The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

Immediate 1000000/10. Actually, no. Let's be more realistic. I rate this game a Millium out of 10. The characters, world building, story, combat and even more are just INCREDIBLE. This game is one of my favourite games of all time, hell, this franchise is one of the best franchises in the universe. I love Rean as a protagonist, be it his mentality and struggles, his amazing combat skills, or even just his monologues (Uh oh...), he never fails to become an extremely likeable and solid protagonist; most of which are either shallow or "wanting to impress" the players nowadays by doing stupid things. Rean actually loses some fights, which is such a breath of fresh air from seeing your typical "I'm so OP, so i'm just gonna wipe the floor with you all the time" protagonists. His losses help build his character too, as well as make the game more realistic since he's only a student right now. I have fallen in love with these characters, the world, the combat, and the game itself. For all the time I've played this, (and i'll probably do more new game pluses) every second, every glance at the screen, every view of this vast, astounding, beautiful game, it just... Fills me with an inexplicable sense of joy and happiness. This goes for the rest of the games in the franchise too, especially cold steel. Absolute cinema; a true masterpiece of a game. Just seeing class 7 going on with their lives at the academy and creating new bonds with each other, is such an incredible sight to see. All the members of class 7 are amazing in their own ways too, and the setting of the academy makes me love this game even more since i love the whole "fantasy academy" thing. The field trips and story progression is great too, i mean, i made sure i took ages to complete this game because i wanted to savour every second of it, and boy, do i regret that. It should've been every millisecond instead, NO, SCRATCH THAT, EVERY NANOSECOND!!! All in all, this ga-, no, masterpiece of art and story itself, is an enjoyable ride; a long one, but trust me, you won't regret it if you stick around and find out...

空３部、零＆碧プレイ済みユーザーです。 空の軌跡リメイク発表もあり、再度追いかける事を決意しました。 Ⅰだけでは正確な感想は出せないかもしれませんが、個人的には 面白かったと感じています。続きもすぐにやりたいと思います。 ・軌跡シリーズどれからやる問題、閃からはアリなのかも？ 閃では以前の軌跡シリーズのシステムから大幅に変更されており、 別視点での出来事ということで、シリーズ物としての知識について なるべく必要が無くても楽しめるように作られた印象を受けます。 空３部、零＆碧をプレイ済みの方にはハッとする場面もありますが、 それも一種のファンサとして感じ取れれば良いくらいの物かと。 ・王道ゆえ心情＆展開が共に読みやすい、だがそれが良い 士官学院という特殊な場所の学生、そしてその中で起きる様々な 出来事を通しての成長を描く王道ストーリーです。RPGはやっぱり 人物描写が重要だなと感じていますが、その辺りは丁寧に作られて いるので、意味不明だったり唐突な展開は無く楽しめました。 いろいろRPGやってる方にはベタに映るかもしれませんが…私は こういった王道的な展開のRPGもまだまだ楽しみたいですｗ ・戦闘の難易度は他のRPGと比べて高めに感じる 軌跡シリーズでは恒例の事なのかもですが、戦闘(特にボス戦)の 初見敗北率は高い印象を受けます。リトライやセーブ＆ロードは スムーズに出来るのでそこまで苦にはなりませんが、もしボス戦前の セーブを忘れていたら悲惨な事になりますので、こまめなセーブを 推奨しておきます。負けるのもRPGの醍醐味ではありますが、 流石に中ボスクラスの敵に完封されたのはショックだったかなぁ… ・全てのRPGで実装されて欲しい「TURBO MODE」 ミニマップやファストトラベル、未読スキップといった機能もきちんと 実装されており、マップの高低差なんかも理解しやすいのでRPGと して遊びやすく仕上がっております。その中でも特に気に入った物が 「TURBO MODE」の存在です。R2ボタンを押すと進行が倍速に なり(デフォだと４倍速の様子？)、戻し作業や移動といった作業に なりがちなパートもググッと楽になります。RPGのプレイから遠ざかる 理由として「プレイ時間が他のジャンルに比べてどうしても長くなる」 を挙げてしまうのですが、全てのRPGにこのモードが実装されたなら、 またいろいろと遊んでみたくなるだろうなと強く感じたシステムです。 ・Ⅰだけでほぼ80時間かかった…(個人的なプレイ時間です) 「TURBO MODE」の話をしておいてこれなんですが…いろいろと 試したり回収したりするプレイ性質ゆえに長くなってしまいました。 標準的なプレイヤーだともっと早くクリアできるはずなんですが、 自分は軌跡シリーズをプレイするとどうしても長くなるようです… 空の軌跡FCからシリーズに入り込んだ身として、また軌跡シリーズを 追っていける事が本当に嬉しく感じています。セールも時々行われて いる様子なので、その時を狙って初見の方もお試しあれば幸いと 感じています。

Consider this a brief review of the entire Cold Steel saga with some slight spoilers. Quite frankly, the Trails of Cold Steel saga is the worst thing to happen to the series. Almost everything they added or changed about the Trails franchise was for the worse. I played through the series from Sky to CS4 2 yrs ago roughly and every time I think about CS, it upsets me to think of the wasted potential. - Visuals: am I the only that preferred the distinctive visual style of the previous games? The characters were actually more emotive and the environments were cozy or creepy as necessary. I think they should have kept it and simply improved graphical fidelity. Going to generic 3D JRPG graphics took something away from series. - VA: Much like reading a book, when playing the previous games, I had in mind how I thought the characters sounded and was quite content with that. Lo and behold, they add VA and its terrible through and through. Full disclosure, I have 88 hrs in this game because it took multiple attempts to even slog my way though and the VA was a large part of why. The only way I could finish it was to mute the VA. - Rean and cast: even most fans of the CS arc will admit that Rean is as interesting as a bowl of plain white rice and the cast is majorly bloated, and all almost as boring as Rean. To be fair, Lloyd wasn't groundbreaking, but he had a great supporting cast to make up for it. - World building and misc.: Its hard to say that the previous games were grounded considering its a fantasy JRPG, but compared to CS, they absolutely were. There was major elements of the supernatural for sure, but the characters were largely underdogs fighting against nearly impossible odds. Not so for CS. Estelle is a spunky bracer with skills using a staff, Lloyd is a detective who uses tonfa.......Rean is a Christ-like super saiyan samurai with a talking, flying, and teleporting mech that he pilots. Honestly, its like the writers for CS are overzealous 12 year old weebs. Across the 5 Sky+Crossbell games, you're introduced to dragons, and the supernatural (demons). In CS? Witches, gnomes, divine knights, ogre powers, continent spanning curses and more I'm forgetting. Its like they were throwing any and everything at the wall to see what stuck. Technically, there's nothing inherently wrong with expanding the lore but here, the execution was poor and I don't think the inclusion of the more fantastical elements were necessary. Keeping it relatively grounded would have been much more enjoyable but that's a matter of personal preference, I suppose. All in all, if you're asking me, play Sky and the Crossbell games and pretend the series ended there. I've gone back and forth on whether I'll try the following Trails games and while it seems like they did SOME course correction (weird how that would be necessary if the CS games were so perfect, right?) it still suffers from some of the core issues that plagued it. PS: there are rabid Cold Steel fans who will berate you and command you to list in exhaustive detail every single thing that you don't like about CS only to follow it up with "If you don't like Cold Steel, are you even a Trails fan?". These golems are best ignored. If you like Cold Steel, that's perfectly fine but I reserve the right to hate it. Also, no accusing me of having rose tinted glasses with this series. I played them all one after the other.

После прохождения Trails of Cold Steel оставила довольно смешанные чувства. В игре довольно много противоречивых нововведений, которые мне не очень пришлись по душе. Прежде всего, сам сюжет про студентов академии из особого класса не особо впечатлил. Много повторяющихся штампов. Например, герои (каждый раз разные) трижды ссорились и не хотели друг с другом разговаривать, что выглядело очень глупо. Почти каждый персонаж имеет свою тайну, которую он скрывает вплоть до конца игры (собрались нетакусики, блин). В целом, середина игры достаточно скучная. Еще не понравилось то, как они переделали кварцы. Если раньше каждый тип кварца (синий, красный итд) давал определенное количество очков, которые открывают определенные способности, то теперь каждый отдельный кварц дает один навык. Это очень неудобно, поскольку вгоняет тебя в серьезные рамки. Например, при достаточном количестве очков у тебя появлялись все виды хилок - малая, средняя и сильная. Теперь же для каждой из хилок нужен отдельный камень, занимающий слот. Впрочем, назвать игру плохой у меня язык не поворачивается. Да, по сравнению с аркой кроссбелла, это шаг назад, но это все еще достойная часть серии, которую стоит пройти. Здесь достаточно интересные герои, можно увидеть множество мест из Эребонии и узнать эту страну лучше, а также есть забавные пересечения с сюжетом кроссбелла. Финальный сегмент очень крутой, хоть и не вызывает таких же эмоций, как прошлые части. Теперь приступаю ко второй игре арки!

just skip this entire arc and read a summary tbh, not worth the time investment at all. extremely disappointing coming from sky and crossbell, felt like i was playing a completely different series

The almost universal praise this game gets baffles me to be honest. It's not terrible by any means but there are so many annoyances and so much tedium involved, it really brings the enjoyment down. So many cutscenes and just way too much dialogue with characters repeating each other all the time. Why say something in one sentence when you can do it in a hundred. The main character is the perfect human being. Always going out of his way to help anyone and he never says anything even slightly offensive or controverial despite having every reason too on occasion. But the other main characters are just as bad, always pointing out how nice they all are and how they will do absolutely anything to help everyone ad nauseum. If you don't wanna miss a sidequest you've got to run around town and talk to every npc. Then the time changes and you have to do it again, and again and again. It's just all so frikkin tedious. The combat dosen't fare much better either. Fights take forever with mobs having stupidly huge hp pools. If you don't get the jump on enemies you will often find yourself just standing there while anything from 2 -8 monsters take turns wailing on your party, so when your turn eventually comes round you're either at a big disadvantage or already dead. You will usually still come out victorious but it just drags fights out for way too long. I got the game because of the almost universal praise it gets, but i'm in chapter 5 now and just don't think i will finish it.

Просто absolute cinema. Одна из лучших игр в которые я играл. Эта история подарила столько эмоций, из-за чего игрок впадает в экстаз. Также как и в trails in the sky конец просто разрыв шаблона. Отдельное спасибо DeadP47, что познакомил с такой великолепной серией игр

A fantastic JRPG. This was my first ever Trails game, and honestly I can’t believe I waited this long to finally play one. The sheer number of games and how they’re all connected always felt a little daunting, but I’m glad I dove in. Very quickly after starting, I was hooked to the point where it was really hard to put down. What stood out most to me was the balance: everyday school life mixed with action-filled field studies, political and military intrigue, downtime for bonding mixed with sudden spikes in story intensity. It always felt like just the right rhythm. Class VII themselves are one of the main highlights. The conflicts between members feel authentic, and watching them grow past those differences is so satisfying. Even side characters and random NPCs feel so fleshed out in ways I didn’t expect, which kept me wanting to talk to everyone throughout the entire game. Combat also really impressed me. It’s turn-based but unique, Crafts/S-Crafts and S-Breaks keeping fights strategic and exciting. The Link system tying social bonds into gameplay is another great touch, and it makes every character feel distinct and valuable. Sure, the graphics show their age, but it doesn’t matter when the world feels this alive. The writing strikes a great balance of serious drama, heartfelt moments, and comedy, and the voice cast brings it all to life. The soundtrack is fantastic as well. I expected to enjoy Cold Steel, but I didn’t expect it to completely grab me the way it did. After 100+ hours (Steam didn't track some of my time for some reason, but there's a 45-hour difference between my Steam time and the time on my safe file lol), I finally get why this series has such a reputation, and I know I’ll be sticking with it. The only “problem” is my wallet, because I’m going to play the rest of the series now. TL;DR: A fantastic mix of military school life, heartfelt character growth, and unique and strategic combat. I came for curiosity, stayed for 100+ hours, and left fully hooked.

Having now completed all four Cold Steel games, I do not recommend. This lost the charm of the first five games, maybe partially from the new engine, but mostly I think they just have way too many characters for too little story. There aren't the cool plot twists or anything of the previous games that made them great. I think there are some, mostly for characters from the other games, but overall, this wasn't worth all the time you have to put into it.