Thoughts on Trails of Cold Steel I and II

2025.08.05

"It seems like a lot is going on, but in reality, not much really happened."

That's basically what I think of the first half of the Cold Steel arc.

Note that this page contains spoilers for the entire Trails game series.

As of writing this I'm already halfway through Trails of Cold Steel III, so perhaps my memories of Cold Steel I and II aren't as fresh as I'd like them to be.

First off, I want to say that no matter what happens in the later games I think I'll probably still stick through until the very end of the series, even if I didn't enjoy any particular title that much.

That said, my thoughts on Cold Steel I and II are that there's too much filler content throughout the games, especially during the second half of Cold Steel II. I didn't mind Cold Steel I that much, since technically it's the start of a new arc, and it's expected that the game will spend more time introducing new plot elements and settings while familiarizing the player with important new characters. I can totally understand that, because character development takes time and there's no way around that, in this case I can be less critical if in general nothing of great importance happens. However, Cold Steel II gave me more or less the same feeling. I feel like most of the important events during the game occured only right at the beginning and near the very end, like nothing significant happened in the middle parts. Most events that occur in the middle of the story feel like filler to me, and I'm totally fine with more filler content if it's the start of a new story in the entire series (like Cold Steel I), but Cold Steel II shouldn't have too much of that, since we already had an entire game to set everything up! I'm not certain about this, but I'm pretty sure Cold Steel I and II have more filler and padding than the Crossbell games do (Zero and Azure).

I'm not a huge fan of the bonding system either, because of the way the games are designed, you're not supposed to see everyone's bonding event in one playthrough (well, technically you can if you save and load, but since you have to do that I'm certain that's not what the developers intended). This makes it so that you can't put important info or development in there otherwise players might miss it. However, if you only put dialogue or content that's skippable and not really significant, it ends up slowing the overall pace of the game.

Anyways, I think that Trails, as a very long-running series, already had pacing issues before Cold Steel, but I think it's even more of an issue in the Cold Steel games. As I said before, I'll probably continue onwards with the series until the very last game concludes everything, but I hope the later games have better story pacing, otherwise sometimes it feels a bit like a drag to keep going.

Also worth mentioning is that starting from Cold Steel, there are a lot more characters that are important to the story, and although the games are longer, it still feels like there's not enough time for every character to develop fully, or to say and do things that really matter. This is just inevitable since you can't have everyone say or do something meaningful when there are so many characters at once.

And every time Rean is in trouble, someone will always come out out of nowhere to help them. Honestly, it's so overused that I kind of like it, because seeing it is always a little funny to me. There is absolutely no sense of danger, since somebody will always come to the rescue just at the right time.

Even though it seems like I'm criticising the games harshly, I still love this series a lot, and it's probably my favorite RPG series ever. Even with many flaws, it's still very unique among other JRPGs, since to my knowledge there isn't any other RPG out there that has such a long and intricately interconnected story, and a world that truly feels alive, like Trails does. The worldbuilding of Trails is amazing, from all the different NPCs you talk to, to the various places you visit. They don't feel like just some random person or some generic location on the world map, but people that have their own lives and personalities, and places that feel real because you get to actually visit them in game and see for yourself. That's why no matter how many flaws Trails has, I think I'll still continue with the series until the very end.

By the way, Towa is best girl. Probably. Since she's a-towa-ble! But that doesn't matter because we all know Rean's true love interest is Crow.

I'll probably write another post on Trails after finishing Cold Steel IV or Reverie.