RPG Review: The Legend of Heroes -Trails of Cold Steel II-

	Get in the robit, Rean.
	moar liek FAILS of Cold Steel amirite

Oh boy where do I even begin with this one. This was the worst Trails game I have played since Trails 3rd. At least though, Trails 3rd provided some back story context for Trails 1 and 2 and the flow in general somewhat made sense. This game provided nothing but grindy annoying gundam battles, and the flow was constantly broken up by idiotic sponge boss fights and a terribly placed end credit sequence.

I generally want to cut Falcom some slack. Like the meme goes, they are a small indie company, but this time they really are unironically a small indie company. They gotta keep pumping out a game a year to keep the lights on, and they also understand exactly how much they can put into each game knowing those constraints. So based on this, yeah I get it WHY their games are the way that they are, but at the same time I really do wish that had more time and resources to make each game have a more standalone feel and to be able the structure the story arcs in a more satisfying way.

Let’s start from the beginning. So the game basically continues where we left off in CS1 but just like with all the previous trails games, it falls into that same template of “let’s bring our party back together.” Unfortunately that ends up taking like 80% of the game’s plot and story. We spend time grinding dumb battles with our gundam, getting a party member back, and then going to the next area until we eventually make our way back to the school. So essentially the cliffhanger they left in the last game, became the ENTIRETY of this game. If they just didn’t split the party in the first place, there would be no game. In fact the last chapter of CS2 is where there’s actually any progress and continuity of the story and it could just have been added as a final chapter to CS1 if they just didn’t break up the group to begin with. But no, let’s just do that so we can have an excuse to sell another game with no substance.

I joked about when we played CS1 that “oh lol they’re running back the same story structure as Trails in the Sky”. Well, turns out that Trails of Cold Steel II is running back the same story structure as Trails in the Sky SC. We resume right after the cliffhanger of the previous game, but also instead of addressing where we just left off we first have to go get the team all back together again before we can finally resolve what was set up in the first game. And therefore like with Trails in the Sky, I kept wishing that both games were one combined game that then also had a little bit trimmed off of each. Cut down some of the schoolhouse stuff from the first one, some of the robot battles in the second one (not only do they screw up the pacing, there are so many of them that instead of being like SHIT JUST GOT REAL it’s like oh boy time for another 15 minute long battle), some of the team re-getting, and the utterly bizarre epilogue and then you’re left with a solid three act structure.

As usual the system remains largely the same but this time you are forced to do more of these stupid robot battles and even with my cheat mods on, it still took several hits. If you did this legitimately, each of these battles would take 15 minutes or so to complete. If I played this game legit, I would have probably spent like another 30 hours just grinding these stupid battles that add nothing to the story. Therefore if you want to keep your sanity, or you actually enjoy repetitive boring robot battles, I suggest modding your game so you can just one shot everything or downloading someone’s NG+ file because NO. At the end, after the credits rolled, they not only forced me to play as that emotionless log Lloyd Bannings again, but they made me run through that shitty maze-ass Geofront for no reason other than to have a quick battle with Rean!? Why didn’t they just CUT to the battle with a quick cut scene. On top of this, they also then forced us to run through yet another, what I assume is, end game dungeon for grinding exp. It should have been OPTIONAL. Why was it just thrown in as a requirement? And at the end of defeating the End of Eva boss reject, everyone starts crying like….why? Why is everyone crying? Are they crying because they are so happy this terrible game is finally over? Because that would legitimately be the only reason to shed any tears.

I swear each of these Trails games keeps adding additional layers to the battle system to the point where honestly it feels wayyyyyyyyyyyy overstuffed. I honestly didn’t really hate it during the first few games, but as more and more and more mechanics get added to it I completely gave up even trying to understand it. And then toss the robot battles and their completely different set of mechanics on top of that and yeah they gotta eventually pare this down. And seriously though, that “ending” was such a baffling choice. It was like how everyone made fun of Lord of the Rings where there’s the final climax…and then it just keeps going on and on and on with scenes that each feel like they could then be the final final ending…and then yet another one pops up after that.

The only true saving grace of this game is I finally get multiple hug and kiss scenes with Rean and Alisa. Fuck yea, SHIPPING. That’s what I’m here for! So I guess the suffering through all the other boring shit was worth it because fuck yea KISSING! ｷﾀ──ヽ(‘∀’)ﾉ──!! I have no idea if any of the other characters got kissing but I frankly don’t care because to me Alisa is the canon OTP. They even hold hands in the final group photo!! Anyway overall, extremely disappointing. It just felt draggy, and the interesting story scenes were few and far between. Everything was always about stupid war shit and battles and like I know I get it, that’s the background for Trails series but how come it was just so much better directed in Trails in the Sky? Hell it was even better in the first game! Yea the first game had the stupid school house but at least the character interaction scenes were interesting. The only interesting scene besides all the shipping, was when Alisa’s mom punched and slapped that kusoGGE. 😂😂

“Cry harder grognards” was our general response to how CS1 took the Trails games in a very anime direction, but honestly now it felt like they went too far in CS2. We were groaning when we got to the final dungeon about how “you are all so preoccupied with doing DBZ and Gundam battles that you completely forgot that the entire reason that you were here was to save the prince!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Oh and also it was “extremely anime” because it was way more pedo and incest than the previous game, like one the first scenes in the game is “time to have some hot springs skinship with your not-blood-related imouto”.

There were 2 final things that really made this game complete shit. One, the beginning of the game had MASSIVE pedo vibes. Constant scenes of imouto hugging Rean, Alfin hugging Rean, and then the two of them going into the bath in only their towels with him. GROSS. Who the fuck decided this was a good idea?? And the 2nd thing, lack of budget for voice acting. I played with the Japanese voices as usual and apparently unlike the English dub, half of the lines in scenes were unvoiced. And by half I mean in some scenes only 1 character was actually talking. It was completely random when someone would have a voice or not with no rhyme or reason. It made a lot of the scenes very uninteresting to watch when I’m just clicking O over and over and just reading a silent visual novel. Hell even my otome games have more voices than this game does…Guess they didn’t have the budget or fucks to give about this game and just pooped it out like some pre-Christmas shovelware. If you’re on the fence about this game, don’t bother. I think the best thing to do is just watch cut scenes on youtube of your favorite waifu and the final chapter and call it a day.

25 hours of game and I…almost can’t even remember what happened in it? I just vaguely recall getting the team back together, then Olivier asks you to do a few things, then you go back to the school, then you go to the azure tree red castle, then you get the epilogue that refuses to end? Oh and the three eroscenes (hot springs eroscene and dorm room eroscene and other dorm room eroscene). This is heavily what I mean when I said earlier that in a perfect world the meat of CS2 would’ve just been like the Act III of a combined CS1/CS2 game’s story.

PS: I complain about Final Fantasy games sometimes reusing the same voice actors mostly as a joke, but no seriously they’re reusing people within the same SCENE of the same game!!!!!!!!! That is not okay and is actually really confusing because now I keep thinking that like “what if they’re actually the same character in disguise”!!!!!!!!!!

And since it was getting awfully long, I decide to split up my Rean x Alisa video into 2 parts for 2 games at a time so here’s Cold Steel 1 & 2: