the worst falcom game to date.

cs4 is filled with trite, worthless filler (act 1-2), and character writing that borders on parody. act 2 is abyss fiction with conflict so forced that the villains themselves cannot even justify the reason for it. act 3 sucks and relies on the shitty plot device (the curse) to move the plot along. the curse is one of the worst written plot devices in all of fiction, being able to do basically anything the writers want by taking away character agency. with the characters having their agency being manipulated by the curse, the writers can set up literally any sort of conflict they want regardless of whether or not the character would participate in said conflict. its like the blood pact from radiant dawn (if you know what that is good job) but applied to like over half the cast. but hey, why set up sidequests/plot points/character moments when you can just make the curse do it for you? it doesnt help that the central plot doesnt kick in until act 3.

the combat was decent but falcom cannot be bothered to balance their games anymore. with balancing the combat system would be excellent but even on nightmare the game is piss easy. the mech fights are pretty cool though

the bloated cast (16 main party members) means little to no character development occurs. the only stratifying character moments come from callbacks to older arcs. the entirety of oc7 and nc7 sucks outside of ash as alisha, the rest of the characters get no character developments or moments. the harem sucks and takes away agency from the women's character arcs. musse is actually a joke and i cannot believe that anyone can take this game seriously. juna being forced as the pseudo main character was awful in cs3 and is awful now: her corny speeches are so bad they offend me. like the rest of the female cast, her character arc is ruined because of the forced rean simping. she talks like she knows the SSS even though we have never seen this. not to mention they had to fucking RETCON HER INTO CROSSBELL BY MAKING NEW VERSIONS AND HER CHARACTER IS STILL SHIT. they just use pedo coom bait like altina to sell copies instead of write them arcs (altina gets no development she doesnt even grieve over the events in cs3 ending lmao). what a joke.

characters are brought back to life for no reason, which takes away from the stakes along with the horrible pacing. the continent is on the crux of war and u are in some fuckoff town taking strolls and running errands. the stakes are also fucked because the game gives every single fucking villain a redemption arc. your friend killed 3 people? no problem, we can save him using the power of friendship!!!!

the music is okay, unisuga made some bangers. i dont know how singa is controversial considering his mixing is worse than most armature music and is overall shit. they also play his awful music for hours on end, in fragments i think i had to listen to the same 3 singa songs loop for 3 hours straight and i had to turn down the volume because it was so bad.

the localization was okay, but full of bugs. a boss in act 2 only spoke japanese lol.

they did bring back a lot of older characters for fanservice, which was cool but a bit disappointing considering they dont show up for a purpose beyond fanservice and being there for the plot. i wish more of it was like renne in zero in how they actually continued her arc and weaved it into the plot, but hey with a cast that bloated u cant really do much.

why this game has a 4.0 is beyond me. i guess kiseki fans are so deep into this series that they cant bear to recognize the game has flaws.