Its peak...
Having a smaller main cast compared to the sky trilogy made me get attached way quicker to the characters. The writing is just as good as it was before they really don't miss. The liberl stuff was just too good it was so worth the build up. I really appreciate the changes in game design on caves/dungeons, they don't feel as linear as they used too. Please don't start the trails series with this game, you'll get more from the story if you start with FC. Overall a great game with a good cast, still miss Oliver tho.

I really wanted this game to be great since my glorious king oliver was going to appear but unfortunately most of this game felt very tropey in allot of ways. A big thing that really brings it down is that we already know so much of what happens in Erebonia from the other trails games that seeing those scenes happen in the story eliminated any shock it would of had. I also wish they kept C identity more of a mystery it was super obvious who they were. A big thing I liked about FC was how familiarized I was with Liberl by the end of the game, but I felt the opposite happened here. If you showed me a map of Erebonia and told me where Legram was located I wouldn't know what to tell you. Which I find very weird, this is a setup game I really would of liked to know the place.
I know I'm ripping into the game allot, but I really do believe that its not as bad as people say it is. I always keep up with the ludicrous amount of npcs in the other trails game, but with this one I felt way more invested in what was going on with the school. I loved seeing the characters grow and become friends. They all came from different political background, and they all still found a way to get past that.
For me Cold steel definitely had allot of issues but the characters really made me turn a blind eye for most of the game. I still very much enjoyed myself with this game, and now that were mostly caught up to where Azure left of I'm hoping the story can pick up again.

While I'm not the biggest fan of CS1 I really enjoyed my time playing CS2. It delivers on some mysteries the first game set up and makes more at the same time. Which makes me very excited for the next game. (mild spoilers) The biggest problem I had with the story is that we already new too much before Erebonia started. The story bits at the end would have been better if we didn't learn about them in azure. At this point I'm just going to assume every trails game is going to have pacing issues. Its inevitable on games this long so I'm just accepting it as the norm. The main story was good but what really got me was the epilogue. I got hit with the same emotion I felt at the end of sky the 3. Its crazy how good they make you get attached with these characters, might be the strongest thing about the trails series. Overall I was left satisfied and I want to see more.