The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV

The finale of the Erebonia arc fails to measure up to the promise of its previous three games. If you're dying to find out how the story concludes, like I was after finishing the third game, prepare for disappointment. Pros: The heroes still have some great moments, and the interactions between them are often very engaging. The gameplay itself was surprisingly challenging at first, which makes the eventual power-scaling very satisfying. The "production" quality: music, cut-scenes, voice-acting, etc., are solid. Cons: The story, including the plot, the writing, the villains (and especially the way the heroes interact with the villains) are all a huge step down in quality compared to the previous games. On the writing/villain side of things, there are several characters who get "redemption arcs" in this game. I emphasis the quotation marks because they're laughably rushed, and completely undeserved. There are several heroes from previous games who went through redemption arcs, so I know the writers can write excellent arcs for characters like that. They just... didn't this time. It didn't even feel like they tried to. An example for the plotting issues, something that th…

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Trails's usual "great man theory" writing taken to unbelievable degrees with an ending that genuinely squanders everything the four games set up. The bits relating to Ouroboros and Aidios sprinkled throughout the four games are interesting, and much of the internal strife in Erebonia is also pretty interesting. There were also many main character and NPC moments I enjoyed, with one of my favorites being the conclusion to Anton's journey across Erebonia. Unfortunately, Rean Schwarzer was chosen to be the center of the universe, where all events and character interactions are caught in his inescapable orbit, eventually passing an event horizon within which only lazy shounen JRPG writing exists. A hundred hours of "our resolve!! we'll see whose is stronger!!", people inexplicably putting all their faith in one single person and deprioritizing their reasonable plans, and an ending that boils own to [spoiler]"Ah, but you see, I was not evil all along! I simply wished to contain the curse within myself so I could sacrifice myself! That makes up for the unimaginable pain and suffering I cause the countries Erebonia annexed, or the thousands of soldiers who died in my idiotic attempt at a …

/!\ SPOILER WARNING FOR COLD STEEL 3 AND 4 /!\ To this day I still don't understand what the vision was with this game, and how this script was somehow greenlighted. Multiple hundreds of hours of build up for this game to deliver in the absolute worst way possible. The plot itself and it's execution is EXTREMELY wacky. Multiple characters turned into caricatures of themselves, some that don't even get their awaited character development AT ALL. Female characters don't even get the freedom to have character development by themselves in bonding events without Rean stealing their own growth and screen time, because they wanted to accommodate for romances (WHILE SOME OF THEM ARE MINORS MIND YOU) that didn't even manage to feel a little satisfying. (I would even go as far as calling it blatant misogyny) Themes from the previous Cold Steel entries, like the class system dilemma, do not even show up ONCE, when it was highlighted as one of the core struggles of Erebonia. All because they chose to represent the history of this country through a "metaphoric" curse extremely heavy handed; that does NOT get the point across whatsoever, unless you try to read into it extensively (qui…

Insane cast of characters with a well written story. Banger ost (obviously cause it's Falcom) and great gameplay

Rean "Forward Relentlessly" Schwarzer