A year ago, I played this game in the coming weeks before the release of Xenoblade 3. I enjoyed my time with the game and the series, but I didn't really get to fully digest it since I was in a rush to also play Xenogears before XC3 at the time. I initially left the game at an 8/10 score due to this. After replaying it without any rush to beat it as quickly as possible, I can say I owe this game an apology. Xenosaga 3 is, if anything, an achievement. It's common knowledge that Xenosaga as a series was unfortunately cut short and had to end early at 3, but the fact that the devs and writers were able to salvage that and still deliver a satisfying and hopeful conclusion to the story is downright impressive. It's by no means a "perfect" game due to its circumstances, but the good so severely outweighs the bad that I think it has earned the new rating of 10/10.

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

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 !

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

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)

After the frustrating mess that was Cold Steel 3's finale, I went into this game expecting it to be an even bigger trainwreck. And I wasn't... entirely wrong. Cold Steel 4 is a game that, while still overall fun and has its good moments, was ultimately sabotaged by the baffling writing decisions made by Cold Steel 3 and is nowhere near the masterpiece finale it should've been.

I would like to start off by mentioning the things I actually liked about this game. For one, the combat is as fun as ever. I played on Nightmare difficulty for this one and while it was still an incredibly easy game, I found satisfaction in watching the difficulty completely crumble with the amount of insane tools the game gives you. The game being so easy even on the highest difficulty lets you get away with using pretty much any character and strategy and still make it through. In typical Kiseki fashion there are still a ton of characters to get attached to, but that also leads to one of this game's biggest issues - character bloat. There are too many characters for the story to juggle that a ton either get nothing to do or are just horribly written. Nearly every returning character is a shell, just there to make the player point at the screen and go "Hey I know that guy!"

Another thing I want to mention is the game's pretty strong first act. Act 1 and Fragments are genuinely good. Having the new Class VII separated from Rean not only allows the class members to have more screentime, but also establishes a clear goal early on: get Rean back. This entire segment of the game, including its conclusion with Fragments, thoroughly surprised me with how good it was. Unfortunately, this is the best the game gets for a long time, which leads to the part of this review where i touch on the bad.

Right after the game's best part immediately comes the worst part of the game - Act 2. If there's one thing that I can say hurt Cold Steel 4 the most besides the obvious nonsensical plot points and revelations, it's the pacing. For being the start to the largest war in Zemuria's history, there is way too much of nothing happening for a good majority of this game, and Act 2 is why. It actually starts off pretty good with the first Rivalry, but after that it turns into a completely different game. The entirety of Act 2 is literally 30 hours of straight filler where all you do is visit town -> talk to NPCS -> solve the extremely minor issue in the area -> rinse and repeat. Padding isn't a new thing in this series at all but I feel like it's at its worst here considering how high the stakes SHOULD be. It's tedious as hell and I actually had to stop playing for a couple of days because of how boring it was.

Last thing I want to touch on is a feature that has existed since Cold Steel 1 and I have never been a fan of, but they're even more baffling here - the bonding events. Mainly with the female characters. The Erebonian curse is one thing, but the real curse in this game is every girl's inability to be around Rean and not want to make out with him. There are some genuinely good scenes between Rean and the female characters, but so many are also immediately undercut by the fact that every girl is in love with Rean. It can get really creepy considering that even characters like Altina and Fie are romance options when they have no business being there.

Thankfully Act 3 and Finale, while not amazing, still kept me entertained enough to want to see the game through to the end. While I can say this is the second worst Kiseki game only ahead of Cold Steel 1, I can also say that I do not regret my time invested into this series at all. A couple of letdowns isn't going to stop me from thinking about the hundreds of hours I've put in being invested in this world and the characters living in it. Reverie and the Kuro games are waiting, and I'm more motivated than ever to continue with this series.

This is a game I have played, yep. This is gonna be my longest review by far due to this game having way too much to talk about. This is a game I had such insane low hopes in before I went into it due to hearing some things here and there from my friends on discord and since 2 Xenoblade faces on twitter were playing it around the same time I started CS4, which is maybe why I can give it some slight props in certain situations. I’m the type of person who can find some things to enjoy in a game where all else fails, and there were some things in this one I did find. The one thing I found myself really enjoying was the non-true ending. It was something I did not expect for them to do and I really took a lot out of that. It kept a sense of stakes in previous events (that the true ending reverted cause fuck stakes) and added more on top of that. A second thing was that the combat was so fucking broken that I found comedy in it. I’m sorry, I should not be doing half of the hp of a final dungeon boss on nightmare difficulty. The difference between this game being easy and a game like CS3 being easy is that CS3 is too easy due to corny things. I will 100% rather broken caster Crow over broken Spirit Unification and Sledgehammer easy. I honestly really like how the game flows into getting Rean out of the BW. It’s a great change in pace and a pretty decent difficulty boost in showing that Rean really is the core of every group he is in. And lastly it would be a disservice to knock the good scenes the game has. There are more great scenes in this 1 game then the past 3 games which has to be some pluses to it. But we’ve all run out of things I enjoy, you know what time it is. The amount of fraudulent characters in this game is hilarious. You make a game which has characters like Cedric and Claire and expect me to enjoy these villains. There are only at max 3 villains in this game I enjoy and thats so fucked up. The only character that I feel like kept getting real development in this game was Ash, and this is only because Joshua was in this game. Another thing I really don’t like was that it feels like they tried to fit way too many references into this game as to previous games. It’s been known that Cold Steel is just a big Sky reference but holy shit there's just so many in this game that it just feels like they just wanted to reference it. There's a scene where Ash says for no reason that Joshua would look good in a dress and it is 100% only there so they can say it is a reference. The worst offender of them all is the story. Jesus it's so nonsensical, nothing happens for genuinely 35 hours of the game. The curse is an awful story mechanic where it is only there to help create needed conflict to evolve the story. “Huh, how do we make x event happen? OH YEAH IT’S THE CURSE THAT CAUSED IT”. And finally, why the FUCK did they reintroduce Gilbert. It is an awful character who is so painfully unfunny but APPARENTLY THIS WHOLE COMMUNITY LOVES HIM??? WHERE DO YOU SEE THIS I GENUINELY CAN’T TELL MAN. Coming from someone who genuinely really enjoyed CS2, I really wanted to end this all saying that it wasn’t the only Cold Steel game I genuinely enjoyed. Coming out of that, I can’t say that this was an experience I would recommend. There are some great things about this game, but the other side of the coin is much heavier. Take me back to Crossbell please

Date beat: 10/23/23
2.8/5

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