Fata Morgana, is the nice boy in class, he has all the good grades, he's not particularly ugly, he's cultivated, he'll likely gonna get into a good university once he's gonna graduate, he seems to have no flaws, except one, he's painfully boring in its flawlessness
Subahibi on the other hand, he's the bad boy , he's dark, sinister, a bit cringe , he has black hair, he makes barely passable poetry , he smokes marijuana and is involved with several case of high school crime, he always brings a guitar and listen to 21 pilot on his airpods, not the kinda guy you should get interrested in, he looks silly , he looks like a fucking looser, he thinks he's goat, but he's not goat, he's just a piece of shit edgy kids and oh my god I hate this guy, but one day you go to a party
Who did you end up in bed with ? That's right , not fucking Fata, he's too good for this, It's Sca-di, you woke up next morning, and he fucked you and you look past the bed border and your mom is lying on the floor , fucked like she never has been before. Then he wokes up with pancackes, kiss you goodbye and leaves you with a teen pregnancy he's never gonna act upon. But the memory of such an experience will last with you for the rest of your goddamn life

Trails of Cold Steel IV : End Of Saga (and my sanity)

Before properly starting this review, I wanted to tell you a little story about myself.

In 2019, there was a game by the name of Kingdom Hearts III, now I know this is gonna sound off topic but bear with me for a second. Kingdom Hearts as a franchise was really important in my formative years of gaming, I received the first entry on Christmas of 2003 (the same year I got my PS2) probably because my mom saw Donald and Goofy on the cover and thought it was just one of many Disney games that she already brought home to keep me occupied during her busy hours.

What she didn’t know is that this single event was going to change the trajectory of my life forever and was going to trigger my biggest most long-running autistic hyper obsession I’ll ever have in my life. I’d say that KH1 is the most important game in my life because as funny as it’s going to sound, it was the game that taught me that games could be so much more than electronic distractions, more than just a virtual toy to lose a few hours on. Oh sure I did have games that could’ve also done that in my library such as “Link’s Awakening” or “Legacy of Kain : Soul Reaver” but as excellent as these games were, they were a bit too “cerebral” for my younger self and I only got to finish them several years down the line when I was intellectually inclined to do so.

KH1 was this perfect blend of complex yet simple, engaging yet straightforward, beautifully poetic and epic. And of course being attached to Disney properties definitely did help. Exploring worlds based on some of my childhood favorite movies was like a dream come true and all of this packed in a great deal of mystery and a seemingly deeper lore that one might not expect from a crossover game. By the end of KH1, I was so charmed, so starstruck by how magic the experience was that I said to myself : “I don’t know what this is, but I need more of whatever this is !” and thankfully enough, KH1 was also an amazing gateway title to the wider world of JRPG’s. It was thanks to KH1 (and a neighbour who was deep into RPG) that I got to play FFIX, my first Final Fantasy game for the first time, my aunt brought me Dark Cloud 2 and so forth and so forth, combine this with me discovering the internet and the wonderful world of emulation and I was set for life catching up on all the amazing games I’ve missed out on over the years and still am catching up to this day.

But KH was different, unlike many JRPG series Kingdom Hearts had its own mythology, its own internal lore and hinged heavily on its continuity. It was in fact one of the series main selling points, you came for the Disney shenanigans and you stayed to hear about the next chapter in Tetsuya Nomura’s wild ride. And while I skipped Chain of Memories when it came out (only to come back to it, to understand KH2 a lil better), I played KH2 and holy shit that game got me hooked for good and I was set for life ! Between the Mickey letter at the end and the awesome secret ending with these badass knights holding keyblade in some sort of desert, I knew that whenever KH3 was going to come out, it was going to be the best fucking game in my life.

Now KH2 was released in 2005 and KH3 eventually released in 2019…

When Square eventually announced that we’ll get not just one, not two but three KH games before the release of KH3, I was going insane !
But deep in my mind all I really wanted was KH3, the fabled conclusion to the epic saga that I was now a part of because in the end that’s one of the reasons I even got obsessed with KH in the first place. It felt like I was becoming a part of something ! I was witnessing the birth of a cult-classic franchise and I was witnessing first hand the continuous creation of its bigger story…

This excitement lasted for a while… but then an event happened which started instilling doubt into my faith in this franchise, this was the release of a little game known as Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. As a videogame, KH3D is probably one of the most serviceable games in the franchise but its story is where I started realizing that the writers were kind of stuck in a corner with this whole “seeker of darkness” arc. The plot started going off the rails with retcons on previous antagonist coming back for plot contrivance reasons, the 2 main lead were going through the same character arc they did in the previous mainline title only served on a different plate and fucking Time-Travel was a thing and made an already convoluted story even more convoluted and everything felt like it’ll lead to all the tragedies in the series and the investment I had in said tragedies being ruined for cheap fanservice down the line.

And yet, I didn’t give up, I still waited for the day KH3 would be mine. But 15 years is a long time, in 15 years a lot of things happened and the little boy who was having fun pushing the triangle button to get on the Hydra’s back in 2005 has went through a lot, I graduated from elementary school and high school, I’ve entered college then dropped out of college, I had a stomach surgery, lost my virginity, experienced many other games and many other media and sadly developed something known as : critical thinking. Since then, I replayed all the KH games through the HD collection discovering the Final Mix version of these games for the first time and realizing that KH2 wasn’t just “great”, it was “a masterpiece” and easily the single best Action-RPG ever released even almost 20 years after its release and while I still hold a lot of fondness for both KH1 and KH2 (and 358/2 days to a lesser extend), the same couldn’t be said for the portable entries.

I tried to get back into BBS but I found the game to be a boring slog with terrible writing, a bland trio of characters, a battle system that was fundamentally broken and became monotonous very fast once I understood the “cracks” in the code and a story that’s full of good ideas but executed sloppily and had to resolve to using a shit load of retcon about how the Keyblade worked in order to expand the universe which killed a bit of the magic of the first game’s plot in my opinion. Suffice to say that while I don’t find BBS bad, it’s definitely a game that aged like piss in my mind because it was trying to make the world too complex while not delivering where it mattered (aka : the character writing, the main plot and having a fun complex battle system).

When KH3 finally came out, I was a changed man and part of me still couldn’t believe this game was real and I could actually purchase it at my local game store. So I did play KH3, spending roughly 40 or so hours completing it and to say that my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined was an understatement. KH3 was indeed the big conclusive finale of the franchise and as such it’s the converging point of everything the series has built up to this point but sadly, it was also the culmination of all the bullshit the series has accumulated over the years and has slowly but surely transformed a once beloved and respected cult classic JRPG series into some sort of a running joke.
I kinda live with the disappointment nowadays and the Re:Mind DLC probably helped mitigate some of my issues I had with the game initially but I simply couldn’t believe in the “KH plan” anymore. The problem with Kingdom Hearts is that what was once the game series that taught me that games can have genuinely great and engaging writing on top of fun gameplay became just this confused mess of shitty fanservice and lore-flopping. Like the series forgot that it was supposed to tell a story with themes and shit and instead just became a collection of cliché and lore stuff thrown haphazardly into a semi-coherent mess and in the end, it wasn’t even conclusive enough, most of it was set up for the next arc which is going to be based on the story explored in the mobile game and … man I just couldn’t care less.

I already invested so much time and energy with this franchise but nowadays, I can’t even gather the energy to recommend it to anybody anymore. I think KH is very different for the people who discovered the franchise now without any nostalgic childhood attachment to it, the early games are a bit janky and most of the portable entry are not the height of gaming promised by your peers, only KH2 stands out amongst the rest for just being some sort of miracle accident which ended up creating one of the most fun and versatile action-rpg ever released (but only if you’re playing on critical mode, why would you play KH2 on anything but Critical is beyond me)

The reason I went on this tangent about KH is to tell you that after KH, I always seeked for something else that I could claim as my new hyper-obsession and at the time I was playing KH3, a friend of mine was talking about the Trails Series and hearing about it made me jump out of my chair, it sounded too good to be true ! An expensive multi-generational epic journey through multiple connected entries with an insane amount of attention dedicated to worldbuilding and continuity ? Damn, maybe I found what I wanted. So over the past 3-4 years, I caught up with the series and I did find my new hyper-obsession… well not with Trails… but with another less “respectable” franchise that I already mentioned in my CS2 review but that’s a story for another time.

I really wish I could’ve become a true super highly obsessed fan of Trails who couldn’t help but marathon these games, but the story of my relationship with Trails was a rocky one, full of powerful highs and unfortunate lows. Full of missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential, not everyone can be the next Matsuno and with the last few entries I kinda gave up on the series giving me something meaningful to latch myself onto, I never became a fan of Trails but I can somewhat empathize with Trails fans due to my experience with the KH series and how it went from my lifeblood to my favorite gaming toxic relationship.

And these problems, these minor issues that I reported in detail back during my Azure review kinda grew out of proportions like a big cancerous tumor filling itself with pus and dead cells and it all culminated in me playing Cold Steel IV.

The worst JRPG, I’ve ever played

Not “one” of the worst, that was true for all the previous entries but this one, easily takes the cake as “THE” worst experience I’ve ever had playing a JRPG.

This is quite a bold claim especially for someone like me who has well over 5000 games logged on my account, I can already smell the comments coming from a mile away.

“But CaaaaaaaaaaAAAaaaaani, you can’t possibly say this is worst than the likes of stuff like FF2, Sonic Chronicles, Any Compile Heart Games ever made, Lagoon, Lunar : Dragon Song or wtv… if you say Cold Steel IV is the worst, you should really start considering playing more truly bad games !”

And here’s the thing my dear readers, I do play bad games, sometimes by choice and sometimes by accident, I’ve had my fair share of experience with bonafide turds ! From games that are barely playable, those with awful game and level design flaws, bad controls, bad music, gameplay, completely nonsensical plot and generally an experience in which all of these elements combined into something truly awful !

I remember fondly when my mom got me “Realplay : PuzzleSphere” on Christmas and I ended using the “PuzzleSphere” in question more as a mace to hit my brother on the head with than an actual controller because of how much the game sucked ass, or getting “Space Chimp” and “Zatura” on the PS2 (bet you don’t even remember Zatura ! It was a shitty sci-fi rip-off of Jumanji that was released in theaters for some reason) ! And don’t get me started on Shrek Fairytale Freakdown for the Game Boy Color ugh. Heck I even gladly played bad games from franchises I love, Megaman X6 and X7 comes to mind as two different flavors of bad games, several Castlevania entries too and to stay on topic with the subject of this review : Ys IV Mask of The Sun and Ys III Wanderers From Ys are legitimately worse games than CS4 !

To me there’s layers to bad video games and to quote Yahtzee from the Escapist : It’s not the bad games that are the worst to review, it’s the bland ones ! The one that just takes ideas from several places and mish-mash them into a semi-functional but seemingly indistinguishable mess, the kind of games that makes you feel “nothing” at the end of the day and might make you hate the medium or genre they came from more by their sheer laziness and incompetence !

I usually love playing bad games because to me every experience is worth having, I have a lot of fondness for bad videogames. I don’t think people make bad games on purpose and you can learn a lot about your own taste or learn a lot more about what not to do when making a game from playing bad video games ! Bad games have cultural values because you can teach about their failures at game design school to teach younger devs what not to do when making a video game ! I sometimes think that some bad games have some “soul” to them, like the developers made it as a labor of love and not a labor of pure exploitation to get a paycheck at the end of the month. So yeah ! I love bad games ! Some pure exquisite kusoge of the highest level !

But even amongst BAD and I mean BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD games, Cold Steel IV, heck even more so the entire Cold Steel saga stands out in the sea of forgettable throwaway garbage that the industry pulls out on a monthly basis thanks in no small part to being part of a larger series and in doing so and failing completely at everything it does retroactively ruin my enjoyment of the entire Trails franchise up to that point ! And you may think that my little KH3 tangent at the start was to pad out time ! Well, you’re right !
But it wouldn’t be a Trails game without a copious dose of pointless padding now wouldn’t it ? (and don’t worry, it’s not just an elaborated meta joke, there’s a lot more in common between KH3 and Cold Steel IV than meets the eyes)

This time I won’t make you sit through an entire slew of paragraphs talking about the gameplay this time around because unsurprisingly, it hasn’t changed, like at all. Aside from being able to stack 2 additional BP on top of the 5 you could already stack in previous games, there is no change to the battle system this time around. That doesn’t mean that CS4 improves on the battle system, the enemy design, the boss design or god forbid the exploration but we’ll talk in due time when I’d talk about how basic the entire thing is and how it ruined my enjoyment of the entire experience.

On a more minor notes, there’s a few QoL improvements here and there especially when it comes to NPC, now every new dialogues are notified by a “NEW” next to the area you want to quick travel to which makes it easier to do an NPC sweep but also makes it harder to ignore that part of the game if you’re autistic like me and can’t stand looking at unfinished business.

In fact, unlike most games in the series, I actually did manage to get a full rank of AP point this time around by just fucking around completing side quest ! Was that necessary ? No, did it make my suffering last for longer than necessary ? Absolutely ! But I’m glad that at least in midst of all of the game’s issues, there are smudges of brilliance thrown here and there and I’d say that not making the 100% completion requirement as cryptic and obtuse as the other titles for no reasons (especially due to the needlessly padded out nature of these games preventing me from ever wanting to replay any of them, even the ones I did enjoy) was for once something that I did appreciate (now as for the actual quality of the side content, we’ll talk about that in a minute).

The game starts on probably the only good part of the game until a long while, the game teases you on being good by bringing back the playable cast members of the previous two arcs and even opens up by a shot of Estelle brand new PS4 HD Graphics ass, showing that the priorities and demographic of this game changed a lot since the last time Estelle was relevant in anything and was actually a respectfully written female character unlike most of the cast of this mess of an arc.

This section which seemingly serves as a tutorial to the game mechanics (you know, the one’s that hasn’t changed from the previous game) will let you play as husks of your favorite characters pretending to have any relevance into this game plot, a running theme throughout the entire thing but we’ll get to that later down the line (and I’ve been saying this a lot already HUH ?). After a boss fight against two of the worst antagonist ever written in the series, the game can actually continue

In the last episode of Rean Schwarzer epic Schwarzin adventure, our boy turned completely schizo after sniffing too much of the gnomes racist perfume infusion therefore triggering the release of said gaz throughout the entire country and activating the cheap cliffhanger protocol that’s so near and dear to Falcom’s writing team to make you play another 80-90 hours slog of a game where only 30 of said hours (assuming I’m being generous here) will be of any significance thanks to the power of cockblocking !
After this gnome endeavor from last time, our heroes got teleported to Eryn village, the hometown of Emma (the plot delivery glasses girl) and the base of operation of the ancient Hexen Clan aka the Witches aka Ancient Guardians of the world who lives like Internet hasn’t been invented yet like in the funny wizard boy book written by a notorious transphobe. It’s here that the rest of Class VII realizes that their teacher has gone missing and is stuck in some sort of gnome BDSM dungeon at least according to a few cutscenes and the deliciously edgy title screen of the game and thus they need to save him !

But how will they do it ?

Well by going through all the places you’ve already slogged and backtracked too with next to no change to the level layout of enemy types of course ! But don’t worry, you’re not just going around planting magic needles on the ground for plot reasons, you’re also doing this to find your missing friend and yes

Yes, you’ve been waiting for this one haven’t you ?

It’s time for yet another epic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXp-Ft404E

“Final Fantasy VI Search For Your Friends Rip-Off moment™ !”

Yes because the same way CS3 was pretty much a repurposed CS1, the same goes for CS4 being a repurposed CS2 ! Because here at Falcom, we love recycling our own ideas (borrowed from several other franchises which did it miles better anyway) and running them to the ground because you bitches have no standard and will eat anything up and accept how stagnant the franchise has become by now !

So after another tutorial dungeon to re-teach you about all the mechanics you already experienced with in the prologue (I shit you not) in one of the series now titular “Tartarus rip-off which looks randomly generated but isn’t actually randomly generated” dungeon (aka : Old Schoolhouse 3 : Revenge of the Sith) you’re out in the world to plant some magic needle to find the Gnome Headquarters, repeat that in a pattern of 3 times, get one party member back and experience what’s happening to the world in the eve of a full-scale war.

I’m going to give credit where credit is due with Act 1, starting off the game without its titular main character is actually a pretty cool idea in a “passing of the torch” kind of way. Rean has always been the strongest, baddest party member in all 3 previous Cold Steel games (if you didn’t have Laura to one-shot everything and anything that is). So it creates an interesting power imbalance which forces you to play with how well NC7 plays out of one another, this balance is pretty cool and makes for some cool moments. At that point, the story hasn’t really devolved into full crayon-eater mode either so it’s alright, I do wish that Act 1 or at least the idea that the game featured NC7 as the new lead party member actually lasted for longer because Act 1 is going to be one of the last time outside of bonding events that the characters will get to shine in any particular way with some insanely cool character moment and interesting arc.

However, I must insist that this part of the game is still relatively boring to go through. Since this is the sequel to a previous Trails game, most of the environments are ripped straight out of CS3 and with little change to the environment (aside from the skybox because that’s what war does to you) and…

Ok I think I need to come clean about the padding issues in this franchise because it is genuinely going out of control the more I advance throughout the series. See the issue with Trails isn’t that the games are too long because BIG NEWS !

JRPG’s ARE LONG !

…

Right ?

No, it’s just that in been long, these games really don’t offer much in terms of actual proper game design, while there was some effort made all the way back in the Crosbell duology to mitigate those issues, in the end, Trails has never been a series known for how excellent its gameplay loop and game design was. Ultimately, the problem with Trails is a fundamental issue with how these titles are constructed and this isn’t something I only recently started complaining about in this arc, it’s something true for the entire series up to that point. That the first game is a slow burn to get yourself familiar with the world and the setting ? Fine ! But why in the absolute living fuck does that slow pacing need to translate to every title regardless of whether or not it’s an intro title or not ?

I swear to god, it’s something you start getting numb to because of how much the game tries to find ways to make the act of playing them less of a chore, by adding more quick travel points or even turbo mode or things of the sort but it never really solves the issues ! These game structures are so rigid and artificial that you can almost see and feel where they pointlessly added stuff to artificially make the game last longer ! But I can already hear you say :

“Well if these games are so long, it’s because it’s to establish the atmosphere and the worldbuilding and the” blah blah blah cut the crap already, you know it’s not true !

You know that most of these games could be cut in half and only get better for it in terms of rhythm if you only keeping in it the actual meaningful content and that’s the problem because we’ve all been fooled into thinking that it was actually necessary to be like that in order to communicate the plot better but it’s not even fucking true is it ?

Even less so when all of the actual good scenes and character moments are contained almost exclusively in the bonding events scene which for the record are both some of the best and some of the worst in the series for reasons we’ll get into later.

These games barely evolved their formula and I’m getting tired of them, as an RPG it’s also some of the milquetoast RPG structure you could ever eat. What’s your favorite dungeon in CS4 ? The series of corridors with brown bricks or the ones with blue bricks ? SO MUCH VARIETY IT’S STAGGERING !
It’s crazy how much I managed to put out and how much so many people managed to put out with how dull and boring the loop of battle, exploration, fetch quest and cutscenes gets in this series, it’s literally driving me nuts at how fucking dull this shit it, I’m going insane !

The only thing that’s carrying this series is just text since the “cutscenes” (if you wanna even call it that) have always been so fucking low budget, badly directed and animated that you might as well make it a visual novel instead and I’ve seen Visual Novels with better staging and direction than most of the dialogue scenes in this game !

God it’s also so fucking predictable, you can make a freaking drinking game out of this !

The characters are in a pinch ? Take a shot as they get their ass saved by a random third actor that was seemingly in the room this whole time and solve the situation on their own while “Sword of Biting Gale” plays !

Take another shot when the characters are done talking about their next step and a villain that was positioned on a roof or a hill was observing them menacingly saying “Nyeheheh, class VII, We’ll see about that !”

Take another shot when the progression is stopped by Rean doing another unwarranted and frankly unnecessary pep-talk friendship speech for no fucking reasons !

Ludo-Narration ? Staging ? Direction ? Not using every repetitive character trope and cheap narrative tool in the book to tell your story through what the medium can offer instead ? I never heard that shit from a freaking Falcom game ! Good god, this is the lowest of lows, you know some games have good direction, others have bad direction but Welcome to the Kiseki series where we just won’t direct our cutscenes at all…

And fuck there is so many characters now, each dialogue and cutscene take fucking forever because Billy, Eddy, Mandy and Roger all have their snarky little comment to make on the situation and often time there’s like 60 or so character on screen and they all have to say something and it’s always the driest, blandest, most unimportant piece of dialogue why did you fucking Talk Elliot Craig ? NOBODY ASKED YOUR WHITE ASS OPINION ABOUT WAR ! YOU ARE A NOTHING CHARACTER SAYING NOTHING AND I HATE YOU ! AND ALL OF OLD CLASS VII FOR THAT MATTER ! GOD WHAT A BUNCH OF BORING USELESS CUNT I SWEAR TO GOD !

Act 2 is probably where the game starts hitting the shitting fan with this !

After saving Rean, the game’s overall quality and pacing take a complete nosedive never to return. I said in the last review that if we dug deeper we might reach China ?

But holy fucking shit, we haven’t just reached China, in fact, We dug so deep that there was no more ground to dig up and we’ve now entered an alternate dimension where the laws of physics have been broken and now everything works in “Kiseki Hours” where a single hour of gameplay progress amounts to 5 IRL time and nothing freaking happened !


Act 2 is just a pure narrative void, there is nothing of note that happen in Act 2, you’re just doing a lot of fetch questing, each worst than the last and you enter pointless conflicts with characters because this game is so starved for time and content that it starts throwing boss fight against some of the most random individuals, in fact most of the setup for boss fights in this game make no sense at all. As I was playing through the game I was even wondering half of the time : “Why are we fighting this person ? It’s completely pointless ? Why are we doing this ?” and that my friend is thanks to a really useful tool the authors have come up with to artificially spawn conflicts out of the blue !

Introducing

The Curse !

The Curse is a fascinating tool of narrative design that allows the writers to do whatever the fuck they want and justify any actions any characters at any moments might take !

In the text, it is said that the curse is something that acts on the human brain and forces them to obey their deeper instinct, but what it essentially does for the most part is turn everyone evil, violent and racist for seemingly no goddamn reasons. It also make characters act in completely uncharacteristic ways so you can have a fight with them or they can fuck you over to pad out more freaking time and justify you going through another boring ass dungeon and fighting another pointless boss fight !

But in reality, the curse is whatever the writers want it to be, yes sometimes it does make people evil and racist but sometimes it can make them addicted to gambling, sometimes it can erase memories, sometimes it can make animals aggressive and turn them into demons, sometimes it can make somebody mess their paperwork or lose their key, sometimes it can make a nun break a pot, sometimes it can force a child to run head first into the nearest kidnapper, sometimes it can power-up robots and machines and most importantly of all, sometimes it can turn your jacuzzi into purple goo which is fucking terrible isn’t it ?

The curse has no rules and no consistency whatsoever, the curse is seemingly the cause and the consequences of everything in the plot ! In fact, doing the sidequests makes the curse even worse as you realize that there are no concrete rules to the curse nor are there any concrete rules to how it works, how it affects certain people and not others or even how you’re supposed to cure people from it !

Elliot will use the power of music to turn a demon into a regular horse again and it’s never brought up ever in the actual main plot ? Bro if you can just get rid of demons like that why are we still busy fighting them in the first place ? The curse can also seemingly get cured by just “talking it out” with the person who’s affected like ok sure why not but also sometimes the curse just heals… by itself ! Magically ! With no real reasons behind it ! One time there’s a little girl who forgets who the SSS is but later without any side quest or extra scenes or anything, the girl just randomly remembers who they are and it’s ???



The only consistent thing about the curse is that it only spreads across the empire and respects the state's border but they never actually give a proper explanation as to why it works like this in the first place ? Why in the absolute living goddamn fuck is an ancient demonic curse from aeons past cares about the modern state borders of some bum ass country ? Like boohoo, poor little curse, it can’t get past a silly barrier ! I thought the Sept-Terrions were supposed to transcend the rules of the mortal realms and be these super-powerful artifacts !

I mean for fuck sake, the previous Sept-Terrion was LITERALLY ABLE TO REWRITE REALITY ! The Power Creep ceiling has already been met ! You can’t make something crazier than something which literally can ignore the rules of physics and rewrite reality how they see fit ! And yet, the game will always try to pretend that the Great One and the curse is the most dangerous fucking threat to have ever existed and seemingly the reason why the entire series happened up to this point !

Oh yeah because yeah, how about that ?

How about this franchise lore and worlbuilding being completely fucking wasted in favor of shitty JRPG plot number 5840 ?

Yeah, remember the gnome shit from CS3 ? That was already pretty fucking bad wasn’t it ? Well get a kick out of this !

Every

Single

Event

In

The

Series

Was all part of some

ANCIENT

RACIST

GUNDAM

GOD



To rebuild itself and become ultra-mega powerful, Ishmelga is the name of the robot and the one who wants to bring the world to an end, with Black…. oh wait no silly, let’s make this antagonist even more of a fucking joke than he already is by making it a Dr.Jekyl and Mr Gnome situation, yes the leader of the gnome, the absolute mastermind behind everything, is just a random sockpuppet for Ishmelga ! And even Osborne is a sockpuppet for Ishmelga, but you see he did all the evil shit ever so he can STOP Ishmelga thanks to his son Rean Chad ThunderCock Schwarzer !

Remember the cool duality between Olivert and Osborne ? The whole class warfare story ? The Imperialism ?

Get the fuck out of here man, it was NEVER ABOUT ALL OF THAT !

It’s all a setup for a shitty mech battle tournament arc with the most non-existent stake possible.

None of the villains actually wants to win most of the time, you fight people that are sometimes evil, sometimes virtuous and sometimes nothing at all thanks to the curse making things more confusing

Osborne is a wet fart of a character and a complete disapointment, the guy went from a cunning manipulator to literally a bootleg Xehanort from KH3 with the exact same end goal of “doing all of this for the good of the world” which is just “stop the racism god to spread more racism”

Oh yeah, because speaking of Olivier ?

Well fuck you he’s alive, in fact everyone who died or disappeared at the end of CS3 are alive and they’re alive because GEORGE NOME actually saved them because GEORGE NOME is not all bad guys, he has good heart inside of his tiny lil gnome heart. Everyone gets revived and sometimes they even get shitty mind control masks and have chuuni names like “Red Rosweil” who is a resurrected Angelica with her memories erased but her PEDOPHILIA STILL INTACT

FUCK YEAH LET’S GO I LOVE THIS CLOWN ASS FRANCHISE !

Yeah right, let’s make all the characters make jokes about pairing minors and adult in the same franchise that has an honest to god CHILD BROTHEL SUB-PLOT ! Hey !

How about we make said CSA victim a victim of jokey funny lol super funky sexual harassment heh ?

Ah Angelica, she ain’t just a pedophile ! SHE’S OUR PEDOPHILE !

As for Olivier, well if character assassination was a sport, the guy would be a gold fucking medalist because goddamn what have they done to my man.

To be frank it’s either getting character assassinated so thoroughly that you might actually file a complaint for manslaughter or seeing all of your favorite characters come back with their personality stripped down to a mere caricature of what they once was just for empty fanservice moment that will only work on the lowest common denominator to try and make people think this game has anything of value as the “END OF SAGA” ! When in fact absolutely nothing of value is to be found here

The story is empty, the characters are empty, the themes are bland and generic, the villains are a joke and half of them don’t even want to win because of the shitty reasons they even do all of this in the first place !

Every part of the plot is an excuse to either pad out more time or to have a “cool” boss fight against some of the most random people ever that has no reason to happen

Irina, why are you evil ?

Oh you’re not evil anymore ? Ok let’s hug it out and forget about it

THIS GAME WAS WRITTEN FOR LITERAL 5 YEAR OLD

Everytime you think the story is doing something cool or half-decent, it’s canceled out by the game doing something stupid

And don’t get me started on fucking Rean

Rean, Rean, Rean, Rean…

Oh boy, you…

You fucking pointless, annoying shallow simulacrum of a character ! You are the worst of them all, I fucking despise your sorry Narou-Kei Light Novel Default Ass ever since the first game and even in this fucking game where you saw little to no actual development and even worse actually regressed just to have the same “your friends love you” magic friendship crystal thing plot from the second game !

You are everything that’s wrong with Japanese entertainment and the genre as a whole ! You’re like a pompous little snob that gets everything he wants, an harem of cute girl wanting to suck his dick at a moments noticed, a cool giant robot ready to get him out of any bad situation, some ancient cool edgy super power that often benefit you more than it nerfs you !

You’re the chosen hero of some sort of prophecy, the ultimate sacrifice and probably the sole reason why the world go round ! And yet, you ask me to feel pity for your sorry ass ? You stubbed your toe once and made it personal and now suddenly you go from shitty power fantasy guy to a relatable virtuous misunderstood hero !

YOU ARE NOTHING REAN

JUST A SHITTY LITTLE CENTRIST CUCK WITH LITTLE TO NO ACTUAL AGENCY AND NO IDEOLOGY TO CALL YOUR OWN ! YOU’RE TRYING TO FIND THE “THIRD PATH” AND WHAT EVEN IS THE THIRD PATH HUH ? WHAT IS IT ? THE THIRD PATH THROUGH ONE OF YOUR 3 ROMANCEABLE STUDENTS CUNT ? ARE YOU A DISCORD MOD REAN ? ARE YOU DONE BEING A SISCON BECAUSE THAT’S THE ONLY SMIDGE OF PERSONALITY THE WRITERS HAS GIVEN TO YOU ???? OH I SHOULD’VE PROBABLY ROMANCED ELISE ! YOU CERTAINLY WOULD’VE LIKED THAT YOU SACCHARINE PUPPY PERVERT !

FUCK OFF REAN

YOU ARE THE WORST

FUCK YOU !

WHY SHOULD I KNEEL TO SUCH A SHITTY CHARACTER LIKE YOU !

YOU’VE EARNED NONE OF MY SYMPATHY

YOU’VE EARNE NONE OF THOSE FUCKING DOGSHIT FRIENDSHIP SPEECH !

YOU’RE SO COOL AND SO STRONG AND MAYBE EVEN STRONGER THAN CASSIUS BUT YOUR HEART IS BROKEN WELL MAYBE YOUR ASS SHOULD’VE ALSO BEEN BROKEN BY BAITING ALL THE FUJOSHI INTO TURNING INTO CROW’S PERSONAL POWER BOTTOM ONAHOLE BECAUSE THAT’S ALL YOUR FUCKING WORTH !

YOU SHOULD’VE DIED ! OH I WISH YOU HAD DIED AND THE NORMAL ENDING WAS THE CANON ONE SO THAT YOUR FUCKING FACE WOULD NEVER FUCKING SHOW UP IN ANYTHING EVER AGAIN !

God and all of the bonding events, god what happened to this franchise man ? It used to actually be about something and now it’s all gone, it’s all a mess for dirty perverted otakus to fap to !

AND I’M A DIRTY PERVERTED OTAKU WHO FAPS TO THIS STUFF !

This game wants to be an eroge so fucking bad man and I swear to god, this game would’ve been better off dropping the pretense and have H-Scenes

The bonding events in this game are a lil more fleshed out thanks to them being the conclusion to some arcs

BUT WHY IN THE FUCK MUST IT ALMOST ALL END WITH THE VAGINA EQUIPPED INDIVIDUALS WANTING REAN’S COCK ? LIKE WOW THAT FUCKING LAURA BONDING EVENT IS SO BAD ! Rean’s all like “I wanna kms” and Laura push him against the wall AND FORCE KISS HIM

THIS GAME IS A COMEDY ! IT’S A PARODY ! IT’S NOT SERIOUS ! IT HAS NEVER BEEN SERIOUS FOR A SINGLE SECOND !

And it ruined several previous entries, because it can’t just be a shitty game on its own, it’s a shitty game that ruins the credibility and my attachment to this world ! No I don’t care what’s the deal with McBurn, he was the very definition of some 14 years old OC and his presence in the narrative is amount to nothing and you fight this guy FUCKING 11 TIMES LIKE FUCKING CHRIST AND IT’S ALWAYS THE EASIEST SHIT !

Man the ending is also a fucking mess bro what the fuck is this ! You need to collect some magic crystal in some deadass cavern so it can help you contain the racism god in your friendship crystal so you can kill him and end racism forever ISTG, I’ve seen scooby-doo episodes which are more thought out like this

Man I’ve wasted so much time on this franchise and all for this ?

And you can’t even be too mad at this because they’ve put some genuine effort sometimes, they’ve put some effort in how the story is told through the NPC points of view and everything but why should I care about Falcom’s nailing the details when they fail so fucking miserably in the things that actually matter ?

Fuck Trails man…

You guys are the scientology church of JRPG fandom

It’s all those great promises of grand epic storytelling, political writing on par with Gundam and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, an endless amount of depth and generosity and attention to detail

But all you get is disappointment, all you get for your investment is some shitty ass JRPG plot that’s borrowed from like 10 different sources that did all the things that Trails did but miles better, it’s the oatmeal of JRPG !

Cold Steel made me understand why Nintendo Youtubers don't like JRPG's

Cold Steel made me understand the POV of people who started KH with the HD collection and didn't like/get it because they never grew an autistic attachment to it when they were young

Cold Steel made me even more of a leftoid than I ACTUALLY am

Cold Steel made me trauma dump to my therapist about it

Cold Steel is my videogame on a stick that's the rival of all those AVGN rip-off

Cold Steel actually worsen my mood the more I played it

Cold Steel reminded me that anime can be cool but they can also be mad cringe


I’m done writing this review, I was going to do a serious one but get a shitty rant instead, just talking about this game puts me in a bad mood !

I don’t care if Reverie or Kuro gets better ! I don’t want to touch another one of those games for a long time if ever ! I’m not even invested anymore ! Not even ironically ! This game is a mess ! And this series is a mess !

STAY AWAY FROM THIS SERIES ! IT'S POISON IT'S ALL POISON ! THERE'S SO MUCH BETTER THINGS OUT THERE ! I SWEAR AND BEG AND CRY FUCK THIS !

FUCK

FUCK

FUCK

FUCK

ASSBALLS

FUCK

Anyway…

Hop on Rance

Before I start this review I need to preface that this game is an extremely good game there's no reason to deny the sheer quality and scope of such a project.

With that said, was it a completely satisfying game to me ? A long time Zelda fan who also happened to have the original BOTW ranked super highly as one of my favorite game of all time ?

Heeeeh not quite

By the time I'm writing this review I have completed every single shrine, gotten every single light roots, gotten every single bubul frog crystals, done a couple of the most important mission, got all the dragon tears and ofc finished the 5 temples as well as defeating the evil Ganondorf.

So I'm confident in saying that while all of this was still a relatively fun and addicting experience, there's a lingering feeling at the back of my head telling me that this wasn't really that great of a sequel to BOTW

But why ? Why did I have this awkward feeling ?

I guess it's because BOTW was such a unique experience on release, one that could be difficult to top even with the best of effort, it's such a unique take on Zelda going back to its roots and giving the series the proper evolution it needed after years of stagnant attempt at recapturing the magic of OOT with more or less good success.

It was an ode to freedom, to adventure, it was a game that had the balls to throw away 20 years of Zelda convention and was making no compromise to deliver the best experience possible.

It's hard to deny how much of an amazing title BOTW was when the only people complaining about it are game design illiterate Zelda fans who thought it wasn't "Zelda enough" (which in my book was a good thing) and personally speaking it was hard to recapture a similar experience.

TOTK feels more like what happens when you're bored of playing Minecraft Vanilla and you want to spice things up with some mods to add more stuff to do and that's how I feel about most of the new features in this game, nothing that truly enhances the original game experience in any significant way but just add more stuff on top of what was already a pretty meaty game.

But in doing so, I don't feel that the new stuff was thought with the same minutia or the same sense of vision that BOTW did.

I start with the big elephant in the room which is the map of the game.

As you may know, the map of TOTK is mostly lifted off of the one from BOTW, the surface world isn't entirely devoid of new stuff but it's still relatively the same world just slightly touched up.

The problem with this is that it completely change the way you experience the world, in BOTW I was discovering the world, I was letting myself go loose and absorb the entirety of the game in all of its scope, in TOTK the exploration feels a bit more processed.

I know these plains, I've climbed these mountains, I've sailed those seas, I've been there so I don't approach the world of TOTK the same way I did the one in BOTW.

BOTW felt like actually exploring a world and creating your own adventure, TOTK feels like checking a list of stuff to revisit to see what's different as well as progressing through the very disjointed story of the game (more on that later).

But TOTK has 2 more layers to its map, the sky and the depths !

These were the main selling point of the game (especially the sky) and the two biggest addition to BOTW's world and what do I think of both of them ?

They're honestly not that amazing, there are very few sky islands and most of them outside of the starting area are just the same copy pasted layout of one island with a rotating platform, a distributor and an empty shrine you have to bring a crystal to either by going to an island with an underground where it lies or going to an island where the same cube boss guards it on its back.

There's only maybe 2 or 3 sky island that are actually different and offer a different set of challenges and going to them is kind of bothersome with no proper way to traverse the sky (unless you decide to create an airbike), at some point the sky islands were becoming a bit too predictable but at least they were better than...

The Depths...

So ok, when I first entered the depths my jaw dropped to the floor, these crazy mf made an entire map under the map ???

But then you actually explore the depth and realize its depressingly void of interest, it's the same biomes and structure repeated infinitely with little to nothing of value to be found in here and the only real appeal of it is making surface shrines easier to find (due to the map being symetrical) and grinding for Zonite Ore to upgrade your battery (and I guess that neat little quest with the Yiga Clan but even that got dull pretty fast), every trip down here ended in disappointment and felt like a massive waste of my time until I decided to make an air bike to skip on most of the cumbersome traversal (because god the geography of the depth coupled with the limited light sources just makes me loose my mind)

The best addition to the world at least to me are the caves and wells, these should've been more advertised because these are awesome ! They're the kind of places that feels like it actually belonged in the original game map, they have unique and interesting layouts and they hold lots of surprises within them without feeling too samey and I wish the Sky Islands and The depths were designed with the same philosophy as them.

Another problem arise when discussing the story of the game. See BOTW structure really doesn't mesh well with a more narratively driven story and it shows, you can feel that there was an intended order in how you're supposed to experience what the game has to offer but if you played BOTW before, you don't wanna do that, you just want to explore the world and do things in whatever order you want !

But TOTK encourages to qualm your drive to explore and go on an adventure because not doing so will lead to a worst narrative experience, sometimes you get cutscenes out of order, you experience story segment out of order and the whole story gets broken because the first memory you get is of Zelda traveling to time and the second could be Ganon transforming into a demon and there's like 15 different step you just skipped.

It's sad because it makes some of the stronger more controlled moment of the story less effective as a result

In conclusion TOTK is a game that I enjoyed but it lacks the cohesiveness of the original game even if its fun to play around with the new ability

Trails to Azure : A Frustrating Masterpiece


Starting the Trails series was a wild ride, it had lows, it had highs (and oftentimes very high highs) but in general those games were overall pleasant to play although I can’t say any of them truly blown me away with the might of some of the old time greats such as Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Suikoden II and many more that I could mention.

I need to preface this because a lot of people might say that a lot of my criticism for these games are in bad faith but no, it’s just that I feel the main public of Trails comes from a non-JRPG background that aren’t used (and tired) of some of the genre tricks and thus claim Trails as this “outlier” that seemingly does what Nintendon’t.

But when a franchise such as the Legend of Heroes series is so long and so well beloved, it must’ve at least had that ONE game, that ONE that could universally be considered as one of the all time greats, every long JRPG series need its own FF VII, the kind of title that transcend the concept of being simply yet another good game in a long series of more or less good titles and reach out of the screen to slap you in the face, the kind of game that sparks debate on whether it’s an all-time classic or an overrated piece of trash (which if it reaches that status, that usually means it’s a title worth checking out if contrarians cares so much to dismantle them).

The qualities of the Trails series is not to demonstrate anymore, I’ve talked about most of what was great about the Trails formula in my big double-review of Sky FC and SC and what was ass about that formula too but I want to preface that every time, I felt that while the core idea of Trails was fantastic on paper, it often lacked in the execution department.

Awkward pacing and structures, repeated content, filler content up the wazoo, needlessly long stretch of uneventful and unengaging story section ludo-narrative dissonance, forgettable gameplay scenario (and in opposition the ones that were great), lackluster dungeon design, uneven sidequest (which hurts the pacing even more if like me you tend to go for all of them) and cliché character archetypes especially on the vilain side of things (especially in SC and Zero) that turn games that could be amazing into simply “good” games and that’s fair and alright

Because on the other side, there was always something that made me come back to them, whether it’s the sheer sincerity of it all, the charm of its cast of character and world, the minute attention to detail, the Quality of Life stuff that are genuinely impressive for mid-2000’s RPG standard, the buttery smooth and natural writing of dialogues and how all of these elements comes together to create a world that feel alive and pleasant to explore and get through even with all the bumps in the road as they can lead to some of the most emotional pay-off ever in an RPG that wouldn’t be possible if not for the weird way these games are divided and elongated to infinity.


Which is funny because so far, my favorite Trails game isn’t even the Trails that follow the classic Trails formula and it’s weird because that can’t be right. Trails the 3rd feels like an anomaly to me because it’s amazing in spite of being a Trails game rather than because it is a Trails game and I always feel “wrong” for liking it as much because it’s like out of all the cookies in the jar, I decided to pick the weird fucked up one that’s half-baked and taste funky but boy did those edibles hit the night I’ve finished Trails the 3rd and ended up as a sobbing mess clapping to the tunes of Cry for Me, Cry for You while being on my knee ready to suck off whoever came up with the name “Kevin Grahams”.

And so coming into Zero, I knew that I was gonna face the Trails Formula again and after a year of finishing 3rd (believe me it’s better to spread your playthrough of these games in the long run to not get burned out on them) and yeah it was the usual song and dance. Zero was a fine game, nothing exceptional and in some areas I’d say it’s slightly better than FC but also more forgettable despite still having all of the same qualities and flaws of the Sky Duology but made slightly more digestible for a new audience and because the games need to evolve with time.

And coming into AO, I thought to myself “Oh no it’s gonna happen again” and I remember dreading the recycling of content, the awkward pacing and structure, the shitty JRPG villains and all of the stuff that stopped me from fully appreciating SC in comparison to FC.

So let me preface this before anything else comes through, Ao fixes every issue I had with the typical “Trails Sequel” problem.

Of course being a sequel to the first game, the recycling of content is inevitable but I feel like they took some notes out of the Sky 3rd book and made it so the ratio from recycled area and new stuff was more balanced and the structure of the game isn’t as formulaic and redundant in fact this game is the opposite of a drag, it’s actually … genuinely engaging from the first hour to the last which is something I can’t say of all of the games I’ve covered so far.

Each plot related events are linked to new areas and dungeons, yeah sure you have to back and forth on the roads and villages of Crossbell at least once but pretty early on, you unlock a fast travel option for the entire map which mitigate a lot of the tedium, no longer do you have to take the bus, now you can get access to any area on the map by using a good ol car (and later on an Airship because of course) which is more quality of life stuff on top of the ones from Zero.

And those new areas and dungeons are freaking amazing for the most part, it’s insane how much they’ve improved in the dungeon design department, it’s nothing to write home about but the dungeons have multiple paths, they have light puzzle solving, tons of chest and secrets to find and the atmosphere is generally stellar in each of them due to some kickass music (shoutout to Mystic Core that one bangs).

Out of all the Dungeons in the game only 3 do come back from the previous game but they like Trails the 3rd they rearranged some stuff to make them more exciting to go through the second time in and honestly, I like this aspect of the game a lot because unlike SC you don’t feel burned out on all of the padding linked to all of that.

Gameplay wise, the game is just more of the same and an improvement on Zero’s and the rest of the series' already solid system. The game introduces Master Quartz which is kind of a poor attempt at introducing a “job system” into the game but its effect on combat is barely noticeable outside of stat buffs, additional effects that are too situational to be useful and Master Arts which come so late into the game due to the leveling curves of MQ being slow as shit and comes out as just yet another unexploited mechanic that has potential but could never truly blossom into something unique.

Exclusive to certain dungeons and the last chapter of the game is the Burst Mode that you can activate after filling up a gauge on the right corner of the screen and lets you spam magic instantly without cool-down time, get turn priority for the entire duration of it, a free auto-CP recovery to make you spam all the craft available, serves as an emergency heal all status effect and art/craft cancel and probably will put your children to college and make your wife love you again if that doesn’t indicate how absolutely busted that shit is.

In fact, the game has so many options for “breaking the game in half”, like for the other titles I’ve played the game on normal so I’m pretty sure I’m missing out on its true depth but damn with so many options on top of combo craft and s-craft, this game is very generous when it comes to combat option and trivialize a lot of combat scenario even though thankfully near the end of the game there’s quite a few challenging boss fight (and the final boss which is about as bullshitly hard as its main theme song is pure literal cum in music form) and some superbosses that are in the main game and don’t penalize you for losing against them but rewards you with more lore and a shit load of EXP if you manage to fully beat them properly (but I’ll get to some problem about missable content later trust me) there’s even some bosses with unique mechanic, sadly only two of them are like that in the game which is a shame because the game could use more unique boss encounter that fully exploit the semi-tactical RPG positioning aspect of the battle system because a lot of bosses just end up being big hard hitting, hard tanking HP sponges that are more long that they are difficult to beat (especially since most of them also are resistant to all stat debuffs and status effect which is always the lamest shit ever).

But enough about all of that, I already went long enough on this write-up and I still haven’t talked about the strongest and at points most divisive part of the game which is the story.

And boy is the story of that game the best in the series yet.

To start up, the initial premise of the scenario is amazing, following the events of Zero most of the Mafia controlling the city and the government officials corrupt by them got properly arrested and put to prison, in the after-math of the events that transpired that day a new Mayor was elected, this guy is Dieter Crois the drippest capitalist pig you’ll ever know who decides to perform a bunch of reform within the current government, build a tower the size of his ego and organize an international trade conference between each nation of West Zemuria to discuss the future of Crossbell.

In the wake of all these changes lies a dormant conspiracy that involves Crossbell status as a buffer state between the war-mongering expansionist Erebonian Empire and the Politically divided Republic of Calvard as well as all kinds of third parties wanting to profit off of the chaos to advance their agenda such as Ouroboros serving more of a support role this time.
In fact the main political conflict throughout the narrative is deeply fascinating because it puts into light how complex and nuanced Crossbell political situation is, Liberl was already a country prompt to the menace of the Empire (which made Richard a superbly written villain for the first game) but Crossbell is an individual state that’s not only rotten to the core with weak governmental and military structure, an awkward national identity due to be the crossroad of the continent but also a huge economic asset for the greater power as Crossbell neutrality combined to being the center of the world's economy makes it a tool for anyone that dare to profit off of that status.

Crossbell is constantly on the verge of exploding onto itself and while the mafia and the cult were terrible they kinda served as a mean to balance the fragile ecosystem of the Crossbell criminal and political underworld, of course a country ruled by mobs that fight over drugs and gang wars is never a good thing and Revache was a pretty goofy bunch of goons but once they’re gone, that stability isn’t so guarantee anymore and between keeping them around and eliminating them is like choosing between the lesser of two evils which is naturally the narrative and thematic throughline of the game.

Late into the game during the Zemurian conference, Dieter announces wanting to make Crossbell an independent nation to save itself from the calculating hands of Erebonia and Calvard and the argument presented are pretty convincing and naturally as someone who spent so many times with these characters, with these places with these inhabitants you do lowkey wish for that stability, you feel proud for them to be able to reunite as a nation and become a legitimate state because they deserve it.

In fact I believe it’s in these high stakes narrative with constantly rising tension that the Trails Formula shine the best for me, in the other game talking to all the NPC and experiencing micro-level story arcs while roaming around the world felt like at nice addition at best and a distraction at worse something that’s good on paper but not something that truly enhances the narrative of each entry main plot significantly enough to enrich it but here it’s such a core element of the conflict at place that you’d be missing out not to talk to every NPC, each of them having different opinions on what’s going on reinforcing the hard nut to crank Crossbell as a setting is.

Eventually these political elements cross the path of the Supernatural aspect of the series and even when it enters full bulshit JRPG mode the main themes and struggle presented by the game never truly fade away keeps being a narrative throughline for the entire duration of it and actually brings out more questions.

The typical “Trails pacing” is almost completely absent here, there is not a single dull moment in the narrative but because of the plot being so engaging on a micro and macro level at all time, it makes some of the Trails formula problem shine a bit brighter than they should and I think it has to do with the way the game handle its side-content.

The side-quest system of the series needs to go away or needs to be reworked, even tho this game has a lot more “good” or even “great” side-quest, a lot of them mechanically speaking involves pretty menial and dull task and the monster hunt is also just unnecessary but it’s not like you can skip on them either because they give you money, crucial plot elements and new mechanics to mess around with such as combo craft or quartz.
The game pushes you to do these side-content so much so that now some support requests are mandatory to progress through the game, like do we really need to go on a wild goose chase to bring a cat back to its owner just to set up a future rivalry between two characters ? I think not but the game feels like this part was absolutely necessary and crucial to the progression of the plot while some are not despite being of equal and even greater importance.

And don’t get me started on the secret side quest and all the missable content like the bonding events which are hidden behind cryptic and completely ass-backwards conditions. I wouldn’t be complaining so much about that since I do think it’s ok to have missable content in an RPG you will probably likely replay if you ever feel like it to keep it fresh on subsequent playthrough and with how massive these games get in terms of sheer volume of text and events to discover, it’s impossible not to miss on anything just playing casually without a guide.

But the game has no priority on what should be considered plot crucial quest to setup for a future conflict within the narrative (especially regarding one of … the “twist” …. uuugh… we’ll get there) and things that are unimportant but nice to have nonetheless and outright HIDE CRUCIAL LORE AND IMPORTANT CHARACTER MOMENT WITHOUT GIVING ANY WARNINGS OR HINTS TOWARD THEM.

WHY IS THIS SO INCONSISTENT I SWEAR TO GOD AAAAGH

This system slows down everything, make these games longer than they should be, ruin the pacing but because the game was so engaging, I was ready to forget its flaws because again I’m making a mountain out of a molehill because in general they are significantly more fun to go through here (for the more part) but these are minor but still infuriating little things (and as we’ve seen with this franchise both the good and the bad are always in the little things) that spits in the face of what could be a genuinely great experience instead of a chore, homeworks to do to get to the good and juicy parts.

I’ll talk about the newest addition to this game side-content aka the Bonding Event later when they become relevant because I want to talk about the story like the actual story.

While the context of the story is important to understand why this game works so well with the Trails formula, it’s nothing if the story has no good characters to back it up and interesting character arcs to go along with them so let’s talk about those.

Like I said previously in my Zero review, I think the SSS is a solid group of characters but they lack the oomfs of the cast from Sky and this remains true here, this cast lacks an Olivier, it lacks a Scherazad, a Kevin or more importantly an Estelle and Joshua. I also think that individually they don’t shine but together as a group that’s where the true force of the SSS lies

Joining the crew of the first game is two characters that were sporadically available throughout the course of Zero : Noel and Wazy, these additions are decent but with how solid and iconic the original 4 are they feel like Graggle from the Simpson (look it up) and the plot in general put much more importance to the main group than the entire SSS as a whole.
But I do like them a lot. Noel is a spunky tomboy with a great ass and a great attitude. She likes 2 things, cars and serving her country, the perfect tradwife to put as an avi to make terrible conservative twitter posts with pretty much.

Wazy is a cool and sleezy sexually ambiguous and smooth talking delinquent turned policeman with a secret life as one of the Graslitter and that plot wist was genuinely awesome as it made an already awesome character into an even bigger badass than he already was, I kinda regret not using him as much during the game because character wise, he’s really cool.

Most of the returning characters are still about as solid as ever, while Tio get a bit side-lined since her story arc is kinda over, the rest finally got the development they desperately needed.

Randy in particular is actually amazing, like I already loved Randy in Zero but this time around he really came into his own as the best character in the cast for me and the one with the best arc in this saga.

Rixia also joins the party later on and her arc was genuinely a nice surprise, she lived a life of strife where killing and perpetuating the burden of her family’s tradition while trying desperately to cling on to something to finally be truer to herself and see that reality shatter around her and not being able to forgive herself (AND I ALSO WANT TO MAKE BABIES WITH HER)

Rixia and Randy share more or less similar arcs but it’s also probably one of the main throughlines of the game, the so-called “barrier” the characters have to get over to reach their happiness.

The world of Trails is a cold, indifferent godless world, its inhabitant dancing to the tunes of these roaring factions, countries or cults or anything of the sort playing games of chess with every life in Zemuria.

While Trails always suffered from a very black and white approach to morality when it comes to its storytelling with clearly well established good guys and bad guys especially in SC, it often dabbled into the moral grayness of the world of Zemuria and how uncaring that grey can be.

And I think this is an aspect that the series shied away from for too long, while some sparks of it have been showing here and there with characters like Richard it was always overshadowed by Falcom need to establish a clear cut evil in the world and I honestly think the existence of Ouroboros, their continued influence within the narrative and many antagonist who are just evil for the hell of it is a complete waste of potential for this series.

But Ao embraces it, it embraces the terribly crude nature of the world of Zemuria, countries are set aflame, lives are lost or ruined, your protagonist are but pawns in a greater conflict, too weak to make a significant difference but determined enough to find a place in this world, to find their happiness and grasping it with their own han to assure a better tomorrow not by taking the easy path but by taking the hard one.
Everything feels bigger than us in this game, what is justice in a world where such concepts are malleable ? Can we truly escape this grayness, can we truly escape our past and our heritage ? Can we really hold the world on our shoulders when we can barely hold our sins crawling down our back ?

In this game, the characters are faced with those difficult situations and the game often asks the character what’s better between what they truly want and what seems like the most rational thing to do ?

And the game is fully in support of self-determinism of letting humanity and society grow and evolves through a complex cycle of mistakes and hardship because because in all that is beautiful and in all that is ugly, lays the indomitable human spirit that will one day transcend pain and suffering and lead to a better tomorrow.

The game knows that the characters are not fully in the right and that the villains aren’t fully in the wrong either. Sometimes the character will feel hypocritical, refusing the divine protection of infinite retry and reality altering shenanigans to assure Crossbell prosperity in the coming future just for the sake of saving one human life and make a little girl happy and not let them shoulder the pain of the world.

Even at the end of the day, the decisions taken by the characters didn’t lead to an happy ending, it’s a bittersweet reality that the game prepares you for during most of the game story, the villains in all of the bad they’ve committed did so to assure no one has to suffer and Crossbell can finally be free and independent and the characters knows this, they know not everyone will approve of their silly rpg nonsense motivations and actions and that they will have to carry the burden of the inevitable bigger evil that will loom over the horizon once the lesser of the two evils, the one keeping the balance of the world in spite of its darkness and toxic aspect will crumble…

In this ending, the game goes full circle, the same way removing Revache troubled the fragile balance of Crossbell, so was removing the cure to that balance just so that humanity can march on with dignity and they pay the ultimate price.

The ending is actually both terrible and genius, terrible in that it’s obvious sequel bait for future entry while also being conclusive in a “We did our best, and it didn’t work out yet we’re still here continuing the fight so that one day the conflict will end and peace will prevail.”

Now you must be thinking, that I love this game story, that I feel it’s deserving of its perfect 10/10 status among the fandom and the JRPG landscape, a game that’s both thought provoking, fun to play and terribly engaging the whole way through and a total “must-play masterpiece of the medium ?”

That’s because I wanted to demonstrate that Azure is a story that works, it’s a story that should work, it’s a story that had all the ingredients to work, they’ve baked the perfect cake with the perfect amount of icing and the cherry on top for good measure, it’s a beautiful cake.

But then Falcom was like : “But we do like Olives tho, it could be a great idea to spread olive haphazardly on our cake it’ll definitely make it better !” said the Falcom baker before getting his nuts kicked in by yours truly.

Everything up to Chapter 4 even with the Intermission which is funny character moment that helps you breathe between two heavy chapters and set up some rivalry as well as the “Fragments” mini-chapter that serves as the introduction to the last fifth is genuinely incredible, like every piece fitted into place, the puzzle was almost complete and at this point I was ready to SLAP that 10/10 rating almost instinctively because I can sense great art when I see and this smelled the smell of a pristine work of art that’s gonna stay in both my mind and my heart for the rest of my life.

But in the wake of realizing that they did something 100% right for once, Falcom decided to shoot themselves in the foot with a Bazooka and make some of the most completely ass-backwards narrative design decisions you could ever think of given the context of what they had built for 40 or so hours.

Like I said, the chapter starts really strongly, Dieter declared the independence of Crossbell and established himself as the new ruling president of the country, he reformed the police and the military to form one super giga defense force and the guy has gained the heart of everyone in Crossbell while gaining the favor of Arios as the new leading commander of the armies.

This send off a series of event that are way too fucking crazy and rise the stakes significantly, pretty much the Crois Family rose into power through gaining the favor of the people and this allowed them to carry their plan to claim back an ancient artifact that can pretty much over-rule basic scientific concept and this artifact is KeA herself and the plan of the Crois Family goes way back and is kind of meticulously calculated to sway the public opinion of them despite all of this, we need to remind ourselves that a good majority of people are ok with Crossbell gaining access to something equivalent to a nuclear bomb to protect the independance and sovereignity of Crossbell and establish world peace through fear mongering by being stronger than everyone on earth, people will have to accept their legitimacy and plan to create a United Nation of Zemuria but some are not because this is an illegitimate government that was established through non-democratic means.

After uncovering that plan, Lloyd and his friends get arrested for treasons and terrorism and the game fast forward one month later in Prison where we see Lloyd in Prison with Garcia a minor antagonist from the previous game as they break out of prison and kick Lloyd’s ass so that he can be a man and claim his life for himself and the people he cares about amidst the chaos.

You’re now left alone and the game goes on a “search for your friends” moment similar to Final Fantasy VI when you revisit the world in the aftermath of the villain's plan succeeding to reform your group and see what happened to everybody.

On paper, this last part is nice, I mean if it worked in esteemed classic Squaresoft 90’s JRPG classic, it should still work here but this is where the praise I gave to the game kinda falls aparts and the cracks start to form and show their ugly faces.
This last fifth of the game is where most of the issues with the game lies, after raising the tension, the stakes and the scale of the conflict to such absurd degree to build-up for this finale (and remember all of that buildup was honestly pretty phenomenal) sticking the landing was not gonna be an easy task.

For starters, this last chapter is long but like really long, I would say it’s about as long as its FFVI counterpart but at least in FFVI most of it was optional and you could ignore most of it (now why would you do that is completely up to you and you will miss out on stuff and have a least satisfying ending but that’s not here nor there) but also what happens in it isn’t really worth the time dedicated to it and you’re forced on a set path without any freedom of orders on how to do these rescue mission.

And I say this because the pacing of the game was generally excellent and there was no recycled area but here you kinda have to drag your ass across Crossbell once again and while there’s some visual change to most of the areas, it’s not much. The game shows that cryptids (big ass kaiju monsters) are roaming the world but outside of the first area you revisit, you don’t see them ever again (and thank god cause they’re a pain in the ass to defeat).

You get an exclusive party member for this part of the game only then he fucks off to the back row of your party not being playable once you gathered enough forces. But like these series of rescue missions are already pretty long and while some make sense why they would be there during the conflict, Tio and Ellie are just trapped somewhere for no apparent reasons on why they were there in the first place.

Of course I get it, going back to these areas lets you talk to more NPC’s and generally speaking this does work for the story but I still feel like the chapter is a drag because after saving your friends, you have to deactivate 2 magical artifacts protecting the Kefk… I mean the Orchis Tower.

Which is, you guessed it, an excuse to make you fight 2 Organization XI… Huh I mean Ouroboros members in their respective recycled dungeon (even with a self-aware joke about how they recycled one of the dungeon and at this point, given the precedent of the series to do that shit consistently, you’re really not having that kind of wink at the camera meta-humor anymore)

Which leads me to talk about Ouroboros and their role within the story, unlike SC when they were the main sources of conflict and were pretty ridiculous in their role, Ouroboros serves more as a neutral third party this time around a support role to provide the villains with the necessary means to carry out their plan, now of course this is just a total sham for further progressing their big plan which we still don’t know half a shit about, not even a slight hint.

All we kinda know about Ouroboros is that they have a big plan, they're gonna do some stuff to unleash that big plan and one day trust me it’s gonna pay-off while being the most obvious mustache twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain while doing so. It’s difficult to take that aspect of worldbuilding and continuity seriously because of a bigger issue that’s not just part of this game's core issues but the whole series issue when it comes to handling antagonistic forces throughout the different games.
See, Falcom has ideas but they also don’t have the balls to commit to these ideas, I said earlier that the world of Crossbell and Zemuria was a complex and unforgiving world especially for the small everyday people within it which in this case you are a part of. It’s a world prompt to conflict and political unrest, people die, people kill other people, some of your party members were either the victims or the perpetrators of terrible acts that now haunts them and have to carry their sin on their back (sometimes quite literally for characters like Kevin or Wazy) and it’s not afraid to show blood on screen or cities being set aflame.

But while all of this is said to you, no true significant loss is happening, if a character has a name or a face, they will simply not die, they will simply not suffer for too long. During the events of the story there’s a raid that happened earlier in the story, during that raid multiple characters which you come to know and love almost met their fate to the cruel hands of the world.

Illya is a character from the previous game and a pretty important character for one of your party member Rixia, Illya is also a shining beacon of light for the people of Crossbell being the living proof that the people of Crossbell are capable of culture that unites the heart of many outside of the realm of politics and ideologies. During the raid, she is supposedly dead but during the next chapter, she’s actually alive and fine.

Now mind you the game will be keeping you wary of her situation that she might suffer heavy consequences, her spin has been completely shattered, multiple ribs were broken, she’s barely hanging in there, here surviving this incident is a miracle but a miracle that might be a fate worse than death, she might not be able to dance and go back on stage.

But the characters say the opposite, that she has simply too much willpower and will come back on the stage and if you watch the end credits they were right as she comes back on stage like nothing happened (Crossbell probably has some of the best surgeons in Zemuria go figure at this point).

Another character, Fran (Noel’s sister) takes a literal grenade on her face, the fact that she survived is also completely unbelievable but also the fact that she survived while not being at least disfigured, injured or crippled and can carry on her life being as cute as a button and serve as a crew member for your newly acquired airship is just the icing on the cake and the accident or the troubled relationship with Noel going to the Defense force is but a fluke in the unrest of the chaos that this part of the story is.

Now it’s not like character deaths are an automatic peak fiction button but it’s kinda like salt, too much salt will hurt the steak, none at all will make it tasteless but just enough salt spread evenly with care and you have yourself a wonderful brisket.

I just think that for a game that loves to make the character in front of their own contradictions and carry the consequences of their actions, the game want to have its cake and eat too by not having loss be an actual part of that narrative process and I’m pretty sure it’s that way only so these characters can come back and say hi in future titles for fanservice but Sky wasn’t afraid of killing off characters. Here even the villains don’t die or face any real harsh punishment for the things they did and I feel like this is where the core demographic and aim of this game become painfully apparent.
This game is made primordially for teenagers, now there’s not anything wrong with that mind you tons of great stories are meant for a younger demographic and JRPG’s and anime are no strangers to that but that explains a lot about how it treats its audience but also how it treats its characters.

Remember when I said that as a group and a part of the narrative the SSS are solid but each member individually are kinda lacking ? Well I think it’s time to talk about the most awkward part of the game which is the character writing and yes we will also be talking about the hidden “bonding mechanic” and how that too hurts their development.

I think the issue with the characters is that while a lot of them are pretty solid, the group as a whole gravitates way too much around the central main character Lloyd, now I had a lot of apprehension for Lloyd coming from the first game where he’s a pretty flat classic shonen protagonist and it doesn’t really change too much here but I think Lloyd works for this kind of story because it needs a truly happy optimist guy to push away the grayness of the conflict.

Nah in reality the problem comes from the fact that the ideas behind the different character arcs are solid but oftentimes the execution can be a bit lacking or disappointing, I have nothing to say when it comes to Randy and Rixia, these two are the clear outliers.

But let’s talk about Harem.

Harem is a cancerous plague of Japanese writing and this game sadly suffers from it in full force, let’s take Ellie for example as this is the most flagrant exemple.

Ellie is an important figure within Crossbell, being the daughter of the previous mayor and someone knowledgeable on Crossbell’s internal politics, she chose to become a police officer to see the problems of Crossbell from the little people point of view but she knows that this position is temporary and that she’ll inevitably have to go back to politics if she wanna change the world. She also is really close to Dieter and Mariabelle Crois two of the main antagonist of the game and while she is shocked to learn about their heel turn, she’s not really that much concerned about their actions which is especially dumb in the latest scene involving Mariabelle where she gets off scott free and Ellie barely makes any comment about it or try to reason her or have discussion or intervene in any kind of manner.

Ellie has a main conflict but the game never truly expands or touches upon it, in fact contrary to what her chest area might indicate, Ellie is a pretty flat character with the only real piece of personality being the main love interest of Lloyd…

And that’s not even something unique to her because like we said earlier, this game is dead set on giving Lloyd a personal harem and this hurts most of the female characters that just breathed in the direction of Lloyd even if it often time makes very little sense at all like for Noel, you tell me when Noel showed any sign of affection for Lloyd before the final chapter happens and suddenly Mr.Smoothtalker convinces Noel to give up her position and abandon her heel turn in like 5 min just because Lloyd is so sexy, he can even convince a patriot to love him instead of the country they swore to protect somehow.

And do I really need to get into Tio ?

First of all Tio is a minor, the previous game has Lloyd even making a comment about how the legal age of consent is 16 (yeah this is this level of writing) and while their relationship is cute and pretty heartwarming, it’s more so in a lil sis and big bro kind of manner, not a romantic one but because this is a very self-indulgent Japanese game for teenagers to live their fantasy, of course it needs to be romantic.

Lloyd is too good, he has no flaws except being boring in his flawlessness, he seems to have no weakness outside of being kinda dense and that’s how average the dude is but in Azure they rise him to a level of absurd importance as even for the male character, Lloyd has become the most important person in their life and the catalyst towards their growth. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing but this is something the previous saga managed to avoid, while Estelle was the main protagonist, she wasn’t the object of interest of everyone around her and if everything Estelle was a character with depth.

A spunky tomboy with a heat or gold, a great personality but still unaware of the pain of growing up and facing hardship and claiming your happiness for yourself and she had great dynamic with all the party members in that game and of course the game was dead set on setting with one romance within the game and a beautifully touching one at that, sure there’s a love triangle with Kloe, her and Joshua but pretty quickly does Kloe give up since she understands the fact that she’ll never be the one and her responsibilities will stop her from pursuing his affection in the long run while not letting feelings be unheard and also she’s literally super best friend with Estelle on top of that and their relationship as love rivals and comrades is the cutest most adorable shit ever.

And you just… WISH that the SSS and the different guys and gals within it had that kind of chemistry with one another, kinda like how in Muv-Luv all the girls are in a competition for the main character but at the core of it all they’re just really good friends that does thing together and have an actual group dynamic outside of the MC and also that there is a supposed “canon” romance to pursue that make the most sense for the game narrative.

But here even the “canon” romance isn’t even canon and isn’t even unique and just the fact that it’s there is weird because it troubles me for the continuity of these games, I don’t mind romance at all and I do like to have choices but also whenever a game does that like FF VII for example, it’s a one game or one saga thing and not a piece of a bigger puzzle and I don’t think that that kind of narration has its place within the series you feel me ?

I bring the FFVII comparison because much like that game there’s a hidden “bonding” mechanic that the game never tells you about where by favoring certain characters you get more events with them, you get to know them better and you have one final scene with them which serves as the conclusion to their arc.

I don’t mind it in theory as I always welcome a bit of RP in my RPG and I’m all for giving each player a somewhat personalized experience tailored to them and forcing replay value to see what outcomes might happen but I say here it’s an issue for two reasons.

The first one is that this doesn’t work really well, there are 7 possible characters you can bond with and somehow I got none of the bonding scenes at the end, what was the trigger ? Where was I supposed to get that scene ? Did the algorithm that determines how many flags you have with one character broken ? Because in a good game, I would’ve had at least one of those scenes but here I got none. I get that this is a personal experience issue and that I probably should’ve looked at a guide but as someone who likes to enjoy my games blind it irks me off to miss on something like this because of bad programming or bad game design.

The second is how crucial these bonding scenes are especially for Randy, Rixia and Wazy because in the case of these 3 their entire backstory which the game teases but never fully touches upon are contained entirely in these bonding events at the tail end of their character arc. Even for the ones which don’t have such crucial information, it’s sad that depending on your actions, the game will not give you closure on characters if you didn’t go out of your way to get interested in them.

This is the reason why systems like the one from Persona and its social links always bothered me because it creates a disjointed narrative between what the characters are in the context of the narrative and their character arc which is a side-dish that you can completely miss out on and also will never matter and often contradicts what is told about them in the main game…

Here there’s not even a mechanical reason to reach for these bonding events, maybe a special craft or a special equipment or some bonuses would be cool but you get legitimately nothing and considering that Lloyd can end up with at least 3 female characters, it’s also pretty saddening that your Lloyd can end up single through no control of your own and Ellie is the most canon romance but I wonder if they’ll bounce back on this in future title or pretend like this entire thing isn’t entirely canon and back off from it, again there’s a contradiction between a system like this being implemented and the need to create a continuous narrative where these characters will eventually come back and see continuous development, it’s just too big to be ignored and I feel like it’s not as rewarding for the players who invested time into these characters because at the end your favorite won’t be the ones you liked the most, but the one you gave the most attention too (if that even make sense).

And this is for the good guys, I didn’t touch upon this game's treatment of antagonists and this review is already pretty long but damn, I need to talk about how the game treats its antagonist because here lies another core issue of the story.

I’ve mentioned earlier that the game presents a gray moral filter between its protagonist wanting for what they believe is the right thing for them but not the best solution for everyone and how the antagonist actually works toward the greater good but are misguided in the solution they came up with and the actions they had to take to reach these goals.

While all of this is true, the game still feels the need to write these characters in the most cartoonishly over the top way that even if deep down you and all the characters good, bad and neutral may think they have a point behind their action, you can’t help but realize that Falcom desperately need to establish a clear evil because it can’t handle a morally and philosophically complex situation like this with the tact and the subtlety that they should have.
But I will give credit where credit is due, the antagonists this time around are both the best and the worst ones of the series. Dieter is a great villain, I genuinely believe it was a fluke that he ended being as good as he is. The guy’s a cunning bastard and an idealist with natural charisma, he has money, he has power but most importantly he has influence beyond his ego. Dieter is a guy you can’t help but sympathize with, his idea of justice and the means necessary for a paradigm shift to occur in the world and the way he presents his arguments makes it hard not only for you but for the protagonist to fully disagree with his actions.

But he can be a little goofy but goofy in a Senator Armstrong kinda way, in the words of Jack he’s not greedy, he’s bat-shit insane. And I like that, he’s an entertaining and really good antagonist and his rise to power and the development of his plan make sense felt natural and earned and it was really great to see all of that happening at once with the people being united under his cause because they realize that this guy is the man that can bring about real change within the current system.

I think so far, Trails excelled with its “political” villains aka the characters that work toward achieving a certain goal to put into light a fundamental issue with the way society is handled and try to bring change even if it’s through extreme means. Richard did the coup d’etat out of love for his country, realizing the impending doom of the Erebonian Empire looming its ugly face over Liberl and the need to re-create a strong military force to prepare for the worst because no time of peace lasts forever. Dieter did so out of an ideal to create a better world, a united nation where war and conflicts would be things of the past with his motto being to use war as a mean to end all war (with the Aions being clear metaphor for nuclear dissuasion) with Crossbell at the front center of this newly established world order not through conquest but persuasion because if you want peace you need to prepare for war and Dieter knows that as long as Crossbell keep its neutrality, it’ll never be free of the clutches of Erebonia and Calvard and Crossbellians will never be considered a nation with people that can claim that land as theirs.

But for every villain like Dieter, Falcom likes to introduce his favorite trope : the “True Antagonist” , another plague of JRPG writing that should’ve died in the pits of hell in the Dragon Quest vault where it belongs (side note : I love Dragon Quest).

Azure is a game with many twists and turns to keep the story fresh and exciting at all times which include twists, lots of them and twist villains and for this game in particular they went a bit overkill in that area. The Crois family was already the true antagonist compared to Joachim because they’re the ones manipulating the D.G Cult to further their own agenda of awakening the Sept-Terrion of Mirage which was a family treasure the Crois family was trying to perfect for thousand of years through alchemy and other magic bullshit but it’s fine because Mariabelle is at first presented as an evil whorish side-kick while Dieter was the main dish and for good reason because he doesn’t care the Crois heritage more so than using said heritage to further his agenda.

But then once Dieter is defeated in what I swear was going to be the final dungeon of the game because that last chapter reached its most climatic point yet… Dieter gets cucked by the Ouroboros member who sold them the mech and then in a surprise reveal…

The actual villain comes out of the frey…

IAN

FUCKING

GRIMWOOD

Oh…

Man…

Where do I even begin with this absolutely unbelievably dumb plot-twist ?

Oh maybe the fact that Ian Grimwood is a total nobody, an absolute nothing character that had very little bearing on the plot for the past 50h, a character that I had rightfully ignored or even forgot the existence so far into the game or the fact that the side-quest leading to that revelation is AN HIDDEN MISSABLE QUEST THAT YOU CAN ONLY OBTAIN BY BACKING OUT OF THE ORCHIS TOWER AFTER A CLIMATIC CAR CRASH WHERE YOU SWEAR YOU COULDN’T GET OUT OF BECAUSE YOU’RE TAKEN BY THE FLOW OF THE STORY ????

HOW ASS-BACKWARD DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO THINK FOR EVEN A SECOND THAT YOU CAN PULL A TWIST VILLAIN OUT OF NOWHERE BY FORESHADOWING THEM IN CONTENT THAT’S MISSABLE YOU ABSOLUTE MEGA IDIOTS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

Outside of how bad this twist is, you wanna know the worst part about this ?

It’s completely pointless, like actually pointless, Ian is such a nothing villain that you could remove him from the story entirely and give his motivation to Arios which had an heel-turn during the events of the game and was Lloyd’s rival and the presumed murderer of his brother (according to his own term) and has motivations that are the exact same as those of Ian Chad ThunderCock Grimwood god even his DESIGN is like the stupidest shit ever, he’s just a regular fat dude lawyer how the fuck did he got all the connections and knowledge to carry out a plan like this that involves politics and the knowledge of an ancient art only known to a secret family of well-kept billionaires ???

The motivation of Ian is to use KeA aka the Sept-Terrion of Zero to rewrite reality so he can create a world where Crossbell rules over the world and no suffering could exist just because he lost his wife in a plane crash but guess what, that’s also the motivation of Arios WHO UNLIKE MEMEWOOD IS AN ACTUAL CHARACTER WITH PROPER BUILDUP, TENSIONS AND CONFLICTS BUILD AROUND HIM !

FOR FUCK SAKE, IT’S RIGHT FUCKING THERE, MAKING THE BIG ANIME BISHONEN SWORD GUY BETRAYING HIS OWN MORAL CODE AND WHAT THE BRACERS STAND FOR JUST FOR HIS OWN WISH THE FINAL BAD GUY ? THAT’S OBVIOUS AND THEY EVEN FUCKED THAT UP, IT MAKES ZERO SENSE FOR THIS CHARACTER TO EXIST.

The only reason Grimwood exist is so that Arios couldn’t be the real murderer of Lloyd’s brother so Arios could be forgiven for his “sins” and come up in subsequent entries but it’s not like it matters to do such mental gymnastic because no vilains in this game faces hard enough punishment for the crime they commited they either get forgiven by the protagonist are convinced of their wrong doings…

BUT IT’S NOT OVER YET

After Ian Grimwood got convinced to put a stop to his 5 year long super complex 5head plan after hearing the most 7/10 Shonen talk no jutsu speech ever by Lloyd FREAKING BANNINGS which is like wow… that … THAT WAS THE DEPTH OF YOUR CONVICTIONS ? (seriously fuck that character why is he a thing ?)

Turns out MARIABELLE WAS MANIPULATING GRIMWOOD FOR…

Reasons ?

Oh no it’s another one of those Ourobozos Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Umizoomies Rollie Polie Olie plan isn’t it ?

BUT OF COURSE IT IS BECAUSE HER MOTIVATION EITHER SEEMS TO BE SO THAT SHE EITHER

Did it for the lolz
Did it to preserve her family legacy
Get a free sit at the ouroboros club of bad Akatsuki Reject Extraordinaire table

Why is she the final villain and why does she also get scott free for the things that she did including killing (but not really and fuck her for that) Ian in front of them in fact when she says “Oh dw he’s fine, I specifically didn’t hit his vital organs” and everyone pans out to him because even I forgot he was still a thing in this story cause I simply cannot believe this wasn’t a complete fever dream that my mind made up out of fatigue for this game that does not seem to end…

I mean of course at the end of the day, all of these sets of villains were themselves controlled by a greater force which is the will of KeA aka the Sept-Terrion of Zero aka the Demi-urge in a pretty clever plot twist involving an intentional inconsistency between the first hour of Zero and the last hour of that same game and how she pretty much rewrite history to arrive at this place and time.

I think KeA, her inner struggles with the role she’s meant to fit, the nature of her own powers and simply how adorable and endearing she is and how you want her to be happy and not have to shoulder the sins of the world and end up like the old Demiurge is a pretty interesting take on the concept of “killing god” in a JRPG. And I think that everything surrounding her, her relationship to the SSS, her desire to make everyone happy and not having to face hardship kinda saves the last few remaining hours as the emotional crux of the story as a whole.
Falcom has this tendency to write good villains only for them to end up as the pawn of a greater more clear-cut evil and I think it’s a testament to what this game lacks to carry on the weight of all of its ideas

MATURITY

Maturity is a nebulous concept, but I think in this it should be about acknowledging the forces of your series and not self-indulge in your own fantasies for the sake of pleasing a niche of neckbeard who can’t think further than the back of the 4 walls that cover their sweaty mother’s basement.

Instead of treating its audience with respect by giving them what they need, they were contempt with giving what the “Falcom audience” wanted and it’s a damn shame because had it fully committed to its ideas, had it taken even more risk than it already did, had it stopped itself from falling into clichés and absurdly outdated JRPG tropes.

That’s really what’s stopping the series from reaching more than a simple niche cult status because it didn’t reach for the sky, it reached for the bottom and is contempt with doing so.

It’s also sad because for as much flack as I give the Sky Saga more so because of its structural issues, I felt that sense of maturity was real there but not in Crossbell but while the Sky series only had an ok premise and an ok story served by beautiful emotionally poignant writing that will get you one way or another.

Azure crumbled under the weights of its own self indulgence which tampered its ambition and by flying too close to the sun Falcom burned their wings in the process which is a shame because I think such an alignment of planets between story, themes, pacing, structure, ideas, politics, morality, hope, despair and the indomitable human spirit is not something that the series had achieved so far and likely will achieve ever again.

The reason why I’m still rating this game highly despite my numerous complains is because the game cheats, it cheated me, it cheated with my heart by giving me the classic cani-core soup that I love so much.

At times, Azure is Xenogears, at times it’s Suikoden or Tactics Ogre and at times it’s Gurren Lagann one of my favorite piece of fiction of all time to which they took direct inspiration when it comes to the character of Lloyd, his brother, KeA and the narrative of an ultimate force for good and an optimist at heart doing what they feel was right in the face of the dark grayness that plague the sad reality of the real world facing villains who asked for lighter burdens when they should’ve asked for broader shoulders which is exactly what Lloyd, the SSS, KeA and Crossbell stand for.

None of the dumb twist, the awkward pacing of the ending actually ruins the beautiful yet bittersweet message of the finale and the game as a whole in fact Ian is no different than Dieter or Arios, all three men wanted the best for the world but had to resolve to means that weren’t right, that were eradicating the very idea of freedom, democracy, individuality and human dignity.

These twist are just additional barriers and maybe with time I will grow to ignore them or maybe these twist will grow on me (except Mariabelle, she can go fuck herself) or maybe will I cross the barriers of Falcom’s terrible narrative priorities to enjoy what they truly accomplished especially after 4 chapters of a complete perfect run of good to great to brillant ideas and twists.

An ambitious, beautiful title, that’s a masterpiece that never actually meant it’s potential due to some creative decisions that needed more time to be thinked about but I think that at the end, I enjoyed this game and I wished I enjoyed it more, it’s a game I have lots of respect for what it is but also for what it fails at being

The beauty of an RPG that will stay with me for the rest of my life both in my mind and in my heart and that I personally feel everyone should get a feel for regardless of what I could’ve said and my very ambivalent feeling towards its almost legendary status.

And this is why Legend of Heroes : Trails to Azure is a frustrating Masterpiece

Xenosaga 3 : A Beautifully Flawed Conclusion

The Xeno franchise, from a creative perspective is probably one of the most fascinating dives into the wonders of the human imagination. If you’ve been reading my reviews so far (and thanks for doing so, I’m putting a bit too much effort for something so insignificant) you probably realized more than anything, I’m deeply fascinated by the creative process behind some of my favorite and least favorite media. This always came from a place of trying to understand why certain things click with me when others don’t. I’m always trying to understand the appeal of even the things I find little value for myself to the point it pisses me off when I simply don’t get why “kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch so much” as that one commercial said.

I’m of the belief that every piece of art has value no matter how good or bad it is, as long as it comes from a sincere place of passion from its creators and not simply out of shameless greedy exploitation. Art is the most powerful tool for humanity to communicate, discussing things through words can be good for a time, but I think if you truly want to understand someone deep inside their souls, you have to look at what they make. Each piece of art collectively forms a puzzle that transcends our mortal bodies and can eventually lead us to understand why humanity in all of its flaws and all of its qualities is actually beautiful and infinitely fascinating. But in the world of media analysis, we tend to celebrate successes and shun upon failures, why is that ? To be fair, it’s pretty self-explanatory, when you succeed at something, you see a direct feedback of progress but a failure and especially a pretty bad one can make you crawl into a fetal position and make you think like you never actually evolve. But you do evolve, constantly, even through failure, you learn, your failure leaves a trace but it doesn’t have to be a wholly negative one and if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that one man’s trash can always be another man’s treasure.

From that perspective, it’s easy to look at the entirety of the Xenosaga Trilogy as well as its subsequent side-material as nothing more than a failure. It’s a project that was too big for itself, it’s a project with a second episode so tonally inconsistent with its two sister entry that it left a mark that was hard to recover from, it’s a franchise when the main vision from its creators was taken, sliced up, diced up, mashed up and broke into pieces to create an incomplete husk of what simply could’ve been. You’ve likely seen projects like these, the most recent exemple I have of it myself being Final Fantasy XV which to this day I still think should’ve not been released due to how much of what was the core of the project got lost in translation in a product that will feel eternally incomplete. FFXV left me with a sense of frustration, a feeling of what could’ve been if it managed to actually pull off everything it set out to do.

In a sense Xenogears was in a similar situation and yet, Xenogears is still celebrated as a monument of the JRPG genre, it’s a cult classic which still remained that way years into the future and which legacy can be felt throughout other projects both from the Xeno franchise but also other games as well. Xenoblade also managed to pull its teeth out and become the first somewhat uncompromised Xeno project and I believe they still go really strong. And then there’s Xenosaga, the awkward middle child stuck on the 6th generation console that no one really talks about. I’ve heard Xenosaga being described as a failed attempt to recapture the feeling of Xenogears but ultimately failed at doing so and didn’t leave much of an impact or some people even call Xenogears the prototype of Saga.
Nonetheless, Xenosaga is in an awkward position as far as the entire franchise goes. Xenogears, although incomplete, was able to tell the whole story of the one episode they could get out to the market and thus naturally had more staying power. Xenoblade games (maybe XB3 aside) are standalone enough in their individual stories for people to latch onto them and were released in an era where the general playerbase for these kinds of games were larger than ever and on some of the most successful gaming consoles of all time. And while both managed to rise into prominence in the gaming sphere, Xenosaga still remains somewhat niche due to its lack of accessibility and the discussion surrounding the game amounts to highlighting its failings rather than celebrating its successes.

Xenosaga is a series that was dealt the worst of hands and everything points out at Xenosaga 3 being a catastrophe, I might be one of the 2 people on Earth to have enjoyed Xenosaga 2 but I can also admit this game fell short in several areas when it came to its plotting mostly because it wasn’t a Takahashi game. And since the series wasn’t going to have its 6 episodes run time (although you might consider that with the addition of Pied Pier, Freaks and Missing Year it does amount to 6 games in the end) to tell the full scope of its story Xenosaga 3 was going to do the seemingly impossible task to conclude an ambitious projects without nearly as much prep time as it actually needed.

And did it succeed ?

I’m not keeping the suspense any longer, Xenosaga is once again a crowning achievement of the JRPG genre and seemingly the most perfect conclusion one could ever hope for the story in spite of its shortcomings (which exists and we’ll discuss them later down the line). Takahashi once again manage to untangle the mess that was left from the development cycle of the franchise and manage to pull it off in the end once again, he already did with Xenogears at the time but I think it’s doubly impressive here considering that what he had to come up with Gears Second Disc was for one game and Xenosaga was for 6.

However, information on the development of Episode 3 are a bit sparse compared to Episode 1 and Episode 2, I’ve tried looking it up online and couldn’t find anything substantial, the only video essay on the subject linked it to a comment made by Bamco’s PR Division which said they were satisfied with the end product and the sales this episode made. One thing is for certain however, unlike Episode 2, Takahashi was back on the project and while he isn’t the actual director of the game, he was pretty much overseeing the entire thing from beginning to end. But it wasn’t going to take simply making Xenosaga 3 and move on to save that sinking ship, that’s why in the wait period between Xenosaga 2 and 3 several project were greenlit by Bandai Namco in order to tie-in some of the loose ends left by the plot of Xenosaga 2.

The most significant of these side projects is Xenosaga 1&2 for Nintendo, a game I unfortunately didn’t play because it’s only in Japanese and no one seems to want to work on an English patch for it. It’s a demake of both Xenosaga 1&2 and from what I heard while it doesn’t actually change much about the plot of 1 it does expand significantly on Xenosaga’s 2 script to make it closer to the initial pitch for the game by Takahashi. Suffice to say, I’m really curious about this one. It's not often you see a JRPG franchise demaking their console releases for a portable system and seemingly make it a more complete version of the original, high budget and ambitious version of said game.
The other two side projects are a bit less ambitious and a bit more questionable when it comes to availability. The first one is “Xenosaga Pied Piper”, an episodic game released for the Vodafone 6, yes it’s a mobile game, yes it’s important and yes you will be regretting skipping on this one once you reach a particular part of Xenosaga 3, I’ve already made a mini-review of it on this website so check it out if you want to catch up on the epic Cani Review lore (or don’t). Same thing for “Xenosaga II to III : A Missing Year”, a frankly forgettable and kinda bad visual novel that’s the equivalent of an hour long infodump meant to tie the previous game to the next by explaining what happened between the events of the two.

If I have one complaint about this way of handling the wider story of the game is that the games in question are not super available in today’s age, these side games were never released outside of Japan and if it wasn’t for the work of several dedicated fans, they will be lost to time and understanding some of the deeper plot of Xenosaga 3 might be almost impossible. I say almost because Xenosaga 3 actually does contextualize a bit of the stuff from those games thanks to the return of the data log.

If this isn’t proof enough that Xenosaga 3 was once again handled by Takahashi, the Database from Episode 1 returns after its surprising absence from Episode 2. In my previous review, I mentioned that I didn’t really check the data base all that often most of it being a combination of laziness on my part, a reluctance to actually voluntarily stop my progression of the story to stop and read wiki articles as well the lack of clear indication of when, why and for what said data base got updated. However, I’d say the database from Xenosaga 3 is much better than the ones from Xenosaga 1 for many reasons, one of which is the fact the game actually notifies you when said database gets updated which is definitely a welcome push towards me actually checking it out and second, the database in question is separated into multiple categories instead of being filed up haphazardly.

Takahashi’s commitment to worldbuilding once again shines through in this game, not only from the database but also the fact the game leans more heavily on talking about the broader setting and all of the moving parts of the deeper lore of the world. Since Xenosaga 3 is meant to provide answers to all the lingering questions left by the first game and try to awkwardly fit in some of the elements of the second to better fit in with the greater whole, this return to form is more than welcome. The database itself is actually much more explicit than the one from Saga 1, not dwelling too deeply on superfluous unimportant detail and just delivering the answer straight to you ! Each entries also comes with a bunch of key-words to link them to one another making navigating the gargantuan story of Xenosaga much easier than it was previously and even if I still had questions near the end of the game, I’d say Xenosaga 3 did a solid enough job at solidifying my understanding of the world it was presenting and gave me much better appreciation for the efforts that were put behind its creation.

But you can also feel this return to form inside of the game itself, NPC dialogues are heavy on contextualization and worldbuilding, there are several areas dedicated to interacting with terminals explaining to you all sorts of esoteric sci-fi stuff and in general there’s a bigger focus on character inter-personal conflict, psychology and drama, something that was present in lesser amount in Xenosaga 2 but here Takahashi just pumped everything he could into every cutscenes and dialogues the game presents.
One thing that’s immediately striking from the start is the presentation of the game, you can feel that this was a late PS2 title and as such, the team at Monolith Software really made the best use of their experience working with console games by now. There are several moments in the game where I was just kinda blown away by how good it looks for a game of this era, especially because of the game's general art direction. Gone are the days of the weird doll-like face of episode 1 or the fugly wannabe realistic character model from Episode 2, here the game has once again a new artstyle which makes a great compromise between the more anime style of the first game and the attempt at realism of the second game. The characters really haven’t looked this good and moved this well in cutscenes. Unfortunately this is where one of my main gripes with the game’s presentation comes into place, there are fewer cutscenes this time around than they were in the previous entries.

While this does help the already excellent pacing of the game as we’re gonna discuss later down the line, a lot of the big story moments are told through a series of in-engine dialogues and text-boxes the kind you see in typical JRPG. I have nothing against this on principle but considering the propension of the series for overindulging in its cinematic flair, it was kind of awkward to transition from one style of storytelling to the other in what clearly feels like budget issues. These sequences are a bit less well directed than usual but they do have the benefit of being all voice acted which wasn’t the case of similar instances of dialogue boxes exchanged in the previous entry. A quick word about the dub of the game, it’s pretty damn excellent, the voice acting in Episode 2 was a bit awkward and there were some unfortunate voice cast changes along the way, for the most part all of the characters got back their voice actor from Episode 1. This includes Shion and Kos-Mos which delivers an outstanding performance on par with what they already delivered in the first entry and since this episode in particular focuses heavily on them as protagonists it’s definitely a welcome change.

I wouldn’t be complaining about that style of dialogue-based cutscenes if it wasn’t for the fact that the game often-times have actual cutscenes and boy oh boy what a bunch of cutscenes these are. The series was already known for having excellent cutscene direction all the way back from even Xenogears and this game is probably the apex of the franchise so far and approaches the kind of cinematic quality one can expect from the later entries in the Xeno franchise. There are a couple of intense moments of action which feels like they’re ripped straight out of some dope ass chinese kung-fu movies with excellent choreography to boot, these are an absolute joy to watch every time and an absolute hype fest. But even the less actioney scenes of the game were given proper care and attention on a similar level, and with Xenosaga you kinda realize that a game mostly composed of cutscenes isn’t really a bad thing as long as the people behind it have a clear love for the craft that is cinema. So many video games these days are trying a bit too hard to not be videogames, proposing heavily cinematic experiences which almost all the time approach just a shallow understanding of what movie-making is.

But from time to time, you get to see a game director with a clear passion and love for filmmaking and it shows, I can name the Metal Gear Solid series from the top of my head for kickstarting a similar philosophy but Takahashi clearly belong to the same school of thought as Kojima does. I already mentioned the clear inspiration from Kung-Fu movies but the entirety of Takahashi’s body of work with the Xeno Franchise oozes from inspiration from the most obvious ones like Star Wars or 2001 A Space Odyssey to more obscure ones like author films that I wish I could tell you about if I was more of a film buff.
Outside of the action segments, I can think of a couple of really evocative shot that would come straight of an arthouse film, that part where Shion reflects upon herself while completely nude (a sight to behold I know), cleaning the foam off of the mirror to show her face full of doubts and interrogation for the situation she finds herself in. That one horrific scene in the hospital where the monstrous updated combat Realians enter the room and mercilessly slaughter Shion’s mom as she’s hiding under the bed followed by a cutscene of a young Shion desperately trying to put her organs back (sadly censored in the English Dubbed version). The evocative first cutscenes of the game’s intro showcasing the downfall of Michtam, an intro that much like the first cutscenes of Xenogears will only make sense in several hours from now.

I could name a couple more of theses instances but I think the cinematography of the game is truly on point, which is a shame when out of the 10h of cutscenes present in the game only 5 of them are in this cinematographic style while the rest is presented in a rather dry format of dialogue exchange. But what little we do get in terms of raw actual cutscenes are simply fantastic and a massive upgrade from the previous 2 entries which were no less impressive in that regard. This level of cinematic flair however isn’t only found in the cutscenes but also in the actual exploration segment as well, the environment design clearly had a lot of thoughts put into them this time around, and the relative dryness of the areas from the first two games are not to be found here.

The game reminded me of the works of Kitase on the Final Fantasy series, more specifically the PS1 entries. While Xenosaga 3 doesn’t use pre-rendered backgrounds like them, it keeps the locked camera angles of the original 2 games but this time uses it to really enhance the presentation of all the areas you’ll traverse. The Tutorial Dungeon alone shows how much of a technical jump we made, with lots of moving parts and lots of sprawling camera angles and cinematographic shots telling a story of its own. One scene in particular struck me as particularly hype and it’s when you enter the Merkabah on the second disc, your mechs just diving inside the enormous space fortress in something that looks like something straight out of freaking Star Wars, or the distorted yet imposing vistas of Abel’s Ark ! At several moments during my playthrough I was simply in awe at how good the game looks and holds up for a game released in 2006, thanks to this commitment to spectacle, cinematography and an absolutely killer art direction.

On average the dungeon design of the game retains most of the qualities of the dungeon design from Xenosaga 2, the same team who worked on that game also worked in Xenosaga 3 and you can clearly see the progress between the two games in terms of game design. You still get a few puzzles, some of them much more fun and less obtuse than the ones from the previous game, there’s a lot of moving parts to each areas, lots of space to avoid the enemies this time around (and the enemies themselves aren’t raging bulls rushing to you with the speed of Sonic the Hedgehog) and most important of all very little in the ways of unnecessary backtracking.

These are easily the best areas and dungeons in the series so far if we’re not counting the Xenoblade games I’ve already played which operate on a completely different design philosophy. The younger team of Monolith did an excellent job with the areas this time around and I’d say than more than just serving as set dressing for the plot to shine through, Xenosaga 3 actually feels like a properly well designed and fun videogames.
But of course, all of this would matter very little if it wasn’t for the game's impeccable sound direction, unlike the previous game, Yuki Kajiura composed the entirety of the OST for Xenosaga 3 making for a much more tonally cohesive soundtrack than that of the previous entry. And my god, she did more than an excellent job at this, no shade to Yasunori Mitsuda, the historic composer of the franchise but I think this has easily become my favorite soundtrack in any Xeno games aside from maybe X. Right from the get go, the dungeon music sounds like actual music from an RPG and not some rejected arcade shmup blurb, we go from jazz, to rock, to orchestral, to epic choir music that goes “HAHA HAHA HAHA OOH AAAH OOOH AAA LALA SALI YADIDADI DADIDI”. The soundtrack is so freaking excellent this time around and actually stuck in my mind for being used even outside of cutscenes and while there is still some moments of silence during gameplay to enhance the atmosphere of the game, these are easily more welcomed than they were previously, much like how Xenogears managed its own soundtrack.

A couple of standout track I can name from the top of my head, like Hepatica, Godsibb, Fatal Fight, Febronia, Promised Pain, Abel’s Ark and of course how the fuck can I not mention the ending song “Maybe Tomorrow” which makes me emotional every time I listen to it like I’m some 15 year old emo girl stuck to her ipod nano in 2006. I’m not a music expert of course so I can’t really go into much detail on why I think the soundtrack is fantastic but sometimes, it’s just something that you feel rather than something you can explain with words. Anyway Kajiura is a goddess and I need more of her compositions in my vein.

The only real issue I have with the sound direction however is that several areas of the game have these “alarm” sounds, which is a repeated line by some robot lady going like “Activation of the Song of Nephilim, all personnel must evacuate immediately” and while it does had an effect in the most urgent and intense moment of the story, the fact that this is a repeated occurrence in a lot of the dungeons in the game quickly start to get a bit grating. Especially when the frequency of the “alarm” is repeated probably every 5 seconds on loop, I don’t get why they couldn’t just stick that one to a cutscene and just let us enjoy the soundtrack in peace.

Which leaves me to talk about the new battle system of the game. Once again, the gameplay of Xenosaga has seen a massive overhaul but this time I must admit that I’m a bit more divided on the change. In this game, there are no combos to do with the Square and Triangle buttons, no AP’s, no Deathblows, No Event Slots and even less so Stocks and Break Zones from Episode 2. The only remnants of the old battle system is the turn order and the boost mechanic, the entire battle system has been streamlined to a frankly quite absurd degree. Now the game has a more standard type of menu based battle system, tech attacks are now just stronger attacks you can use out of a menu which costs EP like the Ether attacks which are still present in the game. The game features now a more classic “break system” you’ve likely seen from a lot of JRPG past the release of FF XIII which I was actually quite surprised to see since Xenosaga 3 was released a whole 3 years before that game (and makes me wonder which game actually did that dreaded mechanic first).

Some attacks deal “break damage” at the cost of reduced regular damage which fills a red gauge below the enemies health bar, once that bar is filled, you can initiate a “break” which leaves the enemies vulnerable and unable to act for 1 or 2 turns depending on how when you break said enemies. You also have a break gauge yourself, so you need to check that.
Boosting is back and serves the same purpose as the old games but with some differences. Just like Xenosaga 2, you and the enemies can both hold 3 units of Boost but now on top of using boost to override the turn order, you can instead use your boost units to launch “Special Attacks” which are this game’s version of Deathblow from the older titles. Using a Special Attack allows you to conserve EP but also if you happen to finish off an enemy with one of those, you get an extra amount of experience, skill points and gold at the end of a fight, so it’s always good to use them to make your characters stronger.

Now the reason I’m a bit divided towards this battle system can’t be really evident at first so I’m going to address the one positive of such a system, everything goes a lot faster than in the previous two games. Entering in contact with an enemy instantly transitions into the battle screen without any transition whatsoever and fights are usually done in a matter of seconds whereas they could be taking a couple of minutes in the previous two games. Add to that the fact that the series added a back attack where you can deal more damage to enemies for one turn if you approach them from the back and battles are generally over faster than it takes to say “Xenosaga II”. A mechanic I think I didn’t explain in the previous two reviews also get a big change that’s kinda welcome, traps, in the previous game there were some weird tanks you could shoot which sprayed an area of effect on the field which not only stopped the enemies on their track but also gave you an advantage in battle if engaged them in that state. Well in Xenosaga III, instead of these traps being installed at certain strategic points of the levels, you actually carry those traps and can place them on the field yourself and upon shooting them, they’ll act exactly the same. I guess it would be a neat tool to use for speed runners and you can carry up to 10 of them before having to restock them at a shop. I personally saw very little use for them during my playthrough as I found getting behind the enemy to be surprisingly easy to do in this one.

But anyway, it does make fights faster but I also think this streamlining kinda removes a lot of the depth and uniqueness of the series core battle design philosophy since Xenogears. Xenosaga 1 was an improvement over the original system and Xenosaga 2 was a re-evaluation of it to try and see how to make it more engaging. I will say though, that as a staunch defender of Xenosaga’s 2 battle system, I was kinda disappointed by this admittedly expected turn-over. I think that ultimately what I dislike about the new battle system is that there’s so much more that could’ve been done with at least the battle system from Xenosaga 1 for exemple and that just make the system more basic didn’t necessarily created a better or more interesting battle system, just one you can be kinda over and done with faster.

I also have a bit of a confidence to make, I’m getting a “break” fatigue as of late and even though this game predates the “break” fads we see in many modern JRPG, I couldn’t help but sigh at the new battle system for having something like this. I’m not blaming the game here, I’m blaming myself for not being able to enjoy that mechanic after so many games using it. I never found a break/stagger system to actually add anything of value to battle for the most part, it’s just a waste of time, it’s just annoying to do piss poor damage all the time until you fill up a gauge that lets you finally have fun… It’s just kind of tiring…

It’s also not helped by the fact the game is pretty damn easy all across the board. Very early on in the game, you get several options to trivialize encounters and bosses, like spamming Erde Kaiser summons which you get one very early in the game and can be casted by all party members this time and not just Shion.
Another thing I’m not too big on is the progression system, it’s a much more linear system where characters fit into tightly defined roles, but whereas the original game allowed you to switch things around and mix and match your party’s abilities this game is sadly very straightforward. Skill points can be spent on a skill tree that looks more like a skill fork than a tree, very early on you are tasked with choosing between two branches, one branch makes the character go through the path of the role they were given in the previous game and the other a sort of alternate job. If you feel especially crazy, you can pick the alternate path but usually speaking it’s better to stick to the main one and stick to it until the end to unlock the Master Skill which is a powerful ability with a variety of effects. Throughout the game, you can obtain a bunch of books allowing you to add a couple more branches to the skill tree, but this is sadly quite a superfluous addition.

Most battles in the game are going to be heavily reliant on you using Tech and Ether to make higher damage and deal with the enemies faster, so a lot of the difficulty comes from managing your EP’s, this rarely becomes an issue since you have 7 party members at pretty much all time ! However I do enjoy the fact that residual EXP and Skill points are a thing now and that the game incentivizes you to use the entirety of your party instead of a select few, much like Xenosaga 2, you can switch out party members during battle which is always a nice plus.

I won’t say the battle system is bad whatsoever, but it is flawed and rather dull at points, most boss fights play out exactly the same and it’s very easy to cheese them. Boosting is such a non-component of the battle system that I even wonder why it was still implemented anyway and they must’ve felt the same way as I did while making the game because they had to give another purpose to boosting in order to not make it almost irrelevant outside of keeping up combos and finish enemies faster. Even the main superboss designed for the battle system doesn’t manage to actually do anything interesting with it, which is kind of a shame. I think with the experience Monolith gained on the first two games, they could’ve managed to make a fast paced version of the older system too instead of making it this way.

It’s hardly a complaint since I still find the battle system effective and fun to break, but not one that particularly impressed me in the long schemes of things. Of course this isn’t the only side to the coin of the game battle system as we now have to discuss the mech fight and for once, I am much more enthusiastic about those ! Not only is there a decent degree of customization this time again but I also think this is the best mech combat in the entire series this far.

The game uses a fuel system much like Xenogears but instead of being a consumable like in that game, it just determines the number of times you can attack in a single turn which is determined by the type of weapon you’ve equipped and their cost in terms of fuel consumption. You also have the possibility to activate “Anima Mode” filling an Anima gauge by landing successful attacks on enemies, you can stock up to 3 Anime gauge depending on where you are in the story and during this mode which last for 2 turns, you can either use a powerful special move, or attack the enemies while only consuming half of the fuel necessary to use your attacks. Attacking during Anime mode can sometimes activate a random ambush which is an all-out attack of your entire party against a single target, there’s also co-op attacks outside of Anime mode where only 2 characters wail on the enemy. You can also heal in battle by charging which also serves as a guard which can come handy.
While a bit more gimmicky than the on-foot battle, I did find them to be thoroughly more engaging than them which is surprising since usually it’s the other way around. Some of the best bosses in the game like the 2nd Margulis Fight which is the apex of fiction, happen during the mech combat and I’m really glad there are a lot more of them this time around and a lot more dungeons designed around E.S exploration. I had a lot of fun with this system which is surprisingly deeper than one might expect at first glance, sadly it does suffer from the same issue as the rest of the game for being quite easy outside of a few encounters using unique mechanics you have to figure out midway through the fight (like the aforementioned Margulis encounters). Much like the on-foot battle, a lot of them are done and over pretty quickly which is actually a plus.

Overall, I’d say the battle system being fast definitely does help the excellent pacing of the game, the previous two Xenosaga games were kind of a slow burn both in terms of story and in their gameplay but Xenosaga 3 goes at a brisk pace at all time, it’s always engaging, there’s always something going on and there’s rarely anything to stop your progress. One thing that’s a bit regrettable however is the lack of side-content to engage with compared to Xenosaga 2. While the side-content in Xenosaga 2 leave a lot to be desired, the sheer quantity of them made the game quite generous especially when it comes to its post-game. Here the side-stuff has been severely downsized, there’s still a couple of mostly puzzle based optional dungeons and 2 superbosses but the bulk of the side content is in the red door/red key quest present in all previous games.

In a surprise twist on the formula however, the Erde Kaiser Quest has been nerfed a little bit in favor of integrating that silly plotline within the actual main story. It’s a surprising choice for sure to make the two comedic side-quest characters actually important characters in the plot but their contributions mostly amount to justifying narrative shortcuts when it comes to technological stuff. But I do find it hilarious that the whole Erde Kaiser thing is actually important to the plot now with Kos-Mos herself being implemented with some of Erde Kaiser’s features after being beaten to a pulp and not being able to keep her new design for long. You can still summon Erde Kaiser in battle, in fact they’re now just regular summons a la final fantasy that you can acquire through the red door/red key thing, you get access to all versions of Erde Kaiser from throughout the franchise, sadly they all share the same battle animation but they compensate with raw fire power, and they made the already trivial regular encounters even more trivial.

The ending of the Erde Kaiser plotline however, is actually peak fiction, acquiring the final Erde Kaiser demands you go through a few steps which includes a boss fight against Wel… I mean Omega Id from NOT Xenogears and another boss fight against the strongest Erde Kaiser which frankly exists to break the late game in half if you’re too tired of the combat system by the end (or if like me you’re crazy enough to finish that game at 4am and you just want to fucking sleep). The conclusion to the quest made me a bit emotional and filled me with the burning passion for giant robots (the thing chicks dig).

Last but not least, there’s Haqox which… is a lemmings clone… it’s the main mini-game available and it’s surprisingly difficult and ramps up in difficulty quite a bit, I was not big on said mini-game but after a while I got used to how it works even if some stages broke my goddamn finger. Completing the game allows you to see the cutscenes with Swimsuits which is a fun bonus for all of your effort and I mean who doesn’t wanna see Shion in a bikini heh ?
Alright enough bubbling around, if you’re playing a Xeno game especially a pre-Xenoblade era game at that it’s clearly not to talk about extraneous detail such as how the gameplay hold up or if the dungeons don’t want to make you kill yourself. First and foremost, you’re playing a Xeno game to experience the amazing stories told by Takahashi and his wife Kaori Tanaka (which I doubt actually worked on the game, like I said, I found very little info on the development of that one). And so how did Takahashi manage to save Christmas once again when everything seemed to be against this game succeeding in doing so ?

The story takes place roughly a year after the event of Xenosaga 2, after a couple of shenanigans involving Gnosis Terrorism and the uncovering of a conspiracy involving Vector Industries, Shion lost her trust for the company and decided to leave it in order to join Scientia, an anti-UMN terrorist group which also wants to know what the deal with Vector is. Meanwhile in the void of space, a floating landmass by the name of “Rennes-le-Château” (an actual city in France btw) has appeared in the middle of space, it’s said to be a part of Lost Jerusalem the home of origin of humanity. Dmitri Yuriev is also up to some shenanigans, after coming back from the dead which seems to bother absolutely no one, he took his place back in the government to start working on a new super weapon by the name of “Omega Res Novae” piloted by a mysteriously familiar looking “Abel” which will not be the only time Takahashi is bordering on copyright infringement. But wait that’s not all, a new scientist is in town and has created a robot very similar to Kos-Mos by the name of T-Elos and they’re about to scrap Kos-Mos which is unacceptable !!! Especially since we need Kos-Mos to save the crew on the Elsa after these dimwits got stuck into a pocket dimension after orbiting a bit too close to the big French rock.

From the get go, we can see one thing about the story which is pretty cool, the story is back to focusing on Shion and Kos-Mos, I had nothing against Jr. taking the lead in the previous game (especially when it was so damn raw) but the story of Shion and Kos-Mos has been the central hook of the original premise for the trilogy and it was about time we get some closure on that front. Like I said earlier, the pacing of the story is honestly quite excellent, the entire premise that I’ve talked about pretty much summarizes the first few hours or so of the story ! It’s intense, there’s tons of moving parts, an extensive attention to detail when it comes to developing the lore and the setting of the game, we’re definitely inside a story that was written by Takahashi and I love it ! The story is really thoroughly engaging from start to finish, aside from one fillerish dungeon which exists solely to make yet another Xenogears reference, every event that takes place advances the plot in some way or another !

This frantic pacing made me play the game for hours on end. We go from revelations after revelations from one powerfully emotional and philosophical moment to the next, it’s like experiencing the highs of Disc 2 of Xenogears but as if it was an actual game. Speaking of Xenogears, Takahashi really didn’t give a fuck this time around, knowing full well this might be the last chance he’ll get to direct a Xeno game, he just bombards the story with all these parallels which will certainly please older fans or people who checked out Xenogears.

I’m a bit mixed on these references and parallels because I fail to see how they contribute to the plot, aside from tying Xenosaga to the grand project of Takahashi aka “Parralel Works” but it’s nonetheless really fun to witness how much he got away with. I mean there’s a certain part in the end where I can hear the team at Monolith Software being like “We cannot pass this opportunity to get a 3D Model of Elly ! WE ARE GETTING ELLY IN 3D DAMNIT !”.
There’s also a part of the game I was a bit skeptical about at first until it turned out to be absolute kino, there’s a “kinda” time travel plot line in the middle which is the game excuses to do the traditional tour of Old Miltia this time around however, we will be witnessing the events that lead to the tragedy that unfolded on this cursed land ! It’s a really long part of the game which takes probably half of the game runtime but I think it was worth every second of it and the implications of time-travel in the series opened a few interesting things for Shion as a character.

Speaking of Shion, I’ve heard that many people hate Shion in this game and on average she’s easily the most unpopular Xeno protagonist by a large margin but honestly… I really don’t get why, I have tons of complaints about the story especially in its later half but none of these issues are Shion related in the slightest. In fact, I wish more female leads in games, manga and anime were written with the same level of pertinence as Shion is. Shion goes through a lot in this game and arguably she has been going through a lot for a lot of time, but she never actually worked on herself, she was always distant and aloof as well as brash and borderline suicidal in the first game. What she goes through in Episode III isn’t a sudden shift in behavior that was brought about for the convenience of the plot or to serve the theme of the story, it was something that was already established in the first game albeit in a more subtle manner.

Shion does a lot of shitty, awful and at times unreasonable things in this game, she acts very rashly to what’s happening around her. Shion isn’t a happy person, nobody seem to understand her and she has been carrying traumas of the past and she now sees the possibility of finally reaching happiness for the very first time in her life and she’s about to take the chance, even if that means turning her back against the people she hold dear and even turning her back against the universe. In this game, we also learn a lot about her relationship with her ex-boyfriend Kevin and let’s just say not everything was as lovey-dovey as they seemed at first. Their relationship is clearly manipulative, even if Kevin claims she is doing all of this to make Shion happy. Shion, giving in to his lies, is torn apart by the avalanche of information rushing through her mind right now. Shion is a broken character, a broken human being and it’s not just something that’s shown and serves just as a cheap way to evoke a feeling of forced relatability to the player, in fact only few people will probably relate to Shion since her situation is very specific to only a couple of people. But what the game asks of you is empathy. Even though I wanted to punch Shion at one point in the story, I also think Takahashi did a more than excellent job at humanizing the character !

She is profoundly human and written so realistically that I’m sure that it could throw some people off, she’s a perfect representation of somebody falling for a toxic relationship once again, of someone willing to go back to her abuser because in the sea of her own traumas, it seems like the only beacon of hope in a hopeless world ! She is stuck, trapped, in the clutch of the man she loves so dearly despite him being the absolute worst fucking dickhead imaginable, but I also think every decision Shion takes are believable ! It’s hard to work the fine line between a caricature of a broken person and someone who is realistically and believably broken. It’s not enough to have a character display self doubts and go “boo hoo my life sucks”, for a character like this to work, you have to make a good character first and then make a good broken character second ! Making them humans instead of just a function inside of a wider narrative ! And Shion is ultimately an excellent representation of that and it makes her path to healing even more powerful and poignant (also ALLEN IS THE GOAT !!!).
Xenosaga III manages to create a powerful narrative about breaking from the cycle of pain, about how a small wave can reach to the far end of the cosmos as long as you scream loud enough for people to hear it ! Shion isn’t the only one to get an amazing treatment in this game however, I’d say that all the characters which had yet to have some level of conclusion to their arc managed to shine through and brilliantly so ! I can’t believe Takahashi managed not only to nail the Febronia plotline that was teased since the first game as well as making me care about fucking Virgil, a random guy who dies near the beginning of the 1st game only to come back as one of the Testament which are the main antagonistic group of the game. All the scenes involving Virgil and Feb managed to make me so fucking emo it’s kind of unbelievable.

In fact, I’d say that characters coming back to fulfill one last wish as Testaments is actually a pretty damn cool idea in concept, usually I’m not a huge fan of returning characters for the sake of fanservice but here it’s not for that sake and they actually do serve a purpose in the story at large. In fact, they even manage to nail the whole “true mastermind” plot line by giving it some interesting ramifications and devastating effects to some characters ! Shoutouts in particular to Margulis which boss fight is easily the best one not just in this game, not just in the Xenosaga series but in the entire Xeno franchise ! I keep listening to Fatal Fight every single goddamn day since that fight happened, the sight of this man being betrayed and left like a dog, losing everything he believed in but finding purpose in the one thing that hasn’t abandoned him yet, the one thing that won’t disappoint him, a fight to the death against his rival ! AAAAAH IT’S SO PEAAAAAAAAAAAK !!

However for how gripping and engaging the story is, that fast pacing does have some consequences especially at the tail end of the game. You can feel that the game was meant to finish around the time of your confrontation with Dmitri Yuriev but the game still had a bit more things to tell and the final dungeon kinda rushes through what little hanging plot thread was left in the story ! It’s a bit of a shame because I would’ve loved to see the conclusion to these arcs presented in a more thorough and developed way ! This doesn’t take away too much from how I enjoyed those but I can’t help but think several things about the game weren’t properly closed off. For example, I do love the final scene of Albedo in this game, but I wonder if there was even a point in bringing him back to just serve second fiddle to the main antagonist of the game and have maybe 3 lines of dialog at best (you don’t even get a boss fight against him whereas you fight every testament in the game at least once !). Deep down, I feel like the Albedo plotline should’ve been dropped or at least developed a bit better. I think Albedo already had a decent conclusion by the end of Xenosaga II so I felt the additional screen time to be kinda pointless.

The story also delves a bit more heavily on direct references to Christianity and I was a bit scared at first but it’s handled with a surprising level of tactfulness, it managed to completely avoid blasphemy and not being too chuuni which I’m always a bit afraid of when you go deeper in that territory.

Despite all of these rushes however, the ending of Xenosaga 3 is absolutely insane. From the moment Shion betrays the party all the way to the end credits I was crying not just out of sadness but out of sheer admiration for the craft ! It’s one of the most beautiful endings I’ve ever seen from this medium and even if it’s clear the story Takahashi wanted to tell wasn’t yet complete, in the end, I think the story we got was good enough !
Xenosaga 3 is a freaking generational game, it’s a game which leaves an impenetrable mark in the mind of those who play it and solidify Takahashi as a master of his craft. So many conclusive pieces of media tend to drop the ball hard with empty fanservices, awkward plot delivery with artificial stakes sometimes in favor of said fanservice, too busy with paying-off the storyline than actually saying something with the work. But not Xenosaga 3, it’s a game which does suffer a bit of growing pain that’s something we can’t ignore unfortunately, but I can excuse a lot of the game shortcomings because of how well it wrapped up everything that matters and delivered a powerful story which spoke to me as a person, with characters and a universe I had a tough time saying goodbye too by the end of the credits.

At times, I even wonder if I don’t prefer it to Xenogears, the gap is really close, but both games, as broken as they are, do deliver on their promises. Takahashi might see the Xenosaga series as a failure, heck maybe you’re seeing the series as a failure after completing it ! But as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t regret going through the series and experiencing Takahashi’s wild ride. And maybe who knows, Xenosaga isn’t over, there’s tons of stuff left to uncover, the Xeno series is not over yet, Xenoblade proves that the Perfect Works plan has still delivered all of its secrets. Maybe someday, Xenosaga will once again be brought up in the light, I really wish it does, I wish the game would receive at least an HD port if not a straight up sequel…

But this is a far off dream for now, but who knows a wave can travel the universe and change the course of history… so yes it’s a dream for now but maybe not for long, maybe one day Xenosaga will shine and ve celebrated for the cult classic series that it is…

Maybe this day…

Maybe tomorrow...

Trails of Cold Steel 3 : The Troubles of Continuity


As I’m playing through this series and writing these reviews, I came to actually question my own sanity.

Why do I keep up with this ? “This makes no sense” I ask myself, there’s so many games out there, so many experiences that I’d rather be having than playing through these titles. Some of my friends who have followed my journey and have shown much more appreciation than me towards this franchise all told me to stop.

“You’re simply not getting it” they say, “You nitpick every aspect and don’t let the games enthrall you by its simple yet sophisticated beauty” they say, “It was never about class warfare but rather imperialism, you literally have reading comprehension issue you fat fuck” some of the more virulent people said.

And yet, here I am, still on the grind, still trying to find out the appeal of this admittedly niche RPG series made by the video game company equivalent of your local Pakistani Store Clerk selling you its finest expired bottle of room temperature sangria for you and your friends at 1am on a Tuesday. If this wasn’t apparent on the tone of my previous two reviews as well as my admittedly less vitriolic but similarly mixed reviews on other titles in the series (“Trails the 3rd” aside), I don’t particularly hold this one close to my heart and by that I mean that despite this being the 8th entry in the series, I never became a “fan” of Trails.

“Fan” is a strong word to describe my relationship to this game series. I appreciate a lot of what the series tries to establish though. The scope and ambition on such a multi-generational scale is something almost never before seen in the history of Japanese Role-Playing games. The only 2 exemple that comes to mind is the Suikoden series that I’ve mentioned countless time in my reviews (and I still advise many Trails fans who haven’t got the chance to try it out to do so expeditiously) and the Rance series that I’ve also mentioned in my previous post and which you can even get to see a review of its ninth episode on this very account (and this one is a bit touchy to fully recommend unless you are really as open-minded and shameless as myself).

But these 2 cases never really reached quasi-mainstream appeal, Suikoden is appreciated by many people in the old-school JRPG community but less so people who grew up on more modern hardware and even so, the Suikoden franchise got discontinued by its own developer Konami because they’re still in the top 3 worst gaming company in history. As for Rance, well, after 30 years of services it finally ended its run in 2018 in one finale conclusive episode that has yet to be translated (and which I’m extremely excited for) and even then the franchise had to pretty much reboot itself in the early 2000’s to reach a wider audience and recalibrate its lore (which is mostly contained outside of the games themselves).

Trails for now has existed since 2004 meaning that next year, the series will celebrate its 20th anniversary and ever since the release of the first title, they’ve pretty much been super consistent on releasing these games to the point that starting with Cold Steel 3, the games will release on an almost yearly basis.
No other JRPG series has this much potential for quasi-autistic level of brain rot. It’s also interesting to note that all of the franchise's thorough worldbuilding and lore is contained entirely within the games themselves. Each games comes with its set of NPC’s who changes dialogues for every minor advancement in the plot, there’s an almost nuclear level of attention to detail and little easter eggs to find (some of them missable through pretty cryptic conditions), entire Skyrim book size novels you can gather as collectibles in each titles to get the characters final weapons and which foreshadows events to come.

Other franchises would make you do extra-homework to get the juice out of that stuff but here all of that extra-homework is integrated into the actual gameplay loop, you don’t usually have to reach for an obscure novel or interview where the author says all elves are gay or something like this to get juicy tidbits on the world around you and it helps those games feel more lived in and fleshed out than any other setting in the history of RPG. And at the core of it all, it’s a human story, it’s called “Legends of Heroes” not because you play as heroes but because you hear about them constantly, you just play as the random little people who yes are going to save the world from impending doom but you’re never going to be on the same level as the heroes of old.

In Sky FC, all of that game is spent running around the world and hearing how much of a badass your dad is, how much good he has done for people and how inspiring such a person is and yet he’s a military general. To some he probably is a war criminal but to his people, he’s a hero and you’re just playing as his kids. It’s a very Dragon Quest V approach although that game was more thorough on one’s journey to adulthood.

And yet, I never found myself to be attached to the point of autistic obsession (and for context, I’m literally autistic, I swear I’m not just using that term as a meter for how addicting fictional crack can be) and it’s weird isn’t it ? I should be all over a series like this, I should be celebrating its ideas and hailing those games as an example for JRPG’s to follow like it seems to be the case with most of the people who play these games but for the most part I don’t and I can’t really explain myself why.

The lore and on-going mysteries of the universe are only marginally interesting to me as they are attached to some elements I’m not super crazy about (aka : Ouroboros and their “plan” more on that later). The themes the series explores can be fascinating in spurt but the actual execution always finds itself lacking and I guess most importantly it’s the general package that I find to be a tiring drag at best and a grind at worst.

Many hail these titles as hidden gems or even must-play masterpieces of the genre but I don’t see it myself and for cause, I think they’re lacking in several areas where most other RPG franchises or individual games don’t. Trails is so derivative of the trend of its different eras and not always to the series benefit. I know the JRPG genre is a big hodgepodge of mutual influences that keeps bouncing from another but that still doesn’t mean a series can’t have a solid identity on top of it all and Trails definitely has one… and then immediately abandons it to follow the next popular trends and causing the series to lose its sense of consistency.


At times, it’s hard to imagine CS1 and CS2 were either planned or thought out by the same minds who imagined the Sky or Crossbell saga and yet here we are. I guess this is also due to the fact that the series main head lead Toshihiro Kondo doesn't actually have much control or hold over the actual development of these games, perhaps due to the fact he’s too busy running the company than actually working on titles himself. So this series despite being this long sprawling tapestry of ideas that are meant to fit into one another don’t actually have anything resembling a true solid artistic vision.

And that’s what happens usually when a series goes for so long, people change, people get older, teams are reformed, priorities and aims get rethought and eventually you end up with something that divides people rather than unite them under a common front.

There’s a reason why many enduring franchises in the history of JRPG don’t usually do the whole continuity thing or when they do, it’s very sparse and almost a non-factor. It’s because titles such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Tales Of, Shin Megami Tensei always try to reinvent their wheel, proposing new settings, new universes, new lore so that everyone can jump on any titles and get a fully complete experience and also allowing new creative leads to put their spin on them without compromising the sanctity of other titles.

Yes of course, some of the game in the Final Fantasy series had sequels but most people agrees that their often times inferior and an hindrance on the original game legacy (hi collection of FF VII) but Trails is different because unlike those franchise it decides to stick to its gun and have this continuity play a big part of its development history and that means that this game series more than any other JRPG franchise need a strong vision to hold itself together.

You can say that despite me not being a fan of Trails, I’m still somewhat fascinated by its ever-growing popularity and the sheer praise all across the board the series get (even for Cold Steel believe it or not), if anything it’s fun to discuss about these games, to theorize about them, to talk about what they did wrong, what they did right. For how much vitriol I gave the first 2 Cold Steel games, they still occupied a masochistic part of my brain, I couldn’t think about anything else.

More than anything, when I dislike something beloved by many, I find myself questioning “why can’t I like this ?” Especially something like Trails that literally has almost all of the ingredients to make for the perfect blend of JRPG goodness because I really want to like Trails. I'm jealous that I can’t be a part of this cultural effervescence, being a Trails fan is like a commitment, it’s a promise, it’s like being a part of something.

This franchise somehow has put a curse in my brain that forces me to desire more, even when I know I’m going to probably end up frustrated or disappointed. If anything, the promise of Trails is a beautiful one ! It’s the promise of being a part of something bigger than yourself, something that will follow you for how much longer it wants to be, even running to the grave. It’s grand, it’s infinite, even at its worst it's presented with such confidence that you can’t help but want it to succeed and you want it to be at its best because I know it can work, I know how good these games can be when they actually try and by god… I WANT TO LIKE TRAILS AND IT FRUSTRATES ME THAT I CAN’T ! IT’S LIKE BEING A KH FAN ALL OVER AGAIN FOR ME ! IT’S A ROAD PAVED OF GOOD INTENTIONS AND FRUSTRATIONS !
Trails is like a toxic relationship, it hurts but somehow you can’t get away from it, it’s a slow acting poison that hurts your brain and every Trails fan, as cult-like as they are, feel like crypto-scammers pulling off a successful rugpull. I don’t know why I keep going with this franchise but I sure am too deep into this to back down, I should’ve probably done so years ago.

Do I think the Trails promise is fulfilled or is it a promise filled with lies and self-sabotage ?

Today, I want this review to be less of a review and more of a thought piece on my troubled yet loving relationship to this beloved series.

Because if anything, Trails of Cold Steel III finds itself in an interesting spot when it comes to the history of its own franchise and in many ways feels like a turning point that the franchise will have trouble ever coming back from.

Trails of Cold Steel III was released 3 years after the end of the previous episode, funnily enough that’s also the length of the time separating the event of CS2 to the event of that game in canon. Yes ladies and gentlemen this game is a timeskip arc much like One Piece did midway through its run. As such Trails of Cold Steel 3 had the time to actually think about ways to actually improve its formula and also its presentation and in many ways let me put it briefly, I did actually enjoy Cold Steel III more than its two predecessors at least on some of its more frivolous elements.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, CS3 is the first game in the series to be entirely designed for home consoles, specifically the PS4, while the game isn’t winning any medals in technical prowess, the game is overall kinda pretty and has an overall nice art direction. Some people might write the entire thing off as generic anime bullshit and they’ll be right, but at least it doesn’t look like a PS Vita game with “cutscenes” that looks like a puppet show by the world's worst puppeteer. The environment design allows itself to be much more detailed and creative, most of Western Erebonia’s location are far more striking visually and more memorable as a result than any town or cities from the first 2 games and while the dungeon design can be up to discussion, I’d say the roads and the more “natural” environment definitely are more pretty to look at.

CS1/CS2 had awful direction when it comes to its many cutscenes or extended dialogue section which wasn’t helped by the absolutely colossal size of the character roster which didn’t help setting up these scenes especially with the limited budget and that problem definitely carries over in the late game of CS3 when the party is fully complete and you get an especially hilarious scene where Rean enters an hotel room followed by 14 character model slowly walking and trying to fit somewhere onto the screen. Here most of the scenes actually have proper stage direction and feel more cinematic which is what one could expect from a 3D video game from the year 2017 and is probably the results of Falcom’s experimentation on their previous title (and most successful title in their line-up) “Ys VIII : Lacrimosa of Dana”, which already significantly improved the presentation from that series.



The action segment are hype, there’s multiple camera angle and some pretty creative use of direction to convey certain feelings or emotions even during the more intimate moments and while we’re not reaching Square’s level of cinematography (this ain’t this series forte anyway) it’s definitely cool to see that Falcom is finally coming into their own to match the rest of the industry instead of falling behind as their status as a double AA studio would’ve suggested (even if the most technically impressive thing about that upgrade is the addition of bouncing physics on the ladies which were… certainly an interesting priority from the studio to say the least…). Another cool thing I could mention about the presentation is how seamless the battle transition are, previously in the series you’d be teleported to a different area entirely here Trails decide to take on the more standardly modern approach of having the battles take place directly on the field and while it doesn’t really matter from a strategic perspective (or at least very little) it’s a pretty cool thing to see and speaking of battles.

A lot of things actually changed between CS2 and CS3 when it comes to the battle system, in my review of Cold Steel 1, I’ve mentioned that while the general fluidity of the battles has improved I still felt like the game was a significant downgrade compared to the series earlier output because of how it streamlined the customisation process to an almost baffling degree making for a less fun and engaging battle system (definitely not helped by the series jump to 3D) that was easily breakable and rendered many of the series core mechanic (namely its magic system) completely obsolete. CS2 in particular was a broken mess of a game, thanks to this game being balanced around late game abilities which made most of that game an easily breakable one even by accident.

CS3’s takes a lot of the more solid elements of the battle and progression system of its two predecessors and expands on them in surprising and interesting ways. First off, the battle UI has changed from a circular menu system to something similar to Super Mario RPG or Persona 5 where each button corresponds to a menu. It needs a little getting used to after so many games of using a similar UI but the change really is welcome and greatly improves the fluidity of battle. Links and Brave points are back and better than ever. First off, Links aren’t tied to bonding points anymore and while it removes the gameplay reward of bonding events I don’t think it really matters because it’s definitely an improvement. Now links levels ups by having the characters linked to one another which was already the case in the previous two games but here it grows much faster and makes it so that pairing any characters with one another instead of just Rean a much more viable option.

But now chaining link attack to obtain brave point actually is more interesting this time around, in the previous game chaining attack had two purposes :

-Triggering passive abilities to help you in battle
-Gaining brave points that could be used to unleash a small combo attack known as “rush attack” for the price of 3 BP or an all-out attack known as a “Burst” which makes the entire attack the opposing team.

While these mechanics are still present, they’re now counterbalanced by the addition of a second use for Brave Points : Brave Orders. Brave Orders are instant buffs that can be applied for a set number of turns and stays active for the remainder of those turns and are only canceled out by the end of that order or the activation of another.

A mechanic quite reminiscent of Master Arts from Trails to Azure which sadly were not all that relevant as they were tied to the rather slow growth rate of Master Quartz in that game and were as such an entire mechanic relegated to the endgame (and even then, more so the final dungeon).

Brave Orders are a fantastic addition to the game battle system as it makes them more dynamic and offers new options to approach fights or get yourself out of tough situations and this game has plenty of those especially early on to make their usage more than necessary to bypass some of the game's tougher challenges. In fact, due to some nerf to crafts (especially support ones mostly replaced by an equivalent in Brave Order) and the addition of some brave orders encouraging that playstyle, Arts are now more relevant than they used to with some brave orders outright removing casting time or boosting magical damage output to absurd degrees. Arts were always presented as the best option to deal huge damage but because of the way CS1 and CS2 were balanced more in favor of crafts (which were plenty in that game with most of Class VII being absolute beast on that front), arts became completely irrelevant and the way the orbment system was changed as to give you less flexibility when it comes to getting spells and the available pool of spell selections, literally there was no real reason to give a shit about it.

In fact, Orbment have also been slightly touched up to go in that direction, now instead of one master quartz, each characters can equip up to two master quartz and stacking their effects to one another, you can even set another character main master quartz as its sub-MQ in order to do interesting combo builds which greatly improves the flexibility that was lost with the orbment system. Unfortunately this means a lot of Quartz who are simply giving out spells (most of the time the ones you get early on in the game) becomes complete filler as 2 MQ fully leveled Master Quartz on one character is more than enough to give you a full kit of Offensive and Support Crafts at your leisure.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean than sticking to a strict craft-centric playstyle isn’t viable (especially on normal difficulty which is how I’ve played the game) but it’s really cool to see Arts make such a comeback which also ties to a new combat mechanic in this game known as “break”. If you’ve played FFXIII (or any JRPG released since 2009 who seem to have ripped off that mechanic) then you’re probably familiar with this. On top of having a HP bar, enemies now have a break gauge that you need to deplete in order to “break” their stance which cancels out any buffs they might have, delay their turn as well as skipping it when reached and of course making them more vulnerable to attack and receive extra damages.

So now the objective is less going to be about strictly depleting the enemies HP’s and debuffing them when necessary (since debuffs unfortunately still doesn’t work on most enemies sadly) but breaking their gauge to then chain their asses with your most powerful abilities by combining all of your tools to make tons of damage and even not make them play at all (by the end of the game, it becomes quite ridiculous when some bosses just straight up did NOT attack me for the entire duration of the fight).

Some enemies such as bosses can enter a “enhanced” state that makes them stronger encouraging you to break them as fast as possible as to not get your ass kicked and it’s overall a pretty fun system that keep each encounter engaging and the customization aspect being put in the front of the battle system once again truly makes it a really fun game to play.
Unfortunately, some elements within the game kinda ruins the fun of such a system and I’m going to cite them for good measure :

The boss design in CS3 is noticeably god awful in more ways than none, almost all boss encounters have the tendency to have an instantaneous un-cancellable healing spell (which also acts as an all-encompassing stat buff) they just randomly spam whenever they feel the need to, that’s pretty much true of 80% of the numerous boss encounters in this game and it becomes so tiring that eventually most of the boss-fight will make you want to cheese them rather than engage with this rather annoying mechanic.

On the topic of boss fights, there’s definitely some weird power creep when it comes to the speed stat of most of the game major bosses, what I mean by this is that for some reasons a lot of bosses have an insane amount of speed and can just play for multiple turn without letting you play at all. One of the bosses late into the game (the Dark Dragon) on top of having annoying healing spells, also summons a shit load of minions which are all faster than you but worst than that, all of his attack are meant to delay your turn or force you into a state of slow agonizing death as your turn gets skipped because of a random status effect which forced me to just endlessly tank hit with damage resistance order and spam S-Craft for survival and it wasn’t fun at all. A non-negligible number of bosses and even regular encounters operate on the same logic, so if you’re willing to play these games, I suggest finding ways to upgrade the speed of your characters as soon as possible as it is perhaps the single most important stat in the game.

I also said the game was more focused on giving priorities to Arts but for a good chunk of the early game all the way to almost the end of the second chapter is pretty stingy when it comes to giving you Sepith the currency that allows you to upgrade your orbment and customize your characters more. This makes a lot of the early game encounter stupidly difficult because of a clear lack of option rather than because it’s a fair challenge and on the opposite side, the late game gives you an over-abundance of options thanks to the roster of playable characters growing exponentially to eventually attain a number of playable character that’s somehow higher than what Trails the 3rd gave you and that game was built around the idea of having so many party member to switch from whenever necessary.

I say this because the initial cast of characters, namely New Class VII, are overall pretty well-balanced and work in pretty good synergy with one another. Their brave orders are not too stupidly broken and encourages you to make strategic use of all of your available option but rather quickly in some segment of the story and during almost the entirety of the end-game, you will be joined by several characters most of which have absolutely stupidly unbalanced battle orders that completely nullify any semblance of challenge in the last few hours of the game sometimes to a ridiculous degree as it’s simply going against established power-gap between some characters inside of its own lore (namely McBurn who is always claimed to be the strongest baddest motherfucker around but melts when Laura equipped with the domination quartz does little as to breathe in his general direction).

On that last point, the game does mitigate that issue a little bit by having many fights where the requirement to finish them is not to beat the enemy but to reduce its health to a certain percentage. It’s kind of an artificial way to keep the consistency between gameplay and lore power-level but the game completely forgets about it by the end which makes it pointless.
Lastly and coming back from CS2 are the mech battles and this time around they’ve been vastly expanded upon than its original incarnation and as such feels like proper boss fights with actual strategy involved. For starters, Valimar isn’t the only playable unit during those fights and you can be joined by two other characters with their own mechs and their own playstyle. The game keeps a lot of the fundamentals of the original system where it’s a guessing game of touching the enemy in certain area of their body to unbalance them and chaining attacks but it’s definitely less arbitrary and with more characters on the field, some of those encounters become much more strategic and the system also incorporate the burst and break system from regular fights which makes them much more dynamic.

Most of the mech fights in these games aren’t particularly difficult tho and much like CS2 mostly serves as some sort of victory lap to conclude certain key point of the story but it’s also terribly badass to get to fight the 3 Aions from Trails to Azure in giant mech fights when they didn’t have the luxury to have those in the game they originally came from which makes for some nice bit of fanservice in a game already filled to the brim with it.

In fact let’s segway into my next segment right away and talk about CS3’s approach to storytelling, worldbuilding, exploration, game structure and fanservice and the reason why I think CS3 is both a return to form for the series who chooses to heavily embrace its legacy and an unfortunate turnover that may as well stopped me from being fully engaged with its main proposition.

CS3 is a game which is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to its own arc and even the whole series as whole. On the surface CS3 is both a continuation of what came before it and some sort of a soft reboot of its own arc bouncing off of new foundation and re-focusing on establishing a new story arc within the Cold Steel Saga. What this entails is that unlike the other arcs in the series which were constructed in a “Build-Up” and a “Pay-Off” game similarly to how old PS1 games divided their stories on multiple discs due to space limitation except each disc is its own fully complete game experience.

In the case of the Sky Arc this resulted in a trilogy in which its first 2 games constituted the main bulk of the story they wanted to tell and the appropriately titled “Sky the 3rd” was an isolated story set in more or less the same premise and served more the purpose of an anthology title expanding on minor plotlines and characters from the previous two game while preparing the terrain for the future (and despite its very derivative, experimental and budget direct to dvd nature is arguably the best game in the entire series but you’ll have to check my review on Sky the 3rd that I probably plan to re-write at some point to truly understand my position). The Crossbell Arc stuck to a duology format and skipped the anthological third game in favor of a more tight and complete experience (even if Azure ends on a pretty sour note which obviously sets up the events to come in the Cold Steel series regarding Crossbell).

Cold Steel on the other hand is 4 games long and instead of being a huge game divided in 4 discs, it’s rather 2 games both with different aims and themes which are loosely connected by the throughline of Osborne Shenanigans and Rean Schwarzer doing some Rean Schwarzing. What that means is that CS3 is less a sequel to CS2 than it is a second intro game in the middle of the arc (which creates some issues down the line, more on that later).

This can be explained by 2 factors, Falcom troublesome development cycle when it comes to these titles and an excess of ambition due to the scope of the region presented in the arc (Erebonia is a much bigger territory with a long running history draught in different war, conflicts and different cults and even other races running the place, Erebonia being “the land of fairytales” as the game says at some point). Initially Cold Steel should’ve been 2 games one focusing on the eastern part and one focusing on the western part but due to the games becoming too long for their own good and Falcom having trouble transitioning to the HD era like most of their contemporaries (which hit them even bigger due to the company smaller size) both of these titles were separated into four rather than 2 and we already see how that became an issue with Cold Steel 2 which had very little to say with its plot in comparison to the actual length of the game (which was filled with countless hours of fetch questing in a quest hub in the mid-point of the game reminiscent of FF VI’s World of Ruin).

As such CS3 being an intro game feels somewhat like a repeat of CS1 both in its ambition but also its story structure. We go back to the rigid chapter based structure of CS1 and the rest of the series ditching the three act structure of CS2 and we also go back to a very similar repetitive routine of “Fetch questing at school then fetch questing on road trips” with all the same stop of “old school house, free day, practical exam day and train trip” that made CS1 a drag to play for most of its runtime but this time around CS3 has less chapter and as such less places we actually go to, you could think this would mean that the game would be much shorter and you’d be wrong because each of the game 4 main chapters last for an ungodly amount of hours and could each constitute and entire SNES RPG length by themselves and I mean that both for the better and for the worst.

So all of the ingredient were there to make this game a terribly boring and mindless experience, the mandatory spinach to go for the desert and while it is true on some level and we’ll develop that in a bit, I can say that this game at least make an actual effort in an area Cold Steel traditionally spectacularly failed at and its : The Characters.

I can’t believe I have to state this as a major improvement because you’d assume than any games of that length would at least put some effort in its characters but the first 2 Cold Steel might as well had the worst cast of characters of any RPG that I’ve played and that’s saying something when I played some pretty heavy stinker. In many RPG’s, there would usually be a few weak link or some characters you simply can’t fucking stand, for CS1 and CS2, if you go back to my review of those games, you’d realize ALL and I mean ALL of them were underwhelming, annoying or outright bad to the point that the side characters (like my sweet and beloved Towa who actually gets to play a bigger role in this game and I’m happy for it) and even the fucking NPC’s were miles more likeable and interesting despite not being the main focus of the story. It was a failure on all levels and even the sequel couldn’t elevate them to anything other than a nuisance to the story and this was also not helped by how Rean was characterized in CS2 which ended up killing all the interest I had in the character and gave me a lot of disdain for him.

In comparison New Class VII looks like they came from a completely different dimension and had a completely different narrative design philosophy behind their writing to the point that I’m actually shocked they belong into the same series as characters such as Machias or fucking Laura of all thing. Let me put it simply, I love New Class VII and I love them to bits. It's not my favorite cast in the series but they definitely reach the same standard as the SSS.
Probably in response to the criticism made to the cast of the first two entries as well as other technical difficulties of having such a large roster from the get go, the initial cast of CS3 is composed of only 4 characters (Rean included) later joined down the line by two other additional party members during the midway point of the game (and which aren’t really a surprise since they show up in the opening) for a total of 6 characters, a far cry from the 9 initial party members of the party that evolves into 11 by the second game. What that means is that unlike CS1, there’s no real necessity to separate the team for balancing issues or to procedurally introduce their gameplay style over the course of multiple hours and that’s great because that means that New Class VII can have something the original never actually had : An actual group dynamic.

New Class VII actually talk to each others, take actions together sometimes without needing Rean’s approval on everything, not all of their relationship involves sucking Rean’s dick off (well outside of Musse that is but that’s because she’s an horndog which is set on making Rean fired) and they even develop relationship with one another. There’s even a slight hint at a potential romantic pairing with Juna and Kurt and while I’m not especially crazy about it, it’s been a while in this series where romance was allowed to exist outside of the main character in the available vagina equipped individual breathing in their general direction for more than 5 seconds. The interactions between these characters are really nice, they have cool back and forth with one another, they feel like an actual group of friends and you get to actually see their relationship form and grow unlike Class VII which they tell you these characters care for each others but really they just all collectively care about Rean and that’s about it.

They also are much more nuanced and fleshed out characters than their senior counterpart, you feel like these characters weren’t just made with one word making up their entire personality this time around. Juna is definitely the outlier of the bunch in my opinion, she’s probably my favorite character in this game (probably because she’s literally Lloyd with tits and more personality woops) and some of the scenes later on definitely cements her as one of my favorite character in the series, she could’ve easily taken the protagonist seat instead of Rean and I wouldn’t have minded. The only unfortunate thing about Juna is that her entire existence is a retcon, she feels like Graggle from the Simpson when they talk about how she’s super buddies with the SSS (but really only with Randy tbf) when she wasn’t even a playable character or even an existing one in some version of the Crossbell arc. I would’ve much preferred if Juna was just an SSS super fan and a Lloyd Larper trying to find an identity of their own to carry on the fight that the SSS couldn’t continue themselves as a real passing of the torch moment, it’s a missed opportunity but she’s still an amazing character nonetheless.

The other cast members are also nothing to shy on about, Ash is a punk with attitude who constantly disobey the rules, gambles and partake in underage drinking while still having a soft spot from time to time, he’s definitely the most entertaining character and his problematic behavior contrast well with Rean’s new position as a teacher trying to set him straight and speaking of setting thing straight let’s talk about Musse.



Musse is not the most well appreciated character in the game simply because the entire schtick about her is that she’s a 16 year old temptress trying to bait Rean into the dark side of Discord moderation. Personally, I like Musse, they could’ve made a character like this much more awkward if they wanted but thankfully Rean’s newfound maturity allows him to quickly set boundaries between him and her which creates a somewhat fun dynamic of playful one sided flirting between the two that got a few chuckle out of me since Rean is trying really hard not to get fired and I just kinda like her mischievous little devil attitude which actually hides her real identity as this game version of Lelouch VI Britannia funnily enough that I’m curious to see more developed in the upcoming game (actually one of the only thing I’m excited to see developed in the sequel… because… well we’re not there yet so let’s move on).

Altina is a daughter type character, in this game you learn that her and Millium are artificial beings known as homunculus and while Milium is this peppy little girl who jumps around everywhere and feels a wide array of emotion, Altina is closer to a robot and is only learning through being around her classmate and Rean that she’s more than just a tool for war and she can be an actual human being with feeling. Some people might say that she’s just Tio again and yeah, she kinda is a K-Mart brand Tio but I don’t really mind it as much as her arc differs in some areas and since she’s also the closest character to Rean by that point, it makes for some interesting retroactive commentaries on what happened in the first two games (and probably the only relevant connective tissue from 2 to 3 aside from the late game revelations of CS2).

Lastly there’s Kurt…

Kurt…

Well…

He… exists I guess ?

Yeah sorry, I got nothing on Kurt, all JRPG parties need to have a few weak links and he’s definitely one of them. His entire deal is trying to live up to his family’s legacy and … yeah his existence makes you wish Mueller wasn’t completely shafted by the developers of the game honestly, I don’t know Kurt is kinda there, he’s inoffensive and has a few cool moment but he’s as basic as a “boy with sword” archetype could get.

BUT WHAT ABOUT REAN THOUGHT ????

In the last episode of my Kiseki journey, I said that Rean went from a character I was neutral about to one who actively grinded my gears for the entirety of CS2. I still don’t really care much about Rean, I still think he’s one of the weakest aspects of this arc and since he’s the main protagonist so much of the element in the story revolves around him. However, I will say that the premise of his character in this game at least makes him more tolerable. Rean is now a teacher at Thors Academy instead of being a student, this new position of power alongside his experience in the first two games at least makes him somewhat wiser and is a more interesting foundation for his character and the relation he’ll have with the rest of the cast.
Rean is also directly punished for his lack of decision making and spine in the original game, so he’s now pretty much tied on a leash by Osborne who uses him to do his bidding. Rean, of course being the little bitch that he is, agrees to play into the Ironbloods game and is forced to do shit against his will. That lack of agency coupled with Rean not really knowing what Osborne is cooking is going to be the main hook of CS3 and I’d say that for once it’s a good thing. Rean being forced to do stuff that he doesn’t want to do well… Actively forces him to take a position and do stuff rather than bitching about not doing stuff and bullshitting his way into acting up anyway without really thinking about the consequences of his action and when you know how Rean is when he actually HAS agency over his actions, you can’t help but think that it’s a better outcome for his character rather than the contrary.

That doesn’t stop Rean from being spectacularly flat in this game, not helped by the plot tendency not to clues us in or develop what’s the deal with him and Osborne in this episode and only playing cat and mouse with your expectations once again to make you excited for the sequel (as all of those Intro games tend to do just be gigantic teaser for their sequel anyway).

The plot also completely gave up on Rean being a nuanced character whatsoever, he seems to have troubles due to some events that happened in North Ambria and some level of trauma from losing Crow in the previous game but much like CS2 these elements are not strong enough to counterbalance how much of an absolute unstoppable giga chad he is at any occasion, in fact because Rean is an instructor now, everyone thinks he’s this real badass mf that can’t do no wrong and multiple time within the narrative are meant to show just how strong Rean has become and how heroic he is. There’s a hilariously out of touch scene rushing at super speed to stop some soldiers from killing themselves and I’m sorry but it’s so over the top and corny that it makes it impossible for me to take this seriously. I’m also pretty sure that Rean is slowly but surely repeating his self-doubt arc from the previous two game on the pretense that his traumas are lil bit more believable than killing a bear as a child but since the game never expands on what happened in North Ambria and all dialogs points out to him having done nothing wrong because god forbid Rean doing war crimes while actually killing people in war to actually affect his mind and give him PTSD, what do you think this is a mature video game ?

But I think that’s enough about talking positively about the game here, I’ve promised a thought piece, not a review and I just wanted to get most of the positives out of the way first to prove to you that while I’m on the side of the game being a general improvement over the first two Cold Steel games, it doesn’t mean that the game was a success in delivering on all of its ideas and that’s probably why CS3 won’t end up joining its brethren in keeping the series afloat and bring back the standard of quality brought by the older entries as the shadow of Falcom’s wacky game and narrative design philosophy come creeping its way back on the soup no matter how fresh the ingredients are.

CS3 has a bit of an identity crisis because it's both a sequel to what came before it but also seems to want to wipe the slate clean and build off on new foundations. We already stated how CS1 was a game designed for a new generation of players who wants to be introduced to the wonderful world of Kiseki and as such it kept most of the reference to earlier entry to a minimal and didn’t really dare involve elements from older title too much (sometimes very inelegantly, such as Ouroboros being first introduced in a throwaway line in the mid-game).
What I mean by that is that the game isn’t really a sequel to Cold Steel 1 or Cold Steel 2 and the main conflict that was the central piece of these two games (the class warfare between commoners and nobles) is only a foot-note within the story. The Civil war did happen and is mentioned at several points throughout the game but the actual main conflict which started the whole thing and how it affected the country is completely glossed over and never mentioned again. CS3 doesn’t seem to be interested in bouncing back from how poorly it handled its political themes in the original two games and it’s really strange how little CS2 and the events that transpired in that game actually matters in the plot of CS3.

Perhaps Falcom realized how poorly it handled the entire thing and seem to want to sweep all of it under the rug but it’s nonetheless very bizarre that the game never actually properly addresses the consequences of the civil war and how it could’ve probably affected the public's perception on nobility and how the noble faction got punished from such careless action and seems to only want to pretend that the very existence of the noble alliance and its action wasn’t the result of some deeply rooted systemic issue but rather the folly of a couple of bad apples within the noble faction namely Duke Cayenne and Lord Albarea (which btw, CS2 explicitly said was the bad apple of the noble alliance and the noble alliance didn’t claim and actively wanted to stop this man from committing the atrocities he committed in Celdic so that’s even fucking crazier).

Heck one of the first character you meet in CS3 is Aurelia Le Guin, a former general of the Noble Alliance and a pretty minor character from CS2 who has been appointed as the principal of the branch campus and was even said to be a major player in the annexation of North Ambria a couple of years prior to the events of the game. The game will rarely if ever explain how Aurelia never got punished for her crimes, if she still believes in the ideals of the noble alliance, if she has some resentment for Rean (she seems to have none) for stealing the glory of the alliance, none of that shit is explored, Aurelia just seems to exist to be badass and steals the character arc Laura should’ve had in this game.

Another thing that CS2 spectacularly fucked over is how it portrayed the civil war and by that I mean that it didn’t portray it at all since most of the action took place in the western region and what part of Erebonia are you visiting in this game ? Well of course, it’s the western region ! And yet, the civil war is only a passing thought, everything seems to be normal, no citizens seems to have been harmed by the situation, no citizens seems to hold resentment towards the nobles, no citizens seems to try and heal from potential traumas or loss brought forth by this seemingly pointless conflict. Absolutely none of that thing is explored even when you are actually visiting the Province who belonged to Duke Cayenne himself (remember ? The Antagonist of the previous game ?) where the only thing that seems to matter is to try and elect a new Duke Cayenne (in fact Musse later reveals herself to be Duke Cayenne’s niece like what is going on with the world ?!?!) and trying to gain the favors of the population.

This is such a bizarre turn over and seemingly makes CS2 an even bigger waste of time than it actually was since it seems to matter very little into the plot of this game. In fact the only conflicts that seems to matter for the game’s plot is the annexation of North Ambria, a war that isn’t explored or explained to you at all unless you’re reaching for an optional book found in Towa’s house and was only ever shown in an anime released 6 WHOLE DAMN YEARS after the release of Cold Steel 3 and it’s weird as shit since it seems that it was a pretty big deal. But the game does not really care and wants to start over on new foundation.
I must ask myself how did they plan out this scenario sometimes because making it so none of the important stuff from the previous 2 games actually matters into its third entry is pretty wild, you could literally be skipping CS1 and CS2 and just read a summary of them and you will have almost the same level of comprehension as someone who actually got through the games. WHAT IS GOING ON ?

A friend of mine who actually like these games (and we’re still in good contact despite his dubious taste in video games) was constantly repeating to me that I was looking at the Cold Steel arc wrong and that it really wasn’t a story about the division of social class and how these dynamics affects and changes society, but rather about the “fear of imperialism and how to act against it” which is represented by the Osborne faction. And while he’s definitely right on some level (because I don’t think CS3’s handling of this topic is particularly stellar either but I’ll develop this further down this already long essay)

You may think that maybe Falcom did this as to make this entry more accessible to newcomers who might want to start the series with this one in spite of this being the third entry in the series or to focus on the new conflict of this new sub-arc without having to deal with the dust left by their failure at delivering anything of substance for 2 whole damn games but surprisingly and that’s the whole paradox of this episode, despite wanting to act as a soft-reboot of its own arc and a potential new jumping point to the series for newcomers, this game more so than any other entry in the series hinges heavily on the series everlasting continuity and constantly referencing past events from older entry in the franchise and in fact the main conflict of the narrative this time around is definitely more focus on the lore of the franchise rather than a singular theme or even political stakes like it was the case with Azure and the first Cold Steel duology.

You see many returning faces, you get to visit places that were mentioned previously in the franchise and heck one chapter takes place entirely within a new 3D rendition of Crossbell which despite how dumb that’s going to sound made me smile despite this being just an obvious overly expanded technical flex by the developers but hell if it didn’t work on me.

These moments are also treated with the utmost respect for their legacy, at one point you visit Hamel a place where one of the most tragic event in the series happened and you get to visit the grave of Loewe the second main antagonist of Sky SC and the most memorable character from that game and its treated as this solemn quiet moment like you’ve just stepped into sacred ground and as a somber melancholic rendition of Silver Will plays over flashbacks from SC, you feel some level of faint nostalgia mixed with uncertainty as you walk towards that gravestone and it’s probably one of the best story segment in the series.

At one point, you get a boss fight with Arianrodh in a setting similar to the moment you fight her in Azure complete with the same theme song from that game and an equally high step in difficulty and it’s literally so freaking hype it’s insane.

So yeah, I think that on average, I didn’t completely loose any kind of attachment to the series continuity since literally all of these moments made me enjoy the game significantly more than its predecessors and made me happy I stuck with the series despite it all but here lies another issue of … what do you even do between these member berries moments that are obviously meant to please old time fans of the series ?
Well…

That’s something we’re going to discuss now to observe how Falcom pretty much lost control of their own ambition once again and ended a game that could’ve been the long awaited return to form the series needed into pretty much its death sentence.

Cold Steel 3 suffers from what I will refer to as “Tales of Syndrome” (and please don’t see a criticism of that franchise as I happen to have a lot of sympathy for it). Like I mentioned in my first review of CS1, “Tales of” tend to compensate a passable/mediocre story with other things such as a great combat system, some technically impressive stuff for their time (I’m still blown the fuck away by Tales of Phantasia technical flexes like what the shit) and most importantly, incredible cast of characters and amazing characterization which its “skits” system is no stranger too. Oftentimes, it’s not surprising to see a “Tales Of” story fumble near the end or heck even in the middle of it, Vesperia is an amazing game up until its last 10h or so which completely annihilate any credibility the story had left.

However, the “Tales Of” series is different in one key element : It’s standalone. It’s easier to forgive a Tales Of game for not delivering because at least it’s not going to ruin your enjoyment of other entries in the series (“Graces F” corny ass writing ain’t going to ruin how stellar “Abyss” was for exemple.) and more generally it’s not going to feel like all the hours you’ve spent playing these titles weren’t worth it. “Trails” on the other hand and especially the one puts a higher emphasis on its world building and its different geopolitical stakes. Trails will always go in excruciating detail about how almost every facet of its universe works (I mean for fuck sake, how many JRPG series will stop you to infodump you on freaking Tax laws) and as such, you expect the series to do something with all of the stuff it’s setting up and as such expect nothing but excellence from it (and with this series, excellence is always close but never reached).

You can’t just disguise yourself as Yasumi Matsuno to be Yasumi Matsuno, Cold Steel and the Trails series has a whole has a rich universe but for the most part I feel like the franchise likes to use all of that as a carrot at the end of a stick to make you keep playing rather than something that truly wants to say anything and what is a rich detailed universe if it’s wasted on shitty character trope and weak stories.

Cold Steel 3 abandons the main conflict it desperately tries to establish for over 2 games in favor of another more lore-centric conflict. Instead of Noble and Commoners, the story revolves around Ironbloods vs Ouroboros which is less risky but also not as interesting because… well… if you think about it for a second… What does the game even want to say with this conflict ?

For the first time since Trails in the Sky SC, Ouroboros take center stages in the narrative of Cold Steel 3, I’ve ranted multiple times about how I don’t care much for Ouroboros but I think in this particular case since they’re in the forefront of the narrative, I will probably make my position a little more clearer on them.

I think Ouroboros is a hindrance to the series' ability to tell intriguing and interesting stories with its universe since their very first appearance.

First introduced in Sky SC, Ouroboros has quickly been presented as the main antagonistic force of that game but the ending of SC and some elements from Sky 3rd showed that Ouroboros are not done yet and they’re here to stay. Trails in the Sky FC had probably what is in my opinion the only good villain that the series ever had : Richard. Richard’s motivations in that game were believable, understandable and worked in tandem with the kind of setting the original Trails in the Sky wanted to portray. In fact, Richard is a character that only gets better with time because all of the stuff he warned us about and the very reason why he did the things that he did pretty much became true as the series moved forward.

However, Richard’s much like many other similar villains in the series (all of varying quality : Dieter was pretty much like Richard but was robbed due to Azure’s obsession with introducing a bigger fish to raise the stakes even when those were already pretty high and it wasn’t necessary to do so) was used as a pawn for Ouroboros which were the people who helped but most importantly used and manipulated Richard to further their own agenda.

What agenda you may ask ?

Well wouldn't you like to know ? Haha…

Ouroroboros to me is a complete enigma, it’s like their very presence exist solely to make the story worse and it’s not helped that most of the lore surrounding the more supernatural aspect of the universe (and thus what the villains will eventually seek to further their goals) are sought after by them too. Ouroboros introduction in Sky SC was dubious at best, they forced the game into a repetitive sluggish structure for most of its run and their saturday morning cartoon personality which only existed to prop up other characters in your party didn’t really help. And whether or not you like Weissman, I also think it was a mistake to make him the first big shot of Organization XIII since apparently according to the game, he was a renegade to the cause and to the plan.

But what plan ? What cause ?

Well… wouldn’t you like to know ? Haha…

Ouroboros are, for lack of a better term, annoying. Falcom really wants you to think of them as this chaotic organization with people of all horizon working together towards a certain goal but then it also wants most of its members to be a free atom that can do and think whatever they want and even temporarily or permanently leave them without any consequences especially for its enforcers since the Anguis (Team Magma Admins type of beat) seems to be all obedient to their grandmaster. A lot of fans told me that I’ve always misread Ouroboros as just “mustache twirling villains” but to be frank… there’s not much elements pointing to the contrary so far in the series ? And even if they want us to think that their cause and their cause is just… maybe a hint towards that cause would help.

But Falcom refuses to let us know, Falcom will just forcefully put them inside of a game’s plot and since they’re the main antagonistic force driving the overall plot forward that means that they’re always going to be the bigger fish in the room, the only antagonist that matter because in the end any new villains no matter their motivations or how elaborate their plans are will always end up as a new pawn for Ourobozos, they’re not interesting villains to me.
Ouroboros are just cryptic and bizarre, they’re just chaotic for the sake of being chaotic. Sometimes they will help you defeat the local bad guy, sometimes they will join them, sometimes they will oppose the villain or join them when they don’t fit their agenda anymore. And it’s really hard to take them for anything but random villain of the week when that’s exactly how they behave and present themselves for most of the series only for them to make you go : “WHAT IS THE SOCIETY UP TO” and the answer always being something like….

Well… wouldn’t you like to know ?

These villains have far outstayed their welcome for me and I’m just tired of their existence and their continued influence on the franchise. It’s impossible to take any stake, any other villains seriously when they are in the middle of the arena selling you on empty promises and “mysteries” which aren’t even that interesting to begin with. In SC at least, there were personal stakes in going against them but in CS3, you only fight Ouroboros because Rean is forced to by Osborne… but other than that… this conflict is pointless and meaningless and worst of all… actually wants to tell nothing.

CS3 has the same repetitive plot structure for all of its chapters, some people say that CS3 isn’t boring because a lot of stuff happens this time around but does it really ?

You still do a lot of pointless stuff that end up accomplishing nothing not just on a micro-level but also on a macro-level. Stopping Ouroboros isn’t an inherently interesting thing to center your plot around and it feels like a distraction at best, CS3 legitimately has nothing to say and nothing interesting to either tell or make us experience with everything that we’re doing in its main plot aside from some carrots at the end of a stick based on complete “trust the plan” rhetoric that leads to more frustration and some nostalgia bait to keep old time fans from snoozing too much at everything happening here.

I don’t know why they felt that the third game in a quadrilogy must be so light in actual substance, heck making this another intro game is also kind of an ass backward narrative choice because there’s not many things left to introduce so they need to pad the story out with the same boring structure as CS1 (which feels even less justified here than it did in that game) and new characters which, yes, are more interesting but feels like a band-aid on an open wound.

And even then, this identity crisis continues, between wanting to be a fresh start and hinging on its continuity.

At some key points in the narrative, some of your old squadmates from the first two games will get you out of a tough situation and temporarily join your party. This reunion with old characters is the emotional core of some of the game's more intimate moment but it hinges heavily on you buying into Class VII as a group and as we stated in the first two games, these titles did nothing to make me care about them in the first place and when they’re put in contrast to the new characters in this game, it’s even worse because despite some dubious attempt at making them more interesting (like Gaius being a Gralsritter which is just ???), they never get any better than what they were before and continue to be a weak narrative element of the story and steal the show of characters I’d rather be playing as.
A friend of mine insisted on telling me this game is supposedly about “the fear of imperialism and how to act against it” but for a game about imperialism, the game really doesn’t seem to want to make any sort of deep thoughtful commentary on the subject or even address it heck most of the time it tries to lowball the issues in multiple ways. Osborne is said to be an expansionist but yet all of the wars he launched to annex neighboring countries have been explicitly stated to have happened without bloodshed which to me is just a strange fact to put in the forefront of the narrative. While Trails has often been afraid to kill off important characters (to the point of extreme absurdity cf : Illya in Azure) it wasn’t really afraid to portray death of civilians or even main characters committing or being the victims of atrocious crime.

But here, you have a seemingly fascist dictator who… conquers the world…pacifically … and makes decisions who… benefits most people ? And make the old nobility fold ? And reducing taxes ? And make Rean do things against his will like… stopping random terrorists from doing terrorist shit ?

Wow that man is awful… I wonder how Crossbell is doing in the ending of Azure. It looked kinda dire and… wait… what do you mean it’s doing better than it ever did on its own ? And what do you mean everything about the ending of Azure was retconned and they didn’t respect continuity just to have Randy chill in a giant robot and Tio being an important searcher ? Weren’t they supposed to be fugitives ?

Oh wait only Lloyd, KeA and … ARIOS ??? Are ?

I mean what about Rean, he seems to be pretty troubled to have lost the control of his abilities and that’s like a main theme of this new arc about him and… wait… what do you mean he just lost control of himself for 5 seconds and didn’t actually kill anyone ? Wait but… huh ?

Hey if this is a story about imperialism, maybe they’re going to finally address why we haven’t seen the emperor yet and why he let his chancellor and the nobles do a bunch of shit while he’s supposed to be ruling the country and …

Oh… you mean he read a bunch of books that predict the future and decided… not to do anything about it and just let things burn ? Because what … What do you mean ?

“There is something in Erebonia”

Oh no

…

Can you hear it ?

The trumpets of the bullshit writing apocalypse are ringing ! The deads are rising from their graves and pretend to have a secret identity, an ancient dragon is awakening out of nowhere and forces you to do a dungeon that looks like the final dungeon but will later be revealed to have nothing to do with the actual main threat of the plot… and… oh no… are these…
GNOMES ???

GNOMES…. GNOMES…. GNOMES…

Nobody’s going to read this fucking review this far so might as well just fucking lashes out. So there’s actually a third faction in this Ironbloods vs Ouroboros thing the plot has going for it and these are…

God…

The Gnomes…

So huh… the gnomes (yes the fucking gnomes, not the dwarves, not the elven, not the any potentially cooler pick for a villain faction just FUCKING GNOMES) are this MyStErIoUs faction working in the shadow of everything with their black workshop, they do all sort of cray thing like bringing people back from the dead and killing all tension and stakes in the narrative, have incredibly obvious secret identity like…

Man…

GEORGE NOME

THEY MADE THE DOINKY SPLOINKY FAT GUY FROM THE FIRST TWO GAMES A VILLAIN BUT NOT JUST A VILLAIN HE’S A GNOME AND HIS FUCKING NAME IS GEORGE NOME GET IT BECAUSE HE’S A GNOME AND HE HAS A GUN AND KILLS ANGELICA (I hope she stays dead) BECAUSE HE’S A GNOME !

BUT WAIT THAT’S NOT IT !

DING DONG

Hey ! It’s me ! Kondo-San !

You wanna come inside my clubhouse ?

KINDA KONDA KONDO-SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57oU-xqiXek

Suddenly the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse rises from the grounds and nothing starts to make sense anymore. The game lore dumps you on a bunch of shit that it already info dumped you on if you read most of the book in the game like I did so thanks… collecting these was pointless I guess. You fought a dragon ? It Does not matter there’s an eviler bigger dragon now, all the villains who've been fighting against each other start teaming up for no reason. People start switching allegiance left and right, Ash is now the secret 3rd Hamel child and HE SHOT THE EMPEROR WHAT THE HELL LET’S GO TO WAR BUT FIRST YOU GOTTA GO DOWN THE LAMEST FINAL DUNGEON IN HISTORY AND ONE-SHOTTING EVERYONE BECAUSE POWER-SCALING ? CREDIBLE THREATS ? NOT IN MY JRPG !
And…

As you enter the door to the final boss…

You prepare yourself…

For the shittiest

Most brain melting succession of events you’ve ever seen.

Put on the music : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3G5IXn0K7A&t

Ok so get this, there was a hobo looking scholar who showed up regularly so of course the guy is a villain because that’s like the 4th time they did this in this series already. His name is actually

BLACK ALBERICH CHIEF OF THE GNOMES (I’m not even kidding, that's his full name and title) and he’s also Alisa’s Seemingly Dead Father who came back from the dead OH BUT GET THIS !

This random guy who hasn’t existed in the series until this episode, he was actually the one behind EVERYTHING, that’s right EVERYTHING, he looks at the camera and tell you to your face “Hamel ? I did that shit, the Orbal shutdown ? I did that shit, EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN CROSSBELL AND THE CIVIL WAR ! I DID THAT SHIT”

THE GNOMES MANIPULATED EVERYONE FROM THE SHADOWS ! THEY EVEN MANIPULATED THE MASTERMINDS OUROBOROS AND OSBORNE AND ALL THE EVIL PEOPLE IN THE SERIES OH AND GUESS WHAT

REFILL YOUR POPCORN YOU’RE GONNA LOVE THIS NEXT PART

FLASH NEWS :

DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE’S NO REAL REASON FOR WAR HAPPENING ? DID YOU KNOW THAT PEOPLE AREN’T EVIL ? THEY’RE JUST DRIVEN TO DO EVIL THINGS AND KILL EACH OTHERS BECAUSE … wait what do you mean clearly established and believable reasons according to the series clearly established geopolitical stakes ?

NO SILLY ! IT’S BECAUSE OF THE CURSE !

WHAT’S THE CURSE ?

WELL IT’S A TOXIC GAZ THAT WAS FARTED BY THIS ANCIENT GUNDAM WHO ALSO MANIPULATED EVERYONE BTW AND WHICH TURN PEOPLE EVIL AND RACIST !

EVEN THE CAT TURNS RACIST ! OH NO REAN HAS TURNED INTO SUPER RACISM WHAT THE FUCK QUICK EVERYONE STOPS HIM ALSO OOMFIE IS DEAD NO CLIFFHANGER “THIS STORY IS AS DARK AS INK, SEE YOU NEXT TIME IN CS4”
COLD STEEL 3

IS A SCAM

THIS FRANCHISE

IS A SCAM

THEY SHOWED YOU IMPROVEMENTS BUT IT WAS ALL A LIE !

FUCK AND I WROTE 21 PAGES FOR WHAT

FOR THIS

OH MY GOD

This is amazing…

I…

I need to play CS4…

This is fraud writing, the kind you only see once every 15 billion years when the planet aligns !

I was supposed to have like a conclusion about how Trails doesn’t deliver on its promises and I’ve tried to approach these games in good faith but holy shit…

GNOMES

GNOMES

GNOMES

GNOMES

GNOMES

GNOMES

GNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMES

(Towa is still really cute tho)

I CLAPPED

THEY DID THE THING THAT GURREN LAGANN DID AT THE END OF THE MOVIE AND I CLAPPED

I CLAPPED WHEN JIN USED MISHIMA AND KAZAMA STYLE AND THEY PLAYED TEKKEN 3 MUSIC I CLAPPED

ALSO THEY GOT SAINT SEIYA SHIT IN THIS

IT WAS GAS

Trails of Cold Steel 2 : Fascinatingly Bad

Previously, in my journey through hell the Kiseki series, we covered the first game in the third arc of this now cult classic series and I concluded rather harshly and in length that it was indeed one of the worst JRPG that I’ve ever played.

In response to such vitriolic hatred for what is essentially a very mediocre bargain bin RPG of the week, my friends quickly responded to me with the following statement : “If you think CS1 is bad, I can’t wait for you to try the 2nd one, it’ll make you think it was actually a masterpiece” which instead of dissuading me from continuing on with the franchise actually got me curious about what that might entail.

You see, Trails of Cold Steel 2 had a bit of a rocky development history. Around 2012, the PS Vita was slowly but surely put on the front as the successor to the PSP, Falcom just went through what could be considered their 2nd golden age with the PSP with a wide variety of titles across both PSP and PC a lot of action-rpg of course since it was until recently their main activity as game devs but also the Trails series which was picking up some speed, so much so that the fabled “Zwei 3” was instead released as “Nayuta No Kiseki” to profit off of the Kiseki brand (a fruitless effort since it was one of the last RPG on the PSP and by that point people have already moved on to other things).

This transitional period was a bit rough for Falcom which had two big projects for the PS Vita, the first one was “Ys : Memories of Celceta” a (bad) remake of Ys IV and of course the next entry in the Kiseki series aka “Trails of Cold Steel”. However, in a moment of extreme “lucidity”, Toshihiro Kondo asked the team at Falcom to develop the game for both the PS Vita and the Playstation 3, marking the first time Falcom has worked on a a game for home console since the mid 2000’s (if you can count porting Ys VI on PS2 as making a console game).

This of course lead to a lot of undesired results, the game was a buggy mess on release with tons of issues running on both platforms and on top of that they had to cut corner everywhere because Cold Steel was simply becoming too ambitious for the studio to reasonably finish it in time, but no worries because they just decided to cut the last hours of the game and release it later as its own standalone experience. What was supposed to be one game probably followed by one more sequel like the Crossbell saga became a 4 game long epic separated into 2 sub-arc each, of which Cold Steel 2 was the second half of that first arc (yeah it’s a bit complicated to follow, I swear I’m trying my best here).

So what exactly is Trails of Cold Steel 2 ? Well imagine if you took the second half of Final Fantasy VI and made it an entire 70h game instead because for some reasons Falcom decided that it would be a brilliant idea to do the “Search for your friends'' bit from FFVI again making it the third time this has happened in the series and I really must ask myself.

“Does Falcom think we wouldn’t notice they’re just shamelessly recycling ideas from other titles AND themselves ?” Well perhaps.

But I don’t really mind, if it’s done well, it could still save itself from the plagiarism allegations and besides the series has its own set of quirks to compensate (for better or for worse).
I’m sorry in advance if this review is gonna be shorter than the previous one (post edit note : this is a lie) because honestly my thoughts on this game are not nearly as intense, most of what was bad about CS1 still carries over from CS2 there’s very little change between the two titles, it is for the most part a straight continuation of what was done previously and that’s gonna be the main bulk of the issue.

Because the foundations that CS1 established were so weak to begin with, it was really hard to get invested into what CS2 wanted to tell me with its story. One thing that I will say CS2 has over CS1 is that the story is a bit more “engaging”, it’s less about experiencing slice-of-life moments between the most boring RPG party you’ve ever interacted with and more so about following a terrible mess of a story that would make Nomura’s writing seem sensible in comparison.

I guess I’ll get the gameplay out of the way first since there’s a few new additions, the battle system remains almost exactly the same as CS1 with the little addition of the “overdrive” gauge, if you’ve read my review of Azure I’ve explained that this game had something called a “burst” gauge which could unleash a massive boost on your characters abilities, getting them priority moves, let them cast spell cost-free and acting as an emergency heal button on top of that, pretty much the “fuck shit up button”. Well overdrive is more or less the same except instead of acting for the entire party, it acts only for the two characters that are linked together on the field and also only acts for three turns instead of dropping down based on your actions.

This small addition is welcome and definitely make battles a little bit more dynamic but it still a very feeble addition with the only real strategic use being to buff your party very very quickly (and the main reason why I used Jusis way more often this time around) during boss fight to more quickly dispatch of them in one hit thanks to Laura aka “What if we turned One Punch Man into a party member” s-craft.

Because yeah, unsurprisingly, the game balance here is even more awful than it was in CS1. Again, I've played the game on normal like with all the other entries but here it almost felt like I was cheating the game and I probably should’ve upped the difficulty to give the game any semblance of challenge. The reason why the game balance is so bad here is because you retain most of your broken crafts and stats from the previous game, since this game acts more like a 2nd disc than a sequel. This means that you start the early game with what were end-game abilities.

It’s nothing new in the series mind you but here since the game is so craft-centric and they didn’t even bother to nerf your crafts like Azure did coming off of Zero, it makes the early, mid and endgame stupidly easy, heck the second you obtain the “Domination” quartz which doubles the damage output of any attack/crafts/s-craft first used in battle, you can pretty much destroy any bosses in one-hit with a turboboosted Laura.

Which further emphasizes how the changes made to the orbment system to make it more accessible/straightforward only made the game battle system a complete mess and while it is fun to break the game in half, it doesn’t necessarily make for an engaging combat system for more than 70 or so hours. Some fights required a bit more strategy like the cryptids which are superbosses scattered across the map but even then, it’s often not that deep either.
But now on top of the regular battle system, you have GIANT MECH FIGHTS !

Those were already featured in the last 20 minutes or so of CS1 but here they are more present, punctuating or sometimes concluding big stretches of the main story for spectacle purposes and while they definitely do a good job at making me hype thanks to the music and the presence of giant robots and all of the implications surrounding their existences on the battlefield, the actual gameplay is a bit rough… but if I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve rarely seen any RPG 100% nailing mech combats so I’m not gonna hold it against the game for not perfecting the formula.

The fights are just a guessing game where you have to hit your target in specific areas of their body, that part changing depending on the stance they’re having, a pretty interesting concept bogged down by the fact it’s never obvious what part of the body becomes the weak point and that even if you do hit the weak point, you don’t have a 100% chance of breaking the opponents guards, meaning the best strategy to win most fight is to put yourself in counter stance and let the game break the guards for you. There’s definitely room to improve those fights, they’re a nice little distraction from the mundanity of the main combat system but they definitely need some tweaking to be more engaging and less gimmicky.

Now that we got the most minimal change out of the way first, let’s talk about the actual big ass elephant in the room which is, you guessed it, the story !

CS1 was meant to be an introduction to the world of Erebonia but if you go back and read my review of it, you will quickly notice that this introduction was not only lackluster but also presented in the least engaging way possible. From long drawn-out info dumps dropped in the worst places, the repetitive, dull and predictable structure of its chapter based narrative, its bland and shallow characters I ended up having little to no attachment to by the end of the game and of course a confused mess of a main political conflict backed up by Kondo’s new weird obsession with centrism and faux gray morality and complete misunderstanding of basic concept such as class warfare and the separation of power.

Out of all the 90+ hours it took me to finish CS1 only the ending portion was of any significant interest because that’s where the game started to have an heavier atmosphere with soon to be child soldiers dreading the very real possibility to be drafted and of course the introduction of the big giant mechs introduced earlier as well as the heel turn of one of our party member Crow who is somewhat of a rival to Rean in this game in a kinda Amuro-Char kinda way (which is equally as gay but not equally as good as that aforementioned dynamic).

We start the story in the mountain range separated from all of our comrades with an understandably distraught Rean crying over the potential loss of his friends and after a quick walk in the area, you get saved by your sister Elise who welcomes you to your hometown of Ymir.

Ymir which by the way is a place the team have already visited in CS1 and even fought an Ouroboros member one time, don't you remember it ? Of course you don’t because it was a chapter that was completely absent from the original game instead being repurposed as a freaking Drama CD and let’s be frank, nobody ever in the history of forever listens to those.
After an altercation with the local Ouroboros super bad guy working for the newly established “Noble Alliance” who acts as the main antagonistic force in this game, your sister and the princess of the country gets kidnapped so now Rean has to gather all of his comrades thanks to his giant robots convenient teleportation magic ability.

One thing I appreciate about CS2 compared to CS1 is how the game decides to shake up the core structure of a Trails game, not by much of course but enough to be noticeable. Instead of the game being separated in chapters, this time the game is separated into 3 acts, meaning the narration and overall game structure can be little more free form and if the first act is pretty straightforward (gathering your friends by revisiting previous areas), the 2nd act decides to do something that is in part interesting from a game design aspect but also terrible from a story pacing perspective.

See CS2 was originally meant to be the last 10 hours of the original game, this game’s final act and the entire game pretty much feels like one drawn out quest to gather up your forces and take on the bad guy which I guess is fine if like for Azure it’s the last arc of an otherwise pretty long and substantial game but here, you quickly come to realize that CS2 really struggles to fill its gametime with meaningful story content somehow even more so than the original game which was mostly about nothing.

But the few story bits there are, are in fact a bit more substantial, I just wish that they were actually good.

Starting with the character writing.

It’s no surprise that I value good characters in my stories and the first game completely failed at making me care about the massive cast of playable characters it had. But the Kiseki series is a long series of games with a solid sense of continuity and usually can surprise me with the way they shake things up and manage to make me care about characters I didn’t truly have any reason to give a shit about in the sequel.

But sadly, CS2 manages to somehow fuck up that aspect beyond belief, none and I mean NONE of the characters aside from the main protagonist goes through any form of development, arcs or anything of the sort during the course of the main story. The only character in this game that approaches something even resembling a character arc is Jusis and it just isn’t a good arc whatsoever. It’s an arc about having to come to terms with his family's shitty actions and fight for himself and what he believes in, pretty standard stuff and honestly not handled super well because of something about this game story I will develop in a minute.

Any semblance of characterization or even minuscule amount of development these characters are contained almost exclusively within their bonding events which means that for some reason, the developers thought that something as basic as character writing should be given to the discretion of the player and be completely optional and missable contents !



Alisa or Machias could be the most 10/10 characters to ever grace the medium and I will still have nothing to say about them because I didn’t focus on them at all when allocating bonding points and I certainly wasn’t going to save scum to see all character events which often times can be up to fucking FIFTEEN AT EACH CHAPTER TRANSITIONS. This design philosophy is not only completely asinine but also completely antithetical to the idea of good character writing or just good writing in a video game in general.

Since my love for these characters have been almost non-existent, I had little to no desire to learn more about them and if they wanted me to care, they should’ve given me something to chew on outside of this pathetic excuse of a social link system which completely misunderstood the appeal of such a system from a game which itself already had issues balancing it correctly, but at least Persona feels somewhat competent in the uses of such mechanics, CS1 and even more so CS2 are embarrassingly bad with their take on it.

It’s not even like the bonding events are all that good either, the ones I’ve focused on mostly for gameplay reasons (focusing on characters I actively use in battle for stat boosting rather than because I’m interested in them) have been for the most part barebones, bland and uninteresting.

How come a character like Laura even get past the conceptualization process, all of her bonding events involves her either talking about swords, swinging a sword or philosophizing about… you guessed it SWORDS. Her entire personality and arc revolves around the idea that she’s a swordswoman like she’s a knight class character from some 80’s RPG on the freaking NES and those usually didn’t TALK about their job so goddamn much.

And you can apply this to pretty much any characters in your party, somehow the development team sat at a table and probably pinned drawings of the characters on a white board and then glued sticky notes on them with random words and said “yeup that’s going to be the whole character !”.

Millium is a literal super-spy working for the government but all of your interactions with her will be about cooking stuff and generally be the resident pedo-bait character because this is yet again a very self-indulgent japanese RPG aimed at teenagers or creepy weirdos with reprehensible fetishes.

Emma literally is a walking plot device, her entire character can be summed up as “I knew about it but I didn’t tell you because of my secret mission as a witch” and then bla bla bla exposition and self-pitying about having to hide shit from us, weirdly enough that makes her the most relevant character in the story because she’s pretty much the spokesperson for all of the random lore shit the game plot gravitates around during certain key point of the narrative and she’s also related directly to one of the main antagonist and resident Team Galaxy Admin : Vita Clotilde, a witch that can manipulate people through her singing.

I could go on and on about the characters in this game but really who cares, if the game doesn’t even make the bare minimum to make them interesting or likable, why should I make efforts trying to analyze and discuss them in the first place.

They had two 70-90 hours worth of gametime to do so and they failed miserably so fuck it fr.
HECK EVEN TOWA, THE ONE CHARACTER I LIKE IN THIS DUOLOGY DOESN’T HAVE ANY MEAT TO HER BONES IN THIS ONE, I’ve still defaulted to her for continuity reasons (which further emphasize how dumb that bonding system is in a game series with a supposed one true canon) and because I like her the most but Jesus Christ they even managed to not make me care as much about the only character I had even the slightest of attachment to in this cast.

Which leaves us with our homeboy, our hero, our guy, our light at the end of the tunnel, our shining beacon of hope and righteousness ! Our Protagonist, Rean Schwarzer !

In the original game, Rean was… not that interesting, he was a rather bland, uninteresting character that I didn’t have much attachment or even strong opinion about, he was generic but I guess that in a world full of walking anime clichés passing off as real human being, he fitted in as a player stand-in and blank slate.

That’s not to say he had nothing to his name in the original, we saw the beginning of his self doubt and self-pity linked to an ever consuming desire to protect others oftentimes prioritizing the well-being of others before his own. We also had some hints about his inner powers, like how he can go beast-mode sometimes and have cool white-hair like the dude from Tokyo Ghoul (do people still care about Tokyo Ghoul ?). And lastly, he’s an awakener, one of seven chosen ones (to which we only see 2 of them) who can control the fabled Divine Knights, powerful ancient machines that can do cool magic robot things (and I’ll admit that Valimar’s design is pretty sick !).

But it’s in this game that Rean finally come into his own as a proper character and let me tell you, I wish he kept his mouth shut because Rean went from a character I was completely indifferent towards in the first game to one I actively fucking despise and perhaps one of the worst protagonist I’ve had the displeasure of playing in a JRPG.

Rean is a whiny insufferable little centrist who believes in literally nothing, wants to get involved with nothing in the story and just accepts whatever comes his way like a good little dog without thinking about his actions or developing a single thought or philosophy of his own… NOT A SINGLE FUCKING TIME. Rean lives in a world drought in conflicts and injustice. A world with a rigid class-system that divides the country he lives in. A country where an elite of people can decide on a whim to start a war on its own people in an attempt to push their domination. A world where a minority of its population have nothing but contempt for the people below and will literally sacrifice civilians to prove their superiority.

And yet, the game insists on painting a morally gray framework on such a basic class-warfare type of conflict with the noble alliance presented as “not entirely in the wrong” except the Noble Alliance does absolutely nothing commendable or justifiable for the entire duration of the game, if anything most of them are random cartoon villains who commits atrocious crimes (that you never get to actually see aside from that ONE time but we’ll get back to that) because of their pettiness and need to push their domination on the masses not just through propaganda but also through literal honest to god warfare !


You can’t get more nazi than the noble alliance and yet Rean will still be like : “Yeah but we shouldn’t interfere, we shouldn’t take a side tho, not all nobles are bad people” and I get that being a noble himself, he doesn’t have the perspective to really refute that status-quo but that’s what character development is for, it’s to make him see the injustice of the world and change his vision and work towards making the world a better place. That ideological nonchalance and hypocrisy isn’t just shared by Rean though, it’s shared by all of his comrades of Class VII who are too busy stroking his One Leaf Blade when they’re not busy being drones with no thoughts or personalities of their own.

Which brings me to my next problem with CS2 storytelling, it’s over-confidence in thinking you care about things. See, in most stories you have a build-up and a pay-off and ideally you’d want both of the ends of that rope to be equally as solid to create a good memorable piece of work. CS2 sadly doesn’t have that luxury and as such needs to ride on the very little highs left by CS1 which they weren’t many. What I mean by this is that CS2 being a sequel is normally a game all about pay-offs.

The entire first act is about reuniting with your long-lost friends and seeing what they’re up to in the turmoil of the war, these moments are meant to be filled with joy and relief at the sight of our friends being ok and fending off for themselves pretty well which on paper is great but since CS1 failed to deliver on any reason to care about these characters you just end up sighing when Machias becomes the first party member to join your party in this game because out of any character you wanted back in your crew, that dude should’ve been left to rot inside his freaking windmill.

And the thing is that the entire game has this sort of warm atmosphere to it but since the characterization was so poor in the first game and also didn’t get better with this sequel and at points even got worse, there’s tons of moments that just fall flat !

For example, there’s a scene in between Act 1 and Act 2 where Rean is having a little moment of self-pity, now that’s also something about Rean that just simply doesn’t work, his inner “demons”. During that scene, which is the culmination of hours of character build-up for the guy and a significant character growth moment, we learn that the reason why Rean protects others to the point of self-sacrifice is because of that one time he killed a bear as a child to save his sister Elise. Since then, he swore to be the baddest, strongest motherfucker around to protect others and … really ?

That’s the reason Rean is such a whiny piss baby boy sometimes because he feels weak for… killing a bear as a child ? Either I’m completely media illiterate and feel free to shit on me in the comment for this or the writers had absolutely no idea how to add flaws to the guy to make him feel more human or relatable. The conclusion to that scene is Alfin (Olivier’s adorable but slightly pedo-baity sister) telling Rean that you know… he’s not just the one protecting others, his friends also protect him because they love him. And then Rean takes that information as a completely shocking turnover realization followed by a text box telling you that you can now transform into Kaneki mode in battle at will now in one of the lamest directed and worst written “character realization” scenes you’ve ever witnessed.



Are you fucking serious ? Are we talking about the guy who is disliked by nobody to the point that any vagina equipped individual in a 100 miles radius of him wants his divine blade inside their baby room going “wait a minute… people … like and care about me ???”. I swear on christ that this isn’t a fucking joke, I’m not making a bit here. It’s been a while since I’ve read or watched any of those “Light Novel” related media but oh my god, I love anime but fucking hell it’s stories like these that make me remember that yeah… anime can also be… that bad.

If you really wanna play on a real flaw the character has, why not play out of the fact that the dude is an indecisive fuck who has so little awareness of himself and the world surrounding him that he can’t pick a side or form a single thought of his own that isn’t “let’s go class vii, we’re gonna do it!” and it could potentially lead to some catastrophic situation down the line.

Rean is such a nothing character such a bland power fantasy schmuck for teenagers to project themselves onto that they relied on the oldest trick in the book by sticking a good old “trauma” to the guy to make him somewhat more relatable, because every kids these days have self-doubt so it’s cool and relatable you know ! It’s cool when the character that exists to be my ideal fantasy also has doubts about himself, he really is just like me ! A random whiny zoomer with no thoughts and no real conflict in their life but still want to pretend they’re making a difference while the only thing they’re good at is changing nothing at all and being a pretentious little shit that need to stay the fuck out of adult space because they have nothing to add to society aside from their ADHD riven rant on basic morality while never acting for the good of anything but the small little problems that only concerns them and them alone.

A problem which is even made worse by the fact Rean has a rivalry with another character, Crow ! Crow in the previous game was revealed to be a terrorist dead-set on killing off Osborne for some misdeed he did to the people of Erebonia and while his reasons for living a life of terror and danger is somewhat justified by his circ…

Wait…

What did you say to me ?

They’re not ?

Oh but of course what did I think, that this was a good game with a good inside political, ideological or philosophical conflict ?

Silly me, I almost thought I could develop empathy for an antagonist in this freaking series. Nah, Crow’s backstory is that his home country got annexed by Chancellor Osborne, not because of a violent cold raid but simply through a simple business manipulation tactic that he won fair and square. His grandpa wasn’t even killed by Osborne directly or indirectly nor did he kill himself off of the guilt of losing their territory to the hands of the Empire. His grandpa simply had to retire and live the rest of his life in regret sure but he simply died of old age at least. Heck, Crow even says it himself, he doesn’t think Osborne is that bad of a guy, he simply killed because he got involved with the wrong people in a moment of his life where he was lost, afraid and unsure about how to live his life… YOU’RE THE LEADER OF A TERRORIST GROUP MY MAN HAVE SOME FUCKING SPINE WOULD YOU ????
He even warns us before dropping his backstory that “his story is just yet another sappy story, don’t mock me please” like Falcom themselves are excusing this sorry attempt at character motivation and backstory.

In fact, why the fuck does Crow and his crew still hang out with the noble alliance and helping them committing atrocious war-crimes, his goals and motivation doesn’t seem to align with the noble alliance and he has already accomplished the goal he set for himself by teaming up with the noble alliance so why the fuck does he still commit warcrimes on account of the Alliance… oh yeah probably to fulfill some dumb prophecy about the war of the lions that the people at Phantom Brigade reject are looking to activate for their stupid anime villain plan.

Kingdom Hearts has a better ambiguously homo-erortic rivalry relationship between an MC and his lover rival and if you’re worse than freaking Kingdom Hearts writing, there’s something severely wrong with you as an author.

But could Crow be any better than this ? Yes of course he could, if he had a rival who actually believed in something but since Rean doesn’t believe in anything but solving only the issues that affect him and his friends I guess we’ll never have the Amuro-Char of the zoomer generation but oh well.

Cold Steel has this tendency to try and make you pretend that you care, it doesn’t actually make you care through clever writing or proper scene direction and good dialogues, it only does it in clichés and a complete lack of talent, that whole section I just mentioned took place during the time where the game literally forces to go talk to every single person on the Noble Alliance ship to try and see the other side and understand their point of view. They never actually show you anything, they just tell you stuff in hopes that you would feel even an ounce of empathy for the people on board except for the fact that the noble alliance has really nothing for them aside from either “Osborne did some mildly bad shit to me back in the day”, being literally hired mercenaries or being Ourobozos which might as well be hired mercenaries but see, they’re only helping because of “THE PLAN” ya know, can’t wait to wait another 30 years or so for these chaotic neutral fucker to boast about how strong and powerful they are and how cool and intriguing their “plan” is… (can you tell I’m just tired of Ouroboros at this point, this game as some new members showing up and I’m not even giving a damn… Oh well… I guess Duvalie is cool).

The game always fails at making you feel for anything in its story, world or characters. The game takes place in the middle of an actual honest to god civil war but you never get to see any of it, the world is mostly unchanged, cities and towns are running pretty much the same as usual except you see a soldier from time to time to remind you that this is a war.

Act 2 of the game in general is this gigantic narrative void where the story goes to a halt and turns into a fetch quest hub of epic proportions where you fly around in your airship left and right to do side-quests, explore the world and kill some superbosses. Pretty much doing anything but progressing the story or exploring the consequences of the war (which aren’t even shown since most cities are just kinda… fine and NPC are not all that bothered by the situation either), nah instead you’ll be finding someone’s horse or find ores to craft a neat sword for your cool robots in a McGuffin hunt that only pads out the game story even more.
Act 2 is neat in concept, having a more open structure inside of a Trails game isn’t something this series is known for but the actual content and things you do in those fetch quest are just boring and doesn’t change from the typical mmo-type shit you’d expect from a shitty modern JRPG and the length of that second act is freaking absurd too which only further emphasize how little actual story the game has when out of a potential 70h game at least 30 of those hours are dedicated to… literally nothing !

Most of the action is taking place on the western front but since Rean and his crew doesn’t wanna fuck with the war, they never actually go there and only take back random places because a friend of them was conveniently placed their to be kidnapped and making Centrist Che Guevera intervene.

Yeah isn’t it strange how Rean and his crew is all about not picking a side and not intervening but all they do since the start of the game is infiltrate military bases, do sabotage and other stuff to mess with the noble alliance which just helps the imperial army anyway.
You can even just run around Imperial Army camps no worry, they’re not antagonistic to Rean’s group, heck your party literally has 2 spies working for the (for now) deformed reformist faction which isn’t even something Rean doesn’t know yet it rarely if ever get brought up during the course of the game. Nothing is here to put into question Rean dumb behavior and position in this war. I just think this is actual insanity, Olivier even gives them the key to a literal warship to just go nuts and do whatever.

There is no nuanced political framing here where one camp is so obviously evil that the game fails so hard to find situations to make you feel that what they do is justified and not every noble is evil…

Which leads me to talk about…

The Celdic Incident

So in the middle of the Act 2 Fetch Quest grind, one of the towns, Celdic, gets destroyed by Jusis’s father, a tragic event that claimed the lives of…

check notes

1 random NPC and a couple of non-important, non-habitable buildings… ?

Well whatever, I can’t believe my man Otto freaking died, they must pay for this ! Quick ! Rean ! Activate your sperging power to find a way to psy-op yourself into intervening yet again without you explicitly making the conscious choice to do it… oh wait ! Rufus the 2nd in command of the army and Jusis’s brother made a call, they need to stop Jusis father because he only did this for himself, not for the noble alliance cause, we don’t actually kill people in the noble alliance… at least not on screen !

Well huh… ok then time to fuck him up !

During that entire time, we get to see noble citizens having nothing but contempt for the low-lives of Celdic because they deserved him and also how dare they put Jusis dad in prison ! He was a good governor ! A true noble at heart (a literal war criminal).

So… are we going to have a scene where Rean reconsider his point of view and realize the system is fucked and promise himself to find ways to change it by casting his outdated system of beliefs and make real progress ?

Well no… but maybe closer to his political alignment he would try to reconcile the two sides or find a compromise, well he can’t do that either because centrists never provide solutions, they just observe, say “well that sucks” and move to the next McGuffin dungeon.

This is the closest CS2 has gotten to portray any consequences of this conflict and yet it still amounts to a footnote at best before moving on to the next section of the game.

For a game that take such obvious cues from FFVI in terms of structure and story setting (with the world being fucked over and our heroes having to gather their forces), they never quite understood what made that part of FFVI so memorable and good to begin with...

In FFVI, the world is dead, it’s destroyed, you start the second half in control of Celes stuck on an island with Cid, an old dude and the closest thing Celes has to a family, you go outside your tent and the world is dead, the music is harrowing with a feint empty wind being heard on the overworld even the random monsters you fight die on their own as even they can’t support the corrosion brought forth by Kefka during his rise to power. You're tasked to go get some food for Cid, something you can actually succeed at but the context of the situation will likely make you lose Cid…

Celes, overtaken by all of her bottled up feelings and anxieties and loosing all hopes commits freaking suicide in a freaking 90’s Super Nintendo game, you miraculously survived and back on the continent by that point the game tells you nothing more and your free to see what remains of the rest of civilization and it’s not pretty, eventually, you get back with Edgar and then Setzer the only 2 other mandatory party member to finish the game and with hopes of defeating Kefka by gathering all your forces the most beautiful Airship theme plays out as you go on a quest to “Search for your friends” !

Everything you can do next aside from taking on the Kefka tower is completely optional but highly recommended if you want the best ending and of course because taking on the Tower with 3 under-leveled character is suicide meaning that all the thing you do in this game is to prepare yourself to defeat Kefka, no matter how innocuous the activity may be. When you meet your party members back it’s not just a sappy reunion, it’s more complex, most of the characters are still carrying over the traumas of the days the world wasn’t completely fuck and they now need to find a new place in this new fucked up reality while dealing with the remnants of the demons of their past and grow as persons all of this leading up to your confrontation with Kefka.



Heck, nothing state in the game that taking on Kefka will magically heal the planet, Kefka already won, it would take years for civilization to rebuild itself, you’re just taking one burden off of the people on Earth, it’s an ending that is equally as bittersweet as it is hopeful GOD I LOVE FFVI SO FUCKING MUCH !

NOW THAT’S A GAME THAT USES ITS STRUCTURE AND GAMEPLAY LOOP IN COMPLEMENT OF THE STORY ! NOW THAT’S A GAME THAT USES THE UNIQUE TOOL OF THE MEDIUM OF VIDEO GAME TO TELL A POIGNANT STORY THROUGH A COMBINATION OF MUSIC, DIRECTION, GRAPHICS, MECHANICS TO MAKE YOU FEEL SHIT FOR THE CHARACTERS AND THE FATE OF THE FUCKING WORLD ! NO TIME WAS WASTE HERE, EVERYTHING FUCKING MATTER AND THE CHARACTERS ACTUALLY DO STUFF TO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER AND MOST OF IT IS TECHNICALLY OPTIONAL SHIT BUT WHO CARES YOU WANT TO DO EVERYTHING AND YOU’LL MISS OUT ON STUFF BUT THAT’S OKAY IT’LL MAKE YOUR NEXT PLAYTHROUGH MORE INTERESTING AAAAAAAAAAAH

SEE FALCOM ? THAT’S WHAT YOUR STUPID VIDEO GAME LACK ! IT LACKS AMBITION, IT LACKS FINESSE, IT LACKS ALL OF THAT SHIT YOU STUPID MONGREL HOW DARE YOU EVEN TRY TO EVEN ATTEMPT AND PRETEND TO COPY FF VI WHEN YOU CAN’T EVEN REACH 1/100th OF ITS BRILLIANCE WITH QUINTUPLE THE RUN TIME AND A BIGGER SCRIPT THAN IT HUH ???

Hey you wanna know what all that stupid fucking fetchquesting leads toward the reconquering of Trista, you know the hub-town from the first game ? That’s an exciting moment the entire game has built toward I wonder how it i-

ITS ASS

The army just… leaves for no reason and task the hostages (?????) to run the school and keep it under control, so Rean and friends take on this occasion to go there and low and behold, the noble hostages just confront Rean.

“But this is pointless ?”

“Yeah we know, but we still need to fight because pride of the nobles or some shit”

So you do a boss fight that had literally zero reason for happening and then everyone nods, the hostages were actually fine the whole time and it was just a playful fisticuff for the older students and… Trista is taken back… ending act 2 on a very anticlimactic note…

Hope you enjoyed the 35 or so hours you wasted on Act 2 that lead to this…

The game… really doesn’t give a fuck… it’s insane, there was zero effort put into the actual story.

Yeah sure, you still have Falcom sense of details in NPC dialogues and books but… not the main fucking story, it’s just… wild as shit to me I can’t even begin to process how much this game doesn’t give a fuck and constantly cucks you from experiencing a little catharsis.
It just doesn’t care, even the neat idea of making this game set during the same time as Azure is just an after-thought and the conclusion to that leads almost fucking nowhere and impacts the story very little.

This nonchalance not only translate during the story but even boss-fight, most boss-fight you win in this game by the skin of your teeth (that is a joke, the game is Press Laura to win what did you expect), your characters are on their knees, the boss is going “mmph, that’s all you got ?” then you get your glory stolen by the adult cast which are all way cooler and way stronger than you, you’ve been doing all the heavy lifting but at the end of the day, you guys are just a bunch of students heh ?

I get that this is part of the series to make you understand that the MC will never be the strongest dude around and there’s so many people equally as strong if not more but it wasn’t so in your fucking face before and to lead to something so anticlimatic…

Heck the ending of the game ends on a barely moving death scene (aaaw) followed by the big revelation ! OSBORNE IS BACK AHAHAHA…

Wait a minute…

But we already know that from Azure ?

Wait a minute…

The game just reveals shit to us that we already knew ?

So all of this was for nothing ????

Anyway, Osborne comes tells Rean that he is his real father and then look at Ourogoonos and tell them to fuck off while stealing their plan like a chad because he planned this entire war on himself this entire time to turn Rean into a national icon for his newly establish fascist ethnostate.

Rean of course… agrees to participate in doing warcrimes for the reformist because… well huh… gotta help daddy I guess ???

Look fuck this game

And like a bad joke, it even keeps going after the credit because you thought the final chapter was the final chapter ? Well no you dumb fuck, there’s 2 MORE EPILOGUE CHAPTER

One is … legitimately the only good part of the game because you get to play as Lloyd and Rixia ! OH MAN I MISS PLAYING AS ACTUAL PEOPLE IN THIS GAME THANK GOD ! AND YOU EVEN GET THE CHANCE TO KICK REAN’S ASS WITH LLOYD FUCKING BANNING 10/10 GAME ON FUCKING GOD !!!!

Followed by several hours of the worst fucking final dungeon you’ve ever played through.
Yeah in the last chapter of the game, you go through a randomly generated multi-floor dungeon where you fight recycled bosses from the main game AND a swap color of the final boss of the first game who literally tells you that doing this dungeon… was actually pointless, he literally says it verbatum, I’m not making this up ! Gotta love Falcom’s brand of cheeky humour ahahaha…

I kneel Kondo, I really am kneeling hard, one last final goodbye to the cast and …

OH NO FUCK OFF KONDO ! WHY DO YOU WANT ME TO PLAY ON NG+ TO GET IMPORTANT LORE FOR THE NEXT ENTRY WHAT THE FUCK MAN WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD THIS GAME SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS

RAAAAAAAAAAAGH THIS GAME SUCKS

So you’re probably wondering why I’m ranking this slightly higher than CS1 well…

For 2 reasons :

Witnessing a story failing at everything it sets out to do in marvelous over the top fashion is somewhat entertaining in its own twisted kind of way
As mentioned earlier, I like what this game does structurally compared to the rest of the franchise (any game where you get to fuck around in an airship and built up an home base by recruiting people has a few more points in my book) and even the dungeon design has seen a significant improvement that I hope to see come to fruition in the rest of the series so there’s that.

CS1 was literally just “white noise : the video game”, homework to do to experience true gaming in the sequel and I must admit that at least CS2 didn’t commit the sinful crime of making me bored to death, there’s definitely a good game buried under all of this trashy nonsense…

But you won’t find it here…

Which leaves me to my conclusion…

Why would you play this ? Yeah the obvious answer is to experience the next chapter in the epic Trails saga, especially if you’re a fan or a masochist like me looking to satiate my curiosity but in general… Why ?

The few good things that CS2 does and heck even what it’s trying to do story wise are things you have likely seen done better in other titles some of which I’d consider true work of art worthy of your attention. Trails is being championed left and right as this life-changing franchise but all I get almost everytime are some average at best game with good ideas and good feelings behind them… But CS1 and CS2 only exacerbated the problem with this franchise, I actually now regret to have been so harsh towards Azure or SC because man, at least they tried, Cold Steel is just chasing trend, taking ideas and throwing them at a wall to see what sticks and if they could bait out the fishies with some good old waifu war.

But if it was only the anime bullshit, it’s also a mediocre attempt at political commentary ? I guess ? Even ideologically speaking, this game is spineless to the point of no return and is constantly trying to sound and look smarter than it actually looks but doesn’t have the balls or the shoulders to carry the boats and the logs ! The writing team behind this game must’ve felt so fucking proud for this last plotwist !

“Hey guess what it’s actually about how centrism is bad because it helped the bad guy !” and it could’ve been almost clever except it’s not and even after that revelation, Rean continues to be a good puppy dog with no spine, no thoughts, no choice no freaking nothing god I hate that character.

So yeah gameplay aside which sucks anyway, there’s the structure and yeah, it’s fun, I must admit I wasn’t completely bored playing this. But… is it really enough ?

If I wanted to play a poor’s man Persona, I’d play Persona
If I wanted to play a game with heavy political writing and a complex nuanced geopolitical setting, I’d play any Matsuno game
If I wanted a game about going around the world to gather people and grew my forces by doing tons of side-content, I’d play FFVI
If I wanted both of the previous statements, I’d play Suikoden which also has the benefit to be like Trails with each entry building off of the previous game in cool ways like .hack did too and those games are also damn good.
Heck I’d even throw Chained Echoes a modern indie RPG that did all of what I just said aside from Persona way better than what CS2 did

Heck if I wanted to play a series with a rich lore to chew on and a solid continuity with charming characters and humors, creative gameplay systems and some surprisingly insightful and dare I’d say ballsy attempt at delivering political messages

I’d play fucking Rance, yes… Rance, an actual honest to god porn game with the most reprehensible protagonist and content in existence but which has more heart and soul poured into it than anything I’ve ever played in my life.

I’d rather fully admit to being a degenerate and a Kingdom Hearts fan (which I am… I know… shocking) than playing Cold Steel 1 or 2 !

CS1 and CS2 are just a copout answer to a regular game recommendation, a good person will direct you to the good restaurant but the weirdoe cultist member who only knows the confine of his cult temple since childhood will tell you that you never eat better than at Veggietales.

Heck by the the time it took me between finishing the game last month and writing this shitass review, FFXVI came out and it had many similarities to Cold Steel especially in terms of structure, pacing and quest design (and not in a good way if you ask me) but by god, after playing FFXVI, CS2 barely was thought at the back of my head, it’s like a version of CS2 that actually worked, with an interesting story, a war setting that takes itself seriously, a badass anarchist hero and some seriously kick ass boss fight that is humanity pilled as fuck.

CS2 was a fascinatingly bad experience and I can’t believe I’m too deep enough into this shit to not hop on CS3 and … CS4 (that one seems to smell some exquisite taste of ass that I just can’t wait to experience)

So TL;DR : Play FFXVI, it’s on PS5 right now and it’s fucking awesome and Clive uses Rean’s asshole as an onahole anytime of the day

Ys IV Part II : The Dawn of Peak Fiction

In the 80’s there were few developers who actually knew what they were doing more than Hudson Soft, these guys are probably single handedly responsible for Nintendo opening itself to third party developers to make the NES/Famicom the legendary console we know today. Hudson Soft first and foremost were people who didn’t just like video games as a way to make money on a newly expanding market, these guys were very passionate about new technology and the wonders of gaming as a whole.

But eventually, when you enjoy making games so much, you start to become ambitious and soon Hudson Soft will partner with NEC the prime micro-computer manufacturer (and creator of the famous “porn game machine” known as the PC-98) under a share common interest of building the game console of the future : The PC-Engine otherwise known as the Turbografx 16 outside of Japan. The PCE was a really impressive machine for the time and even today, I’m still kind of blown away by the technical capabilities of the console which only has an 8 bit processor but packs a lot of punch otherwise especially with the CD Add-on that they’ve adopted earlier than many other companies at the time.

However, they were releasing a new console on an highly competitive market, Sega and Nintendo were fiercely competing for domination and other companies who dared venture on hardware territory knew that it was complicated to stand out amongst the crowd and that’s when Hudson had a brilliant idea, they will partner with Falcom to port their classic Ys title to their console. Ys 1 and Ys 2 were already considered classic of NEC micro-computers system and they have already existed many ports of the game to pretty much all available platforms at the time including the NES and the Master System but Hudson’s version on their PC-Engine was going to be different, it wasn’t just going to be a port, it was going to be a full-on REMAKE !

Ys Book 1&2 took the first two games in the series and combined them together into a single one like it was originally planned for the first time and the game will receive the most premium treatment imaginable ! A graphical overhaul which put new life into the game, touched up gameplay that made the experience smoother to play, smoother leveling curves which mitigated the grinding, new tracks to accompany certain important moment with new remixes on the absurdly insane sounding PCE soundchip which was able to make freaking miracle happened, it had animated cutscenes and full fucking voice-acting for a game released in 1989 and they did it both in Japanese and in English as this was the first game in the series to be shipped internationally (not counting the weird European port of Ys 1 on the Master System) !

Everyone’s mind was freaking blown away by how much love and care was put into this new iteration, gamers who were alive to see it happen before their very eyes as children couldn’t believe their eyes ! It was a true epic adventure with all the proper care put into its presentation to heightened that sense of wonder. It’s clear that probably the reason why Ys even got so popular in the first place and managed to stay relevant was because of this port right there, the game was well received pretty much everywhere and magazines sang the tales of how Hudson made Ys 1 & 2 a legendary game going beyond its simple ambition !

And all of this before Zelda or any other company was able to release their next-gen titles !
The PC-Engine version of Ys 1&2 was a massive success and single-handedly was enough of a reason for people to even buy a PC-Engine in the first place. It was clear that Hudson Soft didn’t just enjoy Ys, they didn’t just like Ys heck they didn’t even love Ys ! THEY WERE TRULY PASSIONATE ABOUT YS ! So much so that Hudson was allowed to port Ys III for the PC-Engine too with the same level of care and polish as what they did for Ys 1&2 even tho no amount of polish managed to make the game any good in the end and they botched the localization of it but oh well…

So when Falcom couldn’t make Ys IV themselves, Hudson seemed like the obvious choice to direct and create a new entry in their series ! But making a game from scratch with only a design document full of concept arts, a few guidelines and no lines of code or any prototype was a vastly different task than just taking an already existing game and polishing it to completion but unlike Tonkin House who was this small no-name company playing with their turds trying to make a barely playable game to satisfy the guideline, Hudson had something that they didn’t, they had experiences with making successful cult classic games but most importantly they had PASSION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmsS8eD_XY

From the moment you boot up the game you understand that the level of production value here is through the fucking roof ! You ain’t playing some dinky ass, poopy ass, budget ass, Tonkin Ass, Cold Steel Era Falcom ass “product” ! YOU ARE PLAYING A REAL VIDEOGAME ! MADE BY REAL DEVELOPERS ! WITH REAL TALENT ! REAL PASSION AND A REAL BUDGET TO GIVE THEM THE MEAN TO PRODUCE A MASTERPIECE AND YOU BET YOUR ASS THEY WERE GONNA TAKE THE CHANCE ! THERE IS NO BRAKE ON THIS TRAIN ! DAWN OF YS IS A GAME THAT’S GOING TO SHOW MODERN FALCOM PLAYERS HOW WE USED TO DO IT BACK IN THE 9 TO THE TIES ! A PRODUCT MOLD IN THE VOLCANO OF LOVE AND FORGED BY THE FINEST SOUL-MAKER IN THE INDUSTRY !

What made Ys 1&2 so legendary already was the visual presentation of it all, it made the original script of those games popped even more than they originally did in spite of the limited presentation and the added animated character portrait, voice acting and even cutscenes really added a lot of flair to the original two games. But Ys 1&2 Hudson was merely adding on top of the original game. With Dawn of Ys, they had full control over the game's presentation and how it would fit inside of the game ! And I’m happy to report they did a phenomenal job on just the visual presentation and scene direction level !

The first few minutes of Dawn of Ys already introduce the game in a much better way than Tonkin's version did. After coming back from one of their travels, Adol and Dogi stop by Esteria. It's been 2 years since the event of their adventure there and everyone is waiting for them ! A lot of things have changed already, Goban has opened a shop, Lilia now lives among the people of Esteria and is constantly waiting for Adol’s return and her health got better too ! Sarah is alive and managed to survive the assault of Dark Fact and his army after mysteriously disappearing in Ys 1 ! As you walk toward the city, the title of the game fades on top of the screen, everyone is celebrating Adol’s return ! This section feels like a genuine victory lap and a great way to welcome us back to the world of Ys after so long and I love every single minute of it and it’s all done really well !
One thing that’s clear from the game’s visual presentation is that the game will put more of an emphasis on its narration and especially how it’s going to be told through its visuals, you have much more scripted events the likes of other RPGs at the time where you lose control of Adol’s character for a moment to witness dialogues and scenes ! The general artstyle of the game oozes of that timeless 90’s anime charm, the character design is pretty damn excellent and on par with the striking designs of the original game, many characters from the first two games even got a face lift for the occasion, each of the game’s portrait and cutscenes are superbly animated and full of details ! That recreation of Ys II final battle is only a technical flex before the game bombards you with an avalanche of colors which pops out of your screen and invites you to live the adventure of a lifetime !

While the in-game graphics might be less impressive than the anime style portrait, cg’s and animation I just love how colorful the game looks which complimented by the extremely varied environments the game make you go through from lush forest to snowy mountains to a creepy abandoned mansion and even more, the visuals manage sometimes to pull off some really cool things with the environment and it definitely make the journey feel more alive than ever !

One particularly impressive thing about Dawn of Ys is that while text boxes are still the norm for dialogues with regular NPC’s most of the big story scene are entirely dubbed with animated character portraits popping on the screen and sometimes even CG’s much like in visual novel to highlight some of the more important moments, the original Japanese performance is honestly pretty stellar and I’m still shocked at how cleanly the voice acting sound on such an old hardware.

However this raised an issue when it came to the availability of the game for the longest time as much like Mask of the Sun, Dawn of Ys remained a Japanese exclusive and in the case of Dawn while an english fan translation already existed for a while most of the important dialogue remained untranslated simply because they couldn’t display subtitles during the game numerous voiced only segments. Thankfully nowadays this is no longer an issue thanks to a group of talented but amateurish voice actors who banded together with the goal to bring a fandub of the entire game !

While it’s not quite as professionally well made as the official dub of Ys 1&2 with the only professional voice actor here being Alan Oppenheimer, third cousin of THE Oppenheimer and voice of Skeletor in the He-Man series giving his voice to Darm in the intro of the game. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the crew delivered a hack job and I think that on average, they did manage to at least capture the feel of that era of voice-acting. I think it was probably something the dubbing team wanted to transmit with their performance, something that sound like it was recorded by a bunch of voice actors going off way too much in a at times goofy, at times overly serious and badass tone and I just think it works really well and definitely feel like the game actually did came out in the west. The only issue with the English Dub however is that the general audio mixing is rather poor, you can feel each member of the team had different mike quality and the voice acting can sometimes be a bit muffled by the music or sound effect playing in the background and with no option to arrange the audio mixing yourself in the settings you’ll have to sometimes open your ear wide to understand what the hell are they saying. Be sure to check their website at : https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/Ys%20IV%20Dub%20Readme/readme.html
But back to the story, as Adol is celebrating with his friends, Sara the local fortune teller tells him about the distant land of Celceta. While she was escaping the forces of Dark Fact she discovered a connection between the black pearl and some ruins recently found on the mainland and she asked Adol to investigate it ! Without losing a single minute, Adol answered the call to adventure and in the dark of night set out to Celceta the mysteries of this ancient land ! But in the shadows, a sinister group of individual are trying to perform a dark ritual shown in a metal as fuck way too fucking gory for this franchise animated cutscenes before the game starts off with this absolute BANGER !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK9JTh0gAXs

GODDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN MY DUDE THESE SAXOPHONES ARE MAKING MY ASS WETTER THAN A FOUNTAIN ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON JESUS CHRIST !

One of the strongest aspect of the Ys series ever since its infancy has always been its amazing soundtrack, baring some exceptions, you know that an Ys game is going to own several asses just going by the soundtrack alone and I must report that the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys is once again completely out of this world ! For the first time in the history of the franchise, it’s the Falcom Sound JDK team handling the soundtrack. The Falcom JDK team is Falcom's very own personal rock-band. Composed of many prominent members joining in and out as the company evolve with time, the JDK team was originally founded to make CD quality audio version of Falcom’s soundtrack to sell them as promotional material but eventually, the JDK team took a more prominent role in development and as the advent of technology and sound quality went on, the JDK team now started actually composing for Ys as well as other Falcom titles.

Ys IV soundtrack was composed before the game ever began development and most of the music were made on CD’s that were later released as the “Ys IV Perfect Collection” but while the original album is freaking phenomenal on its own, that doesn’t take away the excellent instrumentalisation that went into translating the original composition into something that could be played by the PCE absolutely insane sound chip ! It’s simple, the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys might be my favorite soundtrack in the entire series ! While Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack for the original 2 Ys games was already an absolute joy for the ear, his departure didn’t mean that the JDK team couldn’t up the ante and provide a soundtrack which tells a million words with only a few notes !

The synths, the guitars, the FREAKING SAXOPHONE in the intro of the game, everything about this OST oozes from pure 90’s funk and pop with a lot variety in the composition, of course you get your adventure tracks that make you pump to rush into battle like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYZDs0ARqg but you also get more ambient music that makes you feel like you’re adventuring in a scary yet sacred place and you don’t belong there with ominous sound reverberating through the room https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRx_ZBoSrE then you fight a boss and the music goes : https://youtu.be/4HNEPXbNEK4?si=oaBREVaNcJIG7zqj !


There is so much variety and energy to the soundtrack that to me it easily rivals some of the greats like Final Fantasy, Megaman, Castlevania or even Donkey Kong Country with which Dawn of Ys shares its sense of harmony and insane instrumentalisation which seems impossible to do on such ancient hardware but yet it does !

And I even like a lot of the creative choice they make when remaking old tracks, Fountain of Love, Tears of Sylph and the Syonin for example is composed with an instrumentalisation closer to that of the PC-98 instead of how it was in the PCE version of Ys 1 to clearly separate the homely, familiar and old-school feeling of Adol’s quasi home-town which contrasts with the rest of the adventures which uses more elaborate instrumentalisation as Adol dives into the unknown, the same way Adol evolves and his adventure get more grandiose and epic, the soundtrack get crazier and more complex in return !

Heck at some point in the game, you return to Darm Tower which is about to crumble and fall, they could’ve done some weird melancholic version of the tune but nah, your return to Darm Tower is accompanied by some funky, jazzy upbeat version of the original tune, what once used to be the base of operation of a great evil and Adol’s greatest challenge yet is now a freaking dance party !!! You’re dancing to the beat of your old enemies main theme and desecrate their corpses because that’s how strong and confident Adol became through his adventure and to him the Darm Tower isn’t a place of challenge to him but a leisurely walk to the DANCEFLOOR BABY : https://youtu.be/hMnq4RSmZtI?si=mxLh4IP0a_1t2QcR

Theme of Adol 1993, Field, A Great Ordeal, Temple of The Sun, Karna, A Kiss from Eldeel, so many great tracks henched into my brain thanks to Ryo Yonemitsu exquisite arrangements of the JDK’s masterclass of a soundtrack for the PC-Engine ! I’m not a music theorist so I can’t really explain with technical terms how and why these tracks work for me but the vibes are genuinely immaculate !

The Ys franchise is first and foremost about adventure, about this intoxicating feeling of wanting to give everything up, grab our bags and journey to places unknown ! Pushing with relentless motion through the different places Adol visits on his journey and a soundtrack this energetic and varied only emphasize that feeling even more !

But fear not my friend because Dawn of Ys isn’t just a really cool aesthetic served on silver platter of banger tracks, it’s also first and foremost an EXCELLENT videogame ! Once again, we’re back to Bump Combat and I know that after everything I’ve just said that might’ve gotten you a little bit too excited you’ll probably say something of the likes of : “Oh really ? We’re doing this ancient ass, clunky ass, stupid ass bump system again ?” and ladies and gentle straw men who live in my head, I’ve heard your plight !

After all, Bump Combat is such an acquired taste that I had to spend two whole reviews talking about the strengths of a well executed version of such a system as well as its merits when it comes to the flow and the momentum of the game and the cracks that shows when this balance isn’t respected by badly coded hitboxes, stilted movement, terrible boss design and so forth. But Ok I know this can be a turn-off to some people but once again put your bias aside because Dawn of Ys took Bump Combat and made it EXCELLENT ! It’s easily the best game featuring bump combat in the entire series (it’s also the last one if we don’t count all of the countless ports of Ys 1&2 for modern platforms).
Dawn of Ys, much like Mask of The Sun, decides to take the same basic moveset as Ys II, with the same sets of magic to unlock too. One might think of this decision as lazy since the game doesn’t really offer much novelty from a strict gameplay sense but while your toolkit may be the same, the way Hudson uses that toolkit is much more different and the game is full of surprises at every turn. The only real difference now is that you now possess the power of DIAGONAL movement which is an actual god sent for fighting enemies or just traversing the map and offers a greater degree of freedom when it comes to positioning and even puzzles !

Unlike Tonkin House who understood so little of the appeal of the bump combat system they implemented elements of game design which came in contradiction to it, Hudson decided to play with that element of constant motion with sometimes really clever movement based puzzle making almost each dungeon in the game pop with creativity and flair they couldn’t really achieve back then. Like I said in my first review, the secret of the early Ys games was their simplicity and ease of access but also its constant sense of motion which made you rush into battle to the tunes of power metal ! But while simplicity is indeed charming, ambition is definitely more enthralling !

While Ys II chose the route of streamlining the game to be more accessible and focus more greatly on its narration by designing their game in a more linear fashion, Hudson decided to take the freedom of Ys 1 and the varied setpieces of Ys 2 to create the perfect synthesis of the Ys formula imaginable. Dawn of Ys is a game which never stops going and always comes up with new and exciting ideas for your adventure !

When you arrive on the mainland to start your adventure, boom you’re confronted by the Romun Empire and sent to prison where they take your cool ass equipment from your adventures in Ys II and you’re mad as shit about this but you break-out with the help of cool characters such as Durgen and Karna and you realize that sometimes the game will make you fight with ally who also deals with enemies the same as you ! One time you’re on a raft and have to survive an onslaught of enemies, one time you’re in a volcano ! One time you’re turned into a monster and have to find a way to turn back to normal ! One time you’re in Esher Space and the gravity is flipped upside down and so much more !

What about the bosses tho ? Well Hudson also pushed themselves on that front, Dawn of Ys possesses more than 15 bosses compared to Mask of The Sun mere 9 and it’s one more boss than both Ys 1&2 combined (proving once again that Dawn of Ys is the true Ys II if the first two games are combined into one complete experience). With bump combat and magic available much like in Ys II we can imagine that there would be an imbalance between the two mechanics but nope, each boss of Dawn of Ys is extremely well designed and fun to fight !

All of the bosses strike a good balance between having to use bump combat and magic to defeat them and when it comes to pattern and all, I have absolutely nothing to complain about here, some of the later bosses are true marvel of boss design which fully plays into the strength of the somewhat simple yet effective battle system of the series so far ! A friend of mine once told me that the Twin Head boss in Ys 1 was the best they could do with Bump Combat and he was immediately proven wrong upon playing Dawn of Ys for the first time and realizing that even the first boss of that games tops any boss from either Ys 1 or Ys 2. Dawn of Ys is a game of constant wonder that always finds a way to surprise you at every turn with its setpieces, and each one of them go by so fast that you don’t get to see the time pass ! This game's sense of flow and pacing is so immaculate that not a single moment of it is boring and you feel like you’re living a really epic adventure with twists and turns and revelations at every corner ! The game may be short, it can be completed in a little over 10 h but these 10h are so intense and filled with stuff that you feel like the adventure is 10 times more epic and grand than what you can imagine !

And this proves that a game can make us feel and experience many things with more intensity no matter the actual game time, something that Falcom seems to have forgotten with time ! It’s not about how long and how stuffed with content a game is, it’s not about how much you can pad out a game to give the illusion of something richer, deeper and more interesting. It’s about making the most of what the content you have to truly impact the minds of the player who experiences your art ! And if length and only length was a determining factor some medium like films wouldn’t be so successful and Hudson understood it perfectly.

The story of Dawn of Ys is also one that I wanted to give a lot of credit towards. While Mask of The Sun followed the guideline of the design document to a T without attempting anything fancy (and with how awkwardly the story was told here, they didn’t attempt to even follow it right imo), Hudson took the idea of a direct sequel to Ys 1&2 further and did a lot of really cool things with the continuity and the established lore at the time ! The game is called “The Dawn of Ys” because more than just a new adventure in a brand new land, Adol was about to discover the secret of what he went through in the first two games ! It seems that Celceta holds the answers to all the events that lead to the corruption of the Black Pearl and the fall of Ys before Adol’s arrival in the first game and as you explore Celceta, you find yourself uncovering these answers and I absolutely love the connections they made here !

From the relationship the twin goddesses had with the inhabitant of Celceta, to the origins of Darm and the Black Pearl, to how certain things in Esteria and Ys relate to things in Celceta and how everything played into one another. One of my absolute favorite moment of the game is when during one of the game many info-dump flashbacks, you not only learn the real name of Dark Fact but also it’s revealed to you that one of the items you’ve been using in Ys 1 is actually a super important item in the global lore of the series ! Meaning that you now have to depart for Esteria and revisit the map of Ys 1 now free of all the demons ! Can you imagine the absolute flex that it is ? They didn’t have to do this and yet they did ! And it’s so good seeing all the characters from the first two games but also the different places and what they became after Adol’s departure, Ys 1 which used to be so simple, is now relegated to a small chapter inside of a much more ambitious whole ! Sure, it’s not on the level of say, the second half of DQ3 or the Kanto reveal in Pokemon Gold and Silver to name a similar exemple but man I’m a sucker for that type of stuff !

Everything about Dawn of Ys to its presentation, to its music, to its story, to level design, to the way the game builds on the basis of Ys 1&2 and plays with its continuity make the game feel like a non-stop constantly moving grand epic to which we never see the time passes ! They took everything that made Ys 1&2 so iconic and perfected it, Hudson didn’t just want to create yet another title in the prestigious Ys saga, they wanted to create the Ultimate Ys game !

The game is a love letter to the series and what Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, now too busy to work on their own project accomplished years ago and in many ways they managed to surpass them (well at least as far as making a Ys game goes !) and I believe that no one understood the appeal of Ys more than the team at Hudson Soft.

However, Falcom had other plans for the franchises and didn’t want to let go of Adol and the series and with Hudson hopping a bit too much above the initial guidelines to make a conclusion to the series instead of yet another episode, they decided that the game would now be considered not canon and Mask of The Sun will therefore be the version of reference for every subsequent Ys title. On one hand, I get it, this isn’t Hudson’s series, it was Falcom’s and if they wanted to continue with this series they just couldn’t let something like the ending of Dawn of Ys happen and give the series the proper closure it deserves.

Personally speaking, while what Hudson Soft did can be compared to mere fanfiction, it’s really good fanfiction and aside from coming into conflicts with the modern lore of the series and offering an epilogue that could have easily been acknowledged by Falcom without actually hurting the continuity, I think that what Hudson did here is phenomenal, the ending of Dawn of Ys is perhaps my favorite ending in the series despite and never fail to make me emotional. So many of Hudson’s ideas for the lore and continuity of the series at least in my opinion could’ve been reworked into the main timeline as I do think that some ideas here are actually better than what Falcom will eventually do with them !

Much to my dismay, that means that for how excellent Dawn of Ys is, its legacy is now forgotten, even Falcom seems to be really keen on ignoring the game’s existence or any influence Hudson might’ve had on the franchise (in fact : in the modern port of the older titles, you can play every OST’s of each version of Ys 1,2 and 3 but not the PC-Engine version but I bet it’s due to copyright issues rather than pettiness) and I think this is a great injustice.

I really do implore you, if you enjoy Ys especially Ys 1&2, I urge yourself to try out Dawn of Ys even more so if you were disappointed by Falcom’s own take on the game they did 20 years later with “Memories of Celceta” (but that will be a story for another time !). It’s really a masterpiece and easily amongst the best the series has to offer, a true labor of love and passion made by people who probably loved and understood Ys more than its original creators.

The next game in the series will be handled by Falcom themselves and who knows, maybe they won’t fuck it up… right ?

See you next time, as we take a look at “Ys V” the game, the game which almost killed the Ys franchise !

Dohna Dohna : A Colorful Ethical Paradox

AliceSoft is a company which always found itself in an interesting paradoxical crossroad when it comes to tackling heavy subject matter and putting it under the lens of morality. Being a eroge company and not the kind to half-ass the erotic side of their production like most Eroge seems to do out of convention (and for the most part to sell to a niche audience while bypassing censorship on more touchy subject matters) but embracing that aspect as part of their core identity puts them under a pretty unflattering light in the eyes of the general public. But AliceSoft being enjoyed mostly by a niche community of people on which its western side is the size of a small Italian mountain village means there’s not really any further or widespread discussions about the company and their works even within the fringe community of “Visual Novel fans” (I don’t like the etiquette but this is off-topic).

Usually the conversation ends as soon as it starts : AliceSoft is a porn game company, they make porn games for weirdoe otakus to jack-off to. And while we could end the discussion there, trying to be reasonable and actually explain why AliceSoft titles are more than the sum of is part is like explaining that there’s a difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia, like it exists, but it’s really hard to explain the subtle difference without sounding like a pedophile yourself and in the case of Alicesoft without sounding like a porn addicted weirdoe (which I absolutely am btw… anyway where was I ?).

And this is where yours truly chooses to bite the bullet and actually defend the idea that while being a porn game company, AliceSoft's entire existence is fascinatingly paradoxical. On one hand, Alicesoft is an eroge company and one that owns the mantle and wears it with pride, the people working at Alicesoft define themselves as “eroge makers” which can even be found on their logo and it’s not like they’re shy about it. In fact, Alicesoft has always been very transparent about their main goal when making these games : They love eroge and they want to make eroge and thus they put a sisyphean amount of effort into delivering on the erotic front, not because they wanted to sell to a niche market, not because they want to be edgy but because they genuinely enjoy and have a clear passions for the act of drawing naked women doing the deeds and then contextualize them within a thinly veiled plot with characters and complex gameplay systems to accompany said drawings.

Just one look at the Alice Mansion which is this super cool Dev Room feature present in almost every single of their titles will show you how transparent they are about that fact. They are a bunch of goofy hornballs that likes to make goofy lewd shit to please a crowd of people already averted to that type of writing or find an appeal in eroticism and pornography. Porn artists at the end of the day are still artists, they vibe with different shit, they bond over their weird quirky love for superficial details like girls in glasses and the “moe” side of their misery, there’s a lot of thought that’s put behind these elements and it’s impossible to remove that aspect of their catalog because it would just result in a different somewhat truncated experience.

So you think that something like this can only approached through an ironic lens and appreciated only by complete sociopath especially since a lot of the fetishes displayed in those games ranges from pretty extreme to downright criminal (may I remind the RanSill audience that our boy Rance isn’t an UWU soft boy but an honest to god criminal AND a rapist ?) but if it was that simple of course, the company wouldn’t have any sort of following.
Because on the other hand, Alicesoft also wants to tell good stories and more times than not, stories which actually challenge the view and the morals of the people they are trying to cater to. Being founded in the 80’s where most erotic game developers were making a quick bucks selling cheap strip poker, mahjong, shifumi or quizz games without much thought behind it, they wanted from the outset to create interesting scenarios, worlds and characters to contextualize the action. Suffice to say that in my opinion it serves the purpose of rendering the erotic situations even hotter, goofier and/or horrifying depending on what the games are aiming for and help them make more memorable in the long run because you end up having something to attach yourself to beyond the typical plumbers and stepmom scenarios.

And while that’s fine and all, I don’t think this exaggerated attention to detail and care alone would’ve made people stuck with series like Rance or their other less popular productions and they would’ve most likely died to the general indifference of many. As soon as Rance 1, the game present Rance as an awful criminal that you don’t and should not relate to or sympathize with in any capacity but that doesn’t change that he is the hero and he has to face adversaries and he alone isn’t what’s wrong with the world at large and that if people like Rance are able to exist and succeed within such a setting it’s mostly because of deeper problem with the way the world around him works, which in Rance 1 is portrayed by Lavender, the ghost of a girl who was killed by Lia, the princess of the Leazas Kingdom to quench her twisted desires and which Rance promptly punishes in his huh… own kind of way.

Very early on, AliceSoft was already toying the line between indulgence and the criticism of certain moral failings that may lead people to sincerely engage and create this type of content in the first place. Toushin Toushi 2 all the way back in 1994 did the whole “Sans Undertale judging you for your sins'' thing a lil bit more than 20 years before it was cool by including within its game mechanics a morality system which affected certain parameters in your games as well as changing the outcome of some scenes with a very obtuse way of absolving your sins if you so desired.

It’s a game where the protagonist is very different from Rance or even Kuma the character we’ll focus about in a bit, he’s a dude with a girlfriend who sadly finds himself in a pretty shitty situation regarding her well-being and his own deeper desire to progress that relationship to the next level followed by a second half so brilliant and so thought provoking that I really don’t want to spoil it for you or analyze it in details here (maybe some other day ?). Suffice to say that a morality system works with the type of story TT2 wants to tell but the nature of the game being an eroge and thus feeling the need to cater to an audience who genuinely enjoys and likes that type of content is a bit of an awkward position to find yourselves in.

Mind you, I think part of the reason this came to come through for the most part is because Alicesoft is pretty mixed in terms of gender ratio within the company, and a lot of the hard hitting and brutal scenes from these games were written by a female writer by the name of Torii who did her damn best to add her personal female leaning vision in the core DNA of these burly sex stories mostly consumed by a male audience, to the point that the modern western Rance fandom is surprisingly left-leaning and feminist at their core because they could pick apart the more subtle thinly veiled themes that these games had to offer.
In fact, when Torii doesn’t work on a game, you can instantly feel it in the level of indulgence and a lack of subtlety in regards to thing she had previously installed like that cynical biting edge that comes through when shouting into the void that the world is complex and the winds of change can come from the most unlikely and at times unlikable people. I’ve already talked about this in my review on Rance IX if you care enough to check it and give you a proper idea of what I think Rance under a new author might look and sound like (spoiler : I’m mixed on a lot of narrative choices in that game despite enjoying it in the end) but that’s not why I wrote this lengthy introduction.

I wanted to show you that deeply, Alicesoft never forgot about consequences, they may be fetishizing stuff like sexual assault and everything but it’s only a filter through which they can tell stories about the deeper implications of said actions and the multiple consequences that can be born from them and how people explore their own insecurities about sex while still keeping a mostly fun and lighthearted tone to disorientated the distracted players. Kichikuou Rance, one of their most popular and widely acclaimed titles is a game entirely built on a push and pull gameplay loop based on facing the consequences of your actions, making tough decisions and having to adapt to them and accept them as they come. And while a lot of this was lost after Torii’s departure from the company, I believe one writer took the mantle of what she once wanted to accomplish with her works, and that writer is known as Dice Korogashi.

Dice Korogashi was part of a newly formed team of developers at Alicesoft that I will now refer to as “Team Dohna” for the sake of simplicity. When the question of remaking Rance 01 for a modern audience was brought up by TADA who initially wasn’t fond of the idea. He thought that if it had to happen it should be done under the same condition the original game was made in : by a fresh team of young developers, a risky bet for what will eventually become the newest best entry point into the series but a bet that paid off significantly in the end, since Rance 01 is considered by many as one of the best titles in the series and the other remake they worked on, Rance 03 saw even more praise by the general public which faith were starting to dwindle during the few dry years of the company after the release of Sengoku Rance.

Dice and team Dohna perfectly captured the feeling of the franchise and what made it work in the first place, and with a material as shallow and honestly not that great as Rance 1 they managed to pull a lot of its best quality while reinventing the game for a new audience, coupled with a lot of retroactive continuity stuff, a more fleshed out adventure and generally better more witty writing which reminded people of the good days where Torii was at the office.

It is no surprise then than Dice was brought onto Rance X to take the role of main writer replacing Yoroide Dragon who only served a minor co-writing role this time around, the guy understood his stuff and Team Dohna were perhaps even more passionate and talented than their mentors when it came to making fun games which pleased a grand majority of people.

Soon, Team Dohna will start working on their own original IP, a game that will shake the world with a stunning artstyle and a level of presentation never seen before for the company.
Is it all style and no substance ? Or is there more to it ? Let’s see for ourselves.
Dohna Dohna was originally announced in 2016 and went onto a long development period of 4 years after its announcement after the scope and technical aspect of the project found itself to be too big for Alicesoft and Team Dohna to handle in a timely manner especially with the addition of guest artist joining the fray to design all of the unique heroines of the game and of course COVID, anyway the game was eventually released in 2020 to celebrate 1 year too late the 30th anniversary of the company. It wasn’t director Ittenchiroku first title within the universe as there exist a sort of prototype of Dohna Dohna called Haruurare which was a small mini-game in the Alice 2010 compilation, although no english version of it is available, the main premise is roughly similar with an heavy emphasis on kidnapping and forcing girls into prostitution which is what Dohna Dohna is mostly (but not entirely, we’ll get there) about.

The game takes place in the fictitious Asougi City, a modern Japanese metropole controlled by a big corporate conglomerate called “Asougi” who managed to claim its independence from the rest of world and establish a sort of cult of personality fascist regime with all the bells and whistles that come along with it such an heavily armed police force, propaganda everywhere, surveillance, “cleaning” drones and forced labor for anyone who steps too out of line with the system in place. To oppose the oppressive regime a couple of gangs whose goal is to trample on the establishment were founded, these gangs known as “Anti-Asou” clan engage in illegal activities such as property damage, stealing but most importantly the dangerous business of “hustling” which can be roughly translated by the act of kidnapping innocent women and selling their bodies to illegal prostitution.

You take control of Kuma, member of an anti-Aso clan by the name of “Nayuta” and the one managing the hustling business. he’s accompanied by other members such as Zappa the clan’s leader, Torataro the milf enjoyer, KiraKira your chainsaw wielding gyaru childhood friend, Porno the hypersexual loli and a slew of colorful characters joining the party as you progress through the game. Your goal on top of following the story is going to go inside various dungeons in order to “hunt” for potential new “talents” , bring them to your hideout and “train” them to perform well and bring you lots of cash during the “hustling” hours.

Let’s get something out of the way first before going in detail about this very peculiar premise. The game is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, it’s something that many people, even those of the mainstream gaming sphere who don't know about the concept behind the game have said. I would go as far as to say that out of all of Alicesoft’s 30 year old catalog of great games, this one easily has the best presentation of them all. Alicesoft being an eroge company means that they are of a relatively humble size and their games are relatively low budget compared to even low-profile indie games and thus are mostly carried by their sprite art and CG’s as it is tradition in that field. But here the game is just fucking popping, the illustrator Gyokai did more than an amazing job giving life to this game, the colours are flashy in a certain pop-way, the character design are ultra solid and most of all, the game has actual battle animation and those wouldn’t have to envy those of productions commonly found on Steam.

Many people say that Dohna Dohna feels like the “Persona 5” of Eroge and from an aesthetic perspective, it’s hard to deny, everything is so fluid, the UI is really nice, it feels like a proper professional game release and is far above the standards of these kinds of production, as far as the art go, the game is freaking gorgeous and I personally love it ! Even the H-Scenes are… well not to be a gooner but the art pops even in those.
One quick look at the Alice Mansion section of the game informs us that the team went for this sort of Hip-Hop, World End With You artstyle because they felt that telling a story in a modern city would make the visuals of the game rather dull and they wanted to contrast with the heavier subject matter of the game and that was a more than excellent choice, in fact I would even dare to say that some of the more… let’s say harsher and hardcore scene wouldn’t work nearly as well with an artstyle less detailed and with less flair, I gotta admit that I rarely praise H-Scenes but some of the H-Scenes in this game really made me stop to take care of important business if you know what I’m saying.

When I said earlier that the game was considered to be the “Persona 5” of Eroge, I also meant it a bit more literally as a lot of the main criticism people have towards the game because of this poppy artstyle combined to quite a dark premise meant the game was supposedly all style and no substance, that it’s just a fun game with fun mechanics and that the stories failed at delivering any thoughtful deeper commentary about the subject matter it was trying to tackle, I must admit, that was a bit of my impression at first. Like I said, it’s really hard to release an Eroge who very obviously indulges in some crass stuff while trying to sell and please to an audience of jerkers who are only there to appreciate the “art” and the game general tone didn’t really indicate at first that the story was going to take that whole “hustling” thing all that seriously and put it as an excuse to be primordially fun first and a bit needlessly edgy second. I was actually wary about this throughout my playthrough but then I remember that the person who recommended this game to me had a lot to say positively about the game’s handling of said topic and the deeper political themes the game tries to explore.

But to talk about these, we first need to understand how the game works. The game is divided in multiple phases, you have a hideout phase where you can buy items, manage your party, participate in character events to further your relationship with your party members and manage your “talents” (more on that later). After that, you have two choices, either spend the day “hustling” which will trigger the Hustling phase of the game or go on a “hunt” which initiates the Hunting Phase of the game AKA Dungeon exploration. We’ll focus on the hunting phases first as it is the more “video gamey” aspect of the game.

After selecting a dungeon, you move your characters on a series of linear branching paths which sometimes leads to an icon triggering a fight, giving you an item or triggering an event. The battle system of the game is actually pretty fun, it’s a less hardcore version of “Darkest Dungeon”, if you ever played that game, your characters and the opposite party are placed in a round of 4 and you have to slide them left or right before using their abilities, you have to consider placement because some of your abilities only work within a certain radius or only hit a certain row (which can be seen by a line connecting to where the attack will land) and also to avoid damages yourself, as some of the more fragile units could potentially get killed easily if they’re misplaced. While Dohna Dohna, doesn’t really have the same level of complexity of Darkest Dungeons with its permadeath system and various amounts of status effects (here most of them are just stats debuffs), it does have a few “puzzle” fights when it comes to recruiting talents ! Sometimes when on the field, you’ll hit a case with a girl icon, this triggers a fight with a talent on it and if you want to recruit it, you will need to defeat that girl last and so you need to time and use your techniques right as to clear all enemies before dealing with the talent who always die in one hit ! It’s a nice change of pace on top of the bosses which are also pretty damn fun and well designed.
The game’s difficulty on a first playthrough is “just right” and the character variety of your party is pretty damn solid, it’s also nice that you can swap party members at any time in battle and an unlimited amount of time to as to keep the general flow of battle intact and not punish the players too much for harsh decisions. Fights are usually not all that hard but there were some that took me by surprises with how challenging they were, combined with the entire resource management aspect of dungeon exploration. I have a few complaints with the game's systems however : for one, only the active party members at the end of a battle get any XP which is pretty annoying to keep everyone evenly leveled by the end of the game and two the enemy variety isn’t super high. I understand this was done because animating hand drawn sprites for every characters probably was already a huge time commitment as is but It wouldn’t have killed to at least have swap colored version with different aptitudes instead of just pulling from the same pool of generic soldier troopers with more HP for new zones, that’s no to say it’s always these types of enemies as some story dungeons switch things up when the other gangs are involved but still.

Another thing that I didn’t really enjoy was the weapon upgrade system, for some reasons, Alicesoft weapon systems have always been obtuse and RNG heavy for no reasons and Dohna Dohna is no exception. To get new gear, you need to first find the material and then buy it at the shop, problem is the game doesn’t tell you where to find these past Rank 2 and even if you figure it out somehow, you need to be lucky to be able to find said material in a dungeon during an hunting phase, it makes the endgame unnecessarily grindy if you want the most optimal gear to tackle the last few challenges of the game unless you want to spend a lifetime killing one tanky enemies in one of the late game areas while making sure they don’t send your ass to the shadow realm.

Speaking of buying items, the main means of collecting money in this game is through the “hustling” part which is where the game hides its true ludo-narrative experience. One thing that I’ve noticed when playing through the game is that this aspect of the game was pretty secondary, you need it to gain money and gain more resources but aside from the time the story requires it, the hustling is something almost entirely optional and even when you are forced to interact with it the requirement to progress to the next stage of the story is usually not that high.

At first, I thought this design decision was a bit odd. Why would the secondary mechanic of the game, arguably the one the marketing of the game was centered around and one of the main sources of inner conflict for our protagonist, be left being so optional ? The main answer one could arrive at is that much like the RPG aspect of the game, they wanted this part to not be too much of a weight on the players, especially the ones that were more familiar with RPG mechanics but not nearly enough with management simulators. After all, the Alice Mansion section of the game talks about how they wanted the game to remain easy and accessible in order to sell it to a larger audience as this big bright and colorful game celebrating 30 years of the company’s history.

But by actually investing myself deeper within that part of the game out of my own volition and also mostly so I could gather enough resources to mitigate the end-game grind, I think that I was understanding why they decided to do it this way as it says a lot about you the player and how you start naturally fitting in the shoes of the main character Kuma, experiencing a similar level of cold detachment as you invest more time in those mechanics.

Kuma is an interesting protagonist as far as the wider range of Alicesoft protagonist goes, unlike Rance he isn’t some lust and ego-driven asshole looking to dominate the screen time and the world while hiding his weaker side behind a veil of macho man behavior, unlike Seed from Toushin Toshi II, he isn’t an innocent constantly struggling with the morality of his actions and the vow he gave to his S.O. Kuma is a bit like Walter White from the Breaking Bad series, a man who after losing everything turns himself to a shady business and has grown colder and more indifferent in order to protect his own psyche from the harsh reality of the acts he’s committing. Kuma lost his family after they were used as experiments for Asougi which led him to a life of crime and joining the Nayuta clan. Nayuta, initially wasn’t fond of “hustling” as a business but Kuma began introducing it to the clan under the suggestion of “Mistress” a shop owner who gives out weapons and items to other clans around the city as “hustling” is shown to him to be the most optimal way to found Nayuta’s illegal and revolutionary activities.

Kuma sees hustling as just a means to an end, just something that he absolutely needs and has to do in order to avenge his family and further his goals within Nayuta. Kuma is a young man, still going to school during the events of the story even if his presence in class isn’t the most consistent, he even embarks his childhood friend KiraKira into that business which he probably didn’t want to do in the first place but much like anything in his life, dealing with a life of crime had terrible effects on his mind. Kuma being responsible for such a business had to grow distant and cold when dealing with “talents” and usually, he wants to deal with the hustling alone, not letting the other members of Nayuta handle that side of the clan activities and only focusing on the hunt. Of course, the other members interact with him throughout the course of the game, but they don’t really question him on that subject for more than a few seconds and it’s only when Kuma is gone from the team for a short while during the campaign that another member by the name of Joker takes the mantle temporarily and say something “well that was fucked up” and not much else.

As the story progresses, Kuma kinda loses himself in his job, leaving aside his humanity in order to perform well and grow the numbers even larger, he lost himself in the sauce and it’s not even sure that he could even escape from it, he’s not even sure of why he was doing in the first place and why he’s continuing. This is why the hustling part of the game is very light and not too player demanding in my opinion, just like Kuma, you can just treat it literally like a side-hustle that you need to participate in even a little bit to progress in the game but if you want to perform better, you need more money, you need more numbers, you need better talents, with better stats and thus any further implication within that side of the game is only greed from the players perpetuating the cycle of violence and cruelty for his gains.

In the game, you manage your talents through the uses of a tablet showing different stats like their looks (how likely they’ll get picked up by clients), their techniques (how much money they’ll bring) and their mental health stat which is akin to HP in other game and when that reaches zero, the talent “breaks” and thus cannot perform as well and is a wasted asset that you need to dispose of. Talents also comes with a series of attributes which give bonuses during hustling for example by giving a “sexy” talent to a client that demands it means you’ll get more money out of them but in return they can also add attributes to them some beneficial and some not like making them blind or disabled, these attributes have different effects on the talent stat growth and stat decrease every time they participate in sexual activities with mental health almost always systematically dropping down each time.

Of course in order to keep your talent in check, you can feed them different training items which increases their stats so they can either perform better and for longer, you also need to make sure they stay on the pill so they don’t end up getting pregnant which is about as bad as them being broken and making them discardable. It’s in this aspect that I found my mind was starting to look at these talents like just replaceable assets, things that you can just break and replace by the next talent with better stats and initially, the game actually encourages such a playstyle because it’s more efficient to discard your broken talent and replacing them with newer, better ones than keeping them for too long.

This is encouraged by something called the “Hustle Appreciation/Desperation Day” : while you can hustle at any point during your playthrough, it is preferable to keep your girls for these special day which give more money and dedicate the other days to hunting in dungeons and progressing the story. Desperation day in particular is pretty good for your wallet, as the clients give way more money per hustle but in exchange sadly are rougher with your talents which reduce your talents mental health to mush, faster than it took me to write this review and give them a lot of bad attributes !

Realizing the reality of this situation, I started trying to invest more in my talents mental health, showering them with goods to boost their moods and I realized that it was kind of harder to do than just discard them but I didn’t wanna lose some of my best talents as they were a great asset to my business and I grew attached to them. It’s upon this realization that something clicked in my head, I asked the friend who recommended the game to me about tips on how to get more mental health items to keep my talents happy and not leaving them to which they responded that “Yes indeed, it is hard to take care of their mental health, but think about it, isn’t it worse to feed them lies in order to cope with their situation ? It’s not really ethically better to subject them to continuous trauma like that instead of letting them go” and suddenly it clicked, the true horrors of hustling were coming to me. I didn’t treat these poor women as people, I treated these poor women as assets…

I was turning into Kuma, colder, harsher, more disinterested, only caring about the well-being of my talents because I profited off of their pain. I thought that I was mitigating their suffering but truly, I wasn’t. Every Time one of my “talent” mental health started dropping, I was afraid to lose those I called “My best earner” (or “bottom bitch” like that one South Park episode about Butters turning into a pimp). And the complete irony of my line of thinking was put right in front of me when the last tier of mental health training item was literally making my “talents” read the fucking “Myth of Sissyphus” which is a touch of humor on behalves the developers but made me realized how much of an ass I really was when it comes to understanding what the game wanted to say. I was feeding these girls lies to make them feel like their work here was not as bad as it actually was and in the middle of all this, I forgot that this was a game about kidnapping innocent bystanders and forcing them into a life of trauma.

And the downward spiral of awful shit that I was committing naturally without question didn’t stop there. See in this game, there are “special talents” that you can recruit after passing certain points in the story. They usually come with better stats and a unique design provided by the many guest artists who worked on the game but that’s not all. Because these are unique heroines, they have stories attached to them that you can experience by unlocking events by meeting certain conditions, usually involving hustling them to specific people.
When this happens, an ero-scene plays, with a CG and everything and it’s there that the horrors buried deep inside this colorful game starts to show themselves in a much more “in your face” kind of way. See, one of the most interesting narrative decision when it comes to the game story is that the game is told only through dialogues, it’s not an unusual style for Alicesoft of course but the absence of 3rd person narration during the story was purposefully done as to not to embellish or hide the intents of the characters during the regular story sections. Every thought and every action that Kuma or other characters take or have is presented bluntly to you without flourish as to keep the flow of the story intact and the intent of the narrative clear with the exception of two cases scenarios : The Unique Heroine Ero-Events and the “humiliation” scenes that I’ll cover later down this essay.

Here the narration flips the POV from the players, to the victims depicted in the scene because let’s not mince any words, these are harsh, sexual assault scene and the “talents” that you set to the gutter are victims in this specific scenario. During these moments, you can clearly, hear, see and read every deeper thoughts of the story at large, heck one of the CG’s in the game also happens to be in first person view, giving you a frontal look at what it means to be in these people's shoes. Notice how I said “people” and “victims” and not “talent” here because in these circumstances, with the absence of the filters provided by the fluid UI and gameplay mechanics, you can only perceive them as human beings, being progressively destroyed by your actions. You could’ve avoided this, you could’ve just ignored the event requirements for these heroines, but you likely did so out of morbid curiosity or an empty goal minded interest in completing the game CG collection and now you are granted with your “reward” which is these intensely hardcore scenes of psychologically horrific abuse.

There are over 13 unique heroines that are this way and what I do actually enjoy about them is that while their fate is equally as horrible for each, they’re all on a different spot on the spectrum of trauma. Some girls, who lived in Asougi city, who believed in the good of the people living there and the system working for their own benefits, suddenly saw their entire world crumble in front of their eyes. Some of them, whose regular lives were already not enviable before you kidnapped them, see this activity as an escape from the far harsher reality that awaits them in the outside world as being sent to prostitution is marginally better than their previous life. Some of them, who never received or understood the concept of love and are receiving praises for the first time, finally feel values in this body of work. Some of them revel in this situation, as they were already inclined to work with you even if you didn’t force them too.

You might even think that some girl’s situation is “not that bad” until it becomes worse. One of the girls is a pompom girl who gets specifically requested by her childhood friend on behalf of his father buying a prostitute for him to lose her virginity. But after the sighs of relief from realizing that she only has to deal with someone she knows and can trust, it’s immediately followed by the second event where the guy breaks that trust to get out of a bad situation by offering her to his bullies. Feeling guilt over this fact, he starts menacing Kuma, who responds with a cold demeanor that he chose this, that he has his information and that if he attempted to do anything against him, he will expose him and that he need to find another solution and the best solution was simply to buy off the girl to be his private property, removing her freedom for good, just to be the one exclusive to her and give himself a good conscience.

Just like every road leads to Rome, the fate of these girls all end up in the deepest, darkest, places regardless of their circumstances or if they find new meaning in this wretched parody of what they call “their new life”. Whether you keep them around for longer because you wanna keep using their good stats to further your gain, or tire them until they can’t move and break them to replace them with others, in the end, you are always in the wrong, you are always doing bad things ! Your eyes were bigger than your stomach, you can and should’ve avoided this, you could’ve just participated “a little” but you went all in and even then you still participated anyway. Because while these heroines could express themselves directly to you as they were designed as such by the game, how about the slew of generic, interchangeable NPC talents that you sent to the gutter ? You probably only saw them as numbers on a tablet and nothing else.

This is what it means to be Kuma, this is what it means to lose yourself in something that you can’t control anymore. In the end, you’re no better than him, in the end the game molded you into what he become and it’s in this moment that you realize that much like Joker when Kuma leaves the party that the reality of hustling is much more fucked up and that you could probably never do it yourself and yet you did !

There are also other observations one could make of such a system, like how the game seems to privilege younger looking characters when it comes to distributing the beauty stat (with the more child-like ones systematically being S-tier and in high demand) or the fact that talking to your talents is yet another, pointless attempt at trying to sympathize with the victim of your crime and all of this starts to paint an interesting ludo-narrative tapestry that viciously hits where it needs to.

But see, this is where my praise for the game kinda comes to an end, because, the thing that is unfortunate about Dohna Dohna, is that this “style over substance” reputation isn’t entirely invented out of the blue. A lot of the systems that I did mention are secondary and we did see how it was an intentional choice but the problem is that the game expects you to play it in a certain way in order to get the most juice out of what it’s trying to do and this way is pretty counter-intuitive. I guess I haven’t talked about the main story but it’s because my thoughts on it are a bit of a mix bag. I think the cast is charming and the writing can be funny at times and yes, sometimes it can be thoughtful but it feels like it spectacularly ignores all of the narrative potential of the story told by the hustling mechanics.

It’s like Dohna Dohna is two facet of a coin, on the surface, if you play normally and doing the minimum to progress through the game, you realize that the story is a bit of standard and not that entertaining gang-war story with tints of themes of revolution and fighting against oppression, you’ve likely stories like these before and you’ve likely seen them done better. Heck, the game actually has heroines that are not tied to the hustling mechanic but are regular party members and the way the game writes and treats them is a bit… strange ?

When doing a regular playthrough of Dohna Dohna, you can participate in events with your party members to get closer to them and gather affinity points, they’ve become quite popular in JRPG’s these days but this mechanic took its origin from the dating sim genre to which Dohna Dohna is clearly a derivative of. Because this is an eroge, most of the events are for the most part erotic but in the end they all serve the purpose of getting Kuma closer to the girls and the rest of the gang and getting to know them better.

These are called “feelings” event and they’re all sorts of your typical romantic, weird and wacky sex scenario that you come to see from your average eroge with the character arc of said characters usually involving them discovering what sex is and the joy of having healthy regular intercourse with a respectful partner (who just happens to be a freaking criminal on the verge of psychopathy) and eventually falling in love with them or something. Of course, I am vastly exaggerating and there is some variation and some more complex arcs thrown in there but it’s in these moments that the game drops any pretends of being a deep commentary on the commodification of abuse, the cycle of violence and a character study on the fall of a broken man to dive head first into the typical kind of indulgent content meant to titillate the player’s noodlestick.

Combined with the main story itself barely acknowledging the hustling part of the game as an afterthought and you get quite a strange whiplash that might confirm initial expectations. It’s also not helped that the story itself doesn’t really care to explore a bit more deeply the conflicts that exist within its settings. There are 2 other clans that confronts you during the game, they are also Anti-Aso, also participate in similar shady business that you sometimes get to see but most often not but they never really expand on why these gangs who seemingly aiming for the same goal of taking down Asougi don’t actually work together. Is it because they have other methods that don’t fit with Nayuta’s mindset, or they’re using means that they don’t agree with ? It seems like the only reason these gangs fight each other is because it’s traditionally what happens in these types of stories instead of some more deeply rooted reasons.

This sadly has the unfortunate result of making the story go around in circle, never really progressing from hours on end and hinging on similarly repeated conflicts to create intrigues, drama and tension and while it can be entertaining and sometimes fun thanks to the writing being charming, it’s far too shallow to be able to tell an impactful story through the main mean in which the game communicates with you which are the characters, their dialogues and interactions. While there’s definitely some moments, they’re not really reflective of the main conflicts that exist within the world and what our characters are led to do in order to survive in it. The game does try to mitigate this by some neat twist near the end of the game, where it is revealed that in order to maintain the illusion of peace within its system, it had to create, manage and control the Anti-Aso clans from the shadow, manipulating them in order to create a criminal underworld where the more “problematic” citizens can give in to their deeper twisted desires. This reveal should’ve shook Kuma to his core especially when it turns out that Mistress, the shopkeep who led him to this life of crime in the first place, worked in tandem with Asougi’s CEO to maintain this masquerade.

During the final moments of the game, there’s a betrayal arc that ends as soon as it starts because of some friendship speech, there’s a big team-up of all the Anti-Aso clans working together and they try to attack and dethrone the wretched capitalist overlord and their big giant robot of doom. This ending while conceptually interesting concludes in a bit of a wet fart in my opinion, with the characters triumphantly exposing Asougi’s crime to the general public without actually dismantling the company and their influences and most importantly, without facing any real consequences for their action. It was in this moment that Kuma should’ve been punished for his crimes, and face his ultimate fate after realizing that all he did was for nothing and he can only bear guilt on his conscience for the rest of his life or face death but there’s none of that shit and it kinda throw me off a little bit.

You can definitely feel that perhaps, Team Dohna was planning to continue the story and expand on its world, characters and conflicts in a sequel and the multiple endings of the game is definitely opened to it, but with Team Dohna leaving Alicesoft to move on to greener pastures and Dohna Dohna being one of the last high profile games of their catalog that isn’t an exploitative gacha mobile game, it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

And it’s a shame because this story in all of its classicism and in all of its shortcoming and lack of completeness and ludo-narrative consistency is the Dohna Dohna that most people who didn’t push the game further than the credits and the basic requirement to progress through the game will experience and it’s a fun story don’t get me wrong ! But, I wouldn’t blame anyone for getting out of Dohna Dohna feeling unsatisfied by its promising premise that ends up being nothing more than a gimmick at first glance !

The thing is that the game has a very counter-intuitive way to push you towards a deeper, more impactful experience which hinges on you being bad at the game. See, when I’ve talked about the heroine's events earlier, I didn’t mention that all of these feeling events have a “variant B” to them which completely flips the script on its head to deliver on some hard hitting confrontation of Kuma’s action and their consequences. To access these alternate events, you have to not participate in any events with the girl (and thus not furthering their relationship and rendering them less useful in battle) until a certain point in the scenario where they get kidnapped. If you fail to save them in a reasonable amount of time, you will witness something called an “humiliation scene” which is, you guessed it, them getting treated similarly to how the unique heroine in the hustling mode gets. While it does offer another H-Scene to complete your gallery, the deeper, long-lasting effect however is changing every subsequent “feeling events” you’ll do with them to have additional dialogues to reflect the traumatic events they went through !

This is a brilliant idea on paper, most of these variant B scenes are actually miles more interesting conceptually than their regular counterparts. One of them is literally Antenna, the goofy autistic hacker girl having some sort of an existential crisis when she realizes that Kuma might actually be as much of a monster as her aggressor and Kuma retorquing that it’s indeed true and that he doesn’t want to feed her lies by pretending the contrary. Or KiraKira trying to convince Kuma from stopping all this madness and trying to go back to a regular school-life as girlfriend and boyfriend with Kuma sadly refusing as he is in too deep to back down no matter how irrational it may be and how uncomfortable it makes KiraKira.

I say on paper, because, getting to the conclusion that the heroines are “more interesting with traumas than without” is a bit of an awkward statement to make as factually true as it may be. Some of them like Porno and Medico, still have solid enough arc regularly especially Porno since her relationship to Kuma is deeply tied to her troubled past and how she’s learning to cope with it in a very unhealthy way but for the grand majority, you’re better off reaching for the heroine bad endings, if you want the game’s tone to fit the harsh subject matters brought up by its gameplay mechanics and Kuma’s inner conflict. It’s also just kind of badly handled in execution, the requirements to even access these bad endings are so specific, and so hard to miss due to the game treating them as punishments for not playing the game right that it kinda misses the point and is where it would’ve helped if the game was just a tad bit more challenging and tad bit less forgiving when it comes to managing your time and your ressources.

Because as it stands, these bad ending variants feel like rewards rather than punishment because you need to actively seek them in order to make the story more engaging and the point the story wants to get at clearer. And unlike Rance IX, where its bad endings were kind of pointlessly edgy to please to a certain demographic without any meaningful addiction to the game story and what it wanted to accomplish, here you’ll actually want to get to them because otherwise, you just end up with a shallower experience and less completion percentage on your save file.

And isn’t it all a bit ass-backward ?

By treating that side of the game as just an optional, easily missable part of the experience, you ultimately sabotage the potential the story could’ve had in the long run and I don’t think that as it stands, Dohna Dohna can hold its ground naturally as a great entry in Alicesoft’s catalog without these pointless detour. But on the other hand, Alicesoft loves their replay value and also loves their generosity and providing their players with tons of contents to satisfy their craving for erotic gaming.

This is where the philosophical dilemma lies with Alicesoft production and more specifically with Dohna Dohna. It’s clear that the reason all of the story’s depth lied semi-hidden behind obtuse condition was only made this way to turn that darker side of the game into something that players are actively seeking and while the scenes in question can be very heavy in terms of atmosphere and content, I’m not a fool to suggest that to some people, these scenes actually feels like a reward regardless of the writers best effort to accomplish the contrary. Because of the way the game leads the player to that content but also because simply, some folks are just “into that shit” and there’s nothing we can really do about that unless turning the game into a family friendly RPG where these subject matters could barely even be brought up in the first place.

But for those who can set aside their fantasies to read between the lines and really absorbing where the game is trying to lead them, they will certainly find what they were looking for story-wise and learn a valuable lesson with this cautionary tale of a broken man, breaking a lot of woman in his path for what he believed was the right thing to do in order to survive and overthrow the system. Alas, I also hoped that the actual main storyline supported that line of thinking.

As a man in my mid-20’s playing eroge I can only admire and scrutinize the story from a media analyst perspective. I can also empathize with the subject matter and the characters interacting with it and also enjoy the game for simply being a fun game to pass the time. Unfortunately, I could never entirely relate to the pleas and the struggles of these victims because I am not one myself and thus perhaps my review might be just as shallow and disinterested as the story itself was to its deeper narrative elements.

With that out of the way however, I think that while Dohna Dohna is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I still think it’s one of Alicesoft strongest title and that while the attempt was a bit messy, I can only appreciate that they’ve tried and create a story that might connect to someone out there who will find more value in it that I have. However I have one last thing to share before finishing up this essay.

I’ve mentioned countless times during this review that the game was recommended to me by a certain person that I had yet to mention : My good friend Kitty, mostly known by its pen-name of “Antenna” or “.Farside”. if my review made you curious about the game or if you simply want a more thorough and engaged analysis of the work by someone with more insight on it as it unfortunately has a first-hand experience with the subject matter and felt deeply touched by it, you can check what its article on the game has to say about the game here :

https://fuwanovel.net/2023/08/why-dohna-dohna-matters/

I highly recommend it personally, it’s better written than anything I could come up with myself and I consider this to be an essential companion piece to a first hand experience with the game.

Trails of Cold Steel : “It’s a game about nothing”

Been a while since my gigantic review of Azure right ?

I think taking a break between the arcs or heck even between these games is important if you don’t want to end up burning on them. You know, give it a fresh start, give it a fresh new look, give yourself the time to forget about the bad things and enjoy the serie's strengths in retrospect.

Well good for me because the Kiseki grind is not over and there’s a whole new arc to explore this time around with the Cold Steel series. Now to be frank, I was wary about this one, I got a lot of mixed signals from my friends about this, some people loves Cold Steel like it’s the second coming of Jesus Christ but then you have others more reasonable people who have a lot of criticism of the game and let’s be frank neither of those people managed to sold me on Cold Steel.

And looking at it from a distance, this didn’t seem like a good start, a high-school setting, a main character that look just like every Kirito wannabe on the face of the earth even more blatant coomer bait otaku pandering than usual and some stuff I heard from my friends did not bode well for the future of my mental health getting into this game. I knew what I was getting into, it’s trashy JRPG stuff for teenagers to get crazy about on Twitter dot com and kneeling at Rean for being an extreme giga chad of normalcy.

So I went in, tampering my expectations below the ocean floor for this one, thinking that, the series already proved itself enough already and maybe there was a way that my prior investment into the series and the few qualities all the games share with each others in terms of worldbuilding might keep me invested and interested in this right ?

Like this series has set a standard of quality, I’m not a fan of Trails but I can’t deny that in all the issues I had with the series (namely what frustrates me about it that I mentioned in my other reviews), it’s still an ambitious, sincere piece of work with a lot of charm to carry you out for hours even when nothing is happening.


So here I was, bored out of my ass once again in one of my afternoons, and I felt ready, I needed to know what Cold Steel was all about, I needed to form my opinion on it, heck with my expectations being so low it can only positively surprise me right…?

Let’s not play around any longer.

The Legend of Heroes : Trails of Cold Steel is one of the single worst JRPG I had the displeasure of playing and every minute of it felt like actual mind numbing mental torture.

Now claiming such a bold statement for a piece of work with a decent following of people who loves it to death might as well be a death sentence and please, do re-direct all of your future death treats to my dm’s or in the comment so that I can completely ignore them and pretend I’m morally superior to you for not partaking in such trivial display of self-defense and bad intentions.

But I need to get this out of my chest anyway, not only because I have nothing better to do, giving my unneeded opinion on everything is pretty much the solid foundation of my career and because this looks like a job for me, so everybody just follow me cause we need a little controversy cause it’d be so empty without me.

I’m not going to do the old song and dance in this review by re-explaining the strengths and weaknesses of the Trails formula because at this point very little has changed (or at least they took a worse direction overall in terms of execution, more on that later) so let’s just talk about the game itself.

The game is set in the Empire of Erebonia, a vastly overhyped land that was constantly mentioned in the earlier entries in the series most of the time as an antagonistic force so let’s at least address the one positive of such as a setting.

You’re witnessing the event leading up to a full-scale war launched by an expansionist faction who just love to colonize and annex stuff from inside the invader country, it’s a really interesting setup as we rarely get games taking place inside of the “evil empire of doom” most RPG’s tend to have and Erebonia’s situation is a bit more complex than it may seem at first since the Empire itself has its own sets of issues mainly a social caste one. With the nobility still being a thing so we have dukes and lords and barons and the plebs, the commoners but with the advance of technology and change in social habits and custom some commoners have gained prominence in the higher state of society and are now politicians, CEO’s, Generals and some of them have formed the “reformist” faction who are opposed to the “noble faction” which have two lines of thinking “Nobles are cringe and commoners rules but expansionism is based and we should conquer more land to get the point across'' think of it as Stalinism interpreted by a Japanese author who is not super well read on those ideologies.

That is arguably, a fascinating setting for a JRPG and one that could if done correctly rival with the setting of Crossbell which was a whole can of worms onto itself and this is in those instances that even thought the entire rest of the game will absolutely fail at doing anything remotely interesting with that setting that if anything Trails is good a framing the action of their stories in interesting coat of paint.

But then you scratch the paint and you realize that the game is very, very, very rusty and full of cavities and holes and its inner machination is faulty and at times completely out of touch with any form of tangible reality or common sense.

So what POV does the game choose to tell this story, in the Sky Series we played as bracers a private militia with the goal to help the common people without involving themselves in politics, in Crossbell we played as the SSS a special brigade of the police who does the job of bracers but unlike them can actually run investigations and involve themselves with political affairs.




In this game, you play as Rean Schwarzer (a piece of white bread that the game will pretend to be a good protagonist) , a fresh new student going to Thors Military academy. So yes, the framing for this story is that you’re playing as… high-school students… and yes… it’s as thrilling as it sounds…

Look, I don’t mind school setting, I really don’t and in fact some of my favorite pieces of media have a school setting or heavily feature teenagers but as I grow older and bitter and more cynical, my tolerance and patience towards those elements decreases with time. I guess this is my L for playing a video game aimed at a certain demographic of people and complaining about not being catered to but let’s see how the game execute that concept, afterall, I’m all for a good, funny, wholesome high-school slice of life from time to time and it seems like the main bulk of the game anyway.

Now ok, what is the single-most important aspect of any story ? Regardless of genre, regardless of conventions, regardless of scale or ambitions.

That’s right, it’s the characters, my rule of thumb is that you can make even the most basic mind-numbingly cliché story amazing if the characters are awesome (cf. Most of the “Tales of “ series) and boy we sure have characters this time around because guess what, you don’t just have 1, not 2 not 3, not 4 but 9 !

9 fucking playable characters in this game which compose your main party, as you can see this is a large cast of characters which I mean, fine, I don’t mind it but that’s a bit overkill this early into a story as you can’t possibly hope to make all of them standout by the end and you will run into the issues of having a few weak link amongst the party.

Heck even my favorite RPG, FFIX with its cast of 8 playable characters by the end of the game, ends up having 2 characters pretty much being slot fillers that don’t contribute much to the story as a whole and are just here to break the game in half with their abilities but at least you meet them progressively and not all of them dropped on you from the start so they can get a bit of breathing room for them to get introduced before they can wipe the floor with Death Blue Magic.

And you know at least, these characters have personalities, interesting dynamics, layers to them and their arc and even though not all the characters are special, at least the ones who stand out are some of the most compelling characters I’ve had the pleasure to accompany in an RPG.

This is something JRPG understood fairly early on when they started giving a shit about pushing deeper more ambitious narrative into the forefront of the experience, if you want people to spend hours in a game and getting invested into its world, lore and themes, you need good characters to channel those elements and make them shine more brightly.

Well let me tell you that Cold Steel spectacularly fails in epic proportion at making its cast of characters likable or at least interesting, they are the equivalent of paper cutouts with a ChatGPT prompt attached to their mouth and the depth of a glass of water that’s been half-emptied and then left unattended for 9 days straight.
While it is usually a pretty low criticism to say, here it is legit the truth, most of the characters in this game are just a collection of one note anime cliché with almost nothing more going for them beyond that initial first impression. And maybe you’d be like : “But Cani, maybe they start as clichés but then evolve into fully fledged characters through trials and tribulation”, they don’t and I wish I was kidding.

“But do they have like… conflicts with the world or between themselves to make them grow as characters ? Motives that drive them to do the things they do ?” At this point, you might just be grasping at straws trying to find gold. Falcom decided to do the novel idea of making you use your imagination to imagine what these characters could’ve been had they been handled by competent writers who actually cared about the topics they were trying to talk about.

So the context behind how our ragtag team of wet towels got together to become friends and maybe saving the world or some shit is fairly straightforward. At Thors Military academy, classes are usually separated between nobles and commoners with nobles getting extra privileges like exclusive rooms for them and an actual extended vacation period whereas the commoners have a whopping 5 days of break in the whole school year (terrible news, I know right ?) but this time, things are getting a bit wacky and experimental.

Usually the academy has 5 class but this year there’s a 6th one cleverly name “Class VII” (they make a joke about it but don’t expect it to make sense at least in this entry), in class VII members of the nobility and commoners are mixed together into one group to see if they can get along and be friends with each others, they also have a special curriculum which mostly consist of going on on field trips where they’ll fulfill request for the citizen of Erebonia (which is the convenient excuse this game found to justify its terrible structure and quest system more on that later).

This opposition between commoners and nobles is the main conflict of the narrative but it’s only crystalized by two of the most annoying characters I’ve seen in an RPG yet, Machias and Jusis. Machias HATES the nobility because of some old trauma about her sister being bullied into suicide or at least that’s what you learn about after 40h of the game in perhaps the game worst chapter and the dude just can’t stand having to team-up with nobles (rightfully so) so you’d think he’d have a problem with all the nobles but he only has issues with Jusis, a snarky, indifferent asshole, who’s a noble but doesn’t care about all the etiquette coming up with it.

These two character dynamics is the most annoying and cliché thing shit ever, it goes nowhere, they grew to tolerate each other in the span of one chapter but that’s about it and their dialogues might as well be sandpaper for my eyes, they literally have the dynamic of the “enjoyer vs fans” meme, if you liked poor people before, get ready to fucking hate them with Machias… or will you ?

See, you quickly realize that even in its own setup, the game cannot handle that conflict for shit, in Class VII there are only 9 members, 3 of which are nobles and the rest are all commoners, the ratio is a bit unbalanced but alas it gets worse. See because this is a JRPG, every character needs to be a super special character, so all the commoners in class VII do not actually fit the definition of commoners, if anything they’re a product of bourgeoisie.
The commoner characters are either the sons of important political figures, generals or CEO of a multinational company or in the case of Emma while the game doesn’t say it outright yet, she’s a member of a long lineage of secret guardians of the world which is meant to guide Rean (the chosen one of some prophecy we haven’t been briefed about yet but it might happen in the sequel). The only character in the party that can fit the definition is Gaius but that’s because he’s an immigrant from a society where social caste don’t even exist at all so the man is completely outside of that conflict except to show us a different point of view (and pointing out how dated Erebonia’s society is).

This of course gets even worse when around the 70h mark, you get 2 other party members who are also commoners and also have a deep secret past that make them super special (except one will turn out to be the main antagonist of the game real identity, woops, spoiler I guess), now mind you this is actually very thoughtful of the game to finally give us characters that are actually likable and endearing in our main party so late into the game, I’m fine with that but still it’s a bit too late on the uptake.

So you have nobles (who are for the most part not representative of the noble faction at all, nor nobles in general since they need to be “one of the good ones” to be in a JRPG party) and commoners who aren’t really commoners at all and never once represent the real struggle of the common everyday man, a great way to introduce this arc central conflict I guess but somehow it gets worse.

With this setup alone, you realize that what little conflict and themes the game had behind it is completely muddled by a confused writer who has no idea how class warfare even works, this is something I already noticed back when I reviewed yet another game by Kondo “Ys IX Monstrum Nox” which was also another boring slog of a game that shat on Ys’s entire legacy with empty fanservice and terribly bare bone gameplay and level design while trying to make a somewhat confused weirdly political point that just amounted to “Centrism the videogame”.

Chapter 4 of Cold Steel was perhaps one of the rare occasions while playing an RPG that I felt like somebody was ripping my brain apart. A whole lot of things happen in this chapter and a whole lot of nothing too, the gang goes to the capital for some annual festival. Two characters didn’t have an established character arc or any conflict yet so let’s just spawn one out of the blue despite these two characters barely interacting with each others for the past 40h so they have a bit of beef with one another which is this bizarre “I hate you because I love you, stop hiding shit from me” deal and like… what the fuck is this bizarre excuse to lead up to a character dumping their entire life story on you. I get that these are teenagers and teenagers tend to act irrationally at times but this felt very tacked on and was also presented in the lamest way possible (in the lamest in-engine combat cutscene I’ve ever had the displeasure of seeing).

But on top of this, you also have more “Machias” moment who at this point of the story stopped being a shitty nerd with prejudice against the nobles and became an advocate for the #NotAllNoble movement, this scene where Machias explain his backstory and then proceed to explain how he changed his opinion made me cringe so hard that I let the game ran in the background for a solid hour and decided to take a shower and grab a beer at how asinine this take is.
Cold Steel, but I’d say Kondo is the kind of person that just runs on sophistry alone, Kondo is the type of person who is wholly uninterested in answering the political conflicts of his story that he will just either not address them or address them in the most out of touch way possible. See, the idea that a society is divided in two camps, one with privilege and the other without any is enough to set the stage for a revolution plotline but not in Kondo’s stories, Revolution is a brutal, outdated way of leading up to a deep change in power dynamics. Kondo prefers to stay in his position because there are good people in the dominant class, therefore, the system is fine and just needs some tweaking to flow better.

That is complete horseshit and sophistry of the highest level, we live a world right now where social divide is as steep as ever, people at the top are indifferent pedantic asshole with the power to get anything they want at the flick of a hand and can exploit millions of people just for being born under the right circumstances or because they stole assets and profited out of them. For as much as I’ve criticized Falcom’s villain for being corny Saturday Morning Cartoon characters, we now live in a world where these characters can be seen as almost realistic depictions of real life individuals.

Let me indulge in being a massive commie here, when people point out systemic issue in a general sense by saying X privileged group of people are responsible for the suffering of less fortunate people, if you answer is : “But not all of them are bad tho”, get ready to have my foot up in your ass because we simply do not care. What we care about is changing the system for the better or at best get rid of it entirely if its based on no solid foundation and the fact that noble exist in Erebonia don’t have solid foundation and that’s even something that the characters point out in the chapter right before it during one of the game many side-quest so why trying to push a narrative of common ground and acceptance, a so called “third” way that takes the best of both world when one side clearly is answering for the plies of the majority of the country’s population.

Mind you, this is just what I got from what little time the game actually brought up these topics up because and that’s the worst part about this game, Cold Steel seems to be wholly uninterested in its own setting and also in addressing the questions and themes they brought along with them, because this doesn’t constitute the bulk of the game and also because in order to make me even care about these topics, it would’ve been a good start to make us follow characters that are well written and likable and entertaining.

Because of the game's shitty structure, whenever tension arises in the story, the game just looks the other way and wants you to grind for more conclusions making it a game about nothing. Most of this game is just empty and void of any potential interest and is only interested in wasting the players time in pointless trivial matters like preparing for a school festival or retrieving someone’s hat (and I swear this is a mandatory quest, you need to do to progress through the game).

In great part due to the game’s structure and pacing.





As you’ve probably noticed by now, I’ve mentioned my game time at several point in my review, to contextualize when the stuff with the game I had problem with arose and that’s because I just wanted to point out that Trails of Cold Steel is a game that took me 100h to complete but since the in-game time is affected by turbo-mode, I will probably say it was closer to roughly 75-80h, nonetheless without turbo mode almost constantly on, this would’ve been the tangible reality of my game time with this game.

Trails games and this isn’t something that started with Cold Steel are long but they often struggle to justify their own length in a meaningful way. There is this common misconception in media analysis that the more time is spent on a piece of media is representative of its level of complexity and interest, that if a game takes its time to tell the things they have to tell then it must mean that it has a lot of things and a lot of interesting to either tell or to make us experience from a gameplay perspective.

Now it is no surprise that Trails game are very wordy, it’s a fact I already pointed out in the Crossbell arc which was a duology of game I’ve jokingly called “more of a visual novel than an RPG” especially for how long the cutscenes and dialogues were in comparison to the time you spend playing the game. Nonetheless, you do play the game, and the game lets you explore its gameworld to participate in classic JRPG affairs like combat, dungeons and of course side-quest that has always been the main point of contention of the game.

Now Trails of Cold Steel is the 6th entry in the Kiseki series, less than 10 years separate the first Trails in the Sky to Trails of Cold Steel so you’d naturally think that the formula has add a positive evolution from the rigid constant use of back and forth between segmented area of the first game, heck even Crossbell proposed an interesting change of pace by having an hub town attached to a bunch of adjacent routes you explore almost in its entirety in the first 15 to 20h of the game but that’s because Crossbell was a small country, here in Erebonia, to give you the sense that the country is large, you traverse the country by train. Meaning the game forces you to go where it wants you to go, but given that those games are linear by nature, it’s not all that terrible.

The problem is that the series already rigid structure has been more rigidified by some choice, each chapters and I mean each chapters plays exactly the same :

-A first day of going around talking to NPC
-A Free Day of going around doing quest and talking to NPC ending on the exploration of a new floor old school house (which is very mysterious place you visit multiple time which is just a reason to get one similarly boring se and repetitive sewer
dungeon to go through at the start of each chapters)
-Followed by a practical exam day which are literally small tutorial fights (and yes you get tutorial fight even in the final chapter 90h into the game)
-Followed by an exposition train trip where you play card games for extra bonding point (more on that later)
-2 (sometimes 3 when the game feel very spicy about it) days worth of pointless fetch quest inside one of the games many town and surrounding areas
-Concluded by (but only starting with Chapter 3) a terrorist attack where you beat the bad guy but they get away and then the news says “Damn, lots of shit happened heh?”
-Then it’s back to the start of the cycle repeat for 6 10 to 15 hours painfully long chapters
Rarely does the game ever deviate from that structure which makes every individual chapter more predictable than the last but also makes each instance of the game padding itself out even more obvious and increasingly annoying as time goes on.

In my previous review of Trails to Azure, I said that the game pacing was excellent but bogged down by the game constant need to pause its action to make us partake in pointless errant of various quality and for the first time ever some of these errant were mandatory to progress into the game with the game sometimes having a weird sense of priorities as what was considered important quest (and as such mandatory) and the ones that could be skipped (which sometimes were actually more story relevant).

And I suggested naively that if they wanted to go moving forward in that direction, they should make things more explicit as to avoid people missing out on important context and lore like that was the case with Azure and so they did the most logical move, make 90% of the side-quest in the game mandatory.

You’ve heard me right, long are the days of getting the luxury to skip on mediocre monster hunt side quests if you didn’t like going through them since this time around you WILL hunt these monsters inside sewers and you WILL enjoy it whether you like it or not. Oh sure the game still has a few game objectives that are completely optional (and even dares to still have secret side quests seriously how is it still a thing). And the worst thing is that they didn’t stop and thought for one second to change the way these games plays out, I hope you like having to arbitrarily do a random monster hunt to progress through the game because this is what most of the climatic big quest of this game consist of and it’s fucking terrible.

Let’s indulge in a bit of game design analysis and try to comprehend this sudden rise in rigidity in a series which already had an issue liberating itself from the shackles of its own faulty foundation.

See, with Trails Falcom has created a really cool world that they’re really proud of and one of the things they are probably even more proud of more than anything else is their NPC’s who constantly update their dialogues for every minor advancement in the story and help the world feel more lived in as you experience micro-level arc and the life of these random people alongside your own journey.

It is one of the core aspect of the series and one of its best idea ever since the original game but in order for this aspect to work on people, you need to condition people to participate in it and while some people are easier to convince than others when it comes to asking them to always recheck all the NPC’s every time you advance the story even in a minor way, others may not.

See most JRPG only ask you the bare minimum when exploring a JRPG town, usually you’re going to enter a town, talk to all the NPC’s to gather clues, learn more about the world or more broadly to advance the plot and maybe check the shops and explore the area to see what other thing might hide in between the streets of these bustling cities but in general this is a one and done thing and unless we’re talking about a semi or full hub town that you come back to constantly and change with time, most of the time it’s a one and done kinda deal, rarely do talking to NPC multiple time at different point worth the hassle.
But in Kiseki it is such a core aspect of the experience, so how do you unconsciously manipulate your player into partaking in such an activity ?

Well by designing the game in a way that will push the people toward that experience and it’s with this game that I finally understood the secret sauce behind what makes Trails side-quest so terrible, these fetch quest and not meant to be interesting, they aren’t meant to be fun, heck they aren’t even meant to fill out the game with content like you’d see in a lot of modern RPG’s.

They are meant to put you on a tour, each quest consist of you going back and forth around the areas the chapter take places in so that you will probably think unconsciously to re-check on all the NPC’s, it’s not about how good the side-quest are, it’s about how these side-quest will force you to a second, third, fourth or even fifth lap of the single area the chapter takes place in and as such, you will have the reflex (or not) to re-talk to the NPC who are on your path to complete these various objectives.

But then how do you encourage the people to even do the side-quest if they’re so boring ? Well before Cold Steel the main incentive behind them was to gather money, you see in Trails you can trade elemental crystal called “sepith” for money but Sepith are also used to create quartz and unlock orbment slot to make your character stronger so using too much Sepith for money means missing out on making your characters better in battle and they might be drag behind the game (very generous) difficulty curve, monsters do not drop money in this game so the only method to get money without trading Sepith were, you guessed it, the side-quest which always gave just the right amount of money to upgrade all of your characters gears as you proceed to the next chapter.

But the Sky games were smart about this by giving its players choice, you can choose to do the side-quest or not, so imagine if there’s a couple of quests that you didn’t want to do like let’s say the monster hunts which were always the most fillerish type of quest in any JRPG, well you can simply skip them, you might not obtain the money, or bracer point for 100% completion or the extra goodies that come along with them but you will spend less time doing unfun shit and you can always use some spare Sepith to fill the gap in your wallet.

But in Cold Steel a new type of Sepith was invented, Sepith Mass, the only purpose of Sepith Mass is to be sold for money, you can’t use them in any other ways (and at this point, why don’t the game simply give you money I hate that gameplay quirk) meaning that the game brought back regular money grinding into a series that has always structured its difficulty and gameplay loop around limiting the player sources of income to force them into doing things they might not have been willing to do in the first place.

Mind you, you can still use regular Sepith for money and by the midway point of the game where all your character are fully upgraded they make it so you never run out of money ever, but that risk vs reward between selling sepith over doing side-quest is completely gone and so with the main purpose of those side-quest being removed, people will be more inclined to skip them and we’ve already mentioned how Falcom doesn’t want to do that for the sake of not making the time spent on making all the NPC’s and their updated dialogues wasted because of the regular player unwillingness to be curious and it’s especially bad to lose your player, especially in a game that was meant to attract a new audience.
So what is the obvious solution ? Well if players won’t go to the side-quest, we’ll make the side-quest go to them and that’s how you end up with a game that has to pad out and fill the gap between important event with pointless errants that the players now MUST WITHOUT ANY QUESTIONS DO !

Oh sure they are still “optional quest” but they represent 10% of the quest this time around and also yes, you’re not rewarded with money for them so feel free to skip them, I did all the side-quest in this game and most of the optional quest reward was not worth the hassle of doing them, I did them just out of completionist sake and to get those sweet sweet AP bonus which are this time around the only thing pushing you towards those optional thing.

And so you’d think, maybe they would make those errant more entertaining, fun or enticing in any way, well no and most of the time the game will make you understand the definition of insanity when most of the quest in the game are regular monster hunt quest and this is how you end up with a game where you’re still rendered at killing monsters in sewers at the 40h mark of the game while the story has still gone nowhere interesting or is spectacularly avoiding to get you in on the good shit.

And this time around, this particular Trails cannot compensate for its shitty structure with good, entertaining or even charming writing for the life of it and can’t even do it through its gameplay either.

Oh yeah because it’s not enough that the game is a boring slog with almost nothing engaging or even charming going on for it, it’s also a boring slog that made the gameplay of the series worse somehow. Trails gameplay was always kinda fun, it was not the revolution of the century but you could see that the more the series progressed and they more they tweaked some of its elements to make more varied boss and monster encounter and make use of its excellent arts and craft system at the center of it all and one thing that lays the foundation of such a solid system were the Quartz system.

Well fuck me because they decided to make orbment and Quartz way worse in this game, see in the previous games in the series, you had to arrange quartz in certain way to gain access to new and more powerful spell, the players needed to struck a good balance to get access to the most move possible while still profiting of the advantages given by each individual quartz like stat increases or additional effect, the system allowed for a lot of customization and a bit of experimentation, often times limiting the player with the characters different align to push them into playing them a certain way or to try and overcome these limitations.

Not this time tho, now you have quartz that give you stat boost and additional effecst and now you have quartz who are specifically designed to give you one spell, no more messing around with crystal combination and doing math, our players don’t care about an actually good progression system or having fun with an RPG, they want to get through the shitty slog part of the game faster so they can get to the twisty twist turn shit faster. This change severely reduces the utility of Arts which used to be main meta of Trails especially on higher difficulty and as such render characters who are either full-caster or mixed-attacker in the game completely and utterly useless outside of spamming their support crafts which are for the most part absurdly good.
Now be ready to just jack your physical attackers with as much strength boosting accessories and quartz as well as passive status effect and spam the ever living shit out of AoE attack like it’s FC’s endgame on steroid, past the midway point of the game most fight can be trivialized by out-dps’ing or simply not let monsters and bosses take turn.

Because all of your characters have insanely broken crafts, the crafts are so broken in this game whether they’re offensive or support type that they render the use of certain arts completely useless, in fact most arts are useless after a while despite the game tutorial making you think that it wouldn’t be the case and that you’d still need to cast a spell and heck now with the Zero-Arts bonus in combat that can pop-up, you can still use them without any cost.

More than never, the determining factor towards victory now are the master quartz an element introduced in Azure that didn’t have much influence on combat and was this game attempt at a job system but now in a setting where Quartz have been jumbled up to favor just powermaxxing everything, Master Quartz are now going to be essential to mix up your gameplay… or not…

The one that are installed by default on your characters are for the most part the best quartz adapted to them and even if you can get new master quartz throughout your adventure, by the time you get them, you MQ would’ve already evolved past a point where it would be worth changing them (Rean and Laura Master Quartz makes them absolutely stupid from the early game all the way to the final boss)

Wow amazing how the game has 11 party members by the end but half of them are rendered almost useless by this change, what else do we have to do to save this mess of a change ?

Well the main new feature that Cold Steel adds to the gameplay of Trails is the addition of links, you can link your character between them for additional advantages in battle and by using certain type of weapons on enemies (with the damage type borrowed from at the time Ys Seven and Celceta), you can initiate a break and chained them with an additional attack.

As you progress through the game, chaining link attack become a good way to inflict serious amount of damages and after a certain point in the game, you can do the rush attack from the Crossbell titles after chaining 5 link attack (which I think is a good limitation over how Crossbell games handled that feature). The more characters are linked together and the more they gain link points and when their link levels up, they can do even more additional action like counter-attacking or protecting their allies or auto-healing.

This is a pretty neat system sadly not exploited to its full potential here in this title because outside of 2 notable exception, this game is painfully easy, ofc part of the blame is on me for playing on normal like always but no thoughts was put into most of the aside bare the 2nd fight against C which was a welcome raise in difficulty.



Sadly 2 things bog down the fun factor of the system for me, the first one is having to resettle the links everytime someone dies, resettling the link doesn’t sacrifice a turn but it’s something you can easily forgot to do until you’re 5 turns in wondering why you can’t break enemies and then realizing that you just forgot to re-link, I think link should be regenerated if one of the pair gets revived without having linked to another character in the meantime, it’d be a great way to do this, also regenerate the link after battles, it’s just kind of stupid but heh, a bit of QoL wouldn’t have hurt and the other thing is the fact than in order to make full use of this system well… you have to actually give enough of a shit about the character to bond with them and level them up faster.

Because yes, back to writing (and also gameplay).

CS1 seems to take a lot (perhaps a bit too much) inspiration from other popular RPGs at the times, the setting is like Final Fantasy Type-0 (to the point of plagiarism) and the way the game tells its story borrows a lot from the Persona series. I could make a commentary on why I don’t think NU-Persona (heck Rean strikes the same pose as Yu Narukami in battle if that isn’t enough proof) should be this influential on this market but that’s not the subject what I mean by this is that the already rigid structure of the game is completed by a bunch of mechanics and narrative trick ripped straight out of Persona without really understanding the point of them.

The game has a calendar system and even multiple time slot often mention each day but that’s about it, it only serves to place the events of the game on a timeline something that the other titles didn’t need to do in the first place so I don’t know why it’s here, there’s no time management, there’s no prioritizing activities or social link over the other, there’s no meta to that system. However what the game has is something similar to the Social Link from Persona called “Bonding events”.

Now Bonding Point and Bonding events was already an element I complained about in Azure but in that game it was sort of an hidden but hinted at feature that was sadly ruined by bad programming and also by Azure oftentimes bad sense of narrative priorities (hiding who character backstory behind the final bonding events for exemple).

I also said that while I don’t mind a bit of player agency and choice for a personalized experience in my JRPG, I also felt like this feature was a bit pointless in a game that is supposed to have one true canon and that there is no way any subsequent game especially from different arcs could follow through on the individual romantic (or not) choice of the players.

But in Azure, it was discreet, badly programmed and not implemented super thoughtfully but at least it was a subtle way to make the player experience with the game more unique depending on how he acted during the game. CS1 decides to fully embrace that aspect of the game and making it more explicit and I do not feel like it pulled that off successfully either and in fact because the characters in this game are rather dry and bland, I had a lot of trouble actually giving a shit about any of them during regular gameplay and I guess they expected me to like them more through their bonding event and fellas, let me tell that if this was the plan then I’m sorry to say that I see the vision but I feel like the vision is shit.

Persona at least try to make the characters and their dynamic compelling outside of their social link and even though the divide between Social Link and main story creates inconsistencies, at least you were probably more willing to learn more about these characters because they have fun interactions with one another that cement them as real people with personalities, doubts, feeling and not just a succession of one-dimensional anime trope with a character design.

I think a lot of CS problem also comes from the presentation of its story, being the first game of the series for the PS Vita and the first game in Full 3D, I can’t say that the change in arstyle brought with it a net positive, sure environments are in 3D but from the dungeons to the different towns and cities that doesn’t really make a difference since they seem structured in a similar fashion than in Azure except now the game presentation needs to rely on cinematography and I think that Falcom didn’t really nail that aspect at all, the scene composition and direction of the scenes and dialogues are so bad, because the party is so large a lot of cutscene just involve all of them sitting around and blocking each other from the view and it makes for very cluttered scene where not much emotions or anything could be displayed to full intensity.

While I was writing this review, I got curious and watched the CS1 musical adaptation and while it couldn’t fix the gaping ideological and thematic holes in the story it definitely did a better job in selling me on these characters in 2h than this game failed at doing in 80 and that’s saying something about how just a little change like characters being more expressive and proper stage direction can do wonder to an average/mediocre story (in fact RIP character portrait it legitimately hurt the game even more visually). I’m not criticizing the graphics here since Falcom probably wanted this game to sell to a wider audience and most of them can’t handle anything else in terms of artstyle but I will say that the transition to 3D wasn’t an improvement but could’ve been had Falcom would have cared more about directing than just dumping a bunch of text to fill textboxes and embrace other type of narration something they’ve always struggled to do even in the earlier titles.

In fact even the writing this time around I felt to be a bit stiff and lifeless which definitely didn’t help me care about what the game was trying to say, I think this is more of a prose issue this time around, I’m missing the charm and quirkiness of the writing in games like Sky (especially sky) and the Crossbell game. CS1 relies a bit too heavily on unfunny forced sex jokes because “anime” or make their character just have the most annoying dialogue ever like Machias, it’s like CS1 is Trails skinwalker because it’s trying to be like those legacy titles but can’t do it even in the NPC dialogues.

The game just doesn’t let the character group dynamic shine because it also feels the need for gameplay reason to separate the group in 2 in all field studies which makes you feel like you never get time to know these characters as people despite the game spending a considerable amount of time trying to make you care about their school activities.

Some people might say that finding CS1 boring but FC charming is gonna be up to my taste and while it is true, FC only got better with time and while FC has less things going on than CS1, at least it wasn’t trying to blueball you with a real story until the final moment which was genuinely hype as fuck, it was a game carried entirely by the relationship and complicity of its two main lead and the guest characters coming along the way.
CS1 has too many characters and doesn’t have time to spend for a lot of them, Trails work best with a smaller cast that grow larger as the game goes on but CS1 build such weak foundation that you’d rather do anything but waste your time desperately grasping at straws to find an ounce of quality to the game’s writing, atmosphere or structure which all works against him.

Even Rean, the main character of this game couldn’t be more barebone for the life of me, he’s a random LN default looking guy with a sword with the personality of a brick and the social awareness of a cloister and the narrative always try to propel him to be this incredible badass while also pushing a Shirou FSN narrative of him being reckless because he hates himself or has trauma or ofc has some sort of curse in his vein that turn him super saiyan from time to time because anime… he has almost no chemistry with any of the female characters even Alisa which is a character many people like but that I just found annoying the whole way through (definitely has at least character motives which is more than nothing I guess),

I just couldn’t bare to care about these characters or even the few good things borrowed from the series legacy had to offer, I think that after 6 games, effort should be made to improve a game formula and not making it worse in every conceivable way and a lot of the tool the game uses to keep you going and invested are really cheap including the ending.

Crow standout as a really cool character but the way the game foreshadow his twist couldn’t be more obvious and in general you feel like this game just care as much about me about all of the stuff it’s presenting to you, it’s infodumping you on stuff in the most bland way possible like in bar or classroom, it’s reflecting on subject matter it barely has any knowledge or deeper understanding of, it nullify all sense of urgency by showing and telling you that shit are happening but you’re doing things that has nothing to do with the shit happening despite having chapter names that make those story beat more badass than they actually are.

They give so little shit, that the final chapter of the game, I kid you not is the worst lead-up to a final dungeon and final boss I’ve ever seen, first of all the final chapter is about a school festival and preparing for a concert like it’s some bad Naruto level filler, you play freaking mini-games, you go on date, suddenly the old schoolhouse lights up and the characters take the whole situation super seriously, you got the epic music, you got the chuuni quotes, you got the weird surreal environment, yeup doesn’t feel like the climax of the game but it’s the final dungeon anyway and you’re going to fight the final bos which is just a really lame fight coming off of the last boss you fought which was the only genuine challenge of the game.

Then it’s followed by several hours of cutscenes to complete the school festival arc with the final concert which… I understand it was meant to be this emotional peak and a huge accomplishment for the characters solidifying their bonds but because of how badly the game managed to develop or make me care about them, this doesn’t feel earned at all and then…

Well



The only really well done part of the game happens in the last few hours, a roller coaster of twist and turn and melancholic vibe featuring child soldiers being scared of being deported and giant robots punching each other in … huh… let’s say … functioning gameplay ?

But even these last moments feel like a cheap way to make you stay and check out the sequel rather than something truly impactful and earned, like yeah sure if this was let’s say FC, I would be like “oh shit” but here, not really and it’s sad really.

Because that ending really slaps dick, it’s really cool, I just don’t feel like the game earn such a finale after failing at building all the foundations necessary to make this ending worth it, the game feel like a waste of my time, a waste of my energy, a waste of my mental health.

And then it just decides to blueball you like that, I just don’t really have much respect for this, even earlier it was doing it with the intro of the game being a flashforward to an event which was a red herring and nothing really major or important and it even dares make you replay through the intro again when you reach that part, gotta love reused content and padding, well played guys.

Mind you, I do plan on still checking the sequel one of these days, not out of excitement to know what will happen next but because I’m too deep into this to stop now and I’m also morbidly curious to see how low that ship could sink.

So…

Huh…

I forgot to mention the actual one positive of the game

IT’S TOWA HERSCHEL OMG, GUYS, GUYS, GUYS, I LOVE HER, SHE SAVED ME GUYS, ALL THE MOMENT WHERE SHE WAS ON THE SCREEN IS THE BEST MOMENT! SHE’S SO SMOL AND CUTE AND HARDWORKING AND I WANT TO GET HER OUT OF THIS GAME AND SHE’S THE ONLY REASON WHY THIS GAME IS A 2/10 INSTEAD OF A BIG FAT 1

FUCK AM I GETTING PSY-OPPED INTO PLAYING MORE OF THESE BECAUSE OF CUTE GIRLS ?

FUCK YOU KONDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Xenosaga 2 : Peaking on the Stock Market

Takahashi is one unlucky motherfucker, first laid off by Falcom (which to many would be considered a good thing) and then laid off by Square for being too ambitious, our guy simply didn’t have the best of run when it comes to realizing his grand project and Xenosaga was looking to be yet another one of his many failures. When Xenosaga 1 came out, Takahashi had envisioned a way to tell a grand sci-fi epic with tints of religious symbolism thrown into the mix in order to make up for what he couldn’t do with Xenogears. Borrowing a lot from his Perfect Works book Takahashi was set to accomplish his goal once and for all… or was he ?

The problem with being an author is that you tend to be a perfectionist and that perfectionism doesn’t bode well in an increasingly competitive market. Saying that Xenosaga was an ambitious project would be an understatement, the original Xenogears was already too much for Square to handle and Takahashi’s vision saw no brakes on the fast moving train that was releasing the original Xenosaga, the game was dense, rich in lore and in-universe terminology that might completely threw you out of the loop if you’re not paying attention. To say that I had to take mental notes while playing through the game in order to piece out whatever the fuck it was even trying to accomplish would be an understatement, this game is multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and at times very subtle in its approach to both worldbuilding, political setup and characterization.

Something I failed to mention during my Xenosaga review was that the game came with in-depth glossary defining and explaining every single tiny details of the world and it is huge, there’s well over 275 entries in that glossary which unlocks as the game progresses and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t fully commit to reading all of them. I tried doing so but one thing I’m not super fond of when it comes to storytelling especially in video games is having to stop the progression of the story in order to read what is essentially an in-game wiki article. Final Fantasy XIII was especially guilty of this where most of the important part of the game’s setting and lore was found on a random backlog containing info about important story details that should’ve been naturally woven into the game’s natural storytelling and gameplay loop. Fortunately, I still think Xenosaga 1 and especially now having played Xenosaga 2 is clear enough in its cryptic nature that you can somewhat get the gist of it with context clues alone and consulting the glossary is only an optional thing.

All of this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of Xenosaga’s massive commitment to worldbuilding and establishing a larger than life universe with conflicts on a galactic scale interwoven with deep psychological dive into characters' inner doubts and desires. A single secondary heck one might even say a tertiary villain which only appears in the first half of the game and never gets brought up ever again past that point after his inevitable demise manages to be an impactful and really interesting fella once we sit back and think about it. I still think the Cathedral Ship and the Encephalon parts of the game are absolute testament to Takahashi and Kaori Tanaka’s talent as directors and storytellers.

And I even failed to mention how much of Xenosaga 1 is tied to Xenogears in a way that’s very hard to notice if you’re not familiar not just with that game but it’s “Perfect Works” encyclopedia book as many concepts and ideas brought up in Xenosaga like the uncovering of the Zohar in South Africa, Lost Jerusalem, the Galactic Federation, the massive timeskip between the intro of the game and the rest were all elements present in “Perfect Works”
What I’m trying to convey here is that there is no feasible ways for Xenosaga or even the original vision for Xenogears to be completed and even the Xenoblade series only tied back to it thanks to the success of the first game which allowed Takahashi to give it “one more try” and by then the project has shifted so much in style, tone, setting, lore genre and everything that it’s even harder to know if this was really what Takahashi really wanted to tell. As I have yet to play Xenoblade 3 (been stalling it for a bit too long cause I was initially not that interested in trying it out) I can’t really talk on how the story ends up unfolding and if the team at Monolith Software managed to tie all of the series thematic loose end together in a satisfying manner but regardless we have to look at the facts here.

Xenosaga 1 was released with the idea that the series will eventually be comprised of 6 games which were supposed to cover the entire timeline of the universe from beginning to the end and going through a grand total of 3 different arcs separated by massive time gaps between them and change in party members with only Shion and chaos planned to become mainstay characters. And in the end, even as Xenosaga 1 was merely an introduction to that universe and world and was always meant to be, Xenosaga 1 still wasn’t complete itself. Several elements that were shown during its announcement didn’t make the cut and in the end Takahashi said that he was only working with 20% of his real power here.

Can you imagine how insanely absurd the scope of the Xeno project is ? If the Xenosaga we got was only 20% of what was originally envisioned for that first game then I don’t think 6 games would’ve cut it to tell the entire thing ! And it would’ve taken literal decades for it to conclude hoping for little bumps on the road. Overambition is eventually what brought Xenogears to be released in the state that it’s in, it’s not just Square cutting off funds and losing interest in a project that was admittedly too big for themselves, it’s just that Takahashi was a different beast altogether as far as video game creators goes !

Making a video game in the late 90’s and early 2000’s takes roughly 2 or even 3 years, Xenogears was given 2 years and they couldn’t fully finish it on schedule because Takahashi isn’t just an ambitious storyteller but a phenomenally ambitious director as well ! Xenogears decided to forego using pre-rendered backgrounds to tell its story, opting instead for full 3D environments ! Which was unheard of for a game of this ambition especially with how fresh and indiscernible the technology was for most of the staff working on the project and indeed Xenogears is one hell of an impressive game on a technical level.

This visual ambition carried over to Xenosaga and to the furthest extreme to the Xenoblade series was truly something to behold and something Takahashi didn’t lose over the years. Sometimes I am beyond shocked at how good these games look and how well these games run and how insane the level design and environment can be on top of everything else. Xenoblade X alone is a more impressive game than most modern games that came around its release and it was released on hardware that was much less powerful than the competition. Xenosaga was no exception to that rule, as Xenosaga still remains an impressive artistic flex for the console in the heydays of 2002 when it was released and freaking outsold Tekken 4 !



When you think of long saga in video games, you can think of a few examples like Trails or even Yakuza, but even then they had to make compromises to keep the train going like reusing assets every game, keeping the standard of presentation lower, focusing more on text in sacrifice of the gameplay or exploration aspect. Working with a tinier budget can sometimes help to keep a franchise afloat in the long run without risking too much on the line and keeping the release schedule consistent to please fans and investors alike.

But not Takahashi, Takahashi is simply “built different”, the guy always keep pushing the boundaries of what was possible in terms of storytelling in this industry and how to present that story to the world in the absolute best way he can think of or at least that’s what he wants to do…

In the design document for Xenosaga 2, Takahashi stated :

“There are things that even if you try to plan for, you'll never be able to express. With games as a form of media no matter where you set it you have to make towns and all the little accessories you end up doing annoying work with games. That’s why I don’t think it’s a good medium for telling stories. I think it’s better to call it a media for telling narrative things. Without a doubt, there are things you can’t get across in a game.”

Mind you this is certainly coming from a deep place of regret and unease concerning the future of the Xenosaga project, he also stated in that same design document that he didn’t want the current state of the franchise to be static, he wanted the franchise to evolve and branch into other genres. I think what Takahashi really wanted to do was to make the Star Wars of Video Game franchise even Xenogears releasing its fifth Episode first was an homage to the ambition of George Lucas. Takahashi, a man who has worked on games for most of his life up to that point, openly admits that games are imperfect vessels for the art of creating deep impactful narratives because of all of the annoyances that come with making a game well… a game…

Part of me thinks that perhaps, Takahashi wasn’t meant to be a game director, maybe the medium of video game alone was too limiting for his grand vision because being a great artist doesn’t mean you’re good to work with as a manager. When I look back on Xenogears or even Xenosaga 1, the strength and weaknesses of these games couldn’t be more apparent. You’re not coming to these games for deep and interesting gameplay, you came here to experience some of the most brilliant, ambitious and thought provoking stories in the medium on par with novel series. Video games were but a conduit, a means to an end for Takahashi and it would take several years before the Xeno franchise would get a battle system and exploration which people would dare actually give a shit about.

And it’s when realizing that he was perhaps incapable of envisioning Xenosaga II coming on time in a way that satisfies him that he willingly quit the project to take time for himself away from all of the stress that was piling up. His departure would lead to Kaori Tanaka quitting the project too fearing that her writing talent weren’t needed anymore in this context. This wasn’t a forced change, it was something both parties consented to be the best possible outcome for the game. In the end, Xenosaga would go from 6 (maybe more ?) games to only 3 and Xenosaga II would be handled by an entirely different team with the scriptwriters kinda not being sure what to make of Takahashi’s script and the reception was mixed to say the least.
Xenosaga 2 is considered by many long-time fans of the franchise to be the absolute worst game in the Xenosaga series and even more so the Xeno franchise as a whole. It’s a game which is said to be so mediocre or even outright bad on a level of industry failure comparable to “Devil May Cry 2” in terms of a badly made misguided sequel ! Fucking DMC2 ! I’ve heard war stories about people going through this game, some of them outright giving up midway through to watch a let’s play on Youtube. And it’s not even just a gameplay thing either, people have genuine gripes with the story and how it was handled especially when it comes to tone. It’s so bad that I had 2 separate friends sending me 2 separate charts to explain the battle system to me to get it done with it faster (AND ONE OF THEM OUTRIGHT TELLS YOU TO SKIP THE GAME AND WATCH THE CUTSCENES ON YOUTUBE).

The new team in charge of developing the game took Takahashi and Tanaka’s baby, put it inside a microwave and distributed the work of art that it was supposed to be inside easily digestible product for the mass market and retooled it into an impersonal messy product which probably caused a lot of mental anguish for the young creative couple... but... against all odds…

It’s peak I’m afraid…

After reading through that long introduction contextualizing the game’s development and knowing of the game’s reputation, you’ve probably looked at the rating already and started raising a few eyebrows. “A 9 ? For Xenosaga fucking 2 ? Really ? Are you out of your damn mind ? Has the Gnome Juice finally gotten to you and now you can’t distinguish the taste of trash from the taste of well aged wine ?”

Well now my dear readers, I’m going to shock you even further. Not only do I think Xenosaga 2 is good, not only do I find the hate surrounding the game is vastly exaggerated, I also think the game is vast improvement on almost all fronts compared to the first Xenosaga and on some level even the untouchable freaking masterpiece that is Xenogears. I fail to see what in the fuck people find so bad about this game outside of maybe not vibing with the battle system.

You know what, let's talk about the battle system for a hot minute because it’s easily the biggest point of contention when it comes to talking about the game. Xenosaga 2 has a battle system which at first might seem familiar to Xenosaga 1, you have to press either square, triangle or circle in order to make combos, you have the turn order displayed on the bottom right side of the screen, additional effect applied per turn like more critical hits or point multiplier or something like that. You can boost ! And this time you can actually see the boost meter of the enemies which is definitely a nice touch given how boost is a major part of the battle system this time around and that’s pretty much it for the similarities. Because Xenosaga decides to revamp pretty much everything about the battle system and this is where things get really controversial with this entry.

In the first game in order to perform different actions you had to use AP which were always conveniently set in a way that you can do at least one action like a single combo or a single ether attack and if you wanted to use something stronger like a deathblow, you had to cancel out the first attack of your combo in order to build more AP to use a deathblow on the next turn, sacrificing a turn to potentially deal more damage the next which was a nice trade-off.
However in this game, in order to perform more actions, make your combo longer and deal more damage you need to use stocks ! Stocks is pretty much the replacement for AP, there are 3 stocks, without any stock the only thing you can do is do a measly pathetic combo attack or use an ether which consumes MP. If you want to perform more attacks you first need to build up your stock meter at the start of each battle so yes, it does mean spending several turns getting wailed by enemies waiting for the stock meter to fill up before actually launching an assault but hold on ! I know it sounds bad but trust me ! I’m getting somewhere with this !

See because what good is to use combos when there are no deathblows in this game this time around which is a shame for certain but let me talk about break ! In the previous game, using the different button was just a way to use different combos and that was pretty much it, but here each enemy has zones on their bodies which need to be hit in order to break them ! These zones are separated in B and C zones, B zones correspond to the Square button and C zones correspond to the Triangle button ! Rarely, enemies will also have A zones which are tied to the Square button but outside of maybe the very first area in the game as well as one of the superbosses it’s usually B or C ! In order to break an enemy, you have to first find their zones, that zone can be BBC or CBB or BB or any combination of these 3 letters and once that’s done and the enemies break, they enter a state of break which makes them more vulnerable to attack.

And this is where the boost meter comes into play, much like Xenosaga 1, you can override the turn order by using a boost which makes the boosted character take priority in the turn order ! The main difference and honestly a welcome one in my opinion is that now the boost meter is shared across all party members and can be built up to three units just like stocks ! Other than that, building your boost meter works just like in XS1 meaning that the meter will be built with each successful attack you land on the enemies !

And I must admit that boosting was one part of the battle system in XS1 that I barely even used or at least used as a clutch to get out of a bad situation. Rarely did boosting in XS1 gave me a real advantage in fights and with how slow the boost meter for each character built up in that game, you rarely ever got to make use of it and when you do use it, it’s usually not that satisfying or even that helpful ! But not in Xenosaga 2, that game took the boosting mechanic from XS1 and made it make sense in the context of Xenosaga’s 2 battle system. Because you see after breaking an enemy, you need to immediately follow it up with a boosted character to follow up on that combo and then you can either launch the enemy in the air or down it on the ground and they stay that way as long as you keep boosting and keep piling combos onto the fool which deals massive amounts of damages.

There are a lot more that goes into dealing damage than just that however, on top of building up your stocks, you can had elemental attacks to your weapons in order to target their weaknesses, you can use an ether to boost your attack or magic depending on which character you use and eventually all of that combined after all that preparation ends up with you dealing an astronomical amount of damage if you play your cards rights and even more so if you use your attacks on certain turns such as using Momo on the ether boosting turn to make her attacks even more powerful than she usually does (yes Momo went from being completely useless to being your main damage dealer in this game, she’s a glass canon however but she does compensate by having an high evasion stat).
I can understand that this seems like a lot at first glance and a complete headache for those who only want to just mindlessly rush through fights like there’s no tomorrow ! It’s definitely a slower more methodical approach to combat and even regular encounters can last several minutes whereas in any other RPGs they would last mere seconds. I can definitely see the problems people have with it but you’re also talking to someone whose favorite Final Fantasy game is IX, whose favorite Persona game is 2, Pokemon Platinum and I’m an avid SMT player and you know the meme about SMT and buffing that’s a whole ass statement. Xenosaga’s 2 battle system works especially well against bosses which are usually single targets anyway and a bit less when there’s more than 3 enemies, which rarely happens but it does happen ! There’s also a dimension of placement which I didn’t start covering but nonetheless.

I really like this battle system ! And unlike Xenogears or Xenosaga, the battle system never grew dull or uninteresting to me because it’s the type of system which forces you to engage with it constantly and I get it, it’s definitely tiring ! In my Chained Echoes review I talked about how treating every encounter like an event or wasn’t the most optimal way to make a JRPG ! And while it may come from a place of wanting the genre to evolve beyond mindless attack button spam, RPGs tend to be long and I think it’s ok to have enemies which are just fodder and doesn’t require much thinking as you can put the challenge somewhere else like resource management, dealing with status effects or arranging enemies in certain ways which forces the player to think of the most optimal way to deal with them in the long run in the most optimal way possible.

It’s that same feeling that got me to appreciate the battle system from Xenosaga 2 so much, since battles take so much prep time, every fight plays out like a puzzle you have to solve and while in the hands of an uninformed player, the battle system can feel sluggish, once you get into the flow of it, it’s really satisfying. The battle system of Xenosaga 2 is a lot like sex, it needs time, it needs the right tools, the right preliminaries, the right mood and eventually once everything is in place you can climax all over your adversaries in a white beam of glory ! But I guess some folks are more into raw dogging like animals and you know that’s also fair, not everyone can enjoy subtlety in this brute world…

But even with how much I ended up enjoying the battle system of this game, it’s definitely not a perfect system or else it wouldn’t be so divisive to begin with. I think the problem with Xenosaga’s 2 Battle System is that in the end it’s not a very intuitive system and even the game itself struggles to explain how to properly play the game (the tutorial literally tells you to “figure the rest yourself” which is great game design alright). I think it’s better to get into Xenosaga 2 knowing exactly what works with the system and what doesn’t, which party members to pick and which ones to absolutely avoid (lol Shion) as well as choosing the right abilities to learn to make your life easier (Elemental Swords are such an essential part of combat it’s crazy to think it’s even an optional thing to begin with).

There’s also a few other mechanics I forgot to mention because they literally don’t integrate well to the battle system despite their best efforts. Dual Combo can be used when a character boost but you’re not skipping to get to their turn yet, assuming you’ve unlocked the combo in question (more on that later), you can dish out a Chrono Trigger style double tech but I literally never used it. Same for Ether Combo, apparently using certain sequences of Ether lead to Super Ethers but since offensive Ethers are useless you won’t be using them.
Of course during battle you also have to manage health and mana and this is where the one originality of the game shows its face, there is no shop and no money system in the game. Some people might find that strange but in all honesty Xenosaga 1 wasn’t really the best at handling ressources itself and a lot of the late game customization was heavily reliant on grinding barter items to sell, accomplishing cryptic and obscure task to get lots of cash or play the different mini-games that can be accessed at certain points in the story. This gave Xenosaga 1 a bit of a survival aspect to it where you rely mostly on what you find on the ground and Xenosaga 2 embraces that entirely. One thing that Xenosaga 2 surely did streamline however is the ability point system, for better and for worse. Since there are no shops to buy weapons and armor, everything is done through the ability system which is very different from Xenosaga 1.

In XS1, you got a shit load of different types of point that can be spend to upgrade certain parts of your character, Xenosaga 2 streamlined the process a little bit by fusing all of those different currencies into a single one called “Skill Points” which need to be spend on this board where abilities are classed by level and sublevels to what I could only compare to the RPG equivalent of a windows file explorer. In order to unlock these classes however, your character needs “class points”, these are not obtained in battle however you do obtain them for purchasing new skills in the shop (more specifically by purchasing every skill in a single class). Every character in the game can virtually learn any ability and if you happen to have a clear data file of XS1 on your memory card, you can transfer those to get a few extra points to get started when playing the game for the first time.

It’s kind of a daunting but ultimately kinda boring system, some skills are new ethers the character can use in battles, some are passives which apply directly to the characters when learned and others are equipable passives which replace regular equipment. It’s a boring system because it means that every character evolves in the same way, you could make an argument that you can’t possibly teach everything on the board without grinding so you need to specialize your characters through the system but really most of the class board abilities are pretty goddamn useless because they don’t work in harmony with the break and boost system.

You’re mainly going to focus your attention on abilities which can up your damage multiplier, or regenerate mana while stocking, or allowing you to boost even when the turn order is in your favor or starting the fights with stock and all of that jazz and that’s the most optimal way to play the game ! I think a lot of ideas when it comes to Xenosaga’s 2 gameplay should be expanded upon in a sequel so that a lot of the “fluff” gets better contextualized or cut entirely to make for a more well-rounded and less divisive system. Unfortunately the reception of this battle system by the community pretty much dooms it to being entirely replaced by the next game which is a shame however saying Xenosaga 2 had no influence on the rest of the franchise would be a straight up lie. The entire idea of Xenosaga 2’s gameplay system probably heavily inspired Monolith Software during the development of Xenoblade 2 which also had quite a slow methodical system about building up all sorts of weird effects before launching a big fuck you attack on the ennemies in battles which can take quite a while to get through even with regular encounters. Maybe a new playthrough of Xenoblade 2 will make me appreciate the system of that game more now that I kinda have the knowledge of which games probably inspired it (goat meets goat, what can you say o/).

“Ok fine Cani, so you enjoy getting fucked in the ass now that’s great, but surely you’ll have a lot of things to say against the story of the game huh ? Surely with that whole 3 pages long introduction praising the artistic integrity of the author's original vision was to tell us that the game is bordering on fanfiction territory and should therefore be shunned by the public… right ?”

Well actually, man I hate to say it but despite the respect I have for Takahashi and his work on the first game, I must also admit that I enjoyed the story of Xenosaga 2 way more than the first despite most of it not being written or directed by Takahashi. Ok I think it’s time to talk a bit about my taste when it comes to stories. I think I said in one of my Cold Steel reviews that the single aspect I find the most important in a story above all else are the characters and only second to that is theming or message ! What can I get out of this game, what was the intention behind it and did it succeed at delivering on said intention ?

Xenosaga 1 is a game with many praiseworthy aspects to its presentation and at times its story, but remember I did say I had trouble calling the story “good” because in the end Xenosaga 1 was too busy introducing us to the universe rather than making me entice to it ! It’s full of cryptic bullshit that one could only ever hope to understand after thoroughly pondering about the meaning of life and whether I’m already Half-Xehanort or something like that. It’s not a bad approach to storytelling, it’s slow, it’s methodical, it’s very academic but personally speaking I’m a man of action not words ! I think the worst offense a piece of art could do is making me feel nothing ! And even worse than that is making me feel frustrated (you’ve probably understood by now while I was talking about the series we should not mention the name of).

Xenosaga didn’t make me feel “nothing", but it wasn’t a particularly memorable experience either, I 100% acknowledge the artistry behind it but ultimately, I got nothing out of that experience but a thirst to know more which is already enough but it doesn’t help that game stand out on its own ! Xenosaga 2 decides perhaps because of the change in writer to re-focus the story on a more character driven one as well as trying to make sense of wtv the fuck Takahashi was trying to cook in the first game. And yes, am I frustrated that those answers didn’t come from the man himself who made me cry like a bitch watching a dude on a chair for 10h ? Of course I am ! But I also don’t think the job that was done with Xenosaga 2 was a botched job either ! It’s definitely a flawed story but one that I think I ultimately connected with more.

Right from the intro, you can see how much the game has evolved from just a presentation standpoint, the action set pieces from the prologue are absolutely nuts ! Giving us a flash back to the conflict on Old Miltia and explaining Chaos deal in that conflict, this intro is so freaking cool and actually re-introduce mech dungeons into the series something that was missing from Xenosaga 1. Quick word on the mech sections tho, they’re easily the low point of the game for me gameplay wise, I actually enjoyed being able to summon your mech in battle like a Final Fantasy X summon and the customization was nuts even if it was a bit grindy to make good use of it in the long run. But here mechs got their own sections again, separated from the rest but usually speaking the level design of these sections are a bit uninspired and the combat is a more straightforward and limited version of the on-foot battle that I didn’t especially fuck with all that much. No combos, no everything, just charging a bar to unleash 1 (one) single big attack isn’t that great but at least the mechs designs are sick.
You can definitely feel this game was released in 2004 and Matrix was the craziest most hyped movie franchise of that period of time and it shows ! Very early on, you get introduced to Jin, Shion’s brother who is literally just a Citan clone ! He’s not as unhinged as Citan was in Xenogears but he does share enough similarities in terms of raw personality alone that I was still thoroughly entertained by his wacky antics. In this intro, we also get to see Jin’s rivalry with Margulis the chief leader of U-TIC the evil terrorist organization from the first game and every time these two meets, you just get the sickest most badass under the rain super well choreographed sword fight imaginable and you get two of those in the game it’s fucking crazy I love that shit !

In fact, I will that I got a lot of enjoyment out of all the action scenes this time around, I’m a simple guy, show me Kos-Mos waking up, turning her bed into a motorbike, launching to space and perform a freaking Gatai with Shion’s ship like it’s fucking Gunbuster and I’m all over that shit ! It’s in these moments you really can’t be fooled that this wasn’t made by Takahashi however, the team at Monolith Software already got a taste for over the top anime bullshit which is essentially how Xenoblade even came to be and was even allowed to go full shonen mode (Xenoblade is to the Xeno franchise what TTGL was to Gainax in response to Evangelion). The first game went for a colder, more creepy, atmospheric almost stifling vibe which reminded me of Dead Space or 2000’s a Space Odyssey. It’s full of perspective switches to these random politicians discussing important stuff outside of the main frame ! That’s because Takahashi is thorough with his world and wants to make you understand all of it and yes at times, some other aspect gets dwarfed in the process.

But here, the plot is definitely more focused on moment to moment action set pieces as well as character moments which isn’t something that displeases me at all. One thing that people complain a lot about the plot of Xenosaga 2 is its tone, compared to the first game, the team allowed themselves to just have a bit more lighthearted fun with the characters. For some reason, people hated the entirety of Second Miltia and the scenes that happen here. There’s a pretty infamous scene of Shion having to meet back with her brother which seems to have a falling out with before starting working at Vector and the whole scene is a bit silly. Some people found that scene monstrously cringey but I personally found it rather cute myself, we didn’t get to see much of Shion's actual personality in the first game since she was always so aloof and kinda distant so I dunno, I kinda like it here. In fact, I think these moments of levity were kind of necessary coming off of the first game which in contrast was harrowingly stifling in its atmosphere.

Getting the characters to breathe a little bit after the intense event of the first game by just interacting with one another in a relatively stake-free environment definitely helped me getting more attached to the cast and I think these were a great way to show how all of these unlikely allies ended becoming closer following the events of the first game. It sure is a brutal change of tone, but it’s not something that bothered and in fact it’s something that I welcomed, especially since much like the first game, shit starts hitting the shitting fan rather quickly.

While trying to recover the Y-Data, the key to unlocking the seal of Old Miltia and its secret, Albedo pretty much trapped everyone and managed to get away with it, helping U-TIC in the process which lead to a full scale war as U-TIC can now have their greedy palm on the Zohar and unleash whatever evil shit they want to do with it.
During the hacking process, we get to explore Momo’s subconscious world and that’s where we learn a lot more about who she is or rather who the person she’s a clone of was and her relationship with Jr, Albedo and Nigredo. Xenosaga 2 puts a lot more emphasis on Jr. this time around, a lot of the events of the game puts him on the forefront of the story for various reasons. I absolutely loved Jr. in the first game and I think the team at Xenosaga 2 understood that and just straight up made him the main character this time around. The decision to make Jr. the central character of the plot was apparently kind of a shady marketing one, they thought that focusing the plot on a male character would go better with the western audience. As such Shion and Kos-Mos which very much were the central figure of the plot in the first game were kinda shafted in favor giving Jr. and by extension MOMO who he has a romantic subplot with more scenes to shine.

On one hand, it’s kind of a shame because I actually like Shion and Kos-Mos and I find the idea of a genius engineer and her trusty sexy killer bot being the main protagonist infinitely more bold and original and there were still a lot of unanswered mysteries surrounding the past of these twos that I wish we could’ve explored further. On the other, Jr. clearly is the character who had the more stakes in the story of even the first game in my opinion and thus while the decision to make him the main character in this second entry might be a bit misguided, ultimately I think they still did a great job with him and especially Albedo ! Xenosaga is kinda meant to conclude the rivalry arc between these two and without spoiling too much everything about JrMomo, Albedo and Yuriev foundations are easily the best part about the entire game.

There is an attempt to still make Shion relevant into the story but I think it’s done kinda poorly. Not only because Shion seems to had a weird shift in her personality following the events of the first game which somehow made her more bitchy and at times mean compared to how she was portrayed in the first game for seemingly no reasons at all but also because most of the emotional crux of her story are tied to things we have yet to be briefed upon like who the fuck Febronia is and why is Shion so attached to her. There’s a pretty horrific scene near the endgame with Febronia’s sister which the closest the game gets from the horror vibe of the first game and the scene should be genuinely heart wrenching if I had been given more context to Shion’s relationship with Feb and why was she chosen to do all of these crazy traumatic adventure to seek the Zohar all the time. As for Kos-Mos, she gets a grand total of 2 (two) cool scenes and… yeah that’s kind of it… so much for being the mascot character amirite ?

But tonal inconsistency with Shion’s story aside, I found the general plot to be more easy to digest than the first one, maybe because it was more focus on giving us answer as well as developing the relationships each characters have to one another than simply throwing cryptic stuff in your face hoping you make sense of it. It’s definitely a more raw approach to storytelling but it’s one that works on me a bit more, a story focusing on character moments big and small and delivering full sales on them. The game still has a lot of mystery that the third game will have to answer but what I got here still was hella satisfying. The Subconscious Domain and the very end of the game definitely stand up to me as some of the highlights of the Xeno franchise so far. Albedo is a fantastic villain and this game only cements him further as one of the best antagonists in the genre for various reasons. The guy is a legit great representation of a truly psychotic mind with no filters whatsoever, wish he had more creepy scenes like the first game but his antics in this one are still a joy to watch.
The final confrontation of the game between Jr. and him will probably live rent free in my head for the rest of how long this new hyper-obsession will last and I will admit that the game managed to make me emotional during several places in the narrative. However, do not be fooled, this clearly is a different style than Takahashi, this isn’t a Takahashi story. You still get a small amount of what the original script might’ve looked like but even then you can see that whenever they try to imitate the first game pacing and approach to worldbuilding that the cracks start to show. A lot of revelations are done through boring expository dialogues with very little good direction to them, some twists are handled really poorly especially because of the way they padded the game in weird ways in order to just add an additional dungeon and the final boss is a complete joke both as a villain and as a boss fight in spite of a neat meta effect midway through the fight.

Well speaking of dungeons and exploration, let’s talk about that, the game is still as linear as the original and still suffers from a lot of pointless backtracking to progress the story but in terms of dungeon design, it’s a vast improvement over the original game. The original game dungeons really only served as set dressing for the story to take place in and at times felt like they were built out of convention for the genre rather than to be interesting, there were a few puzzles in them but it was really rare. One thing which definitely helps however is that now the game has actual music during gameplay ! It’s another point of contention actually, Yasunori Mitsuda the historic composer of the series left the boat on this one and was replaced by two composers. One is Yuki Kajiura which you’re certainly more familiar with for her work on anime such as SAO, Demon Slayers or Fate/Stay Night but if you’re a chad like me you first heard her work in the classic anime Mai-Hime, she was responsible for the cutscene track and she did an excellent job with those like she usually does for her work on anime. The other composer however is Shinji Hosoei, a guy who you may recognize as the dude who made the soundtrack of Ridge Racer and here the dude is responsible for the regular gameplay track and let’s just say the result is… well… interesting ?

There’s definitely a clear dichotomy between Kajiura and Hosoei’s track which doesn’t make the entire sound direction all too cohesive. Hosoei makes very “arcadey” sounding music which I personally don’t think is necessarily that great of a fit for Xenosaga as it should be, it’s a lot of weird Techno-Electro future sci-fi mambo jumbo can’t really describe it very well. Second Miltia and Kukai Foundation sound like happy mall music. That's really the best way I could describe it and the rest of the soundtrack sounds a bit stiff and odd. Personally speaking, I don’t mind how weirdly “beepy” Hosoei’s track sounds, I like the sound of mid-2000’s eroge and rpg maker tunes and these are pretty reminiscent of that in a sense. Also having actual background music during exploration definitely makes it less boring to go through them, it sacrifices atmosphere but oh well. Some Hosoei tracks work really well and some don't, and while I get the type of sci-fi vibe it was trying to convey, ultimately a lot of them felt a bit too artificial (but not unpleasant to my ear).

Kajiura’s soundtrack on the other hand goes super duper mega hard, of course she’s mostly responsible for the cutscenes but I think Kajiura was a great pick to follow up on Mitsuda’s more grandiose and orchestral score of the original game. I’m more of an in-game track myself because a lot of cutscenes track tend to come and go for me but re-listening to some tunes on the side really solidified how good of a pick Kajiura was for the cutscenes in the game with a very electronic yet epic style she’s known for in her other works. She really captured the vibe and essence of Xenosaga and it’s great.
But back to dungeon, I’d say that the dungeons in this game are a vast improvement not only on Xenosaga 1 which had “wtv” dungeons in my opinion and Xenogears, whose selection of good dungeons and environment can be counted on 3 fingers. Dungeons now have proper dungeon design, with tons of paths to explore, some nice amount of verticality and even the occasional puzzle to solve to spice things up. The game also has a lot more variety in its environment than Xenosaga 1, while it still retains the sci-fi core of the setting, the game isn’t afraid to spice things up with not just making up just from space station to space station. The environment from a visual standpoint is much more striking, from a lush mysterious otherworldly artificial forest to bustling futuristic cities as well as ruins under the sunset, the game kinda makes the most of the setting it presents and I’m all the more happy for it.

However, while I do find them better, do I find them good ? Well it really depends in my opinion, some design decisions in those dungeons can be quite questionable. The Subconscious Domain for exemple is a pretty cool place the first time around but did we really need to go through it a second time but with a winter aesthetic instead and the same enemies but swapped colors ? Especially back to back with no breaks like that ? That’s gotta be the weirdest way to pad game time I’ve ever seen but alas there’s also the Ormus Stronghold. The Ormus Stronghold is way too long and demands so much useless backtracking that it kinda makes me lose my mind a little bit. It’s also not helped that this dungeon is complete filler, it appears in the middle of nowhere halting the natural progression of the plot so we can have a few boss fights with the U-TIC organization which they somehow couldn’t fit somewhere else in the game.

But by far the biggest offender when it comes to the dungeons are the way enemies are placed on the field. I think I said it in another review but I don’t think field encounter are the end-all be-all solution to random encounters and could be easily as fucked up as random encounter are in raw annoyance level and this game is no exception. There are way too many enemies per screen, forget about avoiding them because you will not be able to as they run way too fast, that is if you could avoid them in the first place. There are way too many mandatory encounters which makes the whole field encounter implementation feel pretty useless. One thing I also don’t get is why the monsters in the mech sections disappear for good and never respawn until you leave the dungeon but regular monsters respawn every time you change rooms and come back. Battles are already long enough like that and this only serves as making the fatigue of them even stronger.

It’s especially bad since much like the first game, the red door and red key sidequest is back and requires backtracking which was made significantly more annoying because of these inconsistencies in the level design department. In fact, this game has a lot more side-content than any previous games in the series, it’s a part of the game I’m definitely more mixed on however because while I do enjoy having so much content to chew on, let’s just say that it’s really hit or miss. So on top of the red door and red key sidequest from the first game, you get introduced to the Global Samaritan (or GS) path which is a system that allows you to talk to NPC and help them do different things. That sounds fair, there’s not that much side-quest either and these are completely optional so you can feel free to skip on them if you want, there are over 36 quests like that which ranges from : Fun little vignette, Puzzle Solving and minigames, tedious fetch questing and “Oh god did anybody playtested this shit ???”.

I’d say that all the minigames requiring you to play a small minigame, solve a puzzle or go through a mini-dungeon to fight a mini-boss were honestly fine and a nice distraction from the regular loop of the plot but as it is sadly tradition with games in the mid-2000’s that also mean that there’s a lot of side-quest which are simply about going places and either gather or distributing items and they’re pretty fucking terrible. There’s only 2 real cities in the game, Second Miltia and the Kukai foundation so any quest requiring you to fetch stuff is just about making back and forth between these two places and with how slow the movement of these games can be, they can be very very tedious. Fortunately, I’ve played this game on an emulator and thus I’ve allowed myself to cut on the tedium by activating turbo mode (ah the joy of modern day conveniences…). Some of these quests can also have success and fail conditions which can be very obtuse without a solid guide at hand and I really don’t understand why it’s even a thing given that the reward is given to you regardless of clear status.

And then, there are “these” types of quests, the type of side-content that just makes you question the sanity of the developers who put it into the game. One quest is a fishing minigame but it’s completely RNG dependent, there’s no strategy to be had here, you just cast your line and you wait for the fish to come, you get a 1 min timer for each attempt which I’m not even sure myself why it was even necessary. Another quest requires you to get a battery on Second Miltia, come back on the Elsa to use it on a machine that goes beep beep color to analyze a picture and whether this succeed or fail is completely RNG dependant and you have only 5 charges of said battery before having to go recharge it on the place you got it in the first place ! REALLY FUN !

Oh but the peak of the fun factor is Quest 32 ! Quest 32 requires you to sell items to a robot in order to settle a debt made by the Captain of the Elsa… There is no way to get money in this game so the only way to do so is to sell barter items and accessories which doesn’t even come close to covering 0,0001% of the cost. What you need to do (and this isn’t a joke btw) is backtracking all the way down the final dungeon, fighting the final boss, steal a specific on him, then go through all of the endgame, watch the credits (which is the only cutscene in the game that’s unskippable for some reasons) and repeat the process…

TWENTY
FUCKING
TIMES

YOU HAVE TO DO ALL OF THAT 20 TIMES IN ORDER TO GET SHAVE ENOUGH OF THE DEBT ! THIS IS RIDICULOUS ! AND THE REWARD ISN’T EVEN THAT USEFUL BECAUSE YOU’LL MOST LIKELY BE DONE WITH EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME BY THE TIME YOU GET TO IT !

And that’s also something that kinda suck about these side-quest, it’s their shoddy implementation, there are no side-quest marker so it’s up to you to know when and who needs help and some of the quest can only be triggered by having specific party members set as leader and it’s never clear why. A lot of important and useful skills as well as the entirety of the double-tech system are locked behind those side quests which you know sucks if you want to make the most use out of the battle system and make your life easier but also some quests can only be accessed after beating the game for some reasons ???
Going back to red door and red key quests borrowed from the first game, they’re used primordially to obtain more skills but also get Erde Kaiser like in the first game but because they were a bit weird about it they hid some keys inside other red doors or inside specific sidequest so in the end if you wanna participate in the game lengthy post-game content, you will have to engage with them whether you want it or not.

Because yes the game has quite a bit of content after you beat the final boss, mostly tied to the now expanded Erde Kaiser sidequest. It’s pretty much just a silly plotline giving you a silly reason to explore kind of off-topic environment like a desert, a random factory or a Final Fantasy style flying castle until you reach a climactic showdown against the Dark Professor and his Dark Erde Kaiser and it’s pretty damn funny, there’s also several superbosses added specifically to the english version of the game to please the western market who just like content I suppose. If you’re not tired by the Battle System like me by the end of the game, I’d say these are worth a shot as it’s a pretty fun post-game in my opinion but not essential.

Xenosaga 2 is a game that makes me feel awkward about myself, I’m the kind of person who has a lot of respect for the artistic integrity and the artistic vision of certain authors and seeing as this game is considered almost like fanfiction in the community and single-handedly ruined the Xenosaga plan for them is kinda comical. Because if anything it’s really good fanfiction and a really good improvement on some gameplay and presentation of Xenosaga (and yes that also includes the character design but mostly for the boys, the girls kinda look mid in that more realistic artstyle…). The finale, although a bit rushed is kind of phenomenal, the cliffhanger at the end truly hooks me up to learn more about it in the sequel and even if the game has some awkward design decisions much like any Xeno-games really, I’d say that it is better than the sum of its parts. I fail to see how this game isn’t a straight up improvement over the first one aside from some tonal inconsistencies which didn’t phase me that much and a battle system which is an acquired taste but that I found infinitely more engaging and fun than the first game or even gears. The dungeon design is better but still leaves a lot to be desired however.

In the end, it’s the story which got me, a story of brotherhood, the pain of immortality, what it means to be human when you’re born in a different set of circumstances and how to overcome all of this to become truly whole. It’s some Xeno stuff right here that I love, Jr. is a fantastic character and so is Albedo which has easily ascended in my list of favorite JRPG villain but everything else from the action to the emotional stuff was pretty damn great and I also want to see what Dmitri Yuriev is cooking…

Also damn I can’t believe Kondo stole everything once again, Takahashi (not director here) is the goat ! Xenosaga 2 is the goat ! You guys are just mean and this game is peak !

See you next time for when I cover the epic conclusion to this… broken but still grand Xenosaga !

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa : The Law of Unbalance

Mid
Kino
Abyss
Peak
Disasterpiece
Masterpiece
Kusoge
Kamige

The Law of Balance.

One man’s trash is another one’s treasure, in the infinite sea of contents constantly bombarded at us in the information age, few of them are able to stand out amongst the crowd. For better or for worse, some of them do manage to find their ways in the hands of niche communities which hails them as holy texts, sacred masterpieces that the common man simply couldn’t fathom looking at through a simple, unthinking, uncritical lens. Without necessarily attaining mainstream appeal some works are able to just change people so profoundly and impact their genre in such a way that it’s impossible to miss them if you dive deeper into certain corners of the cultural zeitgeist.

If like me, you happened to be one of the few people in the west to be interested in the phenomenon known as “Visual Novel” (a term I’m not particularly comfortable using as a descriptor for various reasons unrelated to this review), there are seminal classics that have made a name for themselves and one of them is the game we’re going to talk about today : Full Metal Daemon Muramasa !

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa is a game developed by Nitroplus in 2009 and written by the quite mysterious Ittetsu Narahara. The reason why I’m saying this is because the guy isn’t really known for being a visual novel writer let alone an artist, initially the guy was a kendo instructor who just so happened to find work at Nitroplus. Not much is known about the guy itself, I’ve tried looking him up online and only these few informations and the fact he worked previously on another game by the name of “Hanachirasu” (which I have not read and therefore won’t discuss in this review) that he created in order to “train” himself in the art of writing fiction. Both Hanachirasu and Full Metal Daemon Muramasa were works that were quite polarizing in their home countries and Narahara himself received many criticism towards his work but to what nature I couldn’t really tell through my research.

After finishing his work on Muramasa, Ittetsu Narahara would simply vanish into the either never to be seen again, the last time he made any sort of public statement was in 2019 as Muramasa was celebrating its 10th anniversary. He stated that he was not looking to work on more games and formally announced his departure from Nitroplus that year. While the man himself is quite mysterious, it is not a surprise that he ended up choosing Nitroplus to work on his game or perhaps Nitroplus chose him, again I’m not really sure.

Nitroplus is known for their catalog of dark and edgy titles, often depicting scenes of extreme physical, psychological and quite unfortunately sexual violence.
I’m going to be perfectly honest and it’s going to be apparent throughout this review, I’m not a huge fan of Nitroplus’s outing and it’s not for a lack of trying : From Saya no Uta to Demonbane to Totono or heck even their less extreme outing like Chaos;Head (which I have yet to finish), a lot of them initially clicked with me from the outside but the more I digged into them and the less I found their conceptual appeal to carry over many substance. It’s also not helped that Nitroplus’s way of handling dark subject matters tend to be pretty juvenile and dare I’d say immature. One of their favorite past-time is adding unnecessary rape scene to pretty much any of their works, all of these have seemingly the same goal : to enhance the dark atmosphere of their narratives and hammer down how dire and fucked up their setting is. But ultimately, I think there’s a point where not only do I think it’s “too much”, there’s also a point where it can feel somewhat misogynistic as any female is often treated as an available hole to be used by men and it’s not like Nitroplus ever actually comments or show the consequences of these terrible acts on the psyche of the victims, it’s all very fetishized and disgusting and yes, even Muramasa isn’t a stranger to that excessive amount of edge.

And before people call me a hypocrite for criticizing that aspect, I think I need to make my position clear on the subject before moving on to actually talking about the game. To me depiction of sexual violence and fucked up fetishes isn’t really an issue, after all I am an advocate for freedom of expression and I think every work no matter how agreeable they can be can have some value merely by existing and adding their own bricks to the foundation of culture as a whole. If we simply couldn’t represent or brought these topics up, ever, we would be no better than the people perpetrating these action in the first place because while Nitroplus work could be seen as pieces of art which normalize rape, completely erasing any and all sorts of representation regardless of relevance even the most graphic one would also simply be just as hypocritical as pretending these actions don’t exist in the first place. As bad as it is, these inhumane actions are a part of the human experience and as we’ll see down the line, Muramasa touches on the subject of morality and stuff so it’s not like that type of content doesn’t have its place inside a work like this.

But the thing is that eroge companies operate on the logic that they’re always and I mean always selling their products to people who buys them primordially for the erotic content and thus, one can imagine that the primordial core reason why these scenes exists in the first place is to titillate the senses of those who came for it. There’s obviously nothing wrong with that, consumption of porn could be looked under a moral lens but in the specific case of eroge where the only people hurt in the process are a bunch of underpaid developers and translators I don’t think it’s all that necessary and who doesn’t love to jacking in in San Diego from time to time and find outlets to do so, it’s a natural desire and the porn you consume is only between you and god. In the end, it’s really a matter of representation and execution, in my review of Dohna Dohna, an AliceSoft game which historically had a huge propension for rapey content and “problematic” representation of sex, I stated that to me at least, it’s all a matter of framing ! I like sexy women (or men, let's be not exclusive here) being railed in all sorts of fashion for sure, but I also like when genuine thoughts are put behind it as I tend to have a fetish for narrative consistency more than I actually like sex.

AliceSoft games are designed with a lot of intent behind them, there’s a transparency on what type of games you’re playing as well as clear tone indicators on when you’re supposed to take a situation presented to you seriously or with several degrees of levity but in the end, the game also makes damn sure to remind you that you are in fact playing a porn game.

To compare with a Nitroplus game, Demonbane is a visual novel I read primordially to experience a silly light-hearted super robot adventure about heroes fighting evil creatures in the name of justice, love and all that’s good, it’s openly silly and deliberate in its tone and its inspirations. But why the fuck do I need to sit through so many random and terribly misplaced H-Scenes which completely kills the mood and at times pacing of everything. I just want to see cool robot fighting, why does the sex and most importantly, the rape has to be there ! And I mean yeah, there’s an argument to be made that Demonbane is based on Lovecraftian mythology and features heavy references to the works of the H.P himself which were dark stories featuring sex cult and stuff but Demonbane executes this without grace or any sort of subtlety. In Demonbane, you’d be playing normally as the characters are facing off against a spider monster but suddenly without warning, the game transitions into a weirdly misplaced and completely free H-Scene and it’s like… isn’t there a better context for this ?

For as much as Eroge has h-content in them, I always found their implementations to be wholly uneven across the whole medium. Some eroge want to say something with their H, others don’t and just want you to appreciate the view and some like Nitroplus titles and several others within the genre, are stuck in this middle ground when they feel compelled to add them out of convention rather than because they intended to implement them. Also rape, is the most vile act one can subject a human-being to so it makes for easy shock value. I don’t like that, I don’t care for that. Muramasa is already a pretty dark story and while some H-Scenes do serve a purpose narratively, and Kageaki’s sexual tendencies says a lot about his character (more on that later), the way the game handles that content and that subject matters within the framing of the narrative leaves a lot to be desired.

For example, in the first chapter of the game, we are the witness to a pretty heavy scene of physical torture done by one of the antagonist to a group of kids. The situation is already pretty bad, one of the kid loses his sight and a girl literally got her limbs cut off and these are conveniently shown out of frame but also the girl gets well… raped and this is where we go from a scene that should be terrifying in nature to something akin to an absolute clownfest. Suddenly the girl who up to this point never displayed any heavily sexualized features, is suddenly given a pair of developed breasts the size of Britney’s and an ass the size of Rihanna’s out of nowhere thanks to the power of CG (contextual graphics). But then their tormentor after cutting off her limbs (again shown out of frame because this isn’t what you came for) tasks another kid to rape her but since he couldn’t get hard due to how horrifying the situation was, the villain cast “erection 10” on his penis to keep it up again and again and eventually the poor dude literally piss on the corpse of her comrade. Later in a fight scene, it is explained that the reason the villain was even able to perform such a task is because he has the ability to control fluids of any kind including blood and of course urine and water in general since he proceeds to attack the main character with an epic typhoon attack after this explanation.

This is a scene from chapter 1 and what I would describe as a “Nitroplus moment” but at least all of these events were added in a torture scene so there’s some level of build-up to it, some scenes just happens randomly and without warning for the hell of it. You don’t get at any perspective from the victims and also the consequences of these scenes are never exploited within the narrative as the two characters involved are more busy being traumatized by their missing members and dead companion than the actual rape stuff.
This is all a bit irritating because otherwise, the story would still work without these explicit scenes, it’s a game talking mainly about murder, about what it means to kill and thus, it’s an already extremely violent game and that excessive use of sexual violence just feels forced and out of place. There is an “All-Ages” version available of course if that content turns you off completely but they censor it very poorly and also removes the violence which is an essential part of the game’s overall aesthetic and tone and thus the regular 18+ version is the most optimal and likely intended way to experience the game. The lack of thought, grace and subtlety put behind those is what irritates me and if you really want me to nitpick even further, I also think the game’s budget is too low to make them good, there’s only 2 or 3 CG’s per H-Scenes and very little dynamism or creativity so even as “erotic” scenes most of them falls flat on their goddamn face if you can look past the god awful framing.

Of course this isn’t my only issue with the game but I think this is probably the only real overall issue I can’t really excuse and I can’t really defend because it’s such a signature Nitroplus™ staple that pretending this didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the game or its credibility would be simply a lie…

So anyway, after making 99% of the people who were initially interested in the game flee to Mexico or something, I think we can finally start talking about the game itself shall we ?

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa, despite everything I’ve just said regarding its “erotic” content is a work most people would consider to be a “kamige” and kind of received a memetic legendary status amongst the crowd of Visual novel Reader known as “JOP’s”. JOP, short for “Japanese Only Patricians” (as opposed to EOP for “English Only Peasants”) is a nebulous subgroup of visual novel readers who have turned the act of learning Japanese and reading VN’s in said language into a way of life ! The JOP community hold certain titles in high regard and have transcended the mortal plane of existence to deeply enjoy the subtle and delicate prose of games aimed mainly at coomers and we respect them for it !

And for the longest time, Muramasa was kind of a JOP stronghold, an untouchable piece of fiction that no English speakers will ever get to read let alone understand. This is because Muramasa despite its appearance is a deceptively complex piece of work to tackle as far as translating it goes as someone need not just be fluent in the language but also need multiple extra layers of knowledge on top of it to understand it all. The game is full of ancient poems written in complicated ways, historical anecdotes that one needs to have a strong grasp on to convey especially since it’s all mixed with alternate history stuff and of course the entire language linked to martial arts and especially bushido which isn’t just a set of techniques that don’t have similar equivalent in English but philosophical concepts applied to the way of the sword. Ittetsu is a massive nerd on many subjects from history, philosophy, psychology, martial arts and all of these are portrayed in high detail in Muramasa.

All of these elements fundamentally goes against the very idea of translating Muramasa, it’s just something that for many years seemed completely impossible, it would take too much time, too much research and would cost way more money than most western VN publishers who already struggles to make it to the end of the month. But by some miracle of circumstances, JAST announced an English release of Muramasa for the year 2021 in what essentially became their biggest marketing powermove since the existence of the company and this new release received a premium treatment that was unprecedented in the industry.
On top of a brand new shiny limited edition, the game was translated by a guy going by the pen name of Makoto and edited by another one named Moogy, these two are well-known in the English Localization sphere for their excellent work on other Nitroplus works as well as other JAST releases. The translation started 2 years after the original release of the game in 2009 and took no less than 10 years to come to fruition, a monumental task when considering the material they were working with but somehow they pulled it off and they pulled it off exceptionally well. It’s rare when JOP’s or even native Japanese speakers praises localization efforts especially in the VN industry as the translation can often-time be sloppy or so different from the original text one might consider it fanfiction but not Muramasa, the translation was claimed by many to be of the utmost quality and astoundingly faithful to the original text and meaning. Some of my friends who have been fans of the game since its release even told me that the English release is pretty close to perfection, as if the game was initially written in English. Very little compromise was made to conserve the original tone of the game, the editor even commented how he wanted to change some lines to fit his own agenda but decided against it for authenticity sake, a bold move that is sadly not seen that often in this industry.

This is fundamentally this version of Muramasa that I’m reviewing today, so before anyone jumps at me because I somehow “didn’t understand something”, I might be inclined to believe you but I also wouldn’t care that much considering the sheer quality of the translation.

And I’m going to be real, this is something that the JOP’s certainly did not lie about, Muramasa is a complex read which requires pretty much all of your attention, the prose has a certain form of flow and poetry to it, some terms were kept as is and the game comes with an handy PDF guide for all of the more specific terms that they couldn’t directly translate because they’re concept unique to certain discipline. I’m not the type of guy who cares too much about how flowery prose can be as I’m not really a literary person usually, I care more about the impacts of the words than how their assembled in a phrase and if you’ve been reading my reviews, you probably noticed how much my 2nd language English make for some very stilted and unnatural scripts.

But I can only applaud how well-written from a technical standpoint Muramasa is, it’s genuinely impressive even when I’m not usually sensible to it.

The story takes place in Yamato, a fictional alternate history Japan in the 1940’s ruled on one hand by the iron-fisted and tyrannical Rokuhara Shogunate and on the other by the GHQ, an American force who recently established themselves in the region and are more or less trying to take over the place. In the world of Muramasa, warriors don’t simply just fight with swords and guns but with big suits of mechanical armor going by the name of “Tsurugi” (or “Crux” if you’re a filthy gaijin !). These are essentially tiny mechs and some of the more unique and powerful ones even possess something called a Shinogi which is a special power they can activate in critical situations and can do all sorts of things such as controlling fluids, controlling magnetic fields, create black holes, turn invisible and so forth and so forth.

But recently, a calamity coated in silver known only as “Ginseigo” who belongs to no factions at all has started going left and right and destroying different settlements leaving no traces in its wake.

But one man, piloting another mysterious Tsurugi by the name of Muramasa has made it his personal mission to track down and stop Ginseigo in its path of destruction, this man is Minato Kageaki, a somber, aloof and mysterious man with a troubled past and bound with a terrible curse : Those who chose to pilot Muramasa must follow the law of balance, for each foes one slay, a friends or lover must be slain in return !

After a small prologue chapter showing the struggle between Muramasa and Ginseigo, the game decides to start its first chapter in a very peculiar way by making you follow the point of view of boy by the name of Yuhi as he’s investigating the disappearance of one of his friend alongside two other comrades. This intro is meant to be a play on the typical visual novel scenario, with a regular boy living a regular life, constantly woken up by his childhood friend and the typical sleazy best friend character. This illusion won’t last for long however as quickly the chapter ramps up in intensity and reveals Minato Kageaki, a somewhat socially awkward cop who really is a convicted criminal working for the police to be the main protagonist of the game.

This is one of many instances of the game toying with the typical tropes and codes of eroge and visual novels, it seems that Ittetsu Narahara in many ways wanted to break the mold of that typical structure. I obviously don’t know the guy himself but he seems to be quite knowledgeable on the world of visual novel either through passive observation from his time working with Nitroplus in-between his time as a kendo instructor or because he really has an appreciation for the medium in the first place but unfortunately the little information we have on him as a person really can’t help determine if he has a fondness for those tropes or a deep seated bias against them. Nonetheless, I find the first chapter of Muramasa to be a terribly effective opener even if the climax of it is a bit ruined by the so-called Nitroplus™ moment mentioned earlier in the review. It establishes the world of the game rather well by putting us in the shoes of the little people and tricks us just long enough to make us think Yuhi would actually be the main protagonist (à la Simon from TTGL or Cruz from Needless) but alas this is promptly stopped by his hopes and dreams being coldly shattered by the blade of Muramasa having to obey the law of balance.

In fact, even that law of balance itself isn’t entirely explained to you from the get-go, while we can have somewhat of an understanding of it from context clues alone like the chant Kageaki says before mounting his mech or even how the story plays out, the game try to use a clever but slightly faulty designed route system in order to demonstrate it to us. Much like other games of the genre, making choices privileging one heroine over the other will make her affection towards us stronger, however whereas other VN’s would simply take these flags and addition them in the end to determine which route we’re going to end up on, here the game will show us the affection meter at the end of each chapter which is always share between the two heroines and a third party who participates in the episode and whoever has the most points by the end of the chapter gets killed ! So you need to do the opposite of what’s expected of you and try to make your preferred heroine survive by the end of the common route which is around the end of chapter five.

It’s an interesting system on paper and a rare attempt at ludo-narratively explaining to us how the law of balance work before explaining it to us but sadly there’s a few issues with how it works in practice and even if it’s suggested not to use a guide on your first playthrough that doesn’t mean one isn’t vividly recommended on subsequent ones.

For one, the conditions you have to meet by the end of chapter 5 can be a tad bit specific, at first I thought the goal was simply to keep one of the heroines alive by the end of the game but it turns out the conditions are a bit more specific than that…

You do have to keep either one of the heroines alive but also have a specific amount of affection point with them going into chapter 5, 3 for Kanae and 4 for Ichijo which is completely arbitrary and makes zero sense with the way Chapter 5 plays out ! Chapter 5 diverges just a little bit from the episodic nature of the common route and thus doesn’t actually introduce a third party, except there is a third party ! A random journalist Kageaki met at some point before chapter 5 and developed a friendship off-screen is killed off instead to make the story work… It's a bit awkward and honestly kinda makes the whole execution of the mechanic fall on its face (and spoiler : it’s not the only time where the game attempts at introducing game mechanics in a messy manner).

But enough about ludo-narrative consistency, this is a VN after all and thus the primary reasons you’re even experiencing this is for the story so let’s talk about it. The game is divided into a 5 chapter long common route, 2 other routes focusing on either of the two heroines Ichijo and Kanae and one final true route which is meant to wrap up the story in a somewhat satisfying way ! A typical structure for a game like this even with the original way the game handles its flag system.

The common route is a series of episodic adventures which sees Kageaki and the gang dealing with the local villain of the week. For the sake of clarity, at the start of the game, Ginseigo steals Kageaki’s sword and has divided into multiple “eggs” which were spread in the four corners of Yamato, once a person comes into contact with said eggs they become infected which doubles their power and erase their doubts but in return puts them on timer as each of those eggs would hatch at any moments turning the individual into a clone of Ginseigo and as it is established at the start, you really don’t want to deal with more than one Ginseigo !

This means that the first half of the game is a bit repetitive and predictable, Kageaki goes to a place, finds a villain to kill, there usually will be some token nice character who always end up dying despite the game’s best effort to make them likable as they have enough death flags to open a football stand during world cup and their usually would be one or several cool robot fights in the end. Out of all these episodic ventures, only chapter 5 deviates from that structure by instead being an expository chapter where Kageaki gets attacked by Psycho Mantis which gives the game a nice enough excuse to talk to us about Kageaki backstory.

The quality of each of these individual chapters greatly vary from one another but they’re usually not too long to complete, maybe like 4 to 5 hours each which is nice enough to spread out your play sessions, I’d say that overall I did enjoy most of these episodic chapters, the only one I wasn’t a huge fan of was the third one because it was kinda long, kinda boring, bogged down by a stupid plot and a lot of info dumps about shit which will ultimately not matter as well as scenes where the characters act like typical VN heroines which they never really do outside of a few moments mainly to take a jab at how cliché these are.

Speaking of the characters, I’d say this is yet another part of Muramasa’s I’m slightly mixed on. The game has quite a few of them but has a very uneven way of using them, they’re certainly not lacking in personality thought which I appreciate and the different interactions they tend to have between them is pretty good, however they also can end up being very undercooked. Kanae for exemple is one of the two main heroines of the game but I didn’t find her schtick to be particularly memorable, she’s a psychopath who loves to kill and will do so without question making her quite a dangerous foe. But the problem is that she’s written in a very inconsistent way, sometimes hating Kageaki and sometimes acting like a caring wife to him and that comedic aspect of the characters in contrast to her true role within the story never manages to make her all that interesting which will be an issue when discussing the true route of the game.

Ichijo fairs a bit better in that department, she’s an high school who has a blind idealistic view of justice, where she needs to defeat bad guys and take revenge on Rokuhara and their tyrannical reign, she is the typical shonen protagonist archetype, I found her to be really interesting from the get go, her introduction is one of the most memorable parts of the VN and she sees in Kageaki an absolute symbol of justice that she must follows in the step on which later down the line makes for some deeply fascinating character conflicts when the veil of lies is lift up and reveals the truth of Kageaki’s character (I also found a lot of her more softer moment to be infinitely more adorale and funnier than Kanae’s antic, honestly the only really good part of Kanae is her assistant Sayo which is a really fun character on its own).

Speaking of Kageaki, I found him to be the best character of the game unsurprisingly since he’s the main character and the vessel through which most of the game's thematic depth is channeled ! At times, Kageaki is the absolute epitome of an edgelord, going into existential dreads and using lines such as “Don’t need to show me nightmares, I live with them every single day” which makes my 13 year old emo phase flutters and cringe at the same time. However, I did find him to ultimately be a pretty endearing character, the guy is just… a huge weirdoe, he’s not fit for society and it shows, he’s blunt and honest to a fault even when it comes to rizzing the ladies which he absolutely sucks at ! He has a lot of weird habits and quirks that makes him entertaining and makes every situation he finds himself in pretty entertaining as a result.

In some way, he reminds of Rance from the Rance series only if Rance was a pathetic socially anxious worm with years of unresolved traumas and cynicism ruining his ego and sense of self ! In fact his self-destructive behavior is reflected even during the intimate moments he shares with the different heroines, since Kageaki seems to have lost control of his life, he tends to channel a lot of his desperate frustration and need for control on his partners which means that he doesn’t just make love to them… HE FUCKS THEM ! AND SOMETIMES WORSE ! And believe it or not, there’s a genuine explanation on why he’s like this in bed but I’m not a sexologist so I’ll stop there, we already talked about sex enough in the first part of this review anyway.

The most interesting part about Kageaki however isn’t just his personality and quirk that’s only one way to make a character endearing without making him just a simple pity party or a collection of clichés, it’s the struggle he goes through, the philosophy and ideology he develops through those hardships and how they clash with the ideals of other characters in the story and the world at large !
And in that regard I think Muramasa succeeds at keeping that aspect of the game thoroughly engaging in the long-run but not perfectly as we’ll discuss later when talking more deeply about the game’s different routes and how they complete and comment on these aspects. Kageaki is a man with a troubled past and a responsibility to atone for his mistakes and the crimes of Ginseigo which will later learn is his sister Hikaru who kinda went crazy and stole one of the family’s treasure to bring death and destruction upon the world and thus the personal quest of Kageaki is to stop her from doing all of this shit but sadly things ain’t that easy because of the law of balance we previously mentioned.

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa is a heavily philosophical game, it talks about justice, heroism and how these concepts can be twisted by different conflicting points of views and ideologies. It’s a story which explores the nature of what it means to kill for what you believe in and the morality behind murder. At points the game can seem simplistic in nature, after all the final message of the game is that killing people is always bad regardless of one’s reason for it and that peace is the noblest pursuit. At points it can feel like the game is doing a lot of sophistic centrist bullshit like “both side bad” and all that jazz or god forbid the “If I kill them, I’ll be the same as them” but I think that out of all stories I’ve experienced, Muramasa offers a pretty unique way of tackling these rather simplistic idioms.

There are many stories in the world which teaches values of pacifism and how spreading good is always better than succumbing to evil but a lot of these stories fail to actually convince us and reflect on why this truth should be absolute and if there’s even some nuance to it in the first place. It’s one thing to write a story about how “killing is bad”, it’s another thing to convince us that it’s ever true at all, after all, we live in a world drought in conflicts and tyranny, with powerful peoples controlling and toying with the lives of a lot of innocent people just for their own gain ! I won’t hide the fact that I’m a bit of an extremist myself, I think that we should do more political assassination and that you can’t change the world without breaking a few eggs and burning a few cars in the process. If you read my Cold Steel reviews or just read my writings in general, I don’t particularly subscribe to the idea of compromise and consensus, mainly because I live in a country where social progress is so slow because it abides to that single-minded mindset ! I’m all about picking a side and fighting the good fights in your own way ! I believe in the potential of humanity to transcend pain and evil and eventually progress into a cosmic age of enlightenment where everyone is their best selves and society is thriving instead of stagnating !

But I have never taken a life myself, especially a human one. The closest thing to it that I still remember fondly to this day is killing a goat for my consumption when I was a child and not feeling like eating it the next morning ! When life ends, there is no room for redemption, for punishment, for progress, killing is but a temporary solution and a last resort ! During the game Kageaki will have to concede his idea of justice to the reality of the law of balance he has to obey ! And at many points Kageaki is offered the possibility to stop the massacre, to live his own life on his own and maybe go into the forest or something ! He sees the situation he finds himself in as a tragedy, he refuses to call himself a hero because of the horrible actions he’s forced to commit and sees himself more like a demon even if that too is a way of coping with the reality of the act he commits !

Kageaki is a hypocrite with a goal and this goal is the elimination of Ginseigo, that’s the only thing that matters to him, the completion of his quest above all else.
Sacrificing himself and a couple of collateral damages in order to save millions of people, that’s the way Kageaki has to deal with this justice but is he even capable to go all the way and is it even right to do so ?

Kageaki despite his stoic nature is a profoundly good person who wants to do good, he can’t stand seeing injustice before his eyes, he’s just a normal guy who was forced into a path of bloodshed and needs to find meaning in the way of the sword. There’s a scene in chapter 4 where Sorimachi one of the best antagonistic characters in the game confronts him on this and it’s legitimately one of the coolest scene in the entire Visual Novel and the moment I understood that maybe just maybe under the brooding 2009 edge there was something to be found here than most other piece of work talking about similar subject matters don’t have.

Unfortunately, this is where my praise for the games kinda starts to deviate a little bit because the execution is a bit uneven across the entire package. Ittetsu Narahara has two wolves inside of him, one is a wise erudite old man with years of experience, knowledge and a personal philosophy he has forged through the path of the sword. It’s a man who never misses to inform you on little details and teaches you about stuff you may or may not give a shit about. Sometimes this gives the game a lot of flair, especially during battles when the action stops to talk to you about kendo techniques, about stances, about distances, range, and how effectively one could cut through steel or break an arm. There’s an entire fight within chapter 5 which is literally 30 whole minutes of 2 characters staring at each other trying to outplay the others and overthink their every move ! It’s the type of Baki The Grappler type of excessive attention to detail and tension which makes every fight feel more real than the last ! Even during the aerial mech battles with superpower involved there’s always a sense of suggested realism, weight and flow to each of them that make them tense and exciting even if sometimes they do tend to drag on for a bit too long.

However this way of writing also leads its way to a lot of pointless stuff that breaks the pacing and only exists to give more meat to the setting even when it ends up mattering very little. One problem I have with the way Muramasa handles its worldbuilding and internal political struggles is that they pretty much exist as set dressing and suggestion of something bigger than itself ! It definitely makes the world feels more like a complete package but sometimes the game will info dumps you for literal minutes about pointless details while completely overlooking others which could’ve been interesting concept to develop further like for example the whole “Tsurugi dies if you contradict their worldview” or something which is perhaps used twice to different level of effectiveness. This doesn’t really drag down the experience for me but it makes for very uninteresting and rather flat conflicts especially when it comes to how the game handles a lot of its characterization and darker elements.

Because the second wolf inside of Narahara is that of rebellious teenager who dresses in black, listens to Linkin Park, traces artwork of Sasuke Uchiha in his notebook during recess and calls people slurs on Call of Duty Black Ops II while boasting about how much he fucked everyone’s mom. It’s the sort of brooding almost comically excessive amount of edge which ranges from weirdly endearing as I won’t lie to have a certain fondness for that 2009 flavor of emo shit seeping through the crack of every piece of media imaginable but at times it also prevents you from completely taking the game seriously even when it wants to in fact, wants you to take seriously.

At times, Muramasa felt like the philosophical piece of literature people claimed it was with some dark and unnerving moments that wouldn’t be out of place in Berserk but more times than not it felt more like I was reading fucking Akame Ga Kill. The game has a type of humor which sometimes lands and sometimes doesn't and I feel like for the most part it’s there to anime-ify the setting or poke fun at certain conventions but you don’t really poke fun or make a commentary on anything by diving head first into that type of stuff. But also a lot of its darker aspect feels a bit excessive in a way that made just sigh more than anything and created a very predictable scenario. You know that if a character is usually nice and innocent and drops their entire backstory on you they’ll either get killed or worse in the next scene in the most over-the-top Final Destination type of way which is not helped by the fact that the game doesn’t really stop. Its villains are for the most part a series of caricatures with little room to think of them as anything more than a bunch of bad guys to eliminate which kinda makes the point the story is trying to make by the end hard to be sold on !

It’s hard to feel a level of empathy for characters that are meant to be so easily discarded, I think chapter 4 is one of the stronger chapter of the game especially because the action is cool and Sorimachi does his big epic speech while kicking Kageaki in the ribs but it’s also a shining example of the tone of the game working against its own design. In this chapter, Kageaki meets up a group of kids and eventually you know for damn sure because you’ve been conditioned by the structure of the story that these kids are gonna die in the most brutal way possible and yet the game will constantly tap dance around it in a “will-they, won’t-they'' ballet that felt really tiring. It also has the biggest villain yet, a racist american soldier who is impossible to reason with because of how bigoted he is and to show you how much he doesn’t care, he literally made a robot who is powered by fucking dead children because oooooooooooooooooooooh the edge ! Eventually the kids do die after Ginseigo pops up out of nowhere and lands on the island so hard it literally moves which is so completely off-beat with the rest of the chapter’s tone, it’s pretty damn inconsistent.

I think the villain being pretty one note and unquestionably evil like that for the most part is also just a consequence of this game's overall inconsistent character writing. The game has a lot of characters and while not lacking in personality and silly banters with one another, a lot of them end up feels way too undercooked, either because the game kills them in the chapter they were introduced in or because the game doesn’t really spend the necessary amount of time developing them or making them interesting. And while this can certainly be an issue for all the side characters who end up being rather shallow as a result, it is another problem when this happens to characters who are supposed to matter like Kanae, one of the main heroines of the story.

Which leads to probably the single biggest narrative dead-end the game ends up in, its route system. If you have played a visual novel before, especially one with multiple choices, you know that they tend to often alternate perspectives and alternate paths to the conclusion of a story. Route system have been a thing in VN’s since time immemorial and while some try to have a tighter more focused experience with no branching paths which we call “kinetic novels” this game takes the approach most games in the genre uses instead and at least in my opinion not to the game’s benefit. While I can acknowledge the originality of its flagging system and how approximately well it integrates itself to the story Muramasa wants to tell, once you start digging a little deeper we realize that there is a massive imbalance between each route in terms of quality and narrative pertinence.
Full Metal Daemon Muramasa is split into 2 routes, one where Otori Kanae gets to live called “The Nemesis” route and the other where instead Ichijo Ayane survives aka “The Hero” route, each offering a different end to our protagonist in his quest to stop Ginseigo and atone for his sins.

We’ll start with the route that I found to be the weakest part of the game by far, the Nemesis route. In this route, Kageaki is held hostage by the GHQ and forced to work for them as they’re preparing to drop a nuclear bomb onto Rokuhara's fortress. Kageaki ends up in this situation after being tasked by the Emperor’s son (which he’s been working with throughout the game as he was the one pointing him in the direction of his next target) to assassinate the Shogun. At first reluctant, since he doesn’t want to kill anymore than necessary in his goal to kill Ginseigo, he eventually accepts the deal but someone killed him before him. After that Kanae asked him to join her in the temple where the Prince and Kageaki father (who he also was working with, sorry to have missed on these details) as someone is planning to kill the prince under accusation of having orchestrated the Shogun’s assasination.

On his way to the temple, he’s slowed down by a Steel Jeeg copyright infringement which makes arrive late at the temple where Kanae proceeded to enter her own secret personal Tsurugi and kill Kageaki’s dad. Not realizing that his was Kanae behind the armor, he decides to get his revenge on the mysterious Musha but first he gets arrested by the GHQ where it is revealed that Kanae was the cousin of the little kid Kageaki killed at the start of the game and that she therefore seeks revenge. Kageaki however is actually thrilled about this information as he was looking for the person who would punish him for his sin and thus starts a very weird relationship between the two, each seeking the solace of death in one another.

The Nemesis route is conceptually, a good ending because it is the only ending in which Kageaki gets what he truly wants : Death and atonement for his sins. Thematically speaking, it’s a revenge story on both ends and one thing that I actually enjoy about both routes is that while some love blossoms between the 2 adversaries, the girl you chose fundamentally becomes the de-facto final antagonist of the chapter for different reasons. Nemesis route is also the only one to put an heavy focus on the consequences of Kageaki’s action throughout the common route as a ghost of his past eventually comes to haunt him midway through the story. It’s all very solid stuff at least on the paper but sadly, the execution is a tad bit underwhelming.

I think the issue mainly comes from Kanae, Kanae is a cold-blooded killer, a psychopath who loves to kill, in a game which does its darndest to convince you that killing his bad no matter the excuses, it makes for a pretty weak antagonist for Kageaki, instead of confronting Kageaki’s ideology and circumstances and pushing him in a new interpretations of them, Kanae is simply there to give Kageaki’s his sentence. You already know how it’s going to end and yet the game kinda lost me. Nemesis route is mostly just a lot of plot setup and political babble, most of which aren’t particularly interesting to sit through but another thing that drags this route is the over-excessive use of interactive segments which for lack of a better word are all pretty damn bad and makes you sigh everytime you engage in an action segment whereas so far, most of the action scenes played themselves. I ignore why they even did this except to embrace the adventure game nature of early visual novels while serving no real commentary at all, or maybe just to keep your attention.

Kanae is also a pretty undercooked character all things considered and a pretty inconsistently written one at that. On one hand, she’s pretty damn cool and badass because she’s just a crazy bitch which can rush inside a manor and kill everyone there to restore the honor of her family but on the other she also acts way too often like a typical housewife to Kageaki and I really don’t know how this contrasts even adds to her character arc since it seems to only be there for comedy sake. She’s also super underdeveloped to the point that her powers are only half-explained, she has bugs eye but we don’t know shit about it, her servant is an immortal vampire disguising as an old lady but we don’t know shit about it, she wants to avenge her cousin as well as the rest of her family but we barely know jack shit about the relationship she had with them.

Don’t get me wrong, the route has some nice action, but there’s not much juice to latch onto, not really a core-theme that’s developed, the relationship of enemy to lovers who seeks mutual destruction between Kageaki and Kanae is cool in theory but it leads kinda nowhere and lacks the impact than it could have ! If anything, the only reason why this route isn’t plainly skippable is because it sets up some background elements that will be further explored in the game's final route, other than that, it’s pretty disappointing despite some cool albeit underbaked ideas.

The hero route on the other hand…

IS ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT !

The route focus on Ichijo Ayane who after being gifted a Tsurugi by the name of Masamune from Sorimachi at the end of Chapter 4 learns that Kageaki, which she idealized as a grand hero of justice, turns out to be a cold blooded murderer who kills innocent people. As she confronts Kageaki, he doesn’t deny the fact and thus a fight between Full Metal Daemon Muramasa and Full Metal Providence Masamune begins ! Masamune is a tsurugi who believes in absolute justice and whose goal is to eliminate all Evil. Created during Japan’s war after the Mongol, its creator after witnessing the horrors and the atrocities caused by the Mongols was convinced that demons live amongst humans and these demons need to be eradicated.

Like the game precises, history has shown that neither side were either morally good or bad, much like every conflict in history it was all a bit more complex than this, however Masamune kept that blind ideal of Justice and decided to apply it as one of his laws. Masamune is fucking sick, it’s this blue mech who will do anything to triumph over evil and as such, as like a million techniques to do so, most of which involves using its pilots body parts as ammunition for its different techniques (it’s fine since Tsurugi’s can regenerate their pilots almost completely, it’s just terribly painful). It’s a rather clever visual way to clue us in on the true theme of this route and by extension the entire story of the game as a whole because as much as Masamune claims to fight for justice, this justice is a bit fucked up and twisted.

After an initial battle, Ichijo spares Kageaki after learning that he’s forced to obey the law of balance and propose to kill people in his steeds so that the law of balance never activates and he can accomplish his mission without claiming anymore innocent lives.

I absolutely love the Hero Route, if you have to read Muramasa, regardless of your first impression or what you may think of the game afterwards, it’s really for this route in particular. Everything is so tight, so focused, so perfect that the few flaws I find to the route are only H-Scenes related which I won’t further elaborate on. Because Kageaki pretty much plays second fiddle to Ichijo, he pretty much hides himself cowardly behind Ichijo’s idea of Justice. Ichijo is your typical shonen protagonist, hell bent on getting rid of Rokuhara for the evil that they represent and this goal aligns well with Masamune and his ideal of justice. However she will soon find out that justice is a feeble concept and that killing people regardless of how evil one might think they are carries with itself a huge toll on one’s conscience and that killing in the name of justice, inspires others to do the same and ignite the fire of everlasting conflict.

The route has so many clever ways to lead us into what the game is actually about that even if I do find some disagreement with the philosophy that’s portrayed, I can’t deny how effective a tale Muramasa is when focusing on these deeper philosophical questions. When confronting Ginseigo, she refuses to fight Ichijo, her adversary is Kageaki and she was slowing down on her conquest just so Kageaki would reach the truth of the law of balance faster and be a worthy opponent to stop her wrath but she only found a cowards who hides himself into a veil of lies. There’s a remixed flashback showing us what would happen if Kageaki had found Masamune instead of Muramasa and it’s simply brilliant in showing us that it wouldn’t be a better situation, in fact it would be even worse.

The law of balance is meant to represent the true meaning of what it means to kill, Kageaki believes in justice just like Ichijo and is willing to kill for it but each time, he has to kill an innocent but only he and he alone decides who is good and who is bad. The people he had killed up to that point, even the most evil bastard, probably also had loved ones or some people working under them, or some people that were hunting them. Killing only invites more killing, that’s what Kageaki’s mother told him before he was sent by circumstances in a path of blood and that’s what the law of balance is all about : If you’re willing to kill an enemy, you must also be willing to kill a friend because the act of killing is not to be taken lightly regardless on one’s reason to do it and especially when it’s in the name of the nebulous idea of justice !

The philosophy might be a bit hypocritical at first, Ittetsu Narahara simply doesn’t believe in one true justice, it doesn’t exist and it never will because true justice is just a matter of perspective. It awfully sounds like a “both side bad” or “If I kill them I’m just as bad as them” and it does, and to many people, this would be enough to cross-out the game as having a cringy almost spineless centristic ideology which by itself is biased on the idea that there is no good or bad sides and that fighting for something, for your own idea of justice is always “evil”.

The current world is draught in conflicts of all kind and it is always asked of us to pick a side, or else we’re simply seen as a spineless coward, that’s at least what I believe in, I believe that one should always fight their own fight and shouldn’t rely on neutral sophistry to justify passivity. But believing in something and killing in its name, is a whole different subject, the reality is that conflicts are eternal, humans will likely never achieve a point where everyone would be working together, it’s a bit pessimistic of a view but that’s what the game believes in.
Ichijo Ayane is directly confronted on this through a series of circumstances and is now forced to fight against Kageaki. Despite her ideology and entire worldview being broken, and realizing how bad it is for others to fight in the name of her justice, she decides to keep on fighting anyway as she believes that eventually if you keep fighting for what you believe is justice, humanity will keep fighting until true justice happens. This is then followed by an absolutely brilliant epilogue where a time-skip happens and both Kageaki and Masamune are dead only leaving Ichijou to inherit Muramasa and therefore inheriting the law of balance and by extension the will of Kageaki, enacting a more just idea of justice !

And here’s what the problem is with this ending, Hero Route simply just put Muramasa into a narrative dead-end because it pretty much went to the absolute extreme of what it wanted to tell as a narrative, at least that’s what I felt when finishing it and the guy who was reading it with me also agreed. In fact, I’m pretty sure most people I’ve asked told me Hero Route was their favorite part of the game by a huge margin. If the game actually ended here, it would be pretty much the ideal thematic ending to the story and as you know, I care more about themes than I care about wrapping up loose plotpoint since I can usually excuse a few plot-holes if the conclusion is satisfying.

But Muramasa sadly, doesn’t end on the Hero Route, it has one extra last “true route” which unlocks after finishing the first two. And while Hero and Nemesis are on different ends of the quality spectrum, the “Conqueror” route is kind of tip-toeing around the middle and I felt that for all that it proposes, I didn’t get much satisfaction out of it. I was expecting something that would build on the conclusion of either route and arrive at a somewhat wholly unique conclusion that would by some sort of miracle surpass what Hero Route was able to accomplish or even say something more.

And yeah, I’d say that most of my issue with Muramasa stems from that last route which is kind of tonally confused and not as tight or thematically charged as the Hero Route. First off, the route starts with a forced conflict between Muramasa and Kageaki on who gets to control the other or if they should work as one. It’s kinda tired, it’s kinda cliché, the conflict goes by fast and it’s only an excuse for Kageaki to start with the mentality he has by the end of hero route without going through the entire arc he went through in Hero route and already you can see how scuffed the conqueror route really is from the get go.

Since this is admittedly a fresh new start, all of the characters that are still alive and have a role to play in the story don’t really go through the same arc they did in their original route. It’s especially apparent for Kanae and Ichijo which you would expect to get an alternate or further development yet alone an actual role to play but despite being the main heroines of the first half of the story, they play second fiddle to Muramasa and Chachamaru which are the new superstar of the show and according to how much merch they got, the ones the marketing team wants you to care the most about.

From a storytelling perspective, I understand the existence of the true route being a necessity, Nemesis and Hero leaves a lot of on-going plot threads unresolved and a lot of mysteries about the world yet to be explored but it really doesn’t help the route from being just a collection of “stuff happening”. We start with an assassination attempt, then hours of monogatari-style comedy banter between Kageaki and ugh… Hikaru… (we’ll get to her), including a whole joke segment then it goes to a full war then some fucking TTGL shit.
There’s very little actual connective tissue between these sets of event and I must admit that the game kinda lost me for the grand majority of the route and while it’s not void of interesting ideas, a lot of these ideas end-up being served undercooked just to prepare the main event that is the final confrontation between Kageaki and Hikaru. For example, there’s a whole arc where Kageaki gets infected by one of Ginseigo’s egg and turns evil meaning that he joins Rokuhara for a short while and that’s an interesting idea on paper but one that drags for too long and doesn’t lead anywhere. There’s an attempt during this part to “humanize” each of the Rokuhara generals which could be perceived as just blood-thirsty bastard but these additional layers are nowhere near exploited well enough to completely turn your opinions of them on their head and tbf, the GHQ not getting the same treatment either kinda dampens the effect. Heck they even skipped Raicho’s fight despite being built up to be a super badass, what a goddamn fraud smh…

I like Chachamaru but I wish more was done with her in the end, even though her ending got snuffed despite having a badass premise, like why skip the fight there I don’t understand… Oh and she also gets graped by Kageaki at some point which heh… wtv I guess…

But at least Chachamaru definitely has more meat on her bones as a character than Muramasa which is just kind of bland and boring. You’d think the personification of the law of balance and her past as a human would give her some depth as being the one true partner of Kageaki but despite her design being right up my alley she gets a total of 1 (one) good scene where she meets one of the children from the start of the game and confronts the sins she committed with Kageaki, it’s probably my favorite scene of the whole route all things considered.

The biggest and I mean biggest black spot on my appreciation of the route however is the main antagonist of the story : Giseigo aka Hikaru. So to put full context on Hikaru, she is Kageaki’s sister who after a series of events in the past entered in contact with one of her family’s treasure tsurugi, Ginseigo. Hikaru has contracted an incurable disease which eats at her bones everyday and during her many periods of unconsciousness, she heard the voice of Ginseigo calling her. Kageaki, thinking her sister went insane (spoiler : she kinda did) after being manipulated by Ginseigo somewhat, decides to take up arms and is forced into a situation where he has to wear Muramasa and kill his adoptive mother. Throughout the game, Ginseigo served as more of an ominous figure, somewhat antagonistic to Kageaki but also pushing him to new height as a rival, she reminded a little bit of Grahf from Xenogears in that regard and the more you advance through the game, the more you realize that Hikaru is perfectly sane and is doing all that killing on purpose.

As opposed to Kageaki, she kinda works ? If you stretch that a bit ? Ginseigo is supposed to also answer to the law of balance but she managed to find a way to bypass it, because the law of balance forces you to slay a friend for every foe. But Hikaru kills indiscriminately and thus doesn’t have to answer to the law of balance, she seeks to ascend to godhood and transcend the concept of human morality, one of her powers being to erase morality within the mind of humans through a song which makes everyone kill each other pretty much. She could accomplish that goal very quickly but as it was demonstrated in the Hero Route, the one person who interests her the most is Kageaki with whom she has a lot of innuendo based conversation with. Hikaru sacrifices the world for her own sake, while Kageaki sacrifices himself for the world… simple enough… right… ?
But that’s what Hikaru represents thematically within the story and even then, that doesn’t really make for “main antagonist” material for me. She really works more as a stepping stone for Kageaki to realize something about his quest and defeating an opponent who actually has a frontal confrontation with his philosophy (literally every other antagonist that he faces) and that’s how the Hero Route uses her to great effect in my opinion.

But what are her motivations ?

Ok get ready for this…

Since she was born without a father to raise her, she started developing a weird daddy fetish. She desires a dad, she wants a dad that loves her and most importantly, she wants to kill anyone so that her daddy loves her and her alone ! AND ALSO SHE REALLY AND I MEAN REALLY WANTS TO FUCK HER DAD !

No I’m not kidding, that’s Hikaru’s whole motivation throughout the entire game, she just has an insatiable incest fetish and transcending the morals of men and ascending to godhood is the only mean to accomplish that goal because Kageaki read her bed stime stories about Greek Mythology and their incestuous relationships.

In fact, at some point, it is revealed that the Hikaru we see is some sort of astral projection and…

Ok so the plot eventually devolves into some weird conspiracy about reviving god who lives deep in the earth and is an alien who created Tsurugi millions of years ago and it leads to like a weird over the top space battle that somehow involves a completely out of place MATH PUZZLE ???? And parallel universes ???? And the fucking prefect dude from episode 2 reviving for some reasons ????

What the ???

Look, I’m a super robot fan, I love TTGL, I love Getter, I love Gaogaigar, Mazinger and I can name a few others easily. I’m an absolute fan of that over the top, reality bending, space-going, moon shattering, Asura’s Wrath fisting action but where the hell does any of this fit into the setting that the game presented up to that point ?

It’s like they wanted a spectacle fight for the final confrontation but somehow couldn’t just settle with the limitations of the game setting so they said, fuck it, we’re Demonbane now ! And I would’ve probably enjoyed this part a lot more if I actually fucking cared about what was presented to me ! If Hikaru wasn’t a complete joke of a villain whose way is too comical to serve as a good conclusion to the story, perhaps a good conclusion to Kageaki as a character but nothing else.

And the game also hinges on hiding a certain plot twist, that Kageaki was actually the father of Hikaru when not only was it the most obvious thing in the world to catch up on but also since it’s actually revealed at the end, it leads once again absolutely nowhere and I’m left there wondering if this game really needed the extra 20 hours it took me to go through the true route if this was going to be the conclusion they wanted to arrive at.
And like a bad joke, the story doesn’t actually end there, you get a whole epilogue, where it’s shown that Kageaki established some sort of Outer Heaven but worse and then another epilogue after that epilogue but actually a prologue to that epilogue, following Kageaki who after defeating Hikaru was mysteriously left alive and now has to cope with his existence.

This small part of the game however, is probably the actual good part of the true route, it explores how Kageaki could live after all that went through and how he could cope with that existence and what path to take from now on. The ending is pretty damn good and easily one of the most memorable parts of the game aside from some weird heap in logic to arrive at the whole “Kageaki decides to enact the law of balance on a global scale by creating Outer Heaven” which essentially is… what the hero route ended on… minus the whole Kageaki living and making an MGS reference part…

Oh and there’s also a sequel hook but sadly as of today, it kinda leads nowhere.

Full Metal Daemon Muramasa is a tough nut to crank for me, I think that at its best, it is the terribly intelligent and thought provoking work people claim that it is, Narahara is not a stupid guy, far from it and you can feel that he thought the theme he wanted to explore through and bring it to its absolute limit. Narahara wanted to tell an all-encompassing story which features all of his personal interests and combines them into one even when that can be a little awkward and irrelevant !

This gives FMD a “soul” of its own that you can’t find in most other works and I can easily see how someone could base their entire life philosophy around what’s being told in this game even if it’s up to discussion on my end. But is it fully well executed ? I’m not so sure, Muramasa can either be the highest of peak or the downest of Abyss with a lots of hills and valleys along the way, it’s a work who despite its main subject matter doesn’t really fight the right equilibrium to make all of these elements work at 100% of their capacity. There’s a lot of things the game leaves on the table never to cook anything with and yet they still managed to stretch that shit over 70 or so hours. It is a long game, it is a commitment but was it worth it ?

When it comes to this game, I think that I end up in a similar place than with “Higurashi”. I care a lot about specific parts of the game enough to say that I did enjoy it and have some actual respect for it. But so much of Muramasa is just nothing to me, especially the Nemesis and true route (outside of the blind guy and ending) which were underwhelming despite the neat ideas and narrative prowess they might have.

My recommendation if I wanted to be really petty about it, is to read the game with the Hero Route and stop there and only if by the end you wish to dig further then only I would invite you to read the rest to give yourselves your own opinion about it !

The True Route for me doesn’t do much more than what the Hero Route didn’t already accomplish much more gracefully.

It’s a tough game to rate and thus, It’s going to be the first review I’m gonna leave unrated until further notice. I'm glad to have played it however and I acknowledge how much of a cult title the game is as a whole but it’s not for me… It was simply… too unbalanced…

Trails in the Sky The 3rd : Diamond in the rough, don't skip



Previously on "Cani plays the Kiseki series", Cani was struck with how lukewarm he ended up being towards Trails SC the most hype entry in the sky trilogy, if you want some recontextualization refer to my Sky SC (and a bit of FC review)

With that said, let's talk about the 3rd and final entry in the Sky saga, Trails in the Sky the 3rd !

This one is kind of an oddball within the series, remember how I said that despite its flaws Trails SC still retained the same quality as FC in terms of writing and coherence ? Well this time it's a bit more complicated, Trails the 3rd doesn't really possess any of these qualities because it goes for a completely different thing, while the first 2 games were classic JRPG titles were you go around the world, talk to people and explore dungeons from time to time , Trails the 3rd is mostly a dungeon crawler where you go through different dungeons , beat up ennemies and get some random story content from time to time.

In a lot of ways, Trails the 3rd feels a lot less ambitious than its predecessor, the game is kind of a budget title and it's something that you can feel quite a bit. From all the reused assets, to the weird plot structure and doors, Trails the 3rd is a chimera Frankenstein monster of an entry that is so drastically different from the first two that one might not vibe with it if they liked the first two games much more than me.

Even the title kinda put a big emphasis on that, it's Sky "the 3rd" instead of sky "3rd chapter" that's because the game is the third title of the Sky series but not really a sequel to the Sky main storyline which is well over by now.

I honestly even doubt the game was even planned by any stretch of the imagination, it's like "Ok we have enough unresolved plot points and under developed side-characters to fill an entire game with it but the story is over ? What do we do ?"

"I dunno do you know about Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories ?"

Trails the 3rd has to bear on its shoulders three completely disjointed promises :

-Expanding on the already well developed cast and storyline of the first 2 games
-Setting the stage for future entries
-And telling a self-contained story of its own that's worth going through to not feel to justify this game being more than an anthology

So did it manages to do all of that ?

OH MY GOD THEY DID AND EVEN MORE, TRAILS THE 3rd IS ACTUALLY THE BEST ENTRY IN THE SERIES BY FAR

But how ? How does a game so drastically different ? So drastically cheaper on such a drastically smaller conflict can even achieve the status of being quite literally a masterpiece were the first two entries were alright but not above average ?

I'd say that the first aspect that Sky 3rd excels at is structure and general pacing, the game is much shorter than the first two entries but much more is going on in the story at literally any point, there's not a single dull or repetitive moment nor are their needlessly stretched out chunk of gameplay (except maybe chapter 6 but chapter 6 also possess some of the rawest boss fight in the trilogy) and despite setting its story in a world vastly different than the first two entry, it manages to have a superb vibe and atmosphere enhanced by what is easily the best soundtrack in the entire trilogy.

This is also served by probably the best gameplay the series has seen so far, while like the first two entries I still played on normal difficulty, Trails 3rd really does use the serviceable but still fun battle system of the original to its full potential here. This is due to how the game handles its difficulty and the different ressources you get throughout the game, unlike Sky FC and SC, getting access to Mira and new quartz is harder so the game pretty much forces to play smarter with the limited toolset given to you , that toolset grows exponentially larger as time goes on and the more party members you acquire and the more quartz you can get access to grows and the more insane the builds can be.

I actually enjoy the fact the game prioritize giving you characters you might've not used in the original titles meaning that you have a bigger time to experience with new and unique party combination , eventually you do get all the party members available in the previous games (which have also seen some changes in their gameplay with new or upgraded crafts) as well as two surprise party members which just happens to also be 2 of my favorite antagonist from the previous entries (and both are allegedly SUPER BROKEN) but that doesn't really change the fact that for most of the game you have to adapt yourself to what you have, and thank god investing on some of these characters is so worth it (Tita becomes a fucking MONSTER by the end of the game let me tell you)

Everything is served by the game having quite an upscale in difficulty, because of plot related reasons the monsters have new elemental weaknesses and resistance, so now you can't just spam time magic anymore and be gone with it, elemental weaknesses are even more important in this game than in the previous titles and boss battles aren't just about brute forcing your way through them trying to out-dps them, you need to manage buffs and debuffs accordingly, being cautious of your placement and general movement as well as managing your status resistance because this game will not forgive even random encounters can kick your ass without you noticing if you're not careful about that shit and if it's already this much fun on normal mode, I can't even imagine how amazing it would be on the other game difficulties, 3rd is the only game I'm looking forward to replay just for the gameplay , it's really that good.

The exploration is also vastly improved from SC, SC had the problem of having too much less new content, recycled areas with little to no changes and a fuck lot of backtracking

3rd changes that by doing three things :

-Having way more new environment and dungeons to explore
-Recycling areas but putting a twist on them to make them feel fresh and new to go through
-And little to no backtracking with the game having actual fast travel with a LOT of areas you can teleport to

Meaning that yes, Sky 3rd was clearly less of a pain in the ass than SC in that regard and all that I've mentioned above does make the game pacing quite buttery smooth for the majority of it.

But what's good gameplay and exploration in a JRPG if not tied to a good story ?

Well turns out despite its weird disjointed plot structure, Trails the 3rd is the perfect cap off to the franchise one could ever hoped for.

The main content of the game itself is quite straightforward and short, but the side-content is truly where the game truly shines and what make this the penultimate kiseki experience for any fan of the franchise.

Like I said the game has an anthology approach to its story, along your exploration of Phantasma, you'll get across different kinds of doors which ranges from short stories about random characters to longer more developed stories to minigames. Some doors even have the luxury to tease you on the rest of the franchise especially star door 8 and 14 which sets the stage for what I believe would be stuff happening later in Crossbell and Cold Steel.

These doors really adds a lot to the cast that was already pretty meaty in the original and helped me get an even better appreciation for them even the super minor ones, some of these are actually so good you actually wonder why these subplot weren't in SC to begin with (especially the Estelle and Joshua ones which would've hit even harder in the context of that game rather than a random substory in 3rd).

Of course the clear outliers of all these doors is clearly Star Door 15 which is to put it lightly the "PTSD arc" of the Trails series due to how brutal of a tone and atmosphere change it is from the rest of the game (note : therapy not included) and have put me in quite a bad mood after finishing it. It's so viscerally brutal and told so crudely while keeping the doubt throughout the entire thing where you're in a constant state of "No fucking way..." until it is "yes fucking way" and your heart is broken to pieces.

But what about the main story ? Well this time instead of Estelle and Joshua serving more of a support role this time, the story focus on a character from SC named Kevin, Kevin was already a pretty damn fun character in SC but more in a comedic side-kick kind of way well at least until the ending of the game when a new side of his character is revealed to us.

Trails the 3rd builds on that ending to develop Kevin from a funny sidekick to quite possibly one of my favorite protagonist in media, even surpassing Estelle in her own series despite having two games worth of character development herself.

The story of Kevin about dealing with his past traumas and trying to bear the pain on his shoulder to atone for his sins and how his destructive coping mechanism manages to hurt the people around him (metaphorically and literally through the existence of Phantasma) is one that deeply touched me and was so effective and told with such brillance, nuance and subtlety that it managed to even get little old me emotional.

Suffice to say that the final third of the game is truly where the game reaches its most climatic point yet, seriously this ending feels even more cathartic than the one from SC in many ways and yes it did made me cry like a little baby because despite all of the bumps in the road, I did got attached to these characters and that particular smaller story really emphasized how much seeing them grow over the course of three games truly was something few JRPG can manage to pull off.

The final farewell to the cast was probably the best way to cap off this series.

Trails the 3rd is quite honestly a masterpiece but one that truly holds meaning within the context of its own series and to think some people would skip it is absolutely unreasonable.

You got me Falcom hive, you got me DAMN well

TL;DR : SC is trash , 3RD GANG RISE UP !

I think that we, as a society

Should make more games about tiny girls using a drill to do platforming and stuff

But alas, we only got Drill Dozer, Gurumin and this

We're a couple of steps away from the perfect TTGL videogame