Trails From Cold Steel is the first entry in the cold steel arc of the series.
It focuses on the multi background class 7 of thors academy and their studies all over the world of the game while uncovering a mysterious conspiracy pretty much atypical of the trails series.
The localization as expected for me it was just pretty cheesy and the voice acting too just felt pretty bland and unappealing to me especially with the dialogue too.
The characters too yeah as expected too for me, I just found them pretty boring and not really that engaging for me to get too invested in them and all of them have just about literally every single anime trope imaginable and lot of them can be way too whiny for their own good or way too much tsundere like for their own good too.
You can exploit the characters in some situations with the best abilities to breeze through combat on the other hand.
The emotional bonding sections for extra points and abilities I wasn’t even that invested either because of how boring I found the characters.
The only time I honestly found a joke funny was the reference to “bath salt addiction” and out of any joke I found in trails funny this was really so far the only one to make me laugh.
Its turn based combat many of the other games.
You can use s abilties after dealing and taking damage and also combat links between your classmates the higher you level up the more powerful it will be.
The music on the otherhand its really great.
The new at the time 3d graphics were ok but the animations honestly felt stiff at times and kind of lagging in certain areas maybe it’s the version I played on the vita.
At least the camera system was freeform and not restricted into a certain perspective.
The orbal system returns where you can exchange for cash or perks to help you in world exploration or combat.
It’s a pretty long game but longer than it really should have been as a result of unskipable cutscenes and being put through various quests before you can get to what you’re really doing.
The amount of micromanagement here too can be annoying when it comes to equipment.
The art design was pretty decent too.
At one point in the game it introduces horse riding and it’s a quick way to get around but yeah I personally would have wished for it to be more open world like in breath of the wild or tears of the kingdom.
Overall it was a decent game.
It gets 3 out of 5 stars.