The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV Review

Hot off the success of last year’s Trails of Cold Steel III, the Legend of Heroes series returns to Erebonia for one final hurrah in this year’s Trails of Cold Steel IV, dropping the “End of Saga” subtitle for its western release. As you may deduce from the dropped subtitle, this is the final game in The Legend of Heroes’ Trails of Cold Steel subseries and it’s one of some great moments mixed in with some unfortunate pacing issues, not unlike Trails of Cold Steel II.

As always with Falcom’s Legend of Heroes series, the best place to start is with the storyline and with the huge cliffhanger at the end of last year’s Trails of Cold Steel III, there’s a lot of ground to cover in the final game. As expected, you’ll at the very least need to have played that game and as touched on before with Trails of Cold Steel III, there were references to the previous subseries such as the unreleased (but fan translated) Crossbell duology due to the places you visit and people you meet. For the most part, you could have started with Trails of Cold Steel (or even III as Falcom claimed) and understood most of the game despite missing out on some references but that changes completely here with Trails of Cold Steel IV, a game that features massive references and characters from both the Trails in the Sky and Crossbell games throughout. Indeed, you can consider Trails of Cold Steel IV almost like an epilogue to all three series akin to a Marvel’s Avengers Endgame situation.

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Characters across the entire Trails series will have major parts to play here.

As such, the cast in Trails of Cold Steel IV is staggering, one of the largest I’ve seen in an RPG and one that combines all of the heroes from the three subseries mentioned above. Yes, Thor’s Class VII and Rean Schwarzer are still the focus but a lot of the plot points from the Liberl arc (Trails in the Sky) and Crossbell are resolved here and get some great screen time. For long term fans of the entire series, this is incredible to witness, your favorite characters all teaming up to tackle the larger threat and for the first time, seeing them in the Cold Steel engine is a sight to behold. On the other hand, unlike Trails of Cold Steel III, you are missing out on a lot of story and references having zero knowledge of that. At the very least, if you’re unable to experience those games yourself, I’d advise people to read up on the events of those games as characters, events and antagonists will all come up throughout the course of the game (and even some of the more minor plots with the NPCs in those games are referred to).

The burning question with Trails of Cold Steel IV’s story is whether it’s a satisfying conclusion to the Erebonian arc and where it takes The Legend of Heroes series from that point. It’s clear that Trails of Cold Steel IV does suffer some pacing issues, not too different from Trails of Cold Steel II, especially during the middle of the game, but there’s plenty of scenes mixed in during that time that really pushes the narrative forward. The game is certainly stronger in it’s final third as all of the plot points reach their conclusion and with the story complete, I was satisfied with the outcome while the few new mysteries are enough to keep you engrossed for what’s to come. It does feel like most of the questions are answered, especially where all things Cold Steel are considered, and every character gets an important part of closure however, with that said, the Bonding Events are very hit and miss in terms of characterization. Any involving the male characters are some of the best in the series but the ones involving the female cast does seem to suffer due to Falcom wanting to push the romance angle meaning that nearly all of the characters are focused on Rean. Further yet, there’s yet more troubling scenes of over gratuitous exposure to the female cast which really should not exist at all at this point.

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Brave Orders are toned down a little in Cold Steel IV with shorter durations.

As with its predecessor, Trails of Cold Steel IV is using the same engine and as such, despite being one of Falcom’s best looking games, is still average when it comes to visuals on the PS4. High-Speed mode is still here and as with most of the Cold Steel games, the animations are slow, especially in battle so it is welcome to have this feature still available. It’s clear to see that Trails of Cold Steel III and IV were once a single game split into two during development as a lot of the areas you visit are ones that you’ve visited from before (and none from Cold Steel I and II outside of cutscenes), mostly taking place in Western Erebonia outside of visits to Crossbell. As such however, I never experienced any slowdowns or graphical issues in general, something I thought may occur with the more intense Lost Arts added to Trails of Cold Steel IV.

For those of you familiar with Cold Steel III’s battle system, you will know what to expect here as it’s virtually unchanged for the most part. Brave Orders, the new addition to that game, have been balanced a little as specific combos really broke any difficulty there. This has been achieved by decreasing the effectiveness and duration of most of the main offenders at the start, but you can upgrade them by clearing battles from Trial Chests, making a return from Trails of Cold Steel II. All over Erebonia, you will come across white chests which requires specific party members. Upon opening them, you’ll be forced into a unique battle and should you win, you’ll upgrade a specific Brave Order. Due to the vast amount of characters and, as a result, Brave Orders (each character has at least one, including guests) there’s a large amount of these however they also act as a Quick Travel point once you interact with them for the first time. It is not uncommon to not have the correct characters at hand so returning once they are in your party via Quick Travel is a nice addition.

The Break System, likewise, also makes a return with a few changes to it to help balance the game a bit more. In Trails of Cold Steel III, once you achieved a certain amount of Break Damage, your opponent would enter a defenseless state and, in most situations, would not survive from it. If they did survive, they would then enter the Enhance state which boosts their stats, making them more deadly. For Trails of Cold Steel IV, when you bring an enemy to the Break state, you’ll find that they’re in it for much less time than they would in Cold Steel III meaning the odds of them returning to an enhanced state is a lot higher, a change that is especially noticeable on the game’s toughest difficulty setting, Nightmare. The Orbal system for the most part has been left unchanged with the main change coming to the Sub Master Quartz. In Cold Steel III, you could only assign a Sub Master Quartz to one character however with Cold Steel IV, any number of characters can equip the same Master Quartz in the Sub slot, allowing for some truly powerful combinations. All slots are unlocked by default and you will need to spend Sepith to upgrade their slot levels, needed to set some of the more powerful rare Quartz. Aside from the return of the Lost Arts Quartz from Cold Steel II, there are very few new Quartz however which is disappointing and results in you using the same setups you used in Cold Steel III.

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You can equip the same Master Quartz in the Sub slot to any number of characters now opening up more powerful combos.

Likewise, Crafts and S-Crafts are disappointing themselves with very new changes to them meaning the joy of unlocking new Crafts are missing here. For the most part, the majority of your party will only upgrade their existing Crafts from Cold Steel III to be more powerful with the odd new one here and there. The same goes for the flashy powerful S-Crafts, most of the cast will only upgrade their existing S-Craft to a more powerful version of their one from Cold Steel III (also coming late in the game) while only the new Class VII from Cold Steel III will get a new S-Craft altogether. This is slightly offset by the sheer amount of characters you will get to control throughout the adventure so there will still be plenty of new Crafts and S-Crafts to play around with.

Exploration is rather unchanged from Cold Steel III, the areas are still large, and you’ll still have the optional tasks of seeking photo opportunities and fishing along with completing the battle, character, book and recipe lists found in the journal. As mentioned above, you retread a lot of the same ground in Cold Steel IV however you will get the opportunity to visit new areas of some of the older regions such as the Entertainment District now being open in Crossbell. The map does a fantastic job of informing you of any points of interest and the Quick Travel is as quick and snappy as ever making it hassle free to get around. As you reach Act 2 and onwards, the world will really open up and you’ll get a relative degree of freedom to explore the areas, this is where Quick Travel is especially welcome.

Minigames return too in the form of Vantage Master and Pom Pom Party which adds a nice break from the action. Vantage Masters is relatively unchanged but there are far more opponents, new cards, and new Master’s to change up your strategy. Pom Pom Party, however, is a minigame from the second unreleased Crossbell game which is a game reminiscent of Puyo Puyo. You will play against increasingly difficult opponents as you look to clear your Poms by matching three colors and then make use of S-Crafts to shift them to your opponent or defend yourself. It’s a game with a relatively high learning curve if you’re new to Puyo Puyo and some of the later opponents almost feel like luck plays a major part, still, it’s a welcome break and the reward is well worth persisting through it all.

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Lost Arts return from Cold Steel II and are flashy powerful Arts that consume all of your EP.

Falcom tend to have a reputation for excellent soundtracks and Trails of Cold Steel IV’s is a mixed bag. Although many of the tracks are remarkable (the excellent opening comes to mind) and arguably some of the best tracks in the Cold Steel series, there are some rather unforgettable ones mixed in there, higher highs, lower lows so to say. Voice acting is again another area of mixed results, for the most part, it is the same excellent voice cast from Cold Steel III with the voice actress for Laura replaced which is a shame. There is however some moments where the sound and direction can be impacted a little however this is understandable during the current climate making it difficult to get everybody into a studio, especially a game with a cast as astronomical as this one. For the most part though, it does its job and is satisfying, even if my main gripe with all the Trails games, not enough voiced scenes, persists here. It is incredibly jarring to have scenes where the other characters are voiced, only for Rean’s replies to be unvoiced.

Like all the games in the Trails of Cold Steel series, IV is a massive game that will take many hours to complete. I played a lot of the game with the High-Speed mode activated outside of the story scenes and my playtime was around 120 hours to do all the content on the Normal difficulty. Being the last game in the Cold Steel series, nothing is left out of it and there’s a satisfying conclusion but Act 2 in particular brings the pacing down a little and you could almost cut it from the game altogether to leave a better feeling package. Those seeking a challenge should certainly play on the higher difficulty levels as Cold Steel IV remains a rather easy game on the default setting like all the other games in the Cold Steel series.