![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmicspearI did it. I watched the damn fairy tale until it was finished.
This is a Trails game, and more than that it's the last game in its arc, so naturally there will be spoilers for pretty much every game before it in this review, especially for the previous three Cold Steel games. So consider yourself warned.
I'm also gonna just assume some level of familiarity with the series, or at least the Erebonia arc, because it's just plain easier to make this work if I do.
So, in the finale of Trails of Cold Steel III, Rean accidentally the whole world. Kind of an unfortunate situation, really. As was foretold in the Black Records, he unleashed the Great Twilight upon Erebonia, kicking the curse that drives the empire's people to madness and rage into overdrive. And since Chancellor Osborne and his people spent the whole of that game furnishing public support for a war with Calvard, that curse has the easiest time possible taking control of people. And that war's very close on the horizon, as the military has already announced Operation Jormungandr, the decisive plan that if the propaganda is to be believed will guarantee victory. Universal conscription is taking an increasing amount of the population, and because of the curse this is getting an alarming amount of support. Behind the scenes, Ouroboros have begun openly working with the Imperial government for their own reasons.
Meanwhile, Class VII remains stricken following the deaths of Millium and a number of their allies. Rean has been taken captive by the Black Workshop, and is still in the blind rage he went into at the end of CS3. Ash, who shot the emperor while the curse was controlling him, is missing, while Musse has disappeared to implement her own plan to counter the situation—one which General Aurelia and ex-Ouroboros Anguis Vita Clotilde seem to be involved with. The other members retreat to Eryn, the hidden village of the Hexen Clan. From there, they begin fighting back in their own way, which is obviously going to be an issue since a war isn't exactly something a small group of elite fighters can directly stop. So they concentrate on something they can definitely work towards: finding the Black Workshop and getting Rean back.
The first part of CS4, where you're revisiting all the places you saw in the last game and finding out how the Great Twilight and National Mobilization Law are fucking them up, is particularly strong. It was a good idea back in CS2 and it's a good idea here too. It works especially well in Crossbell, since you've had three games to get to know the people there—if there's any particular minor characters you've been following from back in Zero it can be absolutely heartbreaking to see them responding to the draft.
The curse, meanwhile, is something I feel they could've done more with. This is supposed to be an irresistable force driving people to mindlessly support the war, but there's a remarkably small number of people you meet who are actually being overtly influenced by it. I feel like it could've been neat to have more and more characters falling victim to it over the course of the game and that doesn't really happen.
More importantly, the first half of the game also serves as a showcase for the new Class VII and a chance for them to have their time in the spotlight. This is great, and very much needed after CS3 was constantly upstaging them whenever they could've had a chance to do anything. It's particularly good for Juna, who didn't get to do much of interest back in CS3 despite ostensibly being the face of new Class VII but now gets to very definitely be the main character of the first half and have plenty of good characterization.
Of course, once Rean is inevitably rescued the focus goes right back to him, but they still make at least an effort to not have him upstage the other characters when their stories come up. Not much of one, but there's still an effort! It does still turn back into The Rean Show once he's back, though, complete with the return of the dreaded bonding events and open-ended romance options. I'm of two minds about this, because on the one hand I'm not as annoyed with how much Rean monopolizes the story as some people, but on the other hand it really does take away from the ability of anyone else to get through their stories, especially with how massive the character roster is now. It's especially unfortunate with Fie and Jusis, who should be settling things with their main rival characters but since said rivals have Divine Knights, Rean needs to be the one to actually directly resolve things with them.
Ultimately, the story ends up working well enough, with the endgame delivering several very good Trails-style reveals, and I will absolutely admit to crying at the ending. And the other ending, because CS4 is unusual for the series in having both a normal ending and a true ending.
As far as the mechanics go, combat is mostly done using the same version of the Trails battle system as CS3 did. Since I haven't reviewed that game, I'll go into some detail about what's changed in the series since Azure. First up, elemental values are gone—quartz will either give you arts or not give you arts. I'm not fond of this, because it means having to choose between arts and stats, and most of the time you're gonna want to go with stats. As a result, you end up mostly just using whatever your master quartz give you. Second, characters are now linked with each other in battle. Hit an enemy, and there's a chance of unbalancing them based on the nature of your attack and the target's balance resistances, and when you unbalance an enemy you can have your linked partner do a follow-up. These follow-ups also grant BP, which is a resource you can spend for stronger follow-up attacks including one with all your characters. Third, you now have reserve characters you can switch in and out more or less freely. That's pretty much it for the changes brought over from CS1 and CS2.
Then there's the mechanics introduced in CS3. First of these is enemies having break meters, which get depleted as you attack them. Fully deplete an enemy's break meter and you, well, break them, giving you a guaranteed item drop and temporarily giving you automatic critical hits against them. Second among the CS3 mechanics is the Brave Order system, where you can spend BP to activate temporary buffs for the whole party ranging from attack and critical bonuses to automatically adding various buffs to completely nullifying casting time. They're good stuff, is what I'm saying here. Third, you can now equip a secondary master quartz! This gives you the first ability the quartz in question has and a bit of its stats, while letting you create some incredibly broken combos if you know what you're doing. CS4 actually buffs this by letting you assign each master quartz to as many secondary slots as you want, so if there's one you like you can give it to everyone.
Aside from buffing secondary master quartz, the main mechanical change from CS3 is nerfing orders and breaking, which turned out to be a lot stronger than they were meant to be. In CS3 you could guarantee a break against anything by using Juna's Sledgehammer order and having Rean whack it with Arcane Gale, but in CS4 your break improving effects are weaker and enemies take more to break. And they're hardly the only orders to get nerfed—orders in general are more expensive, weaker, and have less duration than they used to. You can improve them, though, with a returning element from CS2: Trial chests. Each trial chest has a battle that you need to do with either two or four specific characters, and if you win you upgrade an order on one of the participants. Honestly, the nerf was good, because orders and breaking really were too strong.
The really big mechanical change comes outside of combat. If you've ever played a Trails game you'll know that this series is missable hell. Trails fans know the pain of having to constantly check back everywhere they have access to whenever there's any sort of plot event just to see if someone's gonna give them a book or a hidden quest. CS4 changes this up. In this game, almost all missables that aren't profile notes are now clearly marked on your minimap, so you can always tell if there's something to find on any screen the moment you enter it. This is honestly a game-changer for a series that's largely relied on you finding a walkthrough to be able to do anything.
On a more negative note, I need to talk about the music. CS4 isn't constantly throwing bad music at you, but it has some serious issues with tracks that don't fit the situation they're used in or don't measure up to the standards the series has previously set—one particular moment I will simply sum up as "Class VII does a cool boss rush while I play unfitting music." A fair few people will blame Mitsuo Singa for this since a lot of the worst offenders are his work, but he can and does produce good work that's up to the standard it should be. I'd say it's more a direction issue—someone had to decide that the OP starting with a section consisting entirely of like five seconds of three-chord backing guitar was a good idea, and if I was a betting man I'd put money on it being the same someone who decided that said backing guitar would best be accompanied by nothing but CGI roads that don't match anything else in the opening animation. Thankfully, there's still enough good in the soundtrack that this is only an occasional issue.
All told, I'd say this is the worst of the Trails games I've played, but it is still a good time. If you've played the previous games in the series, you can certainly do worse than this one, though if you haven't you might want to give it a miss because it's a particularly bad one to start on
This is a Trails game, and more than that it's the last game in its arc, so naturally there will be spoilers for pretty much every game before it in this review, especially for the previous three Cold Steel games. So consider yourself warned.
I'm also gonna just assume some level of familiarity with the series, or at least the Erebonia arc, because it's just plain easier to make this work if I do.
So, in the finale of Trails of Cold Steel III, Rean accidentally the whole world. Kind of an unfortunate situation, really. As was foretold in the Black Records, he unleashed the Great Twilight upon Erebonia, kicking the curse that drives the empire's people to madness and rage into overdrive. And since Chancellor Osborne and his people spent the whole of that game furnishing public support for a war with Calvard, that curse has the easiest time possible taking control of people. And that war's very close on the horizon, as the military has already announced Operation Jormungandr, the decisive plan that if the propaganda is to be believed will guarantee victory. Universal conscription is taking an increasing amount of the population, and because of the curse this is getting an alarming amount of support. Behind the scenes, Ouroboros have begun openly working with the Imperial government for their own reasons.
Meanwhile, Class VII remains stricken following the deaths of Millium and a number of their allies. Rean has been taken captive by the Black Workshop, and is still in the blind rage he went into at the end of CS3. Ash, who shot the emperor while the curse was controlling him, is missing, while Musse has disappeared to implement her own plan to counter the situation—one which General Aurelia and ex-Ouroboros Anguis Vita Clotilde seem to be involved with. The other members retreat to Eryn, the hidden village of the Hexen Clan. From there, they begin fighting back in their own way, which is obviously going to be an issue since a war isn't exactly something a small group of elite fighters can directly stop. So they concentrate on something they can definitely work towards: finding the Black Workshop and getting Rean back.
The first part of CS4, where you're revisiting all the places you saw in the last game and finding out how the Great Twilight and National Mobilization Law are fucking them up, is particularly strong. It was a good idea back in CS2 and it's a good idea here too. It works especially well in Crossbell, since you've had three games to get to know the people there—if there's any particular minor characters you've been following from back in Zero it can be absolutely heartbreaking to see them responding to the draft.
The curse, meanwhile, is something I feel they could've done more with. This is supposed to be an irresistable force driving people to mindlessly support the war, but there's a remarkably small number of people you meet who are actually being overtly influenced by it. I feel like it could've been neat to have more and more characters falling victim to it over the course of the game and that doesn't really happen.
More importantly, the first half of the game also serves as a showcase for the new Class VII and a chance for them to have their time in the spotlight. This is great, and very much needed after CS3 was constantly upstaging them whenever they could've had a chance to do anything. It's particularly good for Juna, who didn't get to do much of interest back in CS3 despite ostensibly being the face of new Class VII but now gets to very definitely be the main character of the first half and have plenty of good characterization.
Of course, once Rean is inevitably rescued the focus goes right back to him, but they still make at least an effort to not have him upstage the other characters when their stories come up. Not much of one, but there's still an effort! It does still turn back into The Rean Show once he's back, though, complete with the return of the dreaded bonding events and open-ended romance options. I'm of two minds about this, because on the one hand I'm not as annoyed with how much Rean monopolizes the story as some people, but on the other hand it really does take away from the ability of anyone else to get through their stories, especially with how massive the character roster is now. It's especially unfortunate with Fie and Jusis, who should be settling things with their main rival characters but since said rivals have Divine Knights, Rean needs to be the one to actually directly resolve things with them.
Ultimately, the story ends up working well enough, with the endgame delivering several very good Trails-style reveals, and I will absolutely admit to crying at the ending. And the other ending, because CS4 is unusual for the series in having both a normal ending and a true ending.
As far as the mechanics go, combat is mostly done using the same version of the Trails battle system as CS3 did. Since I haven't reviewed that game, I'll go into some detail about what's changed in the series since Azure. First up, elemental values are gone—quartz will either give you arts or not give you arts. I'm not fond of this, because it means having to choose between arts and stats, and most of the time you're gonna want to go with stats. As a result, you end up mostly just using whatever your master quartz give you. Second, characters are now linked with each other in battle. Hit an enemy, and there's a chance of unbalancing them based on the nature of your attack and the target's balance resistances, and when you unbalance an enemy you can have your linked partner do a follow-up. These follow-ups also grant BP, which is a resource you can spend for stronger follow-up attacks including one with all your characters. Third, you now have reserve characters you can switch in and out more or less freely. That's pretty much it for the changes brought over from CS1 and CS2.
Then there's the mechanics introduced in CS3. First of these is enemies having break meters, which get depleted as you attack them. Fully deplete an enemy's break meter and you, well, break them, giving you a guaranteed item drop and temporarily giving you automatic critical hits against them. Second among the CS3 mechanics is the Brave Order system, where you can spend BP to activate temporary buffs for the whole party ranging from attack and critical bonuses to automatically adding various buffs to completely nullifying casting time. They're good stuff, is what I'm saying here. Third, you can now equip a secondary master quartz! This gives you the first ability the quartz in question has and a bit of its stats, while letting you create some incredibly broken combos if you know what you're doing. CS4 actually buffs this by letting you assign each master quartz to as many secondary slots as you want, so if there's one you like you can give it to everyone.
Aside from buffing secondary master quartz, the main mechanical change from CS3 is nerfing orders and breaking, which turned out to be a lot stronger than they were meant to be. In CS3 you could guarantee a break against anything by using Juna's Sledgehammer order and having Rean whack it with Arcane Gale, but in CS4 your break improving effects are weaker and enemies take more to break. And they're hardly the only orders to get nerfed—orders in general are more expensive, weaker, and have less duration than they used to. You can improve them, though, with a returning element from CS2: Trial chests. Each trial chest has a battle that you need to do with either two or four specific characters, and if you win you upgrade an order on one of the participants. Honestly, the nerf was good, because orders and breaking really were too strong.
The really big mechanical change comes outside of combat. If you've ever played a Trails game you'll know that this series is missable hell. Trails fans know the pain of having to constantly check back everywhere they have access to whenever there's any sort of plot event just to see if someone's gonna give them a book or a hidden quest. CS4 changes this up. In this game, almost all missables that aren't profile notes are now clearly marked on your minimap, so you can always tell if there's something to find on any screen the moment you enter it. This is honestly a game-changer for a series that's largely relied on you finding a walkthrough to be able to do anything.
On a more negative note, I need to talk about the music. CS4 isn't constantly throwing bad music at you, but it has some serious issues with tracks that don't fit the situation they're used in or don't measure up to the standards the series has previously set—one particular moment I will simply sum up as "Class VII does a cool boss rush while I play unfitting music." A fair few people will blame Mitsuo Singa for this since a lot of the worst offenders are his work, but he can and does produce good work that's up to the standard it should be. I'd say it's more a direction issue—someone had to decide that the OP starting with a section consisting entirely of like five seconds of three-chord backing guitar was a good idea, and if I was a betting man I'd put money on it being the same someone who decided that said backing guitar would best be accompanied by nothing but CGI roads that don't match anything else in the opening animation. Thankfully, there's still enough good in the soundtrack that this is only an occasional issue.
All told, I'd say this is the worst of the Trails games I've played, but it is still a good time. If you've played the previous games in the series, you can certainly do worse than this one, though if you haven't you might want to give it a miss because it's a particularly bad one to start on
