Trails in the Sky Cold Steel Review Xenogears
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Review
Release Date January 29, 2016 (Eu), December 22, 2015 (NA)
Information technology feels surreal to write a review of Trails of Cold Steel given how uncertain the game's possible English release had been until 2015. Having completed information technology, I'thou certainly glad it was released for the West, considering now Persona 4 Golden and Last Fantasy X HD on the Vita finally accept some competition in the JRPG space.
Our adventure takes place in the Erebonian Empire in a region known for war machine prowess. The social grade system is even so in identify and there's tension between nobles and common citizens. In the midst of all of this is Rean Schwarzer, the protagonist who enters Thor's Military Academy. There's a new course in the academy called Class VII which does not distinguish between anyone based on their social or economic status. Every student in this class is unique (with abilities, and in personality) and these characters grow on you right from the start. Trails of Cold Steel is as well the beginning of another story in the aforementioned globe so it tin be played without having experienced the previous games.
And if you lot're familiar with classic JRPGs, you'll be right at home here. It is very story driven so you will take hours spent interacting with your classmates and NPCs before getting into combat – be ready for a slow burn in from the get-go. As it progresses, you acquire more nearly the characters and their relationships, their pasts, and more than. The social and economical course status starts to matter less as you discover the bigger picture: state of war is almost upon us.
Training volition take y'all all over the Empire, and there's also an quondam school house with a changing inner structure that reminds me of Tartarus from Persona 3. Cold Steel'due south combat is great. While this will not come equally a surprise to fans of the franchise, newcomers volition love it and fans of turn based combat volition accept their thirst satiated in a time where some JRPGs are moving to hack and slash or button mashing action combat. At that place's a mashup of things I like from Grandia, Last Fantasy VII (Materia organisation), and Persona in combat.
Spending time with classmates and consuming bond points strengthens your links with them and grants you link experience. This lets you learn more nigh people and gives you bonuses during combat. This tactical link system is new to the serial, and link bonuses range from healing partners to follow up attacks and more.
Combat also gives yous restricted move, which is useful confronting surface area of effect attacks where you need to decide whether tactical links are worth the AoE risk. Each political party member has their ain combat manner: Rean uses a Katana; Laura has a large sword; Machias uses a gun, and Emma uses an Orbal staff. All nine members accept their own way and abilities, and while the visuals do backbite from an otherwise incredible experience, the battle animations are superb, with the special attack animations in particular a sight to behold.
It'southward an impressive world, though. Every NPC has their own story that progresses every bit you proceed playing, which encourages talking to nearly everyone you run into, and exploration on the whole. You lot could just nail through the main story quests, but the real meat comes from characters and the earth. I decided to talk to someone staring into the water and he gave me a fishing rod which unlocked fishing for me – the corporeality of content and things to do is staggering.
A single play-through will take you upwards of 50 hours, but expect to spend more than lxx hours if you don't blitz. Incredibly, there'due south very little filler, and the just existent problem you might accept is how wearisome it is to get going. The prologue has you right into the action, just if yous are short on patience, maybe this one isn't for you. In that location are quests, general student life, battles, fishing, and so much more in this dense world.
XSEED needs to be commended for their localisation. I love the delivery to the franchise, and we see the best of that here. The vocalization acting is smashing for almost every character, and there'due south unique battle dialogue every bit well. NPCs never audio similar, which is a definitely positive in a genre that frequently falls afoul of peripheral characters sounding the same. The soundtrack is likewise one of the all-time soundtracks a JRPG has had in a while. One annoyance with the vocalism acting is how some scenes go on without whatever voice interim – information technology feels inconsistent at times.
The i big problem is the loading times. Rather than hide it behind transition animations or tutorial screens, Trails of Cold Steel just shows you loading screens before and subsequently every boxing. Information technology's simply abrasive, specially on top of the fact that it's generally not the all-time looking game. While the characters and overall art style are fine, it looks dated and inconsistent in many areas, even on the Vita. This might add to the classic JRPG artful, only I wish more care was put into the visuals for the important areas.
Merely this is a dandy and lengthy experience. If you lot're a fan of JRPGs or turn based games and enjoy story driven games, consider investing time into it – you volition not regret information technology. While information technology doesn't do anything new, information technology manages to have a few things from RPGs I honey and weave them into a wonderful package. Despite the issues, I can't praise Trails of Cold Steel enough for making me so invested into yet some other JRPG franchise.
Review lawmaking provided past publisher.
Positives
Infrequent story and slap-up characters.
Fantastic combat system.
Chock full of quality content.
Negatives
Loading times are really annoying in battle.
Visuals are inconsistent.
It'll suck you in slowly every bit it transforms into one of the greatest JRPGs of the last few years, with memorable characters and gameplay.
Source: https://www.godisageek.com/reviews/the-legend-of-heroes-trails-of-cold-steel-review/
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