Trails Of Cold Steel Review (PS3)

Embark on an epic quest with a group of talented high school kids.  Magic, civil warfare, and class exams all come together in Trails Of Cold Steel.  Well, let's get into it.

Trails Of Cold Steel is a part of the Legend Of Heroes series, focusing on Erebonia and a coming war.  It's up to a class of high school students to figure out who starting it and, if they can, stop it.  Enter Class 7.

Class 7 has many similarities to a certain class of students in a legendary RPG series.  They're mostly kids (the teacher gets in on the fun sometimes), they're all badasses, and (most notably) they wear red capes.  Unlike that other class, though, Class 7 is filled with lively and likeable characters.  Not really a dull one in the bunch (Alisa is kind of a bitch, though).  The one you'll be seeing most is the protagonist, Rean Schwarzer.

Rean Schwarzer, our protagonist.

Class 7 is the best of the best, a team of ass-kicking specialists.  Each character has (mostly) unique weapons and fighting styles.  They can also punish enemies with arts and crafts.  No, not paintings and toy models.  Arts and crafts are basically a character's magic and skills.  They also have impressive looking super moves.

Character interactions can be funny or confusing.  The rivalry between Jusis and Machias might make you laugh.  The rivalry between Fie and Laura make you say, "That's stupid."  And Alisa will make you want to say, "It was an accident!  Shut up and get over it!"  For the sake keeping things spoiler-free, I won't say why these rivalries exist or how they turn out.

Machias may look like a nerd, but don't tell that to his shotgun.

Gameplay is interesting.  Going to school and building links with Rean's classmate almost immediately reminded me of the awesome Persona series.  Fortunately, that's where the similarities end.  Combat is an interesting mix of RPG and SRPG.  You move your characters around the battlefield, positioning in ways that will allow them to kick them most ass possible.  With good observation and planning, you can pile mountains of hurt on your foes.  It's a close as you can get to being an SRPG without actually being one.  The one bad thing about combat is that it takes so long to get to it.  This game has a bad case of Too Much Talking Syndrome.

How bad is it.  I actually fell asleep during some of the talking sections.  It's not that the conversations are bad.  They are just too darned long.  The story and meaningful sections (particularly when they're talking about the underground tower) kept me engaged, but the miscellaneous scenes were like an electronic sleeping pill.  At least there were no side effects.

Another bad thing is that you can't always put together the party you want.  There is a story reason behind this, but it still sucks.  For example, you may want Fie in your party, but the game will stick you with that douchebag Alisa instead.  The parties they force on you are still pretty good though.

On to the other stuff.  The graphics are cute, but nothing special.  The music, on the other hand, is pretty good.  From the relaxing overworld theme to the energetic battle theme to the epic boss theme, there's a lot to like in the music department.  There's also some DLC if you like that type of thing.

The graphics don't exactly push the PS3 to it's limits.

In the end, Trails Of Cold Steel is a neat little RPG.  If you like RPG's, it's a good experience.  Story-heavy (with too-long cutscenes), strong gameplay, excellent music, and graphics that aren't terrible make this an RPG to play for those who haven't moved on to the PS4 yet.  You'll need patience (and perhaps a lot of coffee) to get through the cutscenes, but your patience will be rewarded.  Play it.