The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II
This review contains spoilers
So I'll talk about the good first.
When it comes to the gameplay, it's not a game of drastic changes, but minor improvements. With the orbments, all the slots are unlocked and you upgrade them as you see fit. With the combat, it's mostly the same only you get to play as a few different characters and sometimes their Master Quartz give them neat advantages. You still need to consider placement, try to get advantages at the beginning of combat and build your characters well. The core gameplay loop is still fantastic.
Also, you get to have Sara as a main character for most of the game which is cool. AND you pick a romance option, though admittedly it's less exciting than one might think.
So now we slide slowly into the criticisms, but we'll start with something neutral first. Make no mistake: this is still Trails. The game lets you speed the events up but if you're bothered by excessive talking look elsewhere. Yes, these people want to talk about their days and lives. Yes, they will sometimes abandon urgency in order to tell their opponents (who they're in a life-or-death struggle with, especially when they are TERRORISTS) that they respect their skills or whatever. And yes, the game wants you to SEE towns and dungeons so they have to give you multiple camera angles.
And yes, even though I think the story is much better than the first because all the worldbuilding is done, it does still take its sweet time. You have to accept that this game wants you to FEEL like you're in these lives (yes, I used the "feels like" meme). What I mean by that is, if you're going to, I don't know, go talk to the villains in their airship, then the game literally wants you to walk around and talk to all the major villains.
That's good and bad. Perhaps Trail's biggest strength can also be a weakness. It does more than any JRPG franchise I've played to make you immersed in the world and the characters. Everybody has a story. It's almost like a cozy game in some sense in that you have to live these lives. And I like that. I enjoy the bonding moments. It did succeed in continuing and evolving my investment in these characters. I did think hard about who I wanted Rean to romance, even though you can tell it doesn't matter that much. It doesn't alter much besides a couple scenes where they are alone because, I assume, Falcom didn't want to deal with the headaches of being like Mass Effect or some shit. For the record, I chose Laura. But I think the criticism still remains true that they need to edit their shit. It's weird because I can sit here and say that but also, I don't know if the series would be the same without it.
However, much like Cold Steel 1, there is a chunk of the game that let me down. It comes after Finale. Spoilers imminent.
You have two chapters:
Divertissement: "The Occupation"
Epilogue: "Winter's End"
I won't be too harsh on Divertissement because I know fans would have been happier to see these characters. Since I've played it out of order (as I wait for Trails in the Sky: 2nd Chapter Remake to come out), I don't know who these people are. You're supposed to, so I won't hate on a game for doing this when it's my fault for not catching the crossover.
With that said, it's still fucking weirdly paced. In Finale you avert an apocalypse attempted by an ancient entity after climbing a huge castle and fighting a who's who of villains that have been taunting you and sometimes fighting you all game. THEN Crossbell is annexed by the Erebonian Empire and Rean, after finally besting Crow and doing good boy things, decides to join the Erebonian Empire. So you're left being like, "Ah damn, really?" It's not the gut punch that Cold Steel 1 was, but it's still a huge character moment that I know gets explored later. Plus you see things like Crossbell news and whatnot. It's all very coherent and intriguing.
Divertissement feels weird after that logical conclusion. It's neat because it offers an alternative view of the conflict, of the people being occupied. And I enjoyed it on that level. But did we need a dungeon? Nah. It could have been reworked into the final cutscene. I mean shit, the game doesn't care about making you watch shit for 20 minutes any other time, why start now?
The biggest annoyance comes at the Epilogue. I'm not lying when I say I considered stopping and watching YouTube. I didn't because I wanted to have a completed save file for Cold Steel 3, but holy shit was I ever close. Before I say why it's so bad, do know that it's not the entire chapter.
So Falcom thinks it was a good idea to force us through a 16 level randomized dungeon where the enemies get progressively harder. This is post-game type shit, not shit you make mandatory after multiple logical places for it to end. Every 4 levels you fight a boss. Why wouldn't it just be... I don't know, 4 levels? I just ran through it, only stopping to beat up enough enemies to fill my CP bar. I didn't open every treasure chest but when I did, I usually got lame gear. It's a completely unnecessary dungeon.
You know how I know that? Because the final boss tells you so. It's described as a hollow trial, with a setting akin to the final boss in Cold Steel 1. Only in Cold Steel 1 it was a "what the hell?" moment (in a good way). Here, you know what the purpose is? One final trial for Class VII to prove themselves as a class before they go their separate ways. Only we just got finished with the aforementioned apocalypse. You thwarted an ancient being, fellas.
I'm hating pretty hard on these two chapters but I want to make sure it's known that I didn't HATE them. I hated the final dungeon. But I was either tolerant of or liked the rest of it. I just think they could have condensed the two chapters and it would have been better. Play the hits. But as it is, I suffered ending fatigue.
As of now I'm giving this a 9.5/10 even though I spent the last few paragraphs being negative. I can't ignore the 40 hours or so where I was absolutely entranced by this game. I was playing it whenever I could. On days off I'd play 8-12 hours. The pull is never that strong with games that I don't legitimately love. And I do believe that, warts and all, it's better than the first one, which I gave a 9/10. If I did this, I'd probably rate it like 9.2 or 9.3 but I don't rate like that because it's irritating.
So with all that said, I'm looking forward jumping into Cold Steel 3.
When it comes to the gameplay, it's not a game of drastic changes, but minor improvements. With the orbments, all the slots are unlocked and you upgrade them as you see fit. With the combat, it's mostly the same only you get to play as a few different characters and sometimes their Master Quartz give them neat advantages. You still need to consider placement, try to get advantages at the beginning of combat and build your characters well. The core gameplay loop is still fantastic.
Also, you get to have Sara as a main character for most of the game which is cool. AND you pick a romance option, though admittedly it's less exciting than one might think.
So now we slide slowly into the criticisms, but we'll start with something neutral first. Make no mistake: this is still Trails. The game lets you speed the events up but if you're bothered by excessive talking look elsewhere. Yes, these people want to talk about their days and lives. Yes, they will sometimes abandon urgency in order to tell their opponents (who they're in a life-or-death struggle with, especially when they are TERRORISTS) that they respect their skills or whatever. And yes, the game wants you to SEE towns and dungeons so they have to give you multiple camera angles.
And yes, even though I think the story is much better than the first because all the worldbuilding is done, it does still take its sweet time. You have to accept that this game wants you to FEEL like you're in these lives (yes, I used the "feels like" meme). What I mean by that is, if you're going to, I don't know, go talk to the villains in their airship, then the game literally wants you to walk around and talk to all the major villains.
That's good and bad. Perhaps Trail's biggest strength can also be a weakness. It does more than any JRPG franchise I've played to make you immersed in the world and the characters. Everybody has a story. It's almost like a cozy game in some sense in that you have to live these lives. And I like that. I enjoy the bonding moments. It did succeed in continuing and evolving my investment in these characters. I did think hard about who I wanted Rean to romance, even though you can tell it doesn't matter that much. It doesn't alter much besides a couple scenes where they are alone because, I assume, Falcom didn't want to deal with the headaches of being like Mass Effect or some shit. For the record, I chose Laura. But I think the criticism still remains true that they need to edit their shit. It's weird because I can sit here and say that but also, I don't know if the series would be the same without it.
However, much like Cold Steel 1, there is a chunk of the game that let me down. It comes after Finale. Spoilers imminent.
You have two chapters:
Divertissement: "The Occupation"
Epilogue: "Winter's End"
I won't be too harsh on Divertissement because I know fans would have been happier to see these characters. Since I've played it out of order (as I wait for Trails in the Sky: 2nd Chapter Remake to come out), I don't know who these people are. You're supposed to, so I won't hate on a game for doing this when it's my fault for not catching the crossover.
With that said, it's still fucking weirdly paced. In Finale you avert an apocalypse attempted by an ancient entity after climbing a huge castle and fighting a who's who of villains that have been taunting you and sometimes fighting you all game. THEN Crossbell is annexed by the Erebonian Empire and Rean, after finally besting Crow and doing good boy things, decides to join the Erebonian Empire. So you're left being like, "Ah damn, really?" It's not the gut punch that Cold Steel 1 was, but it's still a huge character moment that I know gets explored later. Plus you see things like Crossbell news and whatnot. It's all very coherent and intriguing.
Divertissement feels weird after that logical conclusion. It's neat because it offers an alternative view of the conflict, of the people being occupied. And I enjoyed it on that level. But did we need a dungeon? Nah. It could have been reworked into the final cutscene. I mean shit, the game doesn't care about making you watch shit for 20 minutes any other time, why start now?
The biggest annoyance comes at the Epilogue. I'm not lying when I say I considered stopping and watching YouTube. I didn't because I wanted to have a completed save file for Cold Steel 3, but holy shit was I ever close. Before I say why it's so bad, do know that it's not the entire chapter.
So Falcom thinks it was a good idea to force us through a 16 level randomized dungeon where the enemies get progressively harder. This is post-game type shit, not shit you make mandatory after multiple logical places for it to end. Every 4 levels you fight a boss. Why wouldn't it just be... I don't know, 4 levels? I just ran through it, only stopping to beat up enough enemies to fill my CP bar. I didn't open every treasure chest but when I did, I usually got lame gear. It's a completely unnecessary dungeon.
You know how I know that? Because the final boss tells you so. It's described as a hollow trial, with a setting akin to the final boss in Cold Steel 1. Only in Cold Steel 1 it was a "what the hell?" moment (in a good way). Here, you know what the purpose is? One final trial for Class VII to prove themselves as a class before they go their separate ways. Only we just got finished with the aforementioned apocalypse. You thwarted an ancient being, fellas.
I'm hating pretty hard on these two chapters but I want to make sure it's known that I didn't HATE them. I hated the final dungeon. But I was either tolerant of or liked the rest of it. I just think they could have condensed the two chapters and it would have been better. Play the hits. But as it is, I suffered ending fatigue.
As of now I'm giving this a 9.5/10 even though I spent the last few paragraphs being negative. I can't ignore the 40 hours or so where I was absolutely entranced by this game. I was playing it whenever I could. On days off I'd play 8-12 hours. The pull is never that strong with games that I don't legitimately love. And I do believe that, warts and all, it's better than the first one, which I gave a 9/10. If I did this, I'd probably rate it like 9.2 or 9.3 but I don't rate like that because it's irritating.
So with all that said, I'm looking forward jumping into Cold Steel 3.
Mini Review: It's better than CS1 in most ways. We got into the major conflict, making the story faster and more exciting with less downtime (but it certainly has that because it is Trails). Though the gameplay is very similar, there is evolution in the orbments and combat, so that's welcome. For 40 hours (doing no side-quests) it was incredible, then after Finale it became a mixed bag with times where I thought about just quitting and watching a YouTube video. But I still loved it as a whole.
Watch the Trailer