So we move onto the main event, completing the legend of heroes: Trails of cold steel. An Anime JRPG in the long running Legend of heroes series. The best way to describe it is a JRPG with a drizzle of persona's social elements thrown in. Whilst the game plays like your typical JRPG, there are few things in the combat to differntiate it from your usual fair. TLDR: i liked it enough to have a vested interest for the series despite its misgivings. Giving it a solid 7 or a low 8 out of ten.
For starters, players can move a bit when fighting giving a tactical Strategy/RPG element, hell you can even configure deployment positions if you want.
Secondly you can customize your abilities, whilst each character has an affinity to certain elements, its entirely up to you how you deck them out. Pick the element, whether its offensive/defensive, targets one/area/AOE or straight up passive abilities (like the boring but useful +HP bonus or defensive abilities)
Thirdly, the abilitiy to link with characters. Build your bonds and they will provide support with each other, such has protecting characters, helping to finish off near dead enemies, auto healing or just all out smash enemies. apart.
Speaking of bonds, like persona series, there are social aspects to build up your bonds with each other. So cue story and social activities to partake in and get some tidit bit story and character building. its a real highlight of the game as i spend down time doing side quests for various students, getting to know the NPCs and partaking in various events when exploring the numerous locations.
For a vita game it was surprisingly good. Visually impressive and besides the frame rate tanking at some areas, on the whole its very impressive. The voice work falls between bland to ok and the soundtracks are pretty banging near the end.
So whilst i found the game overall very solid, i do have some concerning critisims about the game.
The best way to boil most of my issues is that the game doesn't value your time. Time skips/jumps days/weeks ahead and if you remember how galling it was in persona series, its just as bad here, if not worse. i would have liked to spend the time exploring or just socializing or something. in fact it make socializing a precious commodity as you WON'T be able to complete all the social events available. To top it off, the events are unique for that day/year. persona it was fixed so you wouldn't miss any of the story or content. To add insult to injury some of these social events are critical to filling in the journal or notes pages. Miss the event? hope you have a save or try again in new game +. In fact the only way to really see them all is playing New game + and/or collecting the unlock to have unlimited social time. But this comes at the cost of more important stuff like retaining experience, notes, items etc or costumes.
The point it got super annoying was during exams. Since ToCS skips days, you don't know what is taught in school. So guess what? socialize with your colleagues to learn the answers to lore and drivel that you weren't given at all or to get hints to what the exam questions might be. Unless you save, you won;t have all the answers or questions.
but thats not all. The combat system takes a hit. Spells aren't instantanous unless there are special events that occur. But thats nothing compare to how some of the bosses are absolute damage sponges and take forever to whittle down. Especially those with no apparent weaknesses, so you can't reliably build up the critical points to do all out damage. Bafflingly theres no real reliabe way to recover Combat points to unlock combat abilities which is where all your special super abilities happen. Hell, even resting doesn't recharge them! heals health and MP but not CP. bloody annoying. you could be starting a battle with no reliable abilties and skipping turns trying to cast magic instead or doing weak attacks.
The other bug bear of the game is more personal and its that ToCS story is incredbily cliched, filled with mary sues, troupes, cringy dialogue, cheesy names you find in any anime. We have big bussomed classmates, magic, mechs, magic, demons and yes even a talking cat. The design of the characters isn't all that great, being very samey (because you know, school uniforms) and when you compare it with like Persona's its just no contest.
The initial prologue (that just baffling starts in act 5) is confusing and is supposed to get you properly pumped up. instead it just left me confused and just cringing at how hamfisted the whole thing was (OTT music, naff diagloue). it seriously left a bad taste in my mouth. But to its credit, give it the time and you do get to like/ care for the characters (which have some surprising depth to them), people and dare i say, interested in the story. it does get better near end once the lore is firmly established and world but it could have been done better. hell, maybe a geopolitical map would have been nice.
So... all said and done, did i like it? I did have fun with it and enough to clock in 100+ hours on my first play through and that's despite the annoying combat and aspects. The game did grow on me and i certainly have a vested interest in how it ends and going to play its sequel. One day. more importantly it did get out of that funk after losing my shin megami tensei save game file so it had to be doing something right. Would i recommend it? i think it gets a thumbs up but your mileage may vary. if you can get into it, you're in for a treat.
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