peak

if you've played all the trails games before this one to date, the amount of payoff and satisfying moments you get throughout the game is absolutely intoxicating, i fucking love the character cast in this series, even the more minor characters that don't get a ton of screen time grew on me so easily, but most of all seeing the liberl cast AND the crossbell cast AND the old class VII AND the new class VII is a fucking treat and the game even manages to handle it in a way that doesn't make it overwhelming for the player.

the fact you don't get rean until like, 15 hours into the game was a bit disappointing at first, but admittedly makes for a great payoff in that climactic moment of the game. and even so, the beginning portion of the game was still fun and had some really heartwarming and emotional scenes. seeing altina break down crying after waking up and remembering what happened to millium honestly kind of broke me, im not gonna lie

as for the middle sections of the game, which sometimes tend to be the weak point of trails games, i think this game does a good job of keeping you interested throughout with clever foreshadowing, giving you a trip down memory lane with memorable setpieces from CS3 (similar to what CS2 does but with CS1's locations), as well as drip feeding you incredible reunions (for the player) with characters from the past arcs of the trails series. furthermore, i love trails gameplay, especially in CS3/4, so there was a lot of fun to be had along the way in that regard too, with trial chests, cryptids, boss fights, etc... vantage masters and pom party provide a good distraction for your completionist itch as well

and then the endgame... man, the endgame. i will say this: gameplay wise, it can feel a bit repetitive and formulaic, in regards to the salt pales and empyreal fortress. but as far as the salt pales go, they are very short and don't overstay their welcome at all. so to me, it was just cool to play as the different sets of characters through the salt pales that you either didn't have access to at all or rarely did throughout the course of this game. it served as a really fun little build up to the main event. the empyreal fortress, on the other hand, did get a bit too repetitive for my liking, i honestly would have enjoyed the "split your big party into 3 teams so you have to strategize party management" mechanic employed earlier in this very game to make an appearance here. would have spiced these sections up and added some challenge as well. that being said, when it comes to the plot, this shit went HARD as fuck. call it corny, predictable, melodramatic, whatever you want, i fucking LOVE this shit. the confrontation with rufus especially was just immaculate. but in general, i just love class VII's group dynamic, and it really shone through during this part of the game. and then at the very end, that bait ending... brought me to fucking tears, and i'm not ashamed to admit it. honestly, i won't lie, that would have been a fucking baller ending, and i would still be giving this 5 stars if it ended like that, despite being a broken man in the process. but, knowing trails, i had a feeling there might be something post credits, and thank fucking aidios there was, because the true ending was so damn wholesome and satisfying. i know trails has a habit of not letting anyone die, which was VERY apparent in this game, but they usually explain it away well enough that i can excuse it, but there is no denying the heavy plot armor that exists in this series. do i care though? nah, rean crow and millium lived fuck yeah

since i've done nothing but gush about how amazing this game is i feel i should finish this review off with naming the problems i had with the game, which were very few but worth mentioning nonetheless. first of all, i'm not a huge fan of the whole "curse of erebonia" thing, just the concept of having a curse that makes people do stupid/irrational things to create conflict feels like a huge cop out to me, as well as unneeded. i think that it would have been completely fine to just have it be the fact that, tragedies like hamel happen because humans are innately flawed and are prone to making inhumane and awful decisions, and leave it at that. it's a fact of life, there are shitty humans out there, and decent humans that make horrible choices. but instead, everything is explained away as "the curse of erebonia" so that at the end of the day everyone can be seen as a moral saint that just got done dirty by the curse. i know the curse factors heavy into major plot points of the story regarding the great twilight, ishmelga, etc. so maybe it was moreso implemented for those plot writing purposes but it really just felt silly to me at times. this is the major gripe i have with the plot. another gripe i have that, i suppose is also plot related, is the whole persona 5 esque romance whoever you want mechanic, which unfortunately completely blockades the writers from writing in canon romances for the erebonia characters because all the girls have to be head over heels for rean. the one exception being millium, who was not included as a romance option for rean in this game and seems to have something blossoming with jusis, which is a very cute dynamic and one i like a lot! would have been really cool, IMO, to see more like this!!! (i guess technically there's like gaius/linde too??? idk wtf was going on there) but really seeing the relationships of like, estelle/joshua, agate/tita, olivier/schera in this game, made me really wish that we saw stuff like that with the cold steel characters, but you pretty much don't see it at all. to be fair, this isn't a cold steel specific problem, as we also didn't really see canon romances in the crossbell series either for fairly similar reasons. i won't lie, at first, when playing CS1 and 2, i really enjoyed the free time system and liked the idea of getting to take my pick of who i liked the most, coming off a persona 5 playthrough where i really enjoyed that mechanic. but the fact is, rean isn't joker, he is NOT a self insert, he is very much his own character, and it ends up feeling weird to be the one in control of who he is going to fall in love with. not to mention, EVERYONE wanting a piece of the action, including ones that don't seem to make a lot of sense, such as (in my opinion) sara, juna, and altina, isn't always the greatest. but to be honest, the romance plays a rather small part in the game and doesn't impact much of the writing at all, just a few special scenes and an odd dialogue option here and there. so it really isn't THAT big of a deal, and i enjoy the plot a fuck ton nonetheless, i just would have liked to see canon romances written into the story. even a boring one like rean/alisa! tbh IMO, rean/laura would have made the most sense, and laura isn't even my best girl by any means. i digress

i wasn't expecting to type this much but, yeah, this game and this arc and this series as a whole has really made a huge impact on me and i've loved every second of it. it's pretty impossible for me to not rank this as my favorite game in the series to date, it just really fires on all cylinders and is the complete package in every way. seeing "Trails of Cold Steel has reached its conclusion." hit me like a fucking dumpster truck, i am so god damn sad that this arc is over. i first played trails of cold steel, four god damn years ago in 2020 (because i did the jank play order where you start with CS1-2 before playing sky) and i just didn't want it to end man. from what i know about reverie though, it seems like it isn't over quite yet. i fucking love trails and am so glad that there are more games, this series is just simply fucking peak probably my favorite series of all time at this point. GG

the ending stunlocked me

edit: to elaborate further, this series is AMAZING and this game did not disappoint. because i played CS1-CS2 first and then went back to Sky, there actually was around a 2 year gap for me between CS2 and CS3, which made the time jump feel much more real to me lmao. i guess that's a benefit of that play order. needless to say, getting back into cold steel was extremely satisfying and reuniting with the old class VII hit super hard, not to mention all the guest appearances from liberl/crossbell and the new class VII are no slouches either. the character cast in this series is immaculate and it really shines in this game. they really stepped it up with the gameplay too, adding fun new mechanics like Break and Orders to the already good combat system present in the previous CS games.

if I had to name any gripe whatsoever it would be that the late game is a bit too easy once you get access to really broken resources like the domination quartz / hades gem etc... makes some key fights near the end pretty anticlimactic when you can kill them all before they even have a chance to attack. naturally though if i wanted more challenge i could've just played on nightmare difficulty or not abused the game to its core lmao, for what it's worth i think this is only a problem later in the game and that the difficulty curve through the early-mid game is fine

furthermore the ending, while crazy, IS a cliffhanger ending that leaves many loose ends untied which is fine as a stylistic choice for the series but does knock it slightly for my overall opinion of this game specifically personally since it's not the complete package.

all in all, to this point I would say this is currently my 2nd favorite game in the whole series just behind trails to azure. lots of potential for CS4

this series is so good

this game has a really strong early-mid game, but towards the late game you will get a "oh we're doing this again" feeling. just feels a bit too similar to the late games of sky SC and sky 3rd for my liking. it also drags a bit and doesn't have an extremely satisfying conclusion (except for estelle/joshua/renne which even that felt a bit rushed and anti-climactic)

i love the SSS, the fact that the main cast is so much smaller than in sky/cold steel makes it way easier to get attached as the characters get much needed screen time and development. but admittedly, the supporting cast and antagonists are weaker than in sky and cold steel. the main antagonist, albeit with slightly different ambitions, is just weissmann 2.0 to the very end

If I'm being brutally honest, it's the worst installment in the franchise. That being said, I love Pikmin so I still had fun with it.

I think the game suffers from being piss easy for 90% of the game and then having a random massive difficulty spike at the very last cave. And in the case of the last cave, most of the "difficulty" just feels cheap and annoying more than anything, which is a way I didn't feel in regards to the difficulty of say, Pikmin 2, for example. Oatchi kind of breaks the game, not that he's the only reason that most of the game is insanely easy, but he's a big part of it. The difficulty of even Pikmin 3 isn't really present in this one (again, until the very last cave) so if that was a part of Pikmin you enjoyed then you're not going to find it here.

Difficulty issues aside, the game is very charming and fun. I will say it suffers from too much dialogue, a problem that didn't exist in the previous games, it just eats up game time and serves to break immersion. The rewards you get from the castaways you save are miniscule and not even worth going out of your way to talk to them to be honest. Also on the topic of the castaways, Dandori gets old, fast. These Dandori caves are EVERYWHERE, and I just wasn't a huge fan of the concept of being rushed in caves. I love trying to maximize my time efficiently on the surface, but I'd rather take my time in caves.

Night expeditions were a bit of a let down, suffers from the same problem as the whole game really where all of it is insanely easy until the very last one. The whole concept also I was disappointed by, I thought you'd just be able to play the game normally during night but with much harder enemies and such. Instead it's something completely separate from the main game and, again, the castaways you get from curing the leaflings with the glow sap from the night expeditions, do not provide much but uninteresting fluff.

My final issue with the game is the lack of creativity present when it comes to the levels. The only one that stands out at all is Hero's Hideaway, the rest are all extremely forgettable. They look nice, but that's about it. They feel much less interesting and expansive than the levels in previous games, and 4/6 areas can just be summed up with "forest/grassy area." Also in regards to Hero's Hideaway, I thought that the fact that we were entering a human's house that was clearly recently renovated/in use would perhaps open the door for some interesting plot developments regarding humans/earth, but nothing of the sort happens. Feels like massive wasted potential there. Also in regards to creativity, to say the game took "inspiration" from Pikmin 2, would be a MASSIVE understatement. The game straight up plagiarizes Pikmin 2 at times (looking at you Engulfed Castle) which does provide for cool little call backs but eventually it starts to feel like they just couldn't be bothered to come up with anything new so they decided to borrow from the fan favorite game in the series instead.

All in all, I enjoyed the game, but it felt a step below the rest of the franchise. It has a lot of content, you'll definitely get your money's worth, but I definitely enjoyed the previous installments more.

I forgot to review this when putting in all my ratings so I will now. One of my favorite games of all time, it is such an amazing mix of memorable setpieces and great level design which is what Nintendo does best, as well as having legitimate challenge which is something that Nintendo is typically not known for. This game when going for 100%, is fucking hard and I enjoyed that a lot. Purple pikmin are broken, sure, but they are fun as hell to use and as a newcomer to the game you will struggle a lot regardless. Everything about this game is just amazing, I love the levels, I love the enemies, I love the treasures that are real world items with unique names, it just felt like so much heart and soul was put into this game.

I think every entry in the Pikmin franchise is great, but this game is far and away #1 to me. It's no wonder that Pikmin 4 took so much inspiration from it, they knew what they were doing.

doors

there's A LOT i could write about this game (both positive and negative) but i'm feeling lazy right now. what i will say is, amazing character cast, and brilliant writing like every trails game that i've played so far. i enjoyed this game more than FC, but not quite as much as SC.

star door 15 felt like i was playing a different game. bone chilling