The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV

The final chapter of the Cold Steel arc, this game had a lot of plot threads to resolve, and had to live up to the previous games of the series. As an effect, this is easily the biggest game in the series, in many, many regards. Gameplay is perfected from the previous games, with the battle and orbement systems being a perfected form of this arc's system - in general, still has a few points that in my opinion work worse than the previous system, but most have been worked on and in general the current format with two master quartz and many different of quarts with magic and status work well - to the point even mages are viable here. The plot is... well, a lot. This would easily be two games worth of plot in the previous installments, but here it's, for better or worse, all put into one long game. It works as both a good closing chapter of the series, as a reminder of Crossbell (even if not everything is dealt well here) and a reunion from the Sky series in many ways. It's not the best game of the series plot-wise, but it's still a serviceable one with good moments for the fans of the series. Overall, if you played the past games of the series and liked them, you'll probably like this one too. Some things could be dealt with better, but for better or worse, it does close this arc somewhat well, with a few small things open for both Reverie - where hopefully we'll finally see Crossbell's independence outside of ending cutscenes - and the next arcs.

3/5 I played through the Trails of Cold Steel series over the course of the year, and while the UI and graphics noticeably improved between games 2 and 3, they all really deserve the same score. Decently fun gameplay and mechanics, and the story surprised me on rare occasions. However, the characters are really shallow and the harem/anime cringy dialogue really prevent me from recommending it. That being said, the writing was better than other rpgs I also consider 3s, such as Star Ocean Divine Force, Tales of Arise, and Scarlet Nexus. If you loved those games though, this is probably right up your alley. It feels like a military school version of Hogwarts. I do respect the scale of the story

Fantastic series!

Rean Schwarzer of Class 7 youre the goat

Вот и подошла к концу последняя часть Cold Steel, знаю что следующая часть уже окончательно завершит эту арку, но некий итог все же хочу подвести, не самая любимая арка конечно, но вот уж чего а концентрации событий и масштаба там хватает , все таки целых больших 4 игры, но как мне кажется имеет место некое топтание на месте, 3 и 4 часть во многом дублируют 1 и 2 в подходах к развитию и подачи сюжета. Приятно было увидеть персонажей из прошлых арок, прям фансервис какой он должен быть. По итогу Cold Steel ощущается как аниме жанра сенён, вроде круто, классно, персонажи дерутся , за ними приятно наблюдать, но порой настолько ничего сюжетно важного не происходит ( вроде пляжных эпизодов) что вроде бы понятно зачем это сделано, например для большего раскрытия персонажей, но на 4 раз это начинает немного утомлять. Главный герой опять же очень странный, он вроде бы живой, со своими тараканами, мотивацией, но иногда от него просто фейспамлишь, Я знаю что Рина многие не особо жалуют, особенно после Эстель и Ллойда, но прямо лютого негатива к нему не испытываю, разработчики явно целились в более широкую аудиторию, и Cold Steel как точка в серию входа довольно не плоха, хотя я бы рекомендовал начать хотя бы с Кроссбелла.

Great series as a whole if you like JRPGs, can be a bit cheesey and some of the characters reasonings for doing certain things can be absolutley asinine but the story is great i liked almost every single character they introduced and its cool having this series have one giant story arcing over 15+ games, the trails series is by far the best and you dont meed to play the others to understand the story, highly recommend

Honestly I prefer CS3 but this game has some great moments here and there despite the fact theres issues there