This will be the last entry where I mention the Trails of Cold Steel series as I finished IV last night and thought I'd give my impressions on the storyline from I to IV as I think I've said everything I want to about the gameplay. In all honestly Trails of Cold Steel is the weebiest game series I've played and given some of the games I play that's saying something. note there WILL be spoilers in this entry, no I haven't used tags as this is the entire point of this entry.

So anyway the story, It's honestly one of the better stories I've played through (IV manages to redeem the godawful ending to III) and has a pretty satisfying ending if you do certain side quests. You have two endings, the regular ending which is a bit of a downer ending and the true ending which still has its own sad parts but is overall much more positive. Now I also need to mention a theory I had since Cold Steel II, that theory is that Rean is the reincarnation of Emperor Dreichels (badass emperor in the games' history and previous pilot for Valimar) this theory turned out to be incorrect, I had the right family just the wrong family member as it turns out that Osbourne (Rean's biological father) is the reincarnation, this is actually an important plot point as well (I initially thought it would just be a throwaway bit of background lore) as the true big bad of the series effectively possess Osbourne and tried to possess Dreichels in the past in order to basically destroy the world. There's more world building basically stating that the continent everything takes place on is kept separate from the rest of the world and its inhabitants kept largely ignorant of this fact thinking that the continent is the whole world.

But enough of theories and some additional world building the story is why I'm doing this entry as it's the story you play these games for, it ends on a high and as I said there's two endings I'll be ignoring the default ending for the purpose of this whatever it is (it's not really a review I don't think) and focusing on the story with the true ending to it where Crow and Rean both survive (they die in the default one) as well as Millium coming back to life. None of these feel like Deus Ex Machinas (or at least not bad ones) as it's stated from Cold Steel II onwards just how much power the 7 divine knights have when all together and Millium is artificially created so her being brought back to life isn't outside the realms of possibility within the game's world. I personally would have liked the divine knights to have been deus ex machina'd survival but we can't have everything (seriously Falcom managed to make both Valimar and Ordine likeable and I would have liked the others to be expanded on some more as well, it's a testament to the writing that seven giant mechs are interesting characters in their own right) and having some form of sacrifice at the end isn't a bad thing. The final boss fight is also a suitable final boss for a series like this as you basically fight a godlike being that requires three separate groups to fight and has Class VII team up with the Special Support Section (SSS) and the Liberl bracers (the bracer guild basically being an organisation of adventurers who aid the common person) as well as some various other allies in order to take it down. Speaking of teaming up, prior to this these groups all split up to take out bosses and let the core members of class VII infiltrate the final dungeon and this leads to some funny dialogue between the separate groups, the bracers and SSS don't really have anything but Duvalie's group has her fellow Stahlriter members teasing her about seemingly being infatuated with Rean (Fie's older brothers are with them for this as well,) Angie's group has Angie needing George to tell her to stop harassing Rose and Sharon while Toval's group has Toval (who is basically jsut an ordinary guy) getting a bit worried about how Vita, General LeGuin and Victor Arseid (Laura's father) don't seem worried about fighting something that requires mechs to beat. These examples are just a few of the examples of humour used in the game, another example is Gaius' pet hawk meeting Celine (a talking cat) and offering her worms with her telling him she likes fish and thus revealing that she can communicate with him (said hawk is treated as an honourary member of class VII and ends up giving you a fish later on in a nice callback to this exchange.) But back to the final boss fight, the boss is actually three bosses at once with each of the three groups needing to take down one of them, the two sub bosses buff the main boss in order to prevent it from taking damage and so are needed to be defeated first, I actually had Rean, Estelle (the bracer and protagonist of Trails in the Sky, which I need to play) and Lloyd in the group that fought the main body. After the last boss is defeated the divine knights return Crow to normal and prince Cedric joins Ouroborous (I'm probably mispelling that) so I'm expecting to see him show up in later Legends of Heroes games.

I've probably left out a load there but IV manages to completely redeem that cliffhanger at the end of III for me and the story was overall very enjoyable even if I feel the divine knights should have survived and gotten more development outside of Valimar, Ordine and Ishmelga. So overall I'd give it a 9/10.

Naked lady in the spoiler below: