The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III

This is a third game, out of a 4 game arc, which sits as the third arc in the greater scheme of an ongoing JRPG series. Most reviewers will inform you to not start with this game first and to at least backtrack to Cold Steel 1 (preferably Trails in the Sky even) better appreciate the enjoyment in this game. Trails of Cold Steel III I can best describe as a colorfully beautiful but messy game. It has at many moments made me smile and have me in excited suspense, while other times left me lulled to sleep or constantly being in and out of the game trudging through slow parts. Being the third entry it has succeeded two games which means there are similarities and improvements made leading to this entry. But also unfortunately there are either new issues or the same issues that also exist. I would prefer to list my most important generalized pro/con first: Cons: • Bonding events are still in the game, these events have always felt shallow to me since games like Persona are better suited for these. I would rather they do the fire emblem route where they would trigger from utilizing characters rather than just checking in to raise points I guess. • Semi-voiced cutscenes – many times characters will have cutscenes that aren’t voiced, but then you will have another character who is being fully voice acted on their lines but then people will reply with unvoiced lines. It just comes off as goofy because in the Crossbell arc they at least used the semi-voicing to emphasize important messages and not disjoint. • Now more than ever, the main character is a dislike for me. He is a character who is loved by everyone for doing the bare minimum, everybody idolizes him, and I don’t believe the game does a good job of convincing me why I should enjoy him the way the game loves him. • Repetitive formula – if you’re like me, the repetition in Cold Steel 1 bored you to the point where it hurt, this game thankfully does it much better but its still repetitive. The chapters move the same after you’ve experienced chapter 1 unfortunately. • Losing cutscenes – a general trope among JRPGs, but they’re egregious in this game. So often you fight a boss that is supposed to be out of your league, only to absolute smoke them in game and then the cutscene will show you hunched over wondering why they’re so strong. It’s annoying because if I’m going to lose to these people at least do me the courtesy of being smacked by the boss and then at last minute cutting away or something more interesting for the game. All too often they will just bring in a new character that wasn’t in the fight to do the “not so fast” thing and intervene and save you. Happens in every chapter. Pros: • Music – the music in this series has always been enjoyable, and they continue to blow me away with great themes in and out of battle. A good chunk of this soundtrack is in my playlist • Better animations – I am not sure if the game is running on a different engine, but if you’ve played CSI&II you’d know that those games moved very rigid for 3D games and overall looked pretty ugly by the standard that they were released in. Now in this game characters are much better animated with few stiff animations, hair physics (Laura’s strand of hair doesn’t clip through her chest anymore) that clip less, and improved facial animations as well. • Expanded Battle system – there are two new features in battle, one is the break gauge for enemies, and the other is the Orders command. These new features add another layer to a great battle system that now rewards aggression and if timed correctly you can dog-pile bosses and turn the battle in your favor. • Access to the Japanese & English Dub – CSI&II were only in English for our localized releases, many of the Vas in English just unfortunately are bad and it made playing those two games a headache for me. Having Japanese dubs back in 3 has allowed me to enjoy my time much more because you can tell the Japanese voices were originally directed with them in mind and the English ones tried to fit in as best they could. Some English VAs are still good, but many remain lackluster. • CSI&II took out a lot of features that older trails games had that are integral to JRPG’s with a lot of reading, such as reading the chat log in case you missed or skipped a message and replaying the line. 3 brings back this feature, along with an insanely fast fast-forward feature which can make repeat playthroughs much quicker. Even with a list of negatives, I loved this game, and definitely had many standout moments in the mid-game and the final chapter was some of the most fun I had since Trails to Azure's end game between its suspense and final battles being personal bouts. I am excitedly moving to Cold Steel IV with optimism.