The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

very good to start the trails series. on to the next one

it's alright

I’ve been on a journey to get caught up with this series for a hot minute now. One of my favorite aspects of this series is how while it’s all set in arcs it calls back and rewards you for playing the previous entries with a better understanding of the story and world. The school aspect is different than previous entries but for the story it’s telling it makes sense. A tight cast of characters that feel real with how they don’t always get along and agree but still come together for a common thing. The combat is very fun in this entry too. Combat links are a fun addition and I found the field studies forcing you to use all the characters a good thing as I like doing that anyways. 84 solid hours of gameplay and is only the first part of 4 games in this arc. Immediately starting CS2.

It took me exactly 50 hours to finish the game without grinding for levels, but in hindsight it felt like there was only maybe 10 hours of story or so. Looking back on it I wonder if so many of my hours spent were necessary. The entire game basically exists to set up the ending, the last 2-3% of the story. That's when it actually starts getting interesting. Until that moment it feels a bit bland. There are some funny and enjoyable moments, but everything in between exists mostly for world building. There is either a fluff/filler problem or a pacing problem, hard to say for certain. The combat is fine. I don't find it interesting, but it works. The only problem with it is the random difficulty spikes. 95% of the combat encounters have a difficulty of 2/10, but when you get to a boss it spikes to 8 or 9 out of 10. It's not enough to prevent progress, it's just a bit annoying. While I like the characters and story enough to recommend the game, I don't think it's memorable. If I take a break before playing the next game, I'm not sure I'll remember the events of the game when I get back. God bless the boost button. Some of the animations really love taking their time. Without the boost button it would've probably taken me 70-80 hours to complete the game. Not an exaggeration. The vibe of the game is a very average high school anime. There are elements that feel shoe-horned in to fit that vibe. The festival rock band is strongly out of place. I can buy into plenty of concepts in this game, but that one stuck out like crazy. And it looked unbelievably awkward, due to the characters just mouthing non-existing lyrics while an instrumental song was playing. Either commit or give up, don't do this half-assery. The ending was definitely the best part. The game makes great use of the immersion to make you feel real tension during a very stressful pre-war atmosphere. But were all the previous 48 hours necessary to achieve it? I don't know.

In the words of a good friend, JRPG"S are food for the soul, and this is basically the platonic form.

Лучшая часть из первых шести

Laughable they charge $40 for a game from ps3 era, but the game is solid, good story, the combat is what you expect from Trails, of course you need to play the first 5 games that came before playing this game lol

esse jogo seria melhor sem a existência de alisa e elise.

Enjoy the journey;-)