The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV is the fourth and final game in the Cold Steel tetralogy. While it finishes off the Cold Steel saga, it is nowhere near the last game in The Legend of Heroes series. This is a classic turn-based roleplaying game, with a large emphasis on story. Naturally, being the fourth game in the tetralogy, it is essential to have played the previous three games, especially since this one wraps it all up with a ton of spoilers of the earlier games.
After the abrupt cliffhanger ending of Cold Steel III, the anticipation would have been high to see how the developers would continue the story and resolve it. Unfortunately, you’ll have to dial that expectation down because the game has an extremely slow-paced beginning. If you thought the previous three games had slow early sections then this one is probably even worse. It takes around ten hours before the story finally picks up, and you get a decent team with most of the gameplay functionality unlocked. It doesn’t help that you end up repeating the same environments that you’ve been through in the early sections so it feels repetitive and something that you just want to push past.
In terms of gameplay, there are no new major elements to the turn based combat when compared to Cold Steel III. It’s a robust and complex combat system, but being the fourth iteration in the tetralogy (longer if you could Trails in the Sky and the Crossbell duology), it is definitely starting to get stale. Each character on their turn can move around the battlefield, attack, use Arts (magic), Crafts (special physical moves with effects), use an item, run, swap with another character in the reserve or use a Brave Order.
Each enemy has a break bar, where if you deplete it the enemy will go into break status, guaranteeing a critical hit. When you score a critical hit, you can do a follow up attack with the other character that they are paired up with. You get two pairs (four characters) in a team, with a few more in reserve that you can swap out at any time. Turn order is key to winning, as you need to plan ahead on when to break the enemy or when to unleash a series of your best moves. Placement on the battlefield can also be important especially when you face stronger opponents that has devastating area-of-effect moves.
Lastly, there are Brave Orders, which provides a variety of temporary buffs to the characters, that once again you need to time properly to gain the full benefits out of. All of the elements combine into a complex layered combat system that’s rewarding, especially on the higher difficulties. That said, the higher difficulties are a pain in the earlier sections as your options are limited. So the enemies can feel like damage sponges, and you will come to detest status effects. If you lose a boss battle, you’re able to retry it straight away or retry and weaken the enemies.
There is an extension to the combat system with the Divine Knights battles. They’re basically a simplified battle involving big mechas. They have their own, but similar, strategy and despite the turn-based nature, can feel quite epic. They have their own twists to keep things interesting, especially when the rest of the Divine Knights have finally been revealed and you will be battling them over the course of the game.
The game has a solid difficulty. There are several difficulty settings to match any type of player, from the easiest mode to enjoy the story to the hardest for a torturous challenge. That said, on normal, the game can feel a bit too difficult in terms of even normal battles taking a while, and requiring some strategy, especially in the beginning of the game where you have less options. Around twenty hours in when the bulk of the playable characters are unlocked and you have a wealth of choice, the game’s much easier until it throws some crazy boss battles at you.
The sheer amount of playable characters is insane. The game is designed in such a way that you can have any party and still be okay. No character will ever be too low in level as everyone gets experience points. There are story requirements where it’ll dictate some of the characters in your party but on the whole, it allows a lot of freedom. The difficulty of the game extends to the minigames, there’s the fairly addictive Vantage Masters card game, with new cards and balance adjustments compared to the previous game. There’s also a Puyo Puyo clone although this one can feel luck based at times.
The graphics are exactly the same as Cold Steel III, which is to say it is pretty good. It’s flashy and one of the best looking JRPGs, especially considering that Falcom is on a small budget and this is a relatively niche game. There are still elements where objects and textures are low-res but on the whole, it’s impressive. The music is probably one of the standout areas though. Falcom always have amazing music and this game is no exception.
After a slow start, it takes nearly twenty hours before the ball finally gets rolling and it starts stepping up. A few lingering questions from the previous games are answered, such as how Siegfried is the way he is, what the Great Twilight is and its effects and the legends of the Divine Knights. Having played several of the games in the series, Zemuria feels like a place that you know well by now, with familiar towns and landmarks. That said, the game definitely relies too heavily on reusing many of the same areas as Cold Steel III so it kills the exploration aspect a bit.
The dialogue for the beginning of the game is also very cheesy and cringeworthy. While this was always a characteristic of the Cold Steel games, particularly with Rean, it feels like they dialled it up without considering how it actually sounds. As a result, it can be hard to take seriously but luckily, it tones it down by around the midway mark. It’s still cheesy but less so. It helps that there are several quality of life features like a high speed mode, and having all cutscenes and animations being skippable.
However, the formula of the games is starting to become stale. While not as apparently in the earlier chapters, by the midway point it falls victim to following the same structure as previous games. You’ll be given several quests, some optional and some mandatory. Then you have the freedom to explore a particular area, getting some points to spend on getting the backstory of several other characters, and then be funnelled into a linear dungeon to face the boss and have a big story event. It feels formulaic by this point which is unfortunate as it’s a very polished game.
The optional sidequests feels more out of place here. While these are standard for the series, due to the urgency of the situation, it feels more unrealistic than ever that Rean still has the time and inclination to go all over the country within the space of a few hours to randomly help out others. Later arcs can also feel that there’s a bit of filler by inserting a dungeon or two that you have to clear, before you can get to the main one. This slows the pacing down but the developers use these moments to clear any lingering questions about all the characters.
The game doesn’t pull any punches towards the end. Even before the final climax, it keeps throwing new tidbits about this world, which drives up the anticipation of future games more and more. These could be throwaway information but you suspect that more likely than not, they might have some bearing and is a hint towards the direction of future games. It relies heavily on the nostalgic factor. Characters from all three previous arcs group up and work together. It’s like a gigantic fan wish becoming true if you are familiar with those characters.
The finale, as expected, is epic. This is a truly a huge world and so much effort was put into it, as the player you just feel as if you had lived in it, the same for the characters, having spent time over the course of multiple games to see their situation progress to where they are now. It’s satisfying to see the results of the detailed world building. At the same time, it’s also sad when you get close to the end and recognize that this is the last chance you’ll spend time with a lot of these characters, being the end to the Erebonia arc.
The ending may have taken some effort, but it was definitely worth it. This game takes around 70 to 80 hours if you’re following a walkthrough, but can be easily over 100 hours if you’re playing it blind. One thing that will continually strike you with the series is how much effort is put into realizing its world, there’s really no other game like it since it’s so fleshed out and introduced so intricately. The amount of text is staggering, from the optional supplementary info within the game to the changing dialogue of NPCs after every major event, it’s impressive and easy to get lost in it.
After literally spending hundred of hours (whether you’ve only played the Cold Steel games or started from the Sky trilogy), the ending had a lot to live up to. For the most part it succeeded. The problem with building so much anticipation over half a decade to a decade is that effectively nothing will satisfy you 100%. What we’re given will satisfy most though, and you will truly feel a sense of happiness as well as loss after the credits roll and the final artwork shows. Yes, the story can be overly idealistic with its happy ending for the most part, but at the same time, it would suck to not see the characters finally earn their happy ending. Nevertheless, one thing’s for sure, you’ll be at a loss at what to do now that you’ve finished such a big arc.
The stinger after the true ending is easy to miss, which is a shame because if you didn’t know how to trigger it, you would likely completely miss it, or if you’re lucky, see it accidentally. There is a New Game+ option where you get to carry over pretty much everything but there is nothing new added in this mode, it’s really there to clean up anything you may have missed on your first playthrough.
Overall, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV is a fantastic game and a fitting end to the Cold Steel tetralogy as well as closing a big chapter from the story started in Trails in the Sky. While it had an extremely slow start, even more so than usual for the series, it managed to pick up steam from around one-third of the way in. While the game can feel like it drags on with filler at times, most of them are useful in that it sheds light to the various characters’ motivations, even if they’re not a major supporting character. This helps build a world that feels real and brimming with detail. It gives the player a sense of belonging, making them actually care about what happens. All of this builds up to the finale which answers the biggest questions that had been teased from the very beginning, helping to tie the threads between the various games in the overarching series together into an impressive and mostly satisfying conclusion. The journey and wait was worth it, this game is one of the very best examples of the JRPG genre, even if it requires hundreds of hours before you can jump in at this point.
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The physical release of the game contains a few extra goodies.
The first of which is a reversible cover.
The second being a CD with a selection of tracks from within the game.
While finally there is a small artbook, a sample of which is below.
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