Posted on: December 12, 2018
Crisco1492
Verified ownerGames: 1137 Reviews: 39
Good, but not great [LIGHT SPOILERS]
I came into Trails of Cold Steel after having finished the Trails in the Sky series. Overall, I found the change in gameplay to be interesting. You actually have to earn your S-Crafts this time, and some characters won't earn theirs until near the end of the story. The number of available crafts is a bit lower as well, although their effects are generally more diverse. The orbal system has been reworked, with the need to link certain orbments to earn more powerful arts having been completely eliminated. This was, for me at least, less fun than in Sky, but to each their own. You can expect a solid sixty hours of gameplay, assuming you're a completionist and you're following the story. It's good for most of that time. However, over the length of the game, there are points where things feel like they're dragging. I bought Steel because I had fun with the quirky dialog and behavior in Sky, and there was quite a bit of that here... however, at times it felt like there were random elements being introduced to pad the play time. The frequent practical exams, the exam questions, and whatnot distracted me from the main story, as did the need to speak to everyone three times a day to ensure you don't miss anything. Even then, you don't really get answers to every question you have. [SPOILERS] Also, right away, I was stricken by just how much darker this game was compared to the earlier series. In Sky, no human characters are said/shown to be killed until the third game, while in Steel you'll see and hear of hundreds of violent deaths by the end of the game. This, I think, was part of the reason I didn't like the story as much. There was less space for humor, with the last few chapters being doom and gloom everywhere. [END SPOILERS] Nonetheless, it's definitely worth a play. Hopefully SEED can get the rights to parts III and IV so that the story can be carried through to the end. With Japanese audio as well, perhaps?
Is this helpful to you?
