As a huge fan of the Trails in the Sky Part of the Legend of Heros Saga, I played through Trails of Cold Steel too. It was a pretty mixed experience. While we had mostly interesting characters and a great protagonist in Trails in the Sky, we got mostly stereotypes and Rean in Trails of Cold Steel, and I still don't know what's more disappointing (it's Rean) The Story is interesting, the gameplay was good overall, and we even get some interesting characters, since Tita from Trails in the Sky is here, and there is still Fie, so that's a plus Having a protagonist like Rean drags down everything, his personality is rather bland. It doesn't really help most of the cast just doesn't excite you, sappy reunions are just seeing a bunch of people you don't care all that much about. Seeing Tita reminds you of the good times, seeing Eliott reminds you of...well he was in the last game Fights are really easy in this version just keep your CP high, add damage with the new command system, way more convenient than raising attack by craft or spell, and fire away the S-Craft at full CP, bossfight is over most of the time. I had to work harder in Trails in the Sky. After the final of Steel1 they assumed bot fights were too hard, which the final fight of Steel1 was. In part2 they felt like minigames, and still do most of the time, but they get to be part of the real fights, which wasn't such a good idea. They are are way to easy, give no strategic challenge at all, impede, attack to fill the gauge, and release all hell on the opponent, heal in between if needed. No positioning, no setup or buffs, just fire away The orbment system gets reduced further too, now you get a secondary master quartz for more spells, mitigating the clumsy change in the system from Sky to Steel (I would elaborate about that, but the review length is limited) I'm really looking forward to Steel4, we will see Estelle and Joshua, and many other better characters from former games, that will be fun
This game could be fun, the platform stuff could be a little more forgiving, or maybe add an easy mode with better time limits since that really wasn't fun at all Also, the combat system, button mashing without a doubt, but if you try to attack, and the opponent just attacks while you want to attack with one of your guys, the chance to miss the block is really high. Doesn't help I try to play this on a keyboard. The total downvote is thanks to a platform part in the middle of a fight, you just got to be kidding me. Of course the boss fights are cheap as hell, he just ramps up the attack rate and with your flawed block mechanic, you get damaged beyond believe before you can even react. All in all, it's a shame, since the story, while not overally new, was quite nice. What were they thinking?
I really couldn't play more than the beginning, those controlls are so bad, I can't even... Worst game I ever bought on this side
If you ever wanted to explain the term style over substance, this game would be perfect. It really looks great, all the attack animations, all the nice backgrounds. If the gameplay was half as good as the graphics, this would be my new favourite game. Too bad the fights are long, boring and tedious. In an attempt to have clever mechanics, we get an over complicated game that ironically leaves you with very little variety. Setting up anything takes far too long, up to that point you can beat your opponent to death just by using normal attacks and defense. It didn't help that I had to restart the game every 15 minutes because it crashed again.
All in all it's an enjoyful adventure, the story is nice, the characters are interesting and some really likeable. There are some little problems here and there, it doesn't feel like a game, more reading a fantasy book with lots and lots of backstory and worldbuilding, combined with a few fights. In the later game all the new information about regions around the city and some culture stuff was getting a little tedious, since it was so disconnected from the story on the one hand, and just didn't help the flow of things on the other. There is a difference between learning some stuff about a place you just entered, or some region you never see in the game and doesn't have any connection to you, the story or anything. There are text heavy games that get their wall of text in a little less blunt, do it more narratively. The fighting system with stopping the fight to give new orders to your heros has been done before, and better I might add. Some extra button to just slow down the fight would have been nice, getting something between full stop and full speed which ended in many "oh my good my guy is running back to the danger zone while I try to get the other one moved". The fights are rather easy, the last boss takes forever due to high Hitpoints, but at least on normal nothing was really challenging. All in all a nice adventure if you are into those games, the RPG part is really small.
Personally I don’t get the high praises around here…at all. Don’t get me wrong it’s still a good game I loved trails in the sky from beginning to end, I never really got the same from trails of cold steel, and there are many reasons for it, weaker character, weaker story and I really don’t think those giant robots work well in this game, it's always like someone pushed the stop button to insert a minigame. One of the most annoying things is the constant middle finger the game shows you in regards to the outcome of your fight. After overcoming a strong opponent, they stand up, you are in trouble and someone leaps to your rescue. If this wasn’t an interactive story/game that would be less of an issue, although if you count how often this happens even then it would get old rather fast. You are just robbed of your feeling of accomplishment. The game doesn’t make all that good use of the big cast of characters, you have 10 people, I used 4 of them, since having one strong formation makes things way easier. Near the end of the game I grinded a little more to get them all up to speed, which paid of in the 2 occasions you need them. I had some technical issues as well, the game crashed every time I use Alysas second S-Craft, some fights just give me a black screen, my game never spread out over my display staying small in the upper right corner and it just crashed in the middle of my second last quest. All in all this is a dull shadow of trails in the sky, but even a shadow of trails in the sky can be a good game.
The game is kind of broken, can't play chapter 5 because an important dialog at the beginning where you choose to go back into the limbo with the girl does not appear, can't finish the game without him since he needs to keep her stable. So that's minus one star There is better artwork for this game, still we get a rather ugly version. Another Star lost Most of the game is just pure darkness with some lines of text at the bottom, it's slow, not scary just the descriptions get a little gory at times. That's minus one stars. The puzzle and the mistery, I called most stuff miles before the game did, running around searching for clues isn't very entertaining, there are a few good riddles but all in all, it's just to long without getting a real hint where to go next. Didn't enjoy that, another star lost.
