The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV

The story spins its wheels in all the wrong places, it rehashes content from Cold Steel II, and the cast bloat has started rearing its ugly head in earnest. Guess that means the game sucks, right? Guess again. It's still peak fiction baby

For everyone that has made it this far, it's worth playing Cold Steel 4 and seeing the saga to the end. It wraps things up in a decent enough manner. However, I still think overall the Cold Steel saga has been pretty mediocre especially in comparison to the Liberl and Crossbell arcs. The main issues are still too many characters which results in most not being developed enough as everyone has to get their screen time. Rean is still too much of a blank slate which especially sticks out when every single NPC in the game is crazy about Rean and all the females are kept open as romance options. It becomes really hard to care deeply for most of the events due to the above issues. However, the new Class 7 still continue to be the better characters, carrying over from Cold Steel 3. While the overall plot of the Cold Steel Saga is decent, it's execution overall is still lacking. Cold Steel 3/4 were improvements, however the series overall still suffers due to the poor work in Cold Steel 2 especially. Cold Steel 4 in particular just struggles with the typical jrpg tropes, some of which have been done one too many times and it comes at the cost of the player not caring enough anymore. I think the best part of Cold Steel 4 was definitely the start where the new Class 7 characters get to shine once again. Juna and Altina especially are MVPs. The middle part of the game tends to be weak and you just go along with things till the ending which is nice mainly because it's concluding the entire saga. Gameplay wise I have to say, this is still another weak entry. This is the first Trails game I played on nightmare and it was really easy. Most people who have come this far should be able to break it pretty easily utilizing orbment/order combinations. I played it blind and do not know the OP strats and yet I was easily able to dominate most fights. Most of the combat in fact just feels like having the right orders/buffs and just spamming damage. The positional/tactical stuff really does not come into play at all really.. Although I will say they improved the Divine Knight battles and they can be challenging especially on Nightmare. It feels nice for them to be difficult given the theme of the game and in the past games they were just roll overs. The minigames are fun. Vantage Masters is notable improved now and is quite enjoyable. Pom Pom Party is fun but there are 2/3 opponents in that which feel outright unfair and it feels too much like rng where you hope to survive their onslaught and hopefully win when you do the +9 lines attack. Otherwise, I talked to every NPC and did every side quest (Somehow missed the achievement ;-;). There were some nice ones sprinkled in. Especially was happy to see Anton again! Visually, the series looks nice. Soundtrack is good once again and has a lot of great tracks. Synchronicity and Twilight Green Passage were the notable standouts for me. Overall, I will say that Cold Steel 3 and 4 were decent enough to make me want to play Reverie in the future. I'd recommend anyone who has come this far to just see things to the end.

Dogsh1t pacing, only enjoyable for the waifus. Some story choices aren't that bad but the pacing sucks

Скорее "Не рекомендую", чем "Рекомендую". Очень массивная игра, если на 100% закрывать(книги, разговоры итд), то можно сдуреть, наверное. Я рад не тому, как эта история закончилась, а тому, что она закончилась. Самая нудная и глупая арка на текущий момент. Но продолжу играть дальше с надеждой, что дальше будет лучше. [spoiler] Очень надоело, что злодеи оказываются хорошими ребятами, которые были за мир во всем мире. по итогу половину злодеев отпустили, другая половина перешла на нашу сторону. А некоторые успели туда-сюда несколько раз сбегать. Ну и некоторые бои просто абсурдные. [/spoiler]

帝国桃花剑最后一部，竟然是个大团圆结局，不过这结局是真的不错。

Тупорылое аниме. ЛЮБОВНЫЙ меха-гаремник. До самой арки вопросов нету, мне понравилось. Да, затянули аж на 4 игры, но ♥♥♥♥♥, сойдёт, и не такое хавал. Но вот к самим играм и тому, как подаются некоторые сегменты тут уже только плакать. Много чего хочется написать, НО ЭТО ♥♥♥♥♥ БУДУТ СПОЙЛЕРЫ. Если вы уже на этой части, вам нечего терять. Вы уже приняли эту мразь Рина Шварцера. Спасибо, Фалком. Заебись игра.

Trails of Cold Steel IV? More like Trails of Peak Steel. I adore this game, and in a wider sense, the Trails series. I like how Trails tell their story. They truly can make you feel the hopelessness from the scale of problem they are presenting, how you feel the hate towards some situations and characters from time to time, and fortunately it pays off in the end. I think what make this game works, and why it is so good, is due to how Trails have done in the past decade or so. They have endlessly built the world through 8 games leading up to this one and it's such a beautiful culmination and payoff for the fans of the series. This might have just become my favorite game series as of now.

Que jornada épica, que ótima conclusão para o arco de Erebonia, apenas joguem e apreciem essa maravilha o/

To me, Trails of Cold Steel III and IV are the worst games in the series so far. There are many flaws. My biggest problem is just how repetitive the games have become. I took several multi-month breaks from the game due to this, and almost didn't come back. The cutscenes, story and dialogue have become so predictable that it feels pointless to watch at times. I started fast-forwarding through the final third of the game and scanning the backlog afterward to see if anything interesting was said, otherwise it was intolerably tedious. The combat is also affected. Considering that this is meant to be the epic end of a saga, it was disappointing that the final boss(es) are using the same predictable and exploitable scripting we've seen since the beginning of CS3, making it easy to win even on Nightmare difficulty. [spoiler]Osborne[/spoiler] is meant to be some kind of genius, so why [spoiler]does he unleash his strongest attack against the party right after I've put up Reflect, like an idiot?[/spoiler] Well, it's because they're scripted to do that [spoiler]1-2 turns after having his HP reduced by half - the same as every single boss in these two games, something an observant player can't help but notice.[/spoiler] It might seem petty to complain about this, but it's absolutely a downgrade from earlier games in the series (e.g. final bosses in Trails to Azure were legitimately exciting [spoiler] - and that game's final boss explicitly countered Reflect![/spoiler]). The music is, while good, also a little disappointing. CS3 and CS4's music feels somehow a little weaker or more cheaply made than the music from Azure, CS1 and CS2. I'm not sure what went wrong here. My most optimistic interpretation is that the developers made some project management errors which resulted in spreading themselves too thinly. Perhaps they should have only made three Cold Steel games or should not have introduced the "new" Class VII. As it is, it feels like the developers came up with certain design formulas for different aspects of the game and then iterated on them again and again and again until X hours of content was produced. The end result is rather mediocre and dull when compared to, say, the Crossbell duology. Giving this a thumbs up or thumbs down was not an easy decision. I've complained a lot, but if you've played the series this far, I don't think this game is so bad that you should skip it. I also don't think this series has been ruined: the plot and the world is still coherent, there are still plenty of likeable characters to follow up on in the next game. It could have been a lot worse. In the end, if you like this series I'd say you should play this, but don't feel bad about using the fast-forward button to speed through all the filler.