i have played every single kiseki entry in chronological order. starting with FC back in february, then slowly working my way through them. from the sky games, to crossbell, and now cold steel. when i finished CS1 around a month ago, i really loved it. i thought that it was the best beginning game to an arc in the series so far, over zero and even over FC for how much i love that game too. needless to say, between my incredibly positive thoughts on the sky arc overall with SC and 3rd both being two all time favorites, and where CS1 ended off, CS2 had LARGE shoes to fill

but what it did went so far beyond what i could've expected

i am being completely genuine when i say that this is probably my favorite game in the series since 3rd, it's tied with it for second place. and honestly? were it not for act 2 of this game being pretty roughly paced even by normal kiseki standards, this would probably be up there with SC for contention as my overall favorite

the gameplay of this is by far the best of any kiseki game up to this point. i really loved SC and 3rd's combat, and despite my grievances with azure they introduced some awesome new features with that system. but the refinement CS2 made upon the already fantastic system in CS1, coupled with arguably the single most exploitable feature in this series with overdrive, makes this game just such an unbelievable treasure to play. nowhere was this made more evident than in the epilogue, cause honest to god, i could've prolly sunk an extra 10 hours just running around in the reverie corridor using the entire cast the game gives you

but where this really gripped me and refused to fucking let me go was with its story, more specifically with the quiet but culminating tragedy they present with rean. the game goes to such drastic lengths to portray not only the nearly endless well of empathy and love within him, but the depths of his self-hatred as well. without his loved ones, he's so tormented he can't function. he needs them to exist, he needs them to pick him up when he falls, to motivate him not to give into despair and let death take him. and more than anything, he needs to protect them. to know they're safe, to know they're there with him. hence why he hunts after all of them

but crow eludes him

crow remains out of his grasp, driven by his own journey. the assassination of osborne was what he drove himself to work for, everything was an afterthought. he built himself to become a singularly driven tool of revenge, reneging his humanity for this sake. but like cassius bright says so eloquently to joshua in sky SC; through simply existing, you form bonds, and you connect to others. and those connections remain no matter the years or strife that pass. crow, whether he wanted it or not, formed that connection with rean and the rest of class VII. they knew it, and he knew it

but things could never go back to the way they were

that, ultimately, is the tragedy that makes it. not only does osborne's survival, as already told by trails to azure, mean implicitly that crow's journey is an inherently meaningless one. we know that this war, everything that we thought meant the culture of erebonia would change, was simply another one of his plots. all the lives he trampled, all the dreams he shattered, everything that mounted against him, was another tool for him to wield and shape erebonia into an even more militant, imperialist hellscape. crow and the connection he made to class VII meant nothing, and that shatters rean. if someone like him could be reduced to so little, even with his almost unrelenting willpower to see his journey through, what does it say of himself? of someone so tormented by self-hatred and guilt he believe he has no place to reside?

and osborne tells him. it's that he becomes another tool. burdened by a title he never wished for, committing actions he never believed in, fighting legitimate heroes to which he believe he could never hope to be. and all of this while knowing the burden of his loved one meant nothing. that he failed. that he failed himself, crow's friends, class VII, and the thors academy as a whole. and no matter the smile he puts in on that epilogue, no matter the reclamation of those peaceful days they all sought, there is but one simple truth:

things will never be as they were. and they can never be again

a character driven by love, forced to commit atrocities for a man he wholly despises. a man who's simple existence spits in the face and in the life of someone he grew to cherish. a country torn in pieces, sewn together through the threads of further strife and discord. of blood, and iron