The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

game 6/13 playing daybreak as of writing. To start this off, I absolutely hated the parts where this game tries to be persona with the free time bs and how interactions are limited per day. Absolutely hate that and glad they don't do it as much after this game. I get persona 4 was the popular jrpg when this game came out but damn man chill out lmao. This system was as if you made persona but made it extra tedious. Onto my actual thoughts, slow start to an arc but has great character moments, nice setups for future games and a diabolical cliffhanger ending. I'd say overall Erebonia lived up to the hype coming from how the other games described this country. The cast was a bit too big for my taste at first especially since they drop all of them at once but I overall ended up liking it since they give you different groups per main part of the story anyways. (It gets worse in 4). The Trails politics was done very well and is remained strong coming from azure. The only downside id say is since this takes place during the events of Azure, you do kinda know whats coming in some events. Other than that, honestly I liked this game alot more than I was expecting. I saw a bunch of people dooming this game as one of the worst in trails but if I'm being honest i liked this as a starting chapter even more than sky fc. Gameplay is an amazing update coming from crossbell arc. Its nice you can freely swap in benchwarmers now mid battle. Unfortunately the game is quite broken with how much they overtuned the MC's delay crafts in CS1 and 2 so I feel sometimes theres no use in building other characters properly in this one other than Rean. Graphics wise, personally I think they should've stuck with the sky/crossbell arc artstyle where they mix 2d and 3d for cs1 and 2.I know these games came out for psvita originally but man are the models ugly. They should've saved the full 3d models for when the hardware could take it (cs3 and 4). They kinda blew the budget on these 3d models and had alot of scenes unvoiced. This is the game where the missing voiced lines issues start popping up. It was jarring as hell at first but it got worse and worse all the way to where im at in calvard arc rn. Very unfortunate but it is what it is since these games dont sell alot.

This game is a great entry to the franchise that serves as a well-deserved breath of fresh air. The controls and general handling on the overworld is bothersome, but aside from that, I feel the new engine is great. The battles are very fun and relatively more interesting than the predecessors. The orbment changes are weird and I don't know how to feel about them, starting almost from scratch is cool in the first half of the game but after that it loses the appeal. This game prioritizes strength (laura) over all else and I think it makes the balancing very lopsided, I don't really like it. A lot of this game is repetitive, and the story struggles the most from this. It doesn't have any crazy big story reveals because it is a "prequel" to the preceding game, and that leaves the game feeling awkward with relation to its place in the story. The extra perspective towards the Crossbell incident is really interesting, especially coupled with the Empire's propaganda towards reporting it. The structure of the game is nice and makes it a lot easier to binge, the sidequests being in smaller demand is great, too. I don't care for any of the characters yet but I like Fie and Towa. Rean so far is a bit of a better Lloyd, but I still don't care for him much lol. Each character gets a little arc and it works for them. This game was better than Azure maybe, I hope CS2 is good!

Going through the entire Trails series from start to finish means I had to replay Cold Steel 1, one of the two I had played previously. Initially it was a rough adjustment, the change to 3D was rough and the presentation isn't the best, but despite that Cold Steel 1 is a very good game. The first chapter is rough, gameplay and story wise, but once it begins to pick up it really picks up. Continuing in the vein of the other arcs this first game is a glorified prologue, but while SKy FC was 40 hours and Zero was 50 Cold Steel took me about 87 hours my first playthough in 2023, and 60 hours on my Nightmare run this time. It's a long game, but the combat is fun and the characters and story are enough to keep you hooked, especially once it gets going.