Various Thoughts

It would’ve been easier had this game followed the lead of its predecessor down into the gutter. Yet it miraculously does not, instead ending up better than the first game in the series by combining elements from both prequels into a far more focused/streamlined product reminiscent of Xenosaga.

This puts potential players in a bind, leaving them the choice of either starting the series here (effectively playing from Juna’s PoV and missing out on all the reunion content) or having to force their way through the first two games in order to see things from Rean’s perspective. After thinking about it a bit, I think the best course of action (if you haven’t played any Cold Steel games before) is to play the first normally, and then play through the second on the lowest difficulty while avoiding all side-content (make sure to pick up Mint, Alan, Hugo, Becky, Munk, and the twins though). You’ll still be in the dark on the Crossbell references of course… but since those games don’t have official translations there’s not much to be done on that front.

Speaking of translations: That’s this game’s one weak point (aside from the cliffhanger ending). Similar to the second installment, the character interactions here more often resemble a rewrite than a translation. It’s thankfully not character assassination-level (looking at you Neptune), but it’s pretty noticeable if you’re playing with the original voice actors and I had hoped that using a different localization team would’ve resulted in a more faithful adaptation. Oh well.

The DLC situation is the same as previous games, which is to say there’s little reason to buy it aside from supporting the developers, and the gameplay progression is quite smooth on normal difficulty. There’s no need for grinding, or going particularly out of the way to find all the sidequests if you simply want to beat the game; just kill the various monster spawns at least once and you’ll be fine.

Now comes the long wait for the fourth and final Cold Steel game, which was announced for release sometime next year… but may end up delayed due to the whole global pandemic issue.

With the way the prequel ended I had feared this would turn into some kind of Gundam ripoff. If only. Instead what it delivers is purestrain cringe worse than DQ11.

It’s especially fond of forcing you to lose or ‘lose’ battles: In addition to a couple battles that literally cannot be won it features battles you win but the story acts like you lost, and battles you win but some random event occurs immediately afterward that requires a 3rd party to magically appear and rescue you. It’s a real bad look. Speaking of battles, the combat remains mostly unchanged (physical attacks miss more often, magical attacks are slightly faster, a new limit-breakish feature has been added) and just as tiresome as ever. Bosses are still massive damage sponges and this time around most of them have access to some kind of healing ability as well, making abuse of the Delay system pretty much mandatory.

Structurally there’s been a huge change however as the Tokyo Xanadu elements have been mostly removed to be replaced with some Suikoden elements instead; namely the whole wandering the countryside to pick up people to populate your base with bit. This results in most of the game being somewhat non-linear and far more engaging than the prequel from an exploration perspective (though do be aware that the second epilogue returns to that previous ‘explore school’ -> ‘explore old schoolhouse’ format).

That’s right: Second epilogue. The first has you controlling characters from the Crossbell games and feels incredibly disconnected from everything else. So yeah, content-wise this game may actually surpass the prequel… making the painful plot developments and monotonous combat a real shame.

Is it worth playing? If you’ve already completed the first then you may as well resolve that cliffhanger. If you haven’t played it though then you’re likely best off avoiding both of them (avoid the DLC regardless, as II‘s is even more worthless than the first’s). If you do decide to play (the GOG version of) it though, take note that the older 1.4 version has to be installed in order for achievements to unlock.

A follow-up to the third Trails in the Sky game, this one takes place in a different location and features a mostly new cast. So you don’t need any familiarity with the earlier games to understand what’s going on (though knowing who Oliver is and what Bracers are will help).

It took me this long to play it due getting burned out on the constant combat (not this series’ strong suit) of the aforementioned 3rd Trails entry. Which ended up being a good thing since it meant I got to play Tokyo Xanadu first. As it turns out, ToCS is half Legend of Heroes (the combat and field trips) and half Xanadu (pretty much everything related to the school).

The characters are stereotypical for the most part and thankfully display only a minor amount of cringe-inducing behavior while event developments are just what you’d expect from Trails game. The combat as mentioned is pretty much the same as previous franchise installments, as is the ease in which you can miss optional content. Using a guide is pretty much mandatory if you want to see/collect everything and even then you’ll need at least two playthroughs. Only want to get the max bonuses for an import into ToCS II? That’s also going to require two playthroughs (unless you do an insane amount of grinding).

And while at first glance that can seem daunting with the massive amount of dialog the game has, if you make good use of Turbo Mode combined with holding down the ‘Cancel’ key to fast-forward cutscenes a second run through the game shouldn’t take nearly as long as the first. Incidentally, if you happen to have the Japanese audio enabled you may notice that the translation trends toward the liberal side of things. Not enough to character assassinate anyone mind you… but enough to be noticeable at times. Oh, and avoid the various DLC since they’re completely worthless (unless you really like the costumes I guess).

Anyways, it’s a decent enough game with a lot of content (60+ hours if you talk to everyone), but if you’ve recently played those other games mentioned above I’d strongly suggest holding off on this since it’ll likely come across as a tiresome retread if you don’t have some distance between them.