crossbells annexation and holds a lot of malice and anxiety towards both the ones responsible and the scapegoats for her tragedy. Alisa struggles in the business world trying to appease to her mothers wishes all while trying to understand and better herself as a woman. Emma is looking to see becoming the next promising elder in her secret village of witches who are in charge of very important world building stuff. Gauis ( as much of a meme that he is) is now a dominion member of the church, a very high position of power and influence, akin to oroborus members. Jusis is a struggling member of the noble faction who learns to keep his friends close to him while fighting against the system that oppresses his friends so. Altina has now grown more self aware of her own existence and wants to learn how to be a better person with her friends.
Until Rean steps in.
From there, Musse becomes very insufferable, Alisa becomes very rean thirsty, Juna does a complete 180 on her standing with her teacher and by the end of CS4 confesses her love to him, Altina all of a sudden loves rean, Emma gets naked several times for rean (in the astral plane), gauis then wont shut the fuck up about the wind (maybe this isn’t a rean problem), jusis just relies on rean whenever he steps in, fie relates rean to her dad and falls for him, laura p much forces herself onto rean, sara is into rean, claire kisses rean, machias rean, kurts there, rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean rean
REAN
Now on the flipside, this is where it gets funny. Rean is a very suffering character in which by the end of CS1. He lost his friends to the faction and had a great fear of not knowing whether they were alive again or not. By CS2 he was stuck being a dog for the government against his will and judgement. By CS3, he was promoted from dog to hound for the government whenever lechter dropped in with a paper in front of reans face and said “ do it, boy”. By the end of cs3, he was at his lowest, being the cause for the end of the world, all with his friend dead, and his dad holding him by the neck saying “les get this bread”. Rean definatly is a good character and has a lot of hard moments….when he isn’t involved with girls.
When he is involved with a female of some type, he becomes the most dense motherfucker next to the likes of kirito or lucia route tonouji kotaro. He does the “ahh..etto..nani..?” while looking dumbstruck as ever. He can just BREATHE, and they be thinking about rean 24/7. Everybody loves rean. He don’t understand why. You see, I liked Juna in Cs3 bc she hated rean for some reason. Ash was a dick to rean. Juna 180’d in cs4 and that was very fucking unfortunate. Rean needs some haters bc god forbid he got none in the world of Zemuria. Of course this is 100% on the writters, bc man, give the man a nongeneric role that isn’t harem protagonist or shonen katana wielding mr perfect. There is so much more to all the bullshit they give him, like the cassius bright ordeal, or the fact he can beat super well trained awakener pilots with like 2 years experience vs their 50+ years. Did you know he can cut tanks in half without harming the drivers? Bc fuck it why not.
Its very weird that when either party is separate, whether it’s the friends faction or rean solo, they have great moments, but mesh the two together, and it can be a mess 75% of the time. Speaking of factions and members, I can think of two characters who had 0 reason to be a part of the group. Elliot had no business being there. No one will fight me on that. Hes accomplished nothing, can contribute nothing, is nothing, and will have been remembered for nothing aside from needing to get stronger and getting his s-craft the next segment. The next member who did not need to be there was laura. She was best as a side character or npc to the likes of towa. Alright characters to their standing, but 0 need to be in the party. Every one else played a much bigger role than those two. They had to story-buff laura to have her the slightest semblance of being in the group, its laughable. She was insufferable in cs1, unnoticeably there in cs2, there in cs3, and a creep in cs4. I have no idea why she has fans aside from their poor taste in “she looks hot bro”. The same can be said for a lot of characters of class 7, but they at least provide their 2 cents at important members. I can easily list them: Emma is the most important class 7 member with her role as the witch, jusis is the noble lord upcoming, machias is the peoples champ for the noble party, alisa runs the fucking reinford company is a branch ceo, gauis (undeservingly) is dominion number 8 of the church, fie is ( by some fucking aspull) a senior ranked bracer within a year, sara is a former high ranked jeager, crow (I don’t even need to list his reasons lmao, if u know u goddamn know), juna is a crossbell hero, kurt is a fucking vander (who does nothing with it now that im thinking about it), altina is a former intelligence member for the government, musse is the fucking mastermind behind countering Osbornes plans, ash is the secret survivor (retcon lmao) of hamel and semi responsible for the events leading to cs4 with the assassination attempt of the emperor. Everyone important. Elliot? Plays a mean violin. Laura? Her dads cool.
Back to more gripping on other subjects, the oroborus have never been more frauds than ever before. Their cast is fucking weak sauce. It took fucking 4 games to convince me that mc burn is actually a threat instead of being a guy who can set stuff on fire very hot. Ya turns out he is a super demon from another plane of reality that the full force of class 7 could dent in, cool. Duvalie has no personality aside from “waga arugie!!” shes the main member of the stalhlrieqhwfbwerjgbwerv, but she quit that p much. The others followed suit after their main boss died. Speaking of, the main boss, lliane, died to a backshot from Rufus lmao. Vita quit, Bluebanc quit, McBurn p much I think quit from the ending of cs4, campanella kind of was there but got pushed back by the most obscure of npcs (aurelias right hand man whose name I forgot lmao) and to top it off: there was very little they did in terms of hostility and terrorism. Shirly literally was there to fuck around and for some reason gilbert was there. Remember in Sky when oroborus actually initiated world-ending shit? Oh ya also forgot that mariabell was there…don’t know why exactly she was there now that I think about it. She played like no role I was aware of for the phantasmal blaze plan. Speaking of, that plan is retarded.
Osborne was the most competent villain in cold steel, man actually thought light years in advance. Everyone else was either alight or less. George was a joke. No one is taking his ass seriously. Want to see a better fat villain? Watch puss in boots 2.
The last compliment ill give, which I don’t know if I covered already or not, was act 1 of cold steel 4 was the best act out of all of cold steel apart from each games finales. Even at that, I liked it more than cs1 and cs4s. each character learning how to deal with their own shit without rean? Awesome stuff. The guy needed to take a step back. There was some fantastic moments that each character had an opportunity to shine in.
Now for the worst act ive had the bitter experience of dealing with, act 3 of cs3. This shits like cs1 chapters all together, but on steroids. Not only did almost nothing happen for the grand amount of it, I can remember nothing apart from their final dungeon, but they had one of the worst rean moments in the game. Sara kiss bc she likes her former student. And claire comparing rean to her brother and proceeds to kiss him. Claire probably has to be my most hated character in kiseki. Shes so badly written, but guys will fall for her bc shes hot lmao. It’s a mess. But my main issue lies in the final dungeon part of that act. Can you imagine being told by some jobber group that “ no, you cant come in, youre not strong enough, nor do you have a leader amongst your group to handle this, we’ll do it, unless u think u can beat us”. Rean in all his glory, backs off, one of the rare times he submits to this bc………anyway, aurelia joins in, that one character they introduced in cs2 for being super strong bc she is. Anyway turns out by the magical science of bulllshit, shes strong! And a leader! She will lead the brigade! And in gameplay? Oh fuck it make her one of the strongest units you have ever seen. Cherry on top? She can match up to Lliane toe to toe, ya know, the 7th Anguis who was known for being the litteral strongest next to McBurn, who had demon powers. Ya she can match up to her toe to toe, no special powers OR REASONING, whatsoever. And then they all fuck off, chapter over. Man im getting a headache thinking about that again.

Cold steel has more problems than praises than I can count, but their praises can come high when I think on them. So its not that it’s a dogshit series, but disappointing for how they handled a lot of scenes and characters. I hope, oh god do I hope, that kuro fixes up a lot of the issues I had. Mainly there being a Van problem, whether it be a harem or naïve issue. I move onto the penultimate game before the Calvard arc, Hajimari. I thought I was really looking forward to this game from the past, now im just bracing myself for a lot of weird character moments. If they somehow manage to salvage a lot of characters from their previous bad writing experience, ill be baffled upon belief.