The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV

there needs to be a study of this game, like seriously yes, its very character bloated but since its mostly characters we've known/played at for years its not a ''overwhelming'' feeling like how something like fairy tell did it (just 15+ guild characters you dont care about whatsoever, other than max) but it is a smash hit game imo, it perfectly ties everything together in all the games and reveals how [spoiler] every game up until that moment is actually connected through ishmelga, ishmelga is responsible for literally everything going wrong on the continent in the last 250ish years, including but not limited to: hamel incident, osbornes wife dying, and by extension rean almost dying, change of personality and ambitions in osborne, which in turn caused friction with every other nation, which also forced the crossbell incident in azure and everything from cs2-cs4 [/spoiler]

Great story.

Пройдя всю серию Cold Steel, могу сказать, что финал получился достойным. Он был немного предсказуемым, но в целом хорошим. В частях 3 и 4 игра вызывает смешанные чувства: порой кажется, что над ней работали гении, а иногда – что разработчики просто поленились. Первые две части ощущались более насыщенными событиями. Третья часть поначалу впечатлила новой графикой, анимациями и разнообразными боями. Однако в четвертой части, когда сталкиваешься с рескином гражданки, без существенных изменений в геймплее, это немного удручает. Особенно учитывая, что в 3-4 частях боев стало значительно больше. Тем не менее, в четвертой части я чувствовал себя очень сильным, что, в принципе, соответствовало игровому процессу даже на уровне сложности "Кошмар". Отдельное разочарование – романтические линии. Были попытки, но в итоге разработчики постеснялись добавить несколько сцен после кульминации.

See you again... Someday. Somewhere.

amazing game

中盤あたりまでテンポがだるく苦痛だがそこを超えてなんとかクリア 正直　うーん　となるところもアレコレあるが （例えばキャラが世界観に合わない言葉をいったり　チートだろ 毎回敵がドヤ顔のまま撤退したり見逃したり） 最後は大団円だったしセリーヌがかわいいのでオススメで 買うならセールでかつ暇な時に買おうね

имбарик

Rean "Forward Relentlessly" Schwarzer

Well, here we are. Trails of Cold Steel 4. Perhaps the longest game in the series, for better and worse. This picks up after CS3 as Rean is missing, the world is going to ♥♥♥♥♥ and New and Old Class 7 pick up the pieces to make the best of it. Along the way, several old heroes return as the forces of all that is good and holy unite to face the ultimate big bad of Giliath Osborne and his suite of villains. Is this a true End Game moment for the series? Maybe. Anyway, I have a new review system, so let me give it a spin. [Presentation Score: 17] Visuals: 4 Nice, good looking anime aesthetic visuals. Creative and detailed art and design. Good visual distinction for the most part. Main characters all have their own style and theming. The use of over done rim lighting is still distractingly bad. The exaggerated breasts on some female characters is childish. Audio: 5 The overall soundtrack is pretty good. Some good use of leitmotif and bringing back a few pieces from previous games. Sound FX are nice, punchy and well used. Voice Over: 4 While there has been a few re-casts, the overall cast does a decent enough job. A few of the veteran cast, such as Jusis’s VA are standouts with their range of emotiveness. There’s a handful of odd pronunciations that distract from the experience though. UI: 4 Game menus and interface have a nice style and is clear to understand with contextual button icons. Could use better optimization such as a quick exit option and better 3d model controls. [Technical Score: 15] Game Options: 3 Most of the game options are relegated to the external interface and not in game; meaning to make adjustments you’ll have to exit and restart the game. Of the options that exist, most are the basic usual fare. No noted accessibility specific features. Graphics and Performance: 4 Like above, the options are in the external interface. There isn’t much in terms of graphic options considering this is mainly a console port game. Performance wise, it’s fine but it tends to run best at capped fps. Only a couple areas show notable performance loss. Controls: 3 The default controls on controller are adequate. However rebinding is not ideal as inputs are tied to the keys so so you can only swap buttons, not assign inputs. On a side note, this also swaps inputs for the minigames and that can be a huge annoyance. Bugs and Glitches: 5 I only really encountered one bug; a shop upgrade one and that was corrected thought a save reload. There were texture flicker issues in the opening cutscene but no where else. So, I’d say for the most part, this was a bug free experience. [Story Score: 14] Writing: 3 It’s fine overall and I noticed no typos. However, there are copious amounts of padded dialogue, repetitiveness and rehashing of info the player and characters already know. Worse still, some of the lines actually make characters sound incompetent. This really comes off as a complete lack of editing as was the case in CS3. Plot: 3 It’s big, ambitious and very bloated. It’s not as bad as I expected, but certainly not as great as it could had been considering this is the moment that brings elements from all the previous games together. The driving force of the plot, the Curse of Plot Convenience, is a huge deus ex machina. While the cast is bloated, everyone does get used well and the conclusion was mostly satisfying. This whole thing is also much longer than it perhaps should be and the poor pacing and bloated writing is perhaps the reason why. Characters: 4 I’d say I generally enjoyed the New Class 7 group and they do get better here over their CS3 appearance with some better moments and fewer instances of anime trope reliance. Old Class 7 gets a bit better here too but some of gets sidelined by the writers incessant need to put Rean in a harem fantasy. The villains are varied with some more notable than others; Arianrhod and Rufus in particular are standouts. Others are just kind of there to have someone to fight. World Building: 4 CS4 continues to build off what was established before and with it’s larger scope of events does a good job of pulling in elements from outside Erebonia. There’s lots of little and major connections to events of past games. While a few may feel a bit like ret-cons, I think the story does a good enough job of uniting everything into a solid, meaningful finale. [Gameplay Score: 16] Systems: 4 The core combat gameplay continues to be a strong point of Cold Steel. It’s mostly the same as CS3 but now sub-quartz can be assigned multiple times (which can be a bit too OP). The mech combat sections are still spectacular events with a few new tweaks. For mini-games, you still have fishing, cooking and some casino games. Vantage Masters continues to be a satisfying, addictive, tactical card game. I cannot fathom why on earth they brought back Pom Pom Party with no improvements or accessibility options. PPP is still as trash as it was back in Azure. Balance: 4 Per usual, I judge a game on it’s normal difficulty. There are five difficulty choices and they can be adjusted anytime in the options. It’s only stat adjustments from what I saw. Overall, I thought the normal difficulty was a fair challenge and with through knowledge of the game's systems, it’s easy to become OP past the mid point of the game. There’s a few tricky fights with bonus requirements and the resource balance is mostly fine but you may run short of certain sepith or cooking ingredients at some points. Design: 4 Areas are well laid out with lot of nooks to find and explore. Treasure and items are well distributed in most places with some good looping back in dungeons. Fast travel options are robust and quick with motorbikes and horses for faster on foot travel. Some dungeons offer multi-party set-ups with light puzzles. A handful of dungeons are a bit bland and linear and the zones are a bit large (this is to accommodate the battle system, but some places feel a bit too large like the manors in the major cities). Fun Factor: 4 For a fan who has been playing the series from Sky 1 up to this point, there is a lot to enjoy here. From the returning cast and visiting places of importance and to how the various factions come together, this a treat for those who have stuck it out for the prior 8 games. The core gameplay is satisfying and fun and the story does a well enough job of raising the stakes for a moment when everyone and everything comes together. Could it had been better? Yes. But I did enjoy my time more than I thought I would. Conclusion: This game was an arduous and bloated journey but honestly not as bad I expected. It’s pacing is terrible and some of the writing is cringe and idiotic. The anime harem trope is terrible and the core plot device is one of the worst I’ve seen in fiction. More annoyingly is that most of the villains or those who allied with them or let them do as they please, suffer no repercussions. However, I did find the gameplay very satisfying. The overall presentation is great and it is a treat to see old favorite characters join in for the ultimate finale (for this arc at least) of the Trails series. A lot of seeds that started out way back get resolved here while a few new ones are planted. I give it a recommend, just be sure to pace yourself and take breaks. Final rating: 7.7/10

Лучшая игра