Cold Steel 3, at its core, has an identity crisis.

For the gameplay, the game has no idea whether it wants to limit past craft options or break the game in half even on Nightmare with brave orders and bell quartz stacking. For the characters, the game has no idea whether it wants to wipe the slate clean with a solid new cast or grind their interactions/the plot to a halt to reintroduce the old class and characters from past arcs. This extends to the narrative, since the game has to juggle the ramifications of a year-long timeskip, sometimes inconsistently, with setting up Western Erebonia. For Rean, the game has no idea whether it wants to explore his role as the Ashen Chevalier or do Fates Conquest levels of the plot bending over to explain that Rean somehow never harmed anyone. And for the plot structure, Einhel Keep exists.

In order for the game to attempt to solve all of this, Cold Steel 3 is the longest Trails game so far. However, because of the identity crisis, CS3 is the only “setup game” so far that doesn’t steadily raise the tension. The overarching plot until the finale consists of Ouroboros needing to test Aions(for reasons not adequately explained), Osborne preparing Erebonia for the war/Great Twilight, and the conflict between Ouroboros, the Gnomes, and Osbo-oops, wait, they’re all on the same side in the finale, nevermind. This causes CS3 to have the most formulaic and slowest plot, which is jarring when following up CS2’s ending.

And the weird thing is, I actually enjoyed this the most out of all the Cold Steel games so far despite the flaws.

CS3 Nightmare gameplay shatters after the well-designed Shirley/Duvalie fight, but breaking the game with a sledgehammer(heh) is actually fun and better than S-Craft spam. New Class VII isn’t burdened by the “Group A/Group B” issue the original class did and thus manages to have a great cast dynamic and entertaining characters(Musse is on thin ice though). Seeing party members from past arcs show up was also very cool(especially bringing Agate and Tita to Hamel). CS3 Chapter 1 is probably the best Chapter 1 in the series so far, and aside from a few issues CS3’s ending is also great. Even Einhel Keep manages to be more enjoyable than the Old Schoolhouse due to each chapter having substantial character interactions set there between battles.

Because of this, CS3 is in a weird limbo state for me being simultaneously the most enjoyable and the least satisfying of the Cold Steel games. Despite the lasting and potential flaws(lol curse) and this game overall being worse than CS2, I’m looking forward to CS4 finally getting to some of the payoffs.

The gameplay isn't too inventive, but it's almost always(screw Twinsgate) balanced and fun on NG from varied map design and most of the characters having distinct roles(rip Julio). While the story has a few structural flaws from the route and scale system(most notably shafting Cordelia after chapter 14 and missing crucial development from Roland if you don't do Roland route chapter 15), it's still amazing with an engaging plot and central characters. Finally, the music has Combat -Destiny-, which speaks for itself. One of my favorite games ever and definitely recommend if you can handle waiting 6 hours before chapter 3 starts.