Year 0
Dear diary,
Since failing to get GBA linkage working in Dolphin netplay however many years ago, we were unsure of when we'd finally be getting around to this. Especially since the remaster was out of the question, as it lacks local co-op and not all of us have a Nintendo Switch Online / PlayStation Plus subscription. But we've finally found the opportunity (and the Link Cables) to play it on original hardware. With character creation now out of the way, we can introduce ourselves:
Player 1, our de facto leader: a male, long-beaked Yuke from a family of tailors
Player 2 (that's me): a female, red-masked Lilty from a family of alchemists
"Player 3": a female, shark-eyed Selkie from a family of fishers
I'll refrain from including our names to protect our anonymity should this diary become compromised. I'll keep the formalities short for now: adventure awaits!

Year 1
Dear diary,
Our first year has come to a close. We've settled loosely into "builds" based on each of the 3 primary stats: P1 is focusing on magic, I'm focusing on defense, and P3 is focusing on strength. It's reassuring that the chalice mechanic, which I had been led to believe was an abitrary piece of busywork, isn't that bad. It may not be a deep mechanic, but it's a decent solution for circumventing the lack of splitscreen functionality, especially since everyone can take turns on chalice duty. The dungeon crawling so far has been pretty uneventful, except the Mine, which featured lanterns with Bombs trapped inside - a creative integration of classic iconography with the world design. Also, unlike the other dungeons, it had an actual gimmick. Not a terribly interesting one, just standing on buttons to make a minecart break through a wall, but the other two were just flat areas with chests and enemies. Pretty generic action RPG stuff, but we've only just begun.

Year 2
Dear diary,
It suddenly dawned on me how the radar mechanic works. Each player is randomly assigned one of four features: enemy locations, treasure locations, a map of the layout, or enemy info (since there's only 3 of us, we're always guaranteed that one person will have the map). But what's the context here? Is gosh itself shuffling these components between us each time we enter a dungeon? Why can't we trade these features with each other, or at least choose which we want? Anyway, the narrative experience is rather strange so far. Besides the basic premise, the "main story" is shaping up to be nothing more than "trudge through a dull dungeon, kill a boss who's probably just acting in self defense, steal their myrrh, dance at a bonfire after doing that 3 times, rinse and repeat." Is the real meat of the narrative in the overworld events? Most of them just involve some group of people showing up on the road, saying some random stuff, and then it ends before anything really happens. If they're meant to be episodic subplots, then for each "episode" to be so barren must mean these subplots are spread quite thin.

Year 3
Dear diary,
I'm warming up to the radar mechanic. Not for some hidden merit I've discovered in it, but rather because the light amount of cooperation it enables spices up the dungeon crawling so much more than anything in the dungeons themselves. There was only one dungeon in this batch (the Manor) which provided some fun of its own, if only for its brevity and the cute story context. Speaking of story, I'm also warming up to the overworld events. They're so cheesy and bizarre that they're quickly becoming the only thing I look forward to anymore. It's ironic considering how slow and boring of an overworld this otherwise is, ESPECIALLY the miasma streams. Even for ones you've crossed before, you still have to sit there and watch as your character (yes, singular character, since funnily enough you can just have one person cross while the others sit at the beginning and slowly die of miasma poisoning) slowly inches along the path while you wonder how someone could possibly be enthralled by this more than MAYBE twice. And every miasma stream is nearly identical of course. I'm afraid the mindless monotony of the gameplay loop will just keep wearing on until the end. But hey, we're halfway there, right?

Year 4
Dear diary,
Some of the worst dungeons yet: same old tedium, but Rebena Te Ra had some obnoxious puzzles, and the difficulty is spiking hard. The combat has really been wearing out its welcome, particularly spellcasting. Spells are becoming much more crucial, and it's very common to be struck with a halting status (freeze, stone, etc) before you can finish casting one. This is doubly dreadful for spells which require two people. One of these, Holy, is practically required to kill some recently introduced enemies (and bosses!). It doesn't help that the equipment feels so restrictive. Theoretically, we could spend additional miserable hours grinding materials for a plethora of armor and accessories which give +1 poison resist or something (whatever that means). But is it worth it? If a relevant opportunity arises to use said equipment, I'd have to push Select, bend my face over the GBA, fumble fatfingeredly through the menu to equip the correct thing, then look back up at the mangled corpse I left behind in the meantime. We're approaching the light at the end of the tunnel anyhow, so I'll just hope we won't have to resort to grinding.

Year 5
F***ing diary,
Hades must have been looking over my shoulder and decided Sysyphus wasn't the only one who needed a cruel and unusual punishment. We should've known by how freakishly powerful the enemies in this final dungeon were, but we pressed on. And we tried, we really did, but it's just not feasible for 3 undergeared caravanners - with what I'm realising are abysmal defense stats - to stand up to this ungodly monstrosity of a boss at the bottom of this hellhole. We were desperate to miraculously pull through to prevent throwing away the progress we made through this place, but it wasn't meant to be. We'll have to grind. Hard. Apparently each dungeon has cycles, and only by making it to the 3rd cycle (yeah because these dungeons were so much fun the first time) will we be able to upgrade our gear from Mithril to Diamond. Diamond is the NEXT STEP UP from Mithril, but I digress. Let's just get this over with.

Year 9
Good riddance,
Gear has been grinded, our GBAs have lost power at least 87 times, and unfavorable comparisons to Nicktoons Unite! have been made. I don't know what else I could say. We're entering the final dungeon for what I hope is the final time. Let's mosey.

Year ?
Dear diary,
I must admit, this sequence following the final dungeon's boss may have sparked the most engaging cooperation I've experienced in any game. We needed to put our heads together and place desperate faith in one another in a way I never could have expected. I wouldn't dare spoil the details of this, but not out of respect for any potential readers of this diary who may want to experience it firsthand. Rather, if we had to endure 9 years of torment to get to this moment, then I refuse to offer anyone a shortcut. Suffer like we did.

Year ????????
Diary,
This may well be my final entry. We've gotten a few "Game Over"s fighting this final boss, but we've learned how it works and sussed out some basic strategies to sufficiently stay afloat. This current attempt will probably be "the one," but we've been on it for a while now. Has it been 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 years? Is the boss' health nearly depleted, or is it actually infinite? If this takes much longer, I'm not gonna make it. I'll... lose the motivation to bother writing a review of this game. Should that be the case, then I hope someone manages to find this diary, because it'll be the only record left of what has transpired. So I'll offer these final thoughts to whoever may be able to read them: if you want to follow in our footsteps (or GOSH forbid drag some friends into our footsteps as well), just know that there's always a better way. If you really want the novelty of a multiplayer game which necessitates each player to connect a GBA to a GameCube, I'm sure Four Swords or Pac-Man Vs would suffice. If you want a multiplayer RPG on the GameCube, there's Tales of Symphonia. It may have shallow combat, a convoluted story, and a bizarre tonal clash between the graphics and the subject matter, but Symphonia clearly had at least 100 times more passion and effort on display than this. Or maybe you grew up with this, which unfortunately means you're already cursed beyond any hope of salvation. But if you're like us, and you're on a mission to play every Japanese role playing game with cooperative multiplayer, well... your fate is sealed of course, but just try to save this one for later. In the meantime, go play some Monster Hunter or something.

I could write this more eloquently but i think i will just copy the shit i wrote in discord when i finished it. It cant handle the cast size, it doesnt know what it wants to be, the character development beam only hits certain characters while completely avoiding others, the plot was lacking direction and then at the end we get answers for weird questions i forgot i even had cause i was too busy being mad at how absolutely stupid the gnome memoey erasure masks are, humanity being the cause of everything should have been the focus instead of literally talked about 2 times and brushed over very quickly, prologue to the beginning of act 2 is some of the best cold steel has to offer and then act 2 is some of the worst cold steel has to offer, why is some of the best character writing in this entire arc delegated to bonding events why cant you write that in. They needed to have actual stakes and have their rules actually fucking matter, and you can fucking tell they planned to kill off or shelf some of the cast but idfk man they were going for with this its like theyre trying to appeal to a certain demographic by being like we have all these characters you can choose who to play, but its like they cant properly write scenes because they are accounting for everyones diffferent party makeup. FOR THE RECORD I LIKE A GOOD CHUNK OF THIS CAST BUT LIKE they are written like this is a tokusatsu for 8 year olds im losing my mind man. IF there was no act 2 and no cast bloat(as in they at least focus on a certain amount of characters and have like old class 7 do other shit) then this would prolly be my fav cold steel game. Why does everyone say nothing theres so much said that isnt anything, the side quests in this game however are some of the best in the series and at the very least the best cold steel has to offer. The atmosphere , the NPC's, the sidequests, a good chunk of the tracks, a lot of the bonding event scenes are the best part of the game and imo this game is the trails game to do the first 3 the best, but man if only the could actually write the main fucking scenario without copy and pasting the same paragraph 4 times. Also sucks that sometimes they can write the old cast well and then sometimes they fucking treat the old cast as hollow fucking call back fan service material. Anyways, sky through cs2 are some of my fav games ever, and i even enjoyed cold steel 3 quite a bit, and I LIKED A LOT OF WHAT THIS GAME HAS AND WHAT IT ADDED TO ZEMURIA but man this game just spent all of my goodwill sky-azure built up and i really hope falcom remembers they can fucking write cause ive seen em do it, dont know why theyre hellbent on writing like this but anyways. Crow altina juna 4 life, i am praying they can somehow salvage this shit in reverie but it would take a lot to pull this off, and im sayin this shit as a fan of cold steel 2.

This game is a slowburn 40 hour slice of life rpg, that generally is treated by the fanbase as a slog to get to through to get to the good stuff in SC. I can understand the viewpoint of someone who does not like this game if it is their first trails game but I think this game does an excellent job of using a simple rpg narrative to build up larger narrative intrigue, plant the seeds and hints of greater things to come, and make the cast of characters feel very genuine. It is a slowburn but it is immersive and warm and fun, the soundtrack is one of my favorite of all time, and it is just as good as the second chapter, its just less grand due to it being the start of the journey. Since this was my 3rd trails game, after cold steel 1 and 2, I kind of knew how to approach this mentally since they can be slow and it helps to be expecting this.

trails is my favorite series of all time and I do tierlists of like what my favorite game in the series is and why and shit, and I always put 3rd and azure in the highest one and then sit there going where do I put SC. Ive seen so many opinions and takes on this game and its writing and gameplay and pacing and characters and yada yada and thought about this game so much man. I just want to say yes of course certain character and there backstories weve seen before, joshua bright isnt the first to have this character arc, estelle bright isnt the first to have a stubborn happy go lucky character have to mature and grow up to the task at hand type character arc, but god damn man does this game do it so fucking well. its soundtrack its art its world its characters and just how fucking falcom does not care that this is an rpg they do not care they are going to make you run around the entire country again in chapter 8, because thats what they want estelle and them to do it just has so much fucking guts and confidence and its doing a story we more or less have seen aspects of somewhere or another but I will prolly never play anything ever again that made me feel like this. When I am making my little trails/falcom game tierlist SC always makes me stop and go I cant rank this I cant compare this. Im not saying others cant but god what cast what a soundtrack what a fucking game dude. I wont give it 5 stars idk why maybe cause i dont wanna fill up my 5 star ratings or whatever but this shit MEANS sumn to me man. Cold steel 4 killed all my goodwill the series had built up in me and it destroyed in future interest in the series, but thinking about SC again makes me wanna give reverie and kuro a shot. I love this game so much I could also write about how its orbment system feels really good and how its just another thing that helps immerse you into liberl and zemuria and shit but you know different people play things for different things.