Welcome to our review of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, the final installment of the series!
The Erebonian Empire is on the brink of all-out war! Taking place shortly after the ending of Trails of Cold Steel III, the heroes of Class VII find themselves with the full force of the Empire on the path to domination. Further, the hero of the Erebonian Civil War and Class VII’s instructor, Rean Schwarzer, has gone missing.
Now, the students of Class VII, old and new, must unite with heroes from all over the continent to create the only chance the world has to be spared from total destruction.
Originally announced in 2017 this is the 4th installment of the series: the Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV. As this is a true sequel to the previous three parts it is also the final installment of the Cold Steel tetralogy. Continuing the story from the third game, it becomes clear straight from the start that you need to have played the first three games to really make sense of the story.
Having played the previous game quite a bit, but in all fairness did not finish it, I knew all about class 7 and how this game worked. A magnificent RPG and one heck of a franchise. Turn-based battles are the main gist of this game on top of the order system, the orbment, the mini-games, and so on.
It is difficult to write a review without spoiling a tetralogy like this so please be warned that there will be actual spoilers ahead. In case you have not played the previous games, I would recommend starting with those and to really stop reading now.
Rean Schwarzer was captured by his real father, Gilliath Osborne and the gang gets together to free him. Not only free him but also put a stop to Osborne’s plans. Traveling all over Crossbell and Erebonia, they discovered plans to take possession of the last divine Knight. Thus leading them to Rean only to find he has succumbed to his curse.
This is just part of what is to come as I do not want to give away the entire story. What I will discuss, however, is how this is one of the better JRPGs out there! The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 4 picks up right where the third game left off and brings us gamers quite the experience, having read up on this game before starting the actual gameplay, made me aware of one issue that is hurting this game.
Apparently many people questioned the balancing of the battle system compared to older games in the series but in all fairness having only played the third game, I did not fully experience this issue. I did notice some special attacks had been downgraded but in turn, were upscalable so it wasn’t that bad after all.
I first started the gameplay, like the previous game, the tutorial starts with a very experienced team that is incredibly powerful, allowing you to land many glorious attacks within seconds. It really showcased the combat and how it’s implemented the combination attacks. This aspect was one of the better sides of this game.
I was also quite impressed at how incredibly long the prologue was, at one point I accidentally hit the fast forward button and despite deciding I would restart my save game, I still had 3 full minutes of story development ahead of me. At that time I chose not to restart the save game but just use the menus and read everything I missed. It is details like these that really make this a great game.
In this part of the menus, yes, you can find the summaries of the first three games in case you do want to start with the last game in the series. I do recommend playing them unlike me starting in the third game. I have been considering getting them for my collection but with older amazing games that are currently inbound, I really sincerely hope I will have time to play these 60-hour games prior to the new generation of consoles hitting the market.
In conclusion, the Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 4 picks up where the last game stopped and that is a good thing. Some small changes to the battle system are present, but they will not influence your enjoyment of this title. My recommendation is still however to play previous games or at least read up on them before starting this masterpiece franchise.
