I started at cold steel 1 and I kept playing until cs3 chapter 2. I saw too many unknown references from cs 3 so I stopped playing and went back to sky and the crossbell games. If you play the previous entries, cold steel 3 becomes a much better experience. Its fun seeing old characters interact with Rean and the new class seven. Also in chapter 2, you go to Crossbell and if you played the duology, you have a much deeper connection with characters like Randy and Yuna.
Well - I started with Cold Steel I, and noticed in some comments on Steam and GOG that it was part of a far bigger series. So after some deliberation I decided to put Cold Steel I on hold (I was only a hour or so in) and started playing the Sky series. I then jumped into the (then by Geofront translated) Crossbell dualogy, to finally dive into the first Cold Steel game again. I am really glad I did it that way, because I really could feel the progress that I made throughout the games. By the way - I really enjoyed Cold Steel III. For me the closure for the old class VII was done in Cold Steel II, so I had no problems at all with fresh new faces. I really got to love Juna as a new "core" of the new class VII. For me she's a great protagonist. Maybe not as great as Estelle, but she sure comes close. But that's the fun of Falcom games. Some games you like and some game do not "resonate" with you. I sure put Cold Steel III and IV on the same level as an Ys VIII - Lacrimosa of Dana and Tokyo Xanadu eX+. But as said - Everyone has a different taste, and that makes things interesting....😉
@@justfoldprech Well - It will be translated.... Eventually... Some day... But now big sites like IGN has given Reverie a real good score making the Legend Of Heroes series more mainstream, I guess the pressure to translate Kuro has gone up some notches. And I still really, really, really hoping Falcom will make a Tokyo Xanadu 2 some day. Oh well - I can always dream you know?
As someone who has yet to play CS3 but has played all its predecessors, Trails combat has always been unbalanced-haha, get it?-but I definitely do prefer the direction in which the series has been going up to this point. It's ultimately my fault for playing Sky games on the difficulties I did, but I think it essentially had the exact same problem in an even worse form: arts spam was good not because arts were too good, but because many crafts were unviable or almost so, until Sky 3. Spamming S crafts eventually loses its luster for sure, but spamming arts is even more homogeneous because they're not unique to the characters like crafts are. Making some characters all but unable to use certain powerful arts by giving them bad orbment lines is the only thing that really made them "unique" in any way, and the Cold Steel games give you lots of characters, which I will always prefer over being forced to use 2-character parties in Sky 1. The more I think about this topic, the more I think Azure probably had the most balanced system overall. Ironically, however, I felt that the finale of that game was oversaturated with fights, both significant and insignificant narrative-wise, to the extent that I felt the series's combat had never held back the story so egregiously before or since. The overall gameplay and lack of QoL of Sky 1 and 2 made me feel similarly at times, but specifically the combat in that finale was the most burned out I'd felt playing a Trails game outside of Sky 1 and 2.
I recently was watching your Reverie stream and you said "one day you'll play these games in Nightmare first playhru" and i come here and see this critique about the arts. I agree with you, outside of using crafts the game doesn't give you enough of an incentive to use arts. But that's only the case on Normal (and even hard I'd be willing to say) and lower because the enemies are so weak that using their elemental weaknesses is a waste of time. This is why i personally recommend Nightmare. If you really want to see CS3, CS4 and Reverie's gameplay mechanics (all of them) shine the brightest. You do not get to see this (let alone even need to think about strategy that much or at all) on the lower difficulties. But that's my ongoing criticism with Trails is the difficulty and balancing of things but Reverie in Nightmare i think is great. I'd highly recommend it as your characters are very powerful from jump and you are only going to get more powerful which makes the game even more of a push over. I see later you mentioned perhaps higher difficulties make them more important, your assumption is true my friend and it's worth it in my opinion
@@DrLevelUp Great to hear that especially since technically Reverie would be your last opportunity to see what I'm referring to before we move into Kuro where the mechanics changed (like no Brave Orders). Brave Orders, United Front, Switching Characters, Art Buffs and Art Attacks all feel like they are useful and showcases the gameplay at its best. It's very sad this can not be seen fully even on Hard mode. There are a ridiculous amount of Brave Oders in Reverie that heal your hp and give you defense buffs, don't ignore their existence because when enemies hit you hard this brave order active buffs exist to mitigate this. Turn order manipulation also becomes way more important as you try way more harder than before to grab the bonuses and the bosses will give you a real tension when you fight them that makes the whole experience feel even more intense at least for me. They will last longer sure but after the fight when feel exhausted it's a good exhuasted feeling at least for me! Hopefully that's the case for you as well and i look forward to your opinion on the gameplay if the higher difficulty pushes you to care more about all of the mechanics that are present because it definitely did for me! (Also Items! They give you a bunch of them! Use them because you'll get a lot of them as well they feel useful as well) (And U-Material! You'll get a lot of it in Reverie, this makes fishing for U-Material and more sepith to get better Quartz an incentive as well!)
Also i want to throw this out there. The way i talk you can tell i put a lot of time into this game's gameplay. So I'll also say this, I do not recommend Abyss Difficultly, it was a jp dlc difficulty that i think they should have playtested more in regards to the enemies speed stat (some boss go up to 7 turns in a row which is ridiculous) Nightmare is what I'm recommending you tackle not Abyss!
To me, cs3 is where the quality of writing starts to feel amateurish. Throughout the course of the game, they will constantly remind the player that rean is awesome now. As if Rean is not already well developed by this point, Altina will constantly remind you that instructor rean have this badass 6th sense without ever needing a dragon scouter, while the rest of the students will remind you that it's not even his him final form yet. Previous entries show characters growth through their actions and resolves without ever need to blatantly tell the player such.
yeah, CS saga arts is very2 bad.. only late games (CS 3 and 4 only) arts become feasible... you can almost see like this Sky: Arts Galore Crossbell: most balance battle (the beginning lean to crafts) Cold Steel: Cratfs unga bunga
Arts are literally the best thing you can do in every single trails game through reverie... except *maybe* Cold Steel 2 because delay stacking and domination str stacking both are basically just as effective (not.... more effective, since all of those builds, including speedy arts, can essentially beat all content before the enemy can even act) Crafts become a viable option in the Cold Steel series, but they are still consistently inferior to delay reduction / speedy arts builds outside of Cold Steel 2 (IMO of course). The combination of Cast quartz and bell quartz is just too strong at manipulating turn order xD... Oh, special note for Gaius S-craft spam in Cold Steel 3/4 + Reverie... that's just as good as arts and maybe even stronger in Reverie (because of how insane the speed modifier is on abyss difficulty) to be clear - I actually AGREE with your assessment of combat in Cold Steel 3 and I liked the review :). Just because Arts is the best thing you can be doing doesn't mean it encourages you to experiment with them. EDIT: If you find the difficulty too easy in Cold Steel I do recommend nightmare in all the games, it still isn't super hard and feels much better in terms of encouraging you to engage more with that combat system. Abyss in Reverie is only for degenerates like me though, 3x speed on all enemies Is way WAY overboard lol...
I started at cold steel 1 and I kept playing until cs3 chapter 2. I saw too many unknown references from cs 3 so I stopped playing and went back to sky and the crossbell games. If you play the previous entries, cold steel 3 becomes a much better experience. Its fun seeing old characters interact with Rean and the new class seven. Also in chapter 2, you go to Crossbell and if you played the duology, you have a much deeper connection with characters like Randy and Yuna.
That’s exactly what I did. I stopped after Bloody Shirley and Duvalie attack and went back to Sky 1-3 and then the Crossbell Duology.
Well - I started with Cold Steel I, and noticed in some comments on Steam and GOG that it was part of a far bigger series. So after some deliberation I decided to put Cold Steel I on hold (I was only a hour or so in) and started playing the Sky series. I then jumped into the (then by Geofront translated) Crossbell dualogy, to finally dive into the first Cold Steel game again. I am really glad I did it that way, because I really could feel the progress that I made throughout the games.
By the way - I really enjoyed Cold Steel III. For me the closure for the old class VII was done in Cold Steel II, so I had no problems at all with fresh new faces. I really got to love Juna as a new "core" of the new class VII. For me she's a great protagonist. Maybe not as great as Estelle, but she sure comes close. But that's the fun of Falcom games. Some games you like and some game do not "resonate" with you. I sure put Cold Steel III and IV on the same level as an Ys VIII - Lacrimosa of Dana and Tokyo Xanadu eX+. But as said - Everyone has a different taste, and that makes things interesting....😉
@@jclosed2516 Cant wait to get into kuro no kiseki!
@@justfoldprech Well - It will be translated.... Eventually... Some day...
But now big sites like IGN has given Reverie a real good score making the Legend Of Heroes series more mainstream, I guess the pressure to translate Kuro has gone up some notches.
And I still really, really, really hoping Falcom will make a Tokyo Xanadu 2 some day. Oh well - I can always dream you know?
@@jclosed2516 is xanadu any good? i heard the story is meh so i havent purchased it yet.
Huge fan since the psp games! I love this review and hope you continue to enjoy trails and all of falcoms gems! Keep it up!
As someone who has yet to play CS3 but has played all its predecessors, Trails combat has always been unbalanced-haha, get it?-but I definitely do prefer the direction in which the series has been going up to this point. It's ultimately my fault for playing Sky games on the difficulties I did, but I think it essentially had the exact same problem in an even worse form: arts spam was good not because arts were too good, but because many crafts were unviable or almost so, until Sky 3. Spamming S crafts eventually loses its luster for sure, but spamming arts is even more homogeneous because they're not unique to the characters like crafts are. Making some characters all but unable to use certain powerful arts by giving them bad orbment lines is the only thing that really made them "unique" in any way, and the Cold Steel games give you lots of characters, which I will always prefer over being forced to use 2-character parties in Sky 1.
The more I think about this topic, the more I think Azure probably had the most balanced system overall. Ironically, however, I felt that the finale of that game was oversaturated with fights, both significant and insignificant narrative-wise, to the extent that I felt the series's combat had never held back the story so egregiously before or since. The overall gameplay and lack of QoL of Sky 1 and 2 made me feel similarly at times, but specifically the combat in that finale was the most burned out I'd felt playing a Trails game outside of Sky 1 and 2.
Good Video.
Just a few weeks until Reverie FINALLY comes out.
I recently was watching your Reverie stream and you said "one day you'll play these games in Nightmare first playhru" and i come here and see this critique about the arts. I agree with you, outside of using crafts the game doesn't give you enough of an incentive to use arts. But that's only the case on Normal (and even hard I'd be willing to say) and lower because the enemies are so weak that using their elemental weaknesses is a waste of time. This is why i personally recommend Nightmare. If you really want to see CS3, CS4 and Reverie's gameplay mechanics (all of them) shine the brightest. You do not get to see this (let alone even need to think about strategy that much or at all) on the lower difficulties. But that's my ongoing criticism with Trails is the difficulty and balancing of things but Reverie in Nightmare i think is great. I'd highly recommend it as your characters are very powerful from jump and you are only going to get more powerful which makes the game even more of a push over. I see later you mentioned perhaps higher difficulties make them more important, your assumption is true my friend and it's worth it in my opinion
You've convinced me. I am going to restart my Reverie play through on Nightmare and see how it goes. Going to play through the prologue again!
@@DrLevelUp Great to hear that especially since technically Reverie would be your last opportunity to see what I'm referring to before we move into Kuro where the mechanics changed (like no Brave Orders). Brave Orders, United Front, Switching Characters, Art Buffs and Art Attacks all feel like they are useful and showcases the gameplay at its best. It's very sad this can not be seen fully even on Hard mode.
There are a ridiculous amount of Brave Oders in Reverie that heal your hp and give you defense buffs, don't ignore their existence because when enemies hit you hard this brave order active buffs exist to mitigate this. Turn order manipulation also becomes way more important as you try way more harder than before to grab the bonuses and the bosses will give you a real tension when you fight them that makes the whole experience feel even more intense at least for me. They will last longer sure but after the fight when feel exhausted it's a good exhuasted feeling at least for me! Hopefully that's the case for you as well and i look forward to your opinion on the gameplay if the higher difficulty pushes you to care more about all of the mechanics that are present because it definitely did for me! (Also Items! They give you a bunch of them! Use them because you'll get a lot of them as well they feel useful as well) (And U-Material! You'll get a lot of it in Reverie, this makes fishing for U-Material and more sepith to get better Quartz an incentive as well!)
Also i want to throw this out there. The way i talk you can tell i put a lot of time into this game's gameplay. So I'll also say this, I do not recommend Abyss Difficultly, it was a jp dlc difficulty that i think they should have playtested more in regards to the enemies speed stat (some boss go up to 7 turns in a row which is ridiculous) Nightmare is what I'm recommending you tackle not Abyss!
@@RikusonOne Yes! I know! I've heard Abyss is ridiculous.
To me, cs3 is where the quality of writing starts to feel amateurish. Throughout the course of the game, they will constantly remind the player that rean is awesome now. As if Rean is not already well developed by this point, Altina will constantly remind you that instructor rean have this badass 6th sense without ever needing a dragon scouter, while the rest of the students will remind you that it's not even his him final form yet. Previous entries show characters growth through their actions and resolves without ever need to blatantly tell the player such.
yeah, CS saga arts is very2 bad..
only late games (CS 3 and 4 only) arts become feasible...
you can almost see like this
Sky: Arts Galore
Crossbell: most balance battle (the beginning lean to crafts)
Cold Steel: Cratfs unga bunga
I am in Act 2 of CSIV and needing to use Arts a lot more.
Arts are literally the best thing you can do in every single trails game through reverie... except *maybe* Cold Steel 2 because delay stacking and domination str stacking both are basically just as effective (not.... more effective, since all of those builds, including speedy arts, can essentially beat all content before the enemy can even act)
Crafts become a viable option in the Cold Steel series, but they are still consistently inferior to delay reduction / speedy arts builds outside of Cold Steel 2 (IMO of course).
The combination of Cast quartz and bell quartz is just too strong at manipulating turn order xD...
Oh, special note for Gaius S-craft spam in Cold Steel 3/4 + Reverie... that's just as good as arts and maybe even stronger in Reverie (because of how insane the speed modifier is on abyss difficulty)
to be clear - I actually AGREE with your assessment of combat in Cold Steel 3 and I liked the review :). Just because Arts is the best thing you can be doing doesn't mean it encourages you to experiment with them.
EDIT: If you find the difficulty too easy in Cold Steel I do recommend nightmare in all the games, it still isn't super hard and feels much better in terms of encouraging you to engage more with that combat system. Abyss in Reverie is only for degenerates like me though, 3x speed on all enemies Is way WAY overboard lol...