CS3 turned out fairly well. It wasn't perfect, but I was pretty satisfied with it.
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV Review Thread
- Thread starter Deleted member 17627
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Yeah, I love this cast and this world, so I'll probably love the big moments, but the pacing and plot delivery will probably have a lot of issues (already present in all the CS games, so yeah, sure, whatever). Hopefully Hajimari and Calvard are better, but I'm not this disillusioned with the franchise, it's going to be a pretty enjoyable game.
The game where they had everything to prove after the YS8 pressure and then it was only adequate? Can't say I put much stock into that when we have several disgaeas being riddled with localization bugs/errors like overlapping text for stats etc etc, ar tornelico 2 with a localization specific game breaking bug and YS8.
Xseed to me went beyond anything I would expect for a good localization so the NISA switch is unsurprisingly going to be a downgrade in the long run.
NISA has a long history of not putting the same care into the process or not having enough time to be able to and that this happened again is just such a non shocker. And if Covid didn't make them get a delay it just speaks volumes to me that they won't ever make a necessary delay for quality reasons alone.
Given that the CS3/4 scripts are super happy to use the same idioms/expression over and over in Japanese it's not like these games couldn't profit a lot from a good localization. If the sky games were anything like that it's no surprise to me how much the localization made me enjoy those games more.
Take a shot for every 全身全霊！
The only team right now that still makes me enjoy the games more localized than in the OG language is the Yakuza team who are honestly amazing.
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Thanks, appreciate the spoiler tag as I'm normally a zero spoilers kind of guy. A little disappointing but not that far off from what I was guessing.
Waiting for the Switch version next year, but I'm excited to play this game. I've enjoyed all the Trails games even Zero which I thought was the worst one. Cold Steel as a series gets the same kind of nonsense hate modern Fire Emblem gets. I say this as a person who likes both era's of FE and Trails.
Despite the decent scores, I'm happy I quit after Cold Steel 2. Cold Steel overall has left a sour taste and I think the biggest issues past games had are just compounded on this series. I also dislike how Falcom doesn't take any risks with the story. Rean has to be permanently available to all girls. All important characters seem to make it out alive despite whatever death scare happens. All villains keep escaping despite being defeated. It's so tiresome. I read some import reviews of CS4 last year and the game basically nullifies whatever CS3 set up. I can't get invested in that kind of story.
This is a really good (and helpful!) review. Reads like a fan who really loves the series but also can see the flaws with it. I liked Cold Steel 1 despite issues with the plot because of the characters, but Cold Steel 2 was really rough. I still haven't gotten around to buying CS3 and after reading this I don't really feel much motivation to. Some of the criticisms in this piece feel like they were ripped right out of my head while playing 2, like how there are these weird scenes were a dozen different characters need to get a superfluous line in and how there are these plot devices that both control every character's motivations but also result in zero meaningful consequences.
It feels like the series' reputation in the West has been largely carried by how wonderful the Trails in the Sky trilogy (or really, duology with a sequel) was. But for me, what made that group of games so great was the charming, tight writing and I haven't personally found with the Cold Steel games.
As someone waiting to play through Geofront's Azure loc and then catch up on CS III/IV, it's sobering to hear about the pitfalls the recent entries have fallen into, especially from fandom friends who run all this by me. So it stings even more to hear about this NISA loc being worse than the previous despite the experience and presumable know-how gained from CS III. I'm happy to hold off on my purchase as usual, but hopefully we hear great things about a Durante-led PC port.
Former XSEED Games staff Brittany Avery, Ryan Thomson, and Kris Knigge did work on the translation and localization of Trails of Cold Steel III. All three staff previously worked at XSEED, and have handled everything from translation, proofing, to editing on Trails of Cold Steel I and II.
It's one thing to criticize NISA for their shoddy work on Ys VIII but to do so while praising XSEED in the same breath and ignoring the fact the same staff involved in XSEED Trails localizations were also involved in CS3's localization. It's not as simple as XSEED GOOD NISA BAD, especially considering the staff exodus XSEED had leading up to was going be involved Trails localizations once NISA got the publishing rights.
It's important to take stock in the quality of a localization also means to know WHO is actually handling the localization, as in the actual people and staff involved. Sometimes the name of the company in front of it all is meaningless.
It's one thing to criticize NISA for their shoddy work on Ys VIII but to do so while praising XSEED in the same breath and ignoring the fact the same staff involved in XSEED Trails localizations were also involved in CS3's localization. It's not as simple as XSEED GOOD NISA BAD, especially considering the staff exodus XSEED had leading up to was going be involved Trails localizations once NISA got the publishing rights.
It's important to take stock in the quality of a localization also means to know WHO is actually handling the localization, as in the actual people and staff involved. Sometimes the name of the company in front of it all is meaningless.
Exactly. XSEED is a shell of its former self now anyway and doesn't even have the manpower to translate games this big anymore.
This makes me sad all over again. Reminder that Xseed actually added turbo mode to trails in the sky some years after just cause. I don't think that was something driven by a huge financial incentive. They just did it to make those version even better.
After Cold Steel 3, I'm not sure how much lower I can set my expectations. After relatively enjoying Cold Steel 2, I was in for the worst Trails game I've ever played in the series. However, an end to Rean's arc sounds great. I've been ready for a new main character in forever. Unfortunately, at the rate Falcom is going I don't have high hopes for that either.
One combat question:
Do tag team specials return from Crossbell?
Curses. Thanks. Hopefully one day for a 3D title.
Anyways, I hope Hajimari gets a localization announcement sometime next year. I'm waiting for the Steam release for Cold Steel 4, so it will be a bit until I can play it.
Too much
meaningless setup you mean if anything.
The corner Falcom found itself in was because they didn't do enough setup imo. Like think about how much shit just came as cheap left field reveals.
I have GIGANTIC misgiving of how the schoolhouse in CS1/2 wasn't used to built up Gnomes as an actual thing instead we get 1 paltry lore note of 2 sentences in an optional book and a huge info dump in CS4 on everything Gnomes. Terrible.
That Witches only get any meaningful expansions on their lore after 3 full games is pathetic as well.
CS2 does so insanely little to set up anything of value. Even the setup that exists in CS2 with Osborne being Rean's father isn't really paid off in a meaningful way.
Imagine CS3 and 4 if CS1 and 2 actually also did more Dreichsel lore and setup. Osborne is largely this huge enigma to us so it's like Falcom could have made that reveal so much more meaningful by painting a rich picture of Dreichsel that Osborne could have been contrasted against and instead we got scraps.
Rivalries are also an info dump exclusive to CS3 when they could have sown seeds for it earlier. The connection of Arseid to Lianne is also barely expanded on when it could have been a great background to have a cool Laura storyline in.
Urgh. CS actually upsets me with how much it squandered away it's potential to actually fill 4 games with meaningful things in favor of keeping any hints away for the Falcom brand "hype" reveals that instead didn't turn out to be that hype cause of the lack of setup.
The corner Falcom found itself in was because they didn't do enough setup imo. Like think about how much shit just came as cheap left field reveals.
I have GIGANTIC misgiving of how the schoolhouse in CS1/2 wasn't used to built up Gnomes as an actual thing instead we get 1 paltry lore note of 2 sentences in an optional book and a huge info dump in CS4 on everything Gnomes. Terrible.
That Witches only get any meaningful expansions on their lore after 3 full games is pathetic as well.
CS2 does so insanely little to set up anything of value. Even the setup that exists in CS2 with Osborne being Rean's father isn't really paid off in a meaningful way.
Imagine CS3 and 4 if CS1 and 2 actually also did more Dreichsel lore and setup. Osborne is largely this huge enigma to us so it's like Falcom could have made that reveal so much more meaningful by painting a rich picture of Dreichsel that Osborne could have been contrasted against and instead we got scraps.
Rivalries are also an info dump exclusive to CS3 when they could have sown seeds for it earlier. The connection of Arseid to Lianne is also barely expanded on when it could have been a great background to have a cool Laura storyline in.
Urgh. CS actually upsets me with how much it squandered away it's potential to actually fill 4 games with meaningful things in favor of keeping any hints away for the Falcom brand "hype" reveals that instead didn't turn out to be that hype cause of the lack of setup.
Huge cold steel arc spoilers in that tag so only open if you played all games.
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I remember being really excited whenever a new localization blog post got posted, I still have them bookmarked, no clue if they're still even up anymore tho
Have you played Hajimari? I'd be curious to hear what you think if so.
honestly not sure how anyone found CS3 satisfactory. It wasnt completely broken, as individual sentences were generally correct, but it was mostly dull, conversation flow showed a lack of effort in looking at a sentence in the context of the whole conversation to create better flow (as in limiting the amount of repeated information), as well as the terrible spam of teehee, heehee, heheh every new bubble
was...at best...average
was...at best...average
The metacritic and opencritic are almost totally in line with the rest of the series.
Nope. The VR ogling really was kind of the last straw to kill my interest enough that I'd rather play other things. I'll probably check it out if/when it comes out in English or something.
From what I saw, the text formatting errors were all isolated to one part of the game. Just something QA missed, I guess. Aside from that, the localisation didn't seem like a huge step down from Cold Steel III. I didn't even notice that some of the English voices were recast until someone pointed it out.
So Opencritic currently has it tied for the highest of the CS games (84) for "Top Critics" and that's with a cutoff that hurts more than it helps (cutting out quite a few 5/5 or 10/10 scores). Not sure why people are just piling on in agreement to the 5. There's loads and loads of really low scores for the Trails series (a few 6/10s for most of the games).
Every Trails game is somebody's favorite. Even some slight trends like SC>FC aren't absolute, and favorite CS game seems like a random number generator much of the time out of the 3 English ones.
Every Trails game is somebody's favorite. Even some slight trends like SC>FC aren't absolute, and favorite CS game seems like a random number generator much of the time out of the 3 English ones.
Fair, but the game is actually probably the least lewd Trails game since before they started going anime fanservice around the Evo versions of Crossbell. Basically the only fanservice stuff in the whole game is related to the one beach mini-game which is optional and has zero story and only unlocks swimsuits.
No and I think the reason is just that there's too many playable characters in CS and it would take too many resources to give tag specials for a lot of the major potential combinations.
Maybe if the next arc is a smaller cast initially they'll bring them back. I miss them too.
Maybe if the next arc is a smaller cast initially they'll bring them back. I miss them too.
me too, they're the reason Trails and probably Ys too exist in the West :( hope they do ok going forward
I've been paused somewhere like ~35 hours into CS4 for about 7 or 8 months now. Iunno if I want to restart with the English release because I haven't exactly forgotten anything, even though it'd be relatively faster to go through because my reading won't be so ungodly slow.
People coming in going "WHOA" should not be surprised at all. For those of us who have played IV already we have been stating this for months (even years) in other Trails threads that if/when we ever got to CSIV you should not have high expectations.
I can't speak on the localization yet because I haven't gotten a copy of NISA's version yet but we all know NISAs track record with anything they've touched. It's not good. As for the main story itself, theres too much to spoil so I'll wait for the OT and time for folks to sink their teeth into it but Ill just repeat what everyone else has said before about. Lower your expectations.
About Rean
About character reunions
About cliffhangers
About story wrap-ups
If when its all said and done you walk away enjoying it more than you thought, awesome. But this is not a Second Chapter or Ao/Azure level of work here that has come to us before from Falcom.
EDIT: Just read part of RPG Site review for it on the translation work. This really is disheartening to see:
I can't speak on the localization yet because I haven't gotten a copy of NISA's version yet but we all know NISAs track record with anything they've touched. It's not good. As for the main story itself, theres too much to spoil so I'll wait for the OT and time for folks to sink their teeth into it but Ill just repeat what everyone else has said before about. Lower your expectations.
About Rean
About character reunions
About cliffhangers
About story wrap-ups
If when its all said and done you walk away enjoying it more than you thought, awesome. But this is not a Second Chapter or Ao/Azure level of work here that has come to us before from Falcom.
EDIT: Just read part of RPG Site review for it on the translation work. This really is disheartening to see:
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I'll probably play this when it comes to PC (and is hopefully patched by then), but I've been disappointed by the storytelling in all three CS games, so I don't know if I'll persist with the series after.
... I had forgotten that was a thing. It's really sad what has happened to this series.
Maybe I'll watch a playthrough of it later.
My objective review:
Stelle is in: +10
On the other hand, MC is still Rean: -5
But there is no Kevin: -9999
Stelle is in: +10
On the other hand, MC is still Rean: -5
But there is no Kevin: -9999
I kinda want to pick this up just to see at least some plot arcs finish after playing through four of the previous games, but I bounced so hard off ToCSIII retreading dumb tropes and the school stuff at the start, and was so bored by the pacing of ToCSII as a whole, that I'd need to get back into the prior game first. The whole thing just feels bloated to me, like way too many characters and npcs all needing to be referenced, I find even returning to them after only a couple of years makes them hard to follow.
There are plenty of other high scores too. Opencritic stands at 84/100, with 19 reviews.
Maybe some more reviews could be added to the OP to show a more representative selection? King of Dreamland
I played through IV in Japanese earlier this year. And I agree with RPG site.
The game felt very repetitive and the parts I enjoyed were mostly the nostalgia of seeing old characters.
Trails has a problem where the bad guys just keep getting away all the time. Where they do things which lead to the deaths of average people but they're handwaved away.
It just boring everytime you fight the same people and know they're going to just leave afterwards.
With the war it really highlights the disparity between the named characters and the average citizen in terms of how much the plot puts value in their lives.
The curse also is a another way that the ordinary person gets their self determination and motivation taken away from them. It's a writing crutch where they didn't justify why people would go to war so they used the curse to make it so that they're controlled.
Also every female character wanting to date Rean means their character development revolves around him just had me not caring in these bonding events.
Plus there's some implied child relationships in the game now.
Though whilst playing it I was more forgiving. It wasn't until I started playing Hajimari that I realised in retrospect that I was wasting my time.
The game felt very repetitive and the parts I enjoyed were mostly the nostalgia of seeing old characters.
Trails has a problem where the bad guys just keep getting away all the time. Where they do things which lead to the deaths of average people but they're handwaved away.
It just boring everytime you fight the same people and know they're going to just leave afterwards.
With the war it really highlights the disparity between the named characters and the average citizen in terms of how much the plot puts value in their lives.
The curse also is a another way that the ordinary person gets their self determination and motivation taken away from them. It's a writing crutch where they didn't justify why people would go to war so they used the curse to make it so that they're controlled.
Also every female character wanting to date Rean means their character development revolves around him just had me not caring in these bonding events.
Plus there's some implied child relationships in the game now.
Though whilst playing it I was more forgiving. It wasn't until I started playing Hajimari that I realised in retrospect that I was wasting my time.
Will probably play this when it releases on PC. Hopefully by then translations will have been patched to a degree.
I don't exactly have high expectations, as CS3 is already full of issues (pacing, bloat, and too easy to break combat, not to mention some heavy cringiness) but I'm just curious where this will go.
I don't exactly have high expectations, as CS3 is already full of issues (pacing, bloat, and too easy to break combat, not to mention some heavy cringiness) but I'm just curious where this will go.
Yeah, at this point 5 of the 19 scores on OpenCritic are "perfect" scores, which is more than CS2 has (only 3) out of the 60 scores up for that game. CS2 has been the best reviewed Trails game in the West until now I think?
Yeah I'm gonna say that Trails just needs to kill more people flat out. Good guys, bad guys, just have the balls to end a life cause Trails does drama well when it wants but it keeps killing and resurrecting people that everyone just kinda feels like cartoons.
Just looked it up and in fact CS3 has been the best reviewed game in the West until now (currently tied with CS4 on Opencritic at 84/100, and 1 point ahead of CS4 on MetaCritic at 82/100).
But yeah, unlike with Crossbell and Liberl, where basically everyone thinks Ao>Zero and SC>FC, it's way harder to rank the Cold Steel series. And besides valid criticism, there are plenty of people who love CS4
Shame about what though? The Metascore is 80+, same as the other Cold Steel games.
only during select parts of the story. They aren't permanent party members