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I recently completed all four Trails Of Cold Steel games and playing through all of them was pretty exhausting not gonna lie. I went straight to Trails Of Cold Steel right after Trails In The Sky SC, because I didn’t think I needed to play 3rd chapter and the Crossbell games between Sky and Cold Steel aren’t out in the west yet. Honestly, I ended up enjoying Cold Steel way more than Sky. Being several games later, several things about the game are improved, including the poor game balance that most of these games have. It’s nowhere near perfect in Cold Steel, but it’s definitely way more tolerable. Out of all the games, I found the first Cold Steel to be the least frustrating and most fun. Not only that, but a handful of elements introduced in this game were featured in Tokyo Xanadu, another game I’ve played and really liked. When I got to the ending though, I really wasn’t sure how to react since it was a cliffhanger.
Eventually, I’d start Cold Steel II, picking up right where the previous game had left off. Although, this was after I decided I wanted to play Sky 3rd Chapter. Cold Steel II took on a way different format and had everyone travelling all over, which sounds cool on paper but it ended up feeling pretty tedious. The majority of the game was good, taking what I liked about the previous game and adding more stuff. Unfortunately, the game’s ending I take some issue with. It’s not the reveals. I’ll be honest, Cold Steel II probably has the most shocking revelation of all the games. At least to me it is. The problem I have is the final moments drag on and the final boss was bullshit. Also, there’s some stuff with Crossbell stuff that’s hard to appreciate when the Crossbell games have yet to be officially localized. The third game was horrible about this. Techinally, it’s not the games fault, but it’s definitely on Nihon Falcom and the localizers for getting these games localized out of order. There’s an entire chapter in Crossbell and I really couldn’t appreciate any of the returning Crossbell stuff. To kind of make up for it, some characters from Sky return. I did like seeing Rean go from being a student to an instructer and his students were decent characters but this is when I really started to feel like these games were dragging on. Cold Steel III is hours longer than Cold Steel II and I often felt like it went on way longer than it needed to. One of my least favorite parts is the bosses that heal themselves. Of course, they’re not new to RPGs but Cold Steel III took it way too far. Several bosses are capable of healing themselves and they do it CONSTANTLY and that resulted in me getting several game overs. It’s a decent game, but definitely my least favorite Cold Steel. Then IV, I had some issues running but I was still able to play it from start to finish. Since IV continues right after III, the Crossbell stuff is still here and I still didn’t feel much for any of the Crossbell characters. However, there were several more characters returning from Sky and I was happy to see a lot of these characters. The plot however, I found some parts a little dumb, I guess. I don’t know, I just didn’t find it too impressive or interesting. The other games had shocking revelations but IV really didn’t have anything like that. It was just thing happening after thing happening until it was over. Most major events got barely any reaction from me. As for the gameplay, it was more tolerable than III, aside from some technical problems like falling through the floor during combat constantly in Orchis Tower, long loading screens, and getting stuck on cutscenes. For the latter two, just changing the computer I used helped. Since III took on I’s format, IV took on II’s and I felt it pretty exhausting in this game too. I played all the way to the end and I gotta say, I didn’t really have that strong of a reaction to the ending. I did enjoy playing all of these, especially I and II, but I’m glad I’m done with them for now. And who knows, maybe I'll do a more detailed review on YouTube some day...?
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