Finally after a rather long time I have come to the conclusion of Trails of cold steel 3 and woooowie what a conclusion it was, so for the short segment of this review for those who don't wanna read a wall the third game is an overall mass improvement to the series, a mechanic was taken out but in return we got a few more mechanics that make battles feel more in depth and lengthy, I admit that can be a bit jarring for old hands who used the Tauros gem to clean house but trust me when I say the games been balanced nicely and can still be a breeze if you play smart as you should on any JRPG game, this end will have you wanting to go to the next game straight away! I know what I'm playing after I write this dood! XD
Okaaaay the long stuffs for ya'all! To start combat, the UI has had a massive oversimplified yet really nice overhall, it's as simple as pressing a button to do an action rather than scrolling the wheel around, the visuals are updated and they did a great job despite that of retaining most of the characters original looks in a way that doesn't feel like you are playing a totally different person which I personally really appreciate dood.
The new and the old character additions are super nice, they even managed to flesh out a character that for the prior two games just felt boring to me, like they are a nice person and the look cool but everything about them, even their reason for being at thors felt basic, now I feel they really did him justice, that said they did add another average person but just enough to them they aren't totally boring, after all a large part of the legend of heroes games is all the personality the characters have dood.
Combat is a similar to the prior games but with some great new additions, so overdrive is gone which I admit is sad but now we have two new things, first off orders! These will let you use a variety of effects based on who is with you to give you an advantage in battle at the cost of BP, it doesn't fix the issue of using the 5BP team attack at all granted, in fact it's so much more useful that it makes it redundant but hey the options still there which is nice, the second thing they added was BREAK, enemies now have a secondary bar (luckily the player doesn't so yay to that lol) once it's depleted they enter a break state, it's at this moment you can got to town on the enemy and build up your BP easily, this also gives another element to Crafts as they now have a break and power rating along with the other effects native to it dood.
The fishing this time around is nice and simple, press a button at the right time to get an okay, good and great catch which gives you various items from rare materials, sepith, items or even permanent stat boosts, you can also fish any time by buying or trading U material for bait, as for the other mini-game? We now have vantage masters...I uhh look it's a decent game, easy to win if you play the right way, the issue stems from how long it takes, especially if you lose, as well as it's importance, you will want to play the card game against everyone as the rewards as the game goes on for doing them all are invaluable but it detracts from the game itself, Blade was quick, raised friendship win or lose and wasn't needed in the prior games this is nice and decently in depth but not everyone likes card games so it's a give and take situation, especially for people like me who want to get back to the story dood.
The map icons are super helpful now, worried you're gonna miss a secret mission? Well don't be, markers will show where a quest is, you could almost easily do most everything in the game other than vantage masters without a guide as they just pop up on the map for you now dood.
Sepith is extremely scarce in this one and I mean it, there are tricks but even with those you are gonna be struggling for it, best fight I found gave me around 200 of each per battle and late game 1000 is needed for the best types of quartz and even then you need more for the more fancy stuff you can do, near end game to get a pretty powerful quartz I spent around 5000 of my 10000 sepith to get that single quartz, it's not the worst honestly, some enemies now drop quartz so you can grind those along with EXP at times to help ease that burden of cost but it's not the most welcome change dood.
In fact talking about sepith, EXP is very low on the amount too, battles are long, really long at times and to get actual decent EXP you really need to do link battles and take advantage of the mechanics for bonus EXP but that can take around 5-10 minutes for not even all that much EXP realistically, a slightly easier fix would be to let the bonus EXP from a master quartz effect everyone but they seem opposed to that, it's not the absolute worst but I hope IV fixes it dood.
Finally there is now a sub quartz option, this is frankly glorious and opens up more quartz options use for spell casters as despite only giving the first effect of that quartz and a lower stat boost, it also gives you all the spells for that master quartz, it was a fantastic addition that really made for some fun combinations dood!
That's all I have to say, I hope if ya pick it up thanks to this review that you enjoy the game, thank you for reading dood!
