GAMEPLAY:
This section has been written from the perspective of someone who already beat CS3. The gameplay systems in CS4 and CS3 are the same. I played the game on Hard difficulty. Coming from CS3 and Kondo's post-CS3 interview where he noted that Orders are too strong and he wanted to add a progression system for orders, I knew that certain parts of the CS3 battle system were going to be nerfed, and I was fine with that. CS3 was a very broken game, largely due to Orders and overpowered master quartz (MQ).
In CS4 Orders are weaker than in CS3 and in some cases cost more BP to use, but you can improve them by completing trial chests (the in-game justification for how your orders got weaker is slightly amusing). MQs also received some nerfs, which include reductions to Sirius's counter-damage, reductions in Skuld's break damage, etc. Lastly, the amount of time a boss got delayed for being Broken was heavily reduced, and it's much harder to Break bosses period. And this worked out pretty well at first. I'd say for the first 1/5 of the game, things are somewhat balanced, though enemies could stand to deal more damage.
However the moment Rean rejoins your party, everything breaks wide open. Rean's overpowered Orders (though overpowered in CS3, there are even more powerful orders in CS3 you can use in comparison) completely decimate the game's balance; the ability to reduce incoming damage by 40% for only 2 BP, and the ability to instant cast arts for 6 turns with only 3 BP are just too strong. Though the other members do have strong orders, they are usually temporary buffs or healing orders, or raise damage via a set percentage, or just cost too much BP to loop reliably since it's harder to Break bosses than before.
Once you reach this part of the game, you can instacast arts, annihilate an enemy's health, break them, then regain BP easily by linking attacks after they are broken… basically the same loop as CS3 with Juna and Kurt/Sara's Orders, just slower. It's not just Rean's fault, because after the midpoint of the game where you have more or less a ton of characters at your disposal you can break the game as you wish and everything gets smashed even farther wide open with whatever variety of busted you want.
An annoying part of all this is that the enemy bosses have something from CS3 called "Raised State", where they gain a buffs (some permanent), big CP/EP gain, a big chunk of health, and take reduced damage for three turns or more depending on how long the State lasts. So if you don't want a fight to take eons, the game almost encourages you to break it. This raised state almost feels like a band-aid fix to balance problems, so that people wouldn't make the same complaint that they made about CS2 and annihilating bosses.
I haven't even brought up the incredible link bonuses you get such as healing, blocking attacks (even blocking s-crafts for reduced damage on TOP of having orders reduce damage), and so forth. Linking two casters together almost guarantees an endless pool of EP. It's the same from CS3, but much worse since you are controlling characters that have way more link bonuses together than before.
Enemy bosses now use Orders, but it was implemented in the lamest way imaginable. Instead of having a system of competing Orders with us versus the enemy, the enemy's Order actually locks out your Order for several turns at the start of the battle, and then after the enemy's Order expires, they never use an Order again (or do so EXTREMELY rarely). So instead of being something interesting, it became another balance band-aid.
The mecha fights are largely just as simple as always. However the ability of boss mechs to suddenly gain a big chunk of health and self-buff (with some of these buffs being permanent, mind you) is ridiculous, basically making matches take way longer than they should be with no real strategic benefit. Since a buffed character/mecha cannot be debuffed in the same category, assist characters that have debuff properties on their arts are useless against big boss enemy mechs. The ability to use Orders with mechs isn't given until WAY too late into the game, another dimension to battles that is sorely missing for the majority of the game.
So like previous CS games, if you don't mind just breaking them in various ways, you'll do just fine.
UI/UX:
Same as CS3. Really enjoy how there are quick shortcuts on the d-pad. There is lag on the character select screen, but it's not too noticeable. One complaint is no wraparound scrolling on the character select screen. Another complaint is that you still can't sort quartz by element.
When you go to report sidequests there is a big delay before you can actually view them on the computer which is annoying. If you accidentally hit report sidequest, it forces you to sit through a spiel even if you have nothing to report. If you submit notes via ARCUS to other student members and are successful, it will force quit your ARCUS screen even if you have other things on your ARCUS you want to do.
If your character is in the corner of the map during battle, it causes crafts and arts to get bugged out where the aiming lines and circles will always set in the wrong direction in the corner by default. A strange bug.
After you beat the game, the game makes a separate save and asks you to reload and make a choice to see the "actual ending". There is absolutely no reason to do this and it befuddles me why they went to such trouble. There is a sidequest that is "only accessible" if you do every sidequest in the game up to that point, and clearing this sidequest it is required to reach the actual ending. But if you don't unlock the sidequest, don't worry; the game forces you to beat it if you want to see the true ending anyway. This is rather stupid and it makes me wonder why they didn't just make this sidequest part of the main plot. THEN, after watching the true ending and watching the second set of credits, you can reload the save AGAIN, to see a "hidden scene". This feels like a ton of nonsense that's layered for no real reason. You think you would give me the courtesy of watching such important scenes normally without having to jump through such silly hoops. What is the point of a true ending that's locked like this, just to say the game has a true ending?
GRAPHICS:
The opening animation is of such a horrendous quality, that I was wondering if Falcom had lost their minds approving it. Please go back to dramatic "moving" stills if you need to be mindful of budgets. It's almost like they recognize how bad it looks because they have a "second opening" character reel, but the combination of these things is so cheap looking and awkward that there really is no need to do something like this again.
There are a lot of beautiful graphical showpieces in this game and the 60fps is very welcome. Lost Arts in particular are just as pretty as ever and the grand spectacle of scenes is impactful (such as the large airship battles). That being said, my previous complaints about lighting and shadows still stand, I would like to see Falcom attempt more stylish lighting and shadows.
The roads are still rather bare, and I would like to see things like rendered grass or more realistic trees. That being said, some areas like the wetlands are very pretty, so no complaints there. I also enjoyed a lot of the graphics in the Crossbell areas like Orchis Tower and Mishelam. Ordis also deserves a special mention for being just as beautiful as always.
MUSIC:
So I feel like this soundtrack is weaker than the one in Cold Steel 3 and might be the weakest soundtrack in the entire Trails series. The biggest problem is the proliferation of very crappy sounding boss battle themes; Endure Grief, Mighty Urge, Deep Carnival, Blue Stardust, Bold Assailants (why are there so many different boss themes that all suck?). Not only do these boss themes sound terrible, but contextually they have no power or depth at all; can you listen to any of the above themes and tell me which one is the battle theme against Ouroboros members or Jaegers? Bet you can't. It's like the exact opposite of Trails SC and Ao, where the "Sora no Kiseki" leftmotif and the "Get Over the Barrier" leftmotif rang proudly throughout many high quality songs, or where the beautiful pacing and instrument choices dictated the emotion of the scene or had a composition texture which reflected the character of the opponent you were facing (e.g. Erosion of Madness and McBurn, Unfathomed Force and Arianrhod).
Generally the problem is that Falcom outsourced way too much important music to a dude named Singa who doesn't have the skill to compose good music, and doesn't care to put context into his songs either. So there is just this avalanche of shit. Why do I call it an avalanche? Because you will be hearing all of these battle themes A LOT and for a long period of time. To make matters worse, one of the most climactic moments in the whole game (and one of the most emotional, if you're a big fan of Rean, and I know there are a lot of those) is jarringly ruined by some of the shittiest freestyle rap I've ever heard in my life. Meguro this composer is not.
Area themes are fine as usual, though I feel that there isn't a road song as good as CS3's "Alley of Silence" (though "Witch of the Quiet Forest" comes close). Ordis theme sounds as beautiful as ever, but town themes are largely reused or just basic stuff, which is perfectly fine. Minigame themes sound good, though I feel that the CS3 Vantage Master theme is superior. Dungeon themes are excellent, with "Betting the Fate of the World" and "The End of SAGA" being the pure sugary good stuff.
There are some absolute standout battle themes such as Excellion Krieg, Unlikely Combination, With Our Own Hands!!, and Majestic Roar, though Unlikely Combination is played very rarely and Majestic Roar is only played once (for good reason). Give some praise to Unisuga and Sonoda, two long-time Falcom composers, for knowing when to bring the hype.
Why am I writing so much about music? Because Falcom is famed for their music and seeing the deterioration of quality in important parts of their soundtracks is very sad. This goes hand in hand with the fact that being the last game in the series, the area, road, and final/major battle/sendoff themes not standing out from the previous entries is a little sad. I do not want to see these games go the way of generic Tales music. The Cold Steel series as a whole has only really had two songs live up to the greats from Sky and Crossbell in terms of memorability, and those are the two sister songs "Decisive Collision" and "Blue Destination". It's not a coincidence that these two songs are incredibly popular as they are contextually extremely well composed.
There are other weird problems. The place where new songs and past songs are used during scenes is exceedingly odd. The boss gauntlet leading up to the final boss has two groups use "Belief" SAV as their fight theme, which I've heard too much for it to have any real impact (and style wise doesn't feel like it matches the context, unlike how it fit the desperation fight against C in CS1 very well). "Blue Stardust" is used in a fight that does not match the context of the battle. "Sword of Biting Gale" (an absolute crap-tacular screechy song I might add) is used as the cavalry back-up theme even when other dramatic songs which would have matched the characters in question better are available. "Doomsday Trance" plays NONSTOP during one of the last parts of Act 1, for almost two hours straight! The game is entirely devoid of character-specific themes like CS2's "Altina" or "The Witch of the Abyss". "Ai no Uta", sounds like some cheap romance anime breakup song and does not match the context of the ending scene at all (consider that something like CS2's "Wakare no Toki" is the polar opposite of this situation). I could go on but there is a lot more, and you will notice this when playing CS4, no doubt about it.
The two final battle themes, while being good compositions, are probably the most forgettable final arc songs in Trails history. The first has no contextual callback and is simply a generic orchestra which could fit in any game or hell, a movie. The second one has pretty much the same criticism. What kills me is that during the final battle, all the major characters from each arc are fighting, so the fact that despite this huge combination of amazing characters, we could only get a generic orchestra battle theme? Not even an attempt to meld the history of each series together into a beautiful melody? This kills the hype.
Now I can already see you reading this review and coming up with some snarky comments as music is usually a touchy subject, so let me head them off at the pass.
Peanut Gallery 1: "Why do you care so much about Falcom music? lol just generic rpg shit."
A: I too like 4chan level discourse, oh user who I am sure is a connoisseur of the fine musical arts.
Peanut Gallery 2: "All the music from each Cold Steel game sounds the same to me."
A: Apart from being very insulting to composers who work very hard to make memorable tunes for you and generally being insulting to the craft of music composition as a whole, if you honestly think this you can skip this part of the review as well.
Peanut Gallery 3: "It sounds fine to me."
A: Your standards are duly noted.
Peanut Gallery 4: "The new battle music sounds great, I love hearing crappy guitars, awful violins, cursed freestyle rap, and songs with no emotional depth or context. It's my fetish to play devil's advocate at all costs to protect my precious Cold Steel series."
A: I can do nothing for you.
Peanut Gallery 5: "The title screen song in CS4 is based."
A: Agreed!
WRITING QUALITY:
I've wanted to write this category for a while. As most people who are astute enough noticed, the writing quality has taken a serious dive since the beginning of Cold Steel 1 (despite XSEED's best efforts at pruning away a lot of nonsense), but Cold Steel 4 has reached the apex.
Almost every scene in the game where there is a past event that the current cast doesn't know about starts and goes like this.
Altina: "This was recorded during my time at the Intelligence Division. [Launches into long expository dialogue]."
Other character: "Oh yeah, I think I heard a rumor about that. [Launches into even more expository dialogue]."
AND/OR
Rean: "Oh yeah, I heard about this (you) from [insert character(s)]. This was [launches into long expository dialogue]."
This is seriously jarring because there are many characters and events that are extremely unlikely for any of these people to actually know. But it's such a transparent attempt to catch people up or remind people of previous characters (hell, they do this for events that happened in the same game!) and the expository dialogue is so out of place that it feels extraordinarily cheap and bad. There is so much time wasted on this junk dialogue and sepia tone flashbacks that I have to wonder how much time would actually be saved if events and characters were merely accepted as they were instead of writing this crap. Freaking GILBERT is reintroduced like this, and I couldn't believe it. It robs so much joy of rediscovery, and kills the intrigue for those who haven't played the older games yet.
Cold Steel 3 had a pretty similar problem which is one big mark against that game but this is a CS4 review. I never want to see sepia Lloyd cocking his head like a rooster ever again.
The next thing I want to talk about is how much dialogue is wasted with very unnatural platitudes. It's gotten so bad that even Japanese players are starting to beg Falcom to stop doing it. There is confluence between written language and spoken language which creates strange jarring effects during dialogue. The whole of the text needs to be refined and shortened into more natural language.
And before you ask, yes the "Rean echo" makes a comeback. That and the listing of every character's name whenever something emotional happens. No, that's not natural Japanese.
STORY:
Here we are, the big meaty stuff.
There are so many problems, I don't know where to start. I originally wrote a far more detailed review, but even then I couldn't cover everything I wanted to say. So I opted for a more general and condensed style of writing.
There's a lot of dissatisfaction, but at least we can say Cold Steel is over.
In my personal opinion, the power of Trails games lies in the characters. The better the characters, the better the character interactions and character stories, the better the game. Well-developed characters are the strong foundation of memorable stories. If you divorce character development from the main plot and the fabric of the main plot development, you risk having a main plot that feels "empty", with little consequence.
And that's the main problem with CS4. It feels like an empty game. There is no sense of accomplishment or exhilaration. The stakes are almost never there. Even during moments where character developments in the plot puts forward a chance for characters to shine, the majority of things fall flat on their face or never live up to the potential set to them by the previous games. I'm not just talking about heroes either, but also villains.
The main reason for these failures comes down to the cast size. There are just way too many characters, period. This includes all the "guest" characters from other arcs that suck up the tiny remaining oxygen in the plot, and act like cardboard cutouts that were purely inserted into the game for nostalgia marketing grabs. There are so many loose ends from Cold Steel 1 through 3 (especially 3), that making Cold Steel 4 an "Everyone is Here" game was actually a big mistake because it acts like a logjam for plot movement. Old Class VII is merely just background characters, New Class VII happily joins them on the plot sideline soon after, and Rean returns to his blank-faced self-insert self. But that doesn't excuse the game from failing to address or build on so many things built up to this point.
The villains either fight us for the most inane reasons, or fight for us for unbelievable reasons, or fight us because the curse dictates them to do, but we just merely handwave it off regardless. Shirley is probably the most jarring example of this, but the scene with Irina and Schmidt's excuses was so unbelievable I well, couldn't believe it, especially considering what they had done up to this point. Cao attacks New Class VII under contract and the game handwaves it off later, in a section with such perplexing writing that I couldn't believe what I was actually reading (and before some dude pops in here with B-B-BUT SKY SC, the battle context in that game was handled 1000% better than this nonsense). Just like in CS2 with Vita, making every villain sympathetic and "totally on our side dudes" or "never did anything wrong, really" without even an attempt at developing and providing acceptable and believable context is just Falcom saying "we didn't really properly develop this idea at all but we need these characters to be kept in the flow because we don't want to write anything difficult so lol yeah just ignore all that past stuff". Or "the curse did it" or "we were just testing your resolve" (the last one is especially weird from characters that have no business saying it???). This results in so many scenarios where I wonder why the hell we are even fighting to begin with and gives me the uncomfortable feeling that despite being part of the main plot, there is a ton of wasted time here and ideas that go nowhere.
And one more thing I wanted to mention. Falcom's disrespect of the dead.
Every single character that gets killed in CS3 revives in this game, and the only people that are allowed to die are Franz (I literally cannot bring myself to care about him, and I doubt anyone else did either) Rutger (a character whose motives are so open and who fought us as often as he pleased that it is VERY difficult to care about him) and Arianrhod (probably the only well-executed death in the game, even if the way she died was a bit contrived). All of the incredibly convenient revivals, including the slow roll fanservice moment where Millium is wearing more or less a skin-tight bikini, undercuts all the themes that Falcom has been promoting since the beginning of Sky (saying goodbye and moving past death to save your world and not give in to hatred or despair). It also undercuts CS4 extremely hard as there are quite a few touching scenes where Crow has to accept his upcoming "death".
This unbelievably convenient resurrections, restorations, and such completely kill the punch of everything set up from CS3. Is there any point in caring at all in the rest of the series if someone dies (or is about to die), no matter how important?
In an unbelievable end to this section, Falcom shows their total regret at actually allowing Loewe to die by letting him talk AGAIN, which is why I mention Falcom's disrespect of the dead. They refused to let Loewe rest in peace. Can't wait to revisit Loewe's grave in every future Kiseki game so I can call him back from the dead like a 1-800 phone call! I almost feel like if Falcom could think of a stupid enough reason to revive Loewe from the dead for real, they would do it without hesitation, that's how bad they've gotten with dealing with the concept of life and death.
Gilbert is one of the highlight returning characters from Sky but he is used way too much. I think I go against him no less than 6 times including (big) sidequests. I think he's funny, but his comedy was repeated so much that Falcom ruined his shine, just like any repeated joke. At the very least his final scene is amazing.
Regarding the conclusion to the game. Osborne is magnificent as always, but the Olivier vs. Osborne rivalry from the 3rd never pays off, as the two never truly and properly engage each other after Olivier is revived. Rean does get a good conclusion with Osborne in the end, but Teo Schwarzer is never really introduced into the whole drama other than an explanation for how Rean was handed off to Teo. Which is 1 lost chance of 1000 of introducing some juicy family drama into the game, just like how the Alisa / Sharon drama was a complete dud (what awful writing for those parts of the game!).
Ouroboros has devolved into a joke organization. I'm not sure how I can make this much clearer. That's largely the fault of Vita and Mariabell. I feel pretty bad for them nowadays, I remember fondly when they used to be a mysterious and threatening organization with awesome power. But who really cares about mysterious power and technological strength when Rean is literally Goku, ARCUS is a catch all powerup, everyone has orbal net and laptops, the Glorious got its ass kicked, and the Courageous II cannon can kill an Aion like it's nothing? What's Ouroboros going to do; send some tiny archaisms after our next heroes again for target practice? Cedric joining them is kinda poetic since Ouroboros became so pathetic.
On the same topic, McBurn actually turned out to be a real awesome character, and his scene gave me Sky vibes with how interesting and fun it was implemented. Like the rest of the characters in the game, he is really denied proper screen time due to character volume, but at least his scene was super cool and kinda endearing. I look forward to seeing him in the future.
A huge war breaks out due to the curse as Rean and company go to the final dungeon, and there is an awesome scene of the war beginning, but the fast conclusion to the war and the bringing of peace thanks to the killing of the curse is relegated to the plot cleanup monologue, which reminds me...
...tons of plot cleanup occur at literally the last minute, with Rean monologuing a drama CD script after you finish the true ending. This includes Rufus getting arrested (why the hell can Rufus get arrested but we are completely unable to arrest anyone else?). Stuff like the noble uprising (thus meaning that the whole "finding the answer to the noble and commoner divide" is more or less a failure; not like it was ever a focus again after the midpoint of CS3), the Crossbell Independence movement that has been teased for so long is completely wrapped up with some intensely described scenes that we never even got a chance to participate in... all of this is relegated to a few lines during this monologue… the whole time I was listening to this, I was incredibly sad that all of these interesting plot ideas that could've taken the place of filler was instead placed into a black screen readout. Such a huge disappointment.
I absolutely loved seeing the Schera and Olivier wedding, but I didn't really like how Cold Steel characters took the spotlight in the final photo. It should have been a true, huge group photo with every character you can squish into the shot, with Olivier and Schera in the middle (Schera's face is blocked by a tree!); after all, it is a big celebratory event in the whole Trails universe. And Rean being surrounded by girls and all the guys shoved to the side or back… like, really? How indulgent is Falcom really?
OK, I'll stop here before I keep writing nonstop. But if someone wants me to write more leave a comment and I will cause there's a lot to talk about and I definitely didn't address all the characters and events, like the final boss being Ishmelga, Osborne's Divine Knight who is the originator of the curse on the empire. Or you can tell me to stop writing. :)
FINAL THOUGHTS:
For those of you who scroll to the end of reviews to find a rating number or something, sorry, I don't have anything for you. All I have is my final personal ranking for Trails games.
3rd > Zero > Ao > SC > CS3 > FC > CS1 > CS4 > CS2
CS4 like CS2 becomes more of a disappointment the more I think back to what I played.
I'm not here to dissuade anyone from buying the game, after all it's the "conclusion game" so if you're already invested this far into the series, there's no way you're not going to buy it lol. If you don't really care about the details and you don't mind if context is all messed up, you should probably have a good time. You can enjoy it as a generic RPG, just like CS2.
People docked a lot of the game for the harem aspect, but I accepted that it was going to be part of the game since it was part of every Cold Steel game. You either accept it or you don't. Yeah, it's shitty, but that's a consequence of the bonding system being shitty too. It's not like the bonding events are bad, in fact they're usually quite good when the characters in question are not sucking Rean off, but the very way they exist by nature is flawed, and everyone knows why by now.
CS4 has really tested my patience though, I won't deny this. Trails games are no longer an automatic purchase for me. I'm going to be taking a good hard look at the next game… and who knows? If it doesn't meet my liking, I have no problems stopping here and only playing Ys games from now on. I'm not gonna make the same mistakes I've made in the past like where I kept buying tickets to every successive Hobbit movie even though each one was awful. Falcom has a lot of refining to do and a lot of junk to throw out. End review, catch you on the outside.
