Trails of Cold Steel 3
a.k.a. my favorite Cold Steel
At the beginning of the year, I made, as my main goal for 2023, finishing the Cold Steel series. I had already played the first two games in 2022, so all I needed to do was to go through the other two. While I’m talking about only two games, they are two big boys that took me around 170 hours to roll the credits on both games. I knew tackling such big games besides the ones I would be playing during the year for work would not be easy. Two weeks before the end of 2023 I was watching the true ending of Cold Steel IV.
After the four Cold Steel games, I was expecting to have the last as my favorite due to the emotional weight that endings usually have on me. Tears are expected in most scenarios and it’s not uncommon for me to spend a whole week slowly digesting what happened at the end of a game. But, at least this time, it was not the case. I think it is impossible for me not to consider Cold Steel 3 as my favorite Cold Steel.
The third game in the series takes place some time after the end of Cold Steel 2 and A LOT of things have happened since then. Now, Rean is a teacher in a secondary campus of Thor Academy which works as a place where dangerous individuals are kept. Not only do we have new characters – the new Class VII that are under Rean’s supervision – but we also get to see all the previous Class VII older, cooler – except Jusis and Machias who just got new clothes – and playing different roles in Erebonia.
On the surface, we can find very little changes in the game. This is the first Cold Steel in the PlayStation 4, so the visual upgrade was expected and welcome. Even so, improved graphics are nothing when we remember Cold Steel 3 brings one of the best additions to the game since Master Quartz: The Brave Order System.
Whenever an enemy is unbalanced by an attack or special conditions are met during battles, you get brave points. There wasn’t much you could do with these points though. Prior to the third game, Bravery Points were only useful to trigger follow-up attacks, which, although powerful, added very little to the combat. Besides that, the attacks were only effective if you triggered the all-characters version, even then, using them against certain enemies wouldn’t cause as much damage as we would assume from an all-out attack. The only reason I could find after the initial sections of the games to use my Bravery Points was so I could watch a short – but cute – animation with all the characters in my party.
What the Brave Order system does in Cold Steel III is to give players a layer of complexity in battles. The system allows us to choose, instead of triggering the follow-up attacks, to spend the points to activate passive abilities that go from buffing attacks, and recovering HP to even blocking all-incoming damage or making arts have no cast time. While some of them are pretty overpowered, their cost in Brave Points is higher to force you to spend more time without a buff to compensate for the extremely strong ability you will activate. The aftermath of implementing this system in Cold Steel 3 is making follow-up attacks even more obsolete. I can’t think of any situation where attacking the enemy is better than activating Altina’s order and receiving zero damage for four turns.
Story-wise, Cold Steel 3 dumps so much information on us that it’s difficult not to love this game and all the moments of revelation it offers. The depth of this narrative is a good surprise. As I played the game, new layers of intrigues, plans, and secret intentions unfolded and most of them were pretty much a mystery until the moment the explanatory dialogues began. The segments of exposition are not rare but they didn’t make me feel I was having my time disrespected.
The game suffers with pacing because of its initial section – something that Falcom hasn’t necessarily improved in Cold Steel IV – and the total length of the third entry makes it a quite tiresome experience if tackled too eagerly. While a good method to deal with a long game is to simply tackle it in short sessions, Cold Steel III takes a sudden change in tone and rhythm from where we left in Cold Steel II that might put players off.
In Cold Steel III, it takes time for action to happen, since the game forces us to go through a shorter version of the field exercises we did with the first Class VII but now with the new group of Thor students. Putting them under Rean’s tutelage through the process he and his friends had gone through gives a sense of continuity that is interesting and enriches the whole “spirit of Class VII” concept. It also helps us see how Rean has grown up since the end of CS2.
However, the price for taking players through the steps of the original Class VII is too high, making the initial segments of the game feel like a slow burn. We have already seen each individual dealing with their personal beliefs and finding strength in union alongside different people that eventually they can call friends. By recreating this whole process, Cold Steel III forced me to ignore all the questions I had from the end of the last game and wait until the game had caught up to the real action to think about them again. This experience might, unfortunately, push away those players less excited by the promises of what is to come that the game holds.
Cold Steel 3 is the seventh game in the Trails series and suggesting it for those uninitiated on the series is currently difficult to justify. In more than one Reddit post I saw people sharing their fear and anxiety in even considering starting the series. With the engulfing quantity of games released every year, I know that committing to such a long series makes this appealing project sound daunting.
Although I completely understand both – as well as many other – arguments uttered by people when explaining why they haven’t started the series, I also learned to value the journey and believe that those who have the energy and enjoy at least one game should try walking the walk. Playing them is not a race, so you can take as much time as you need to finish them. I invite you to take the first step so you can have the same experience I had playing Cold Steel 3. Despite its flaws, for me, the third Cold Steel is in the halls of memorable Trails games alongside Trails in the Sky FC and SC, as well as Trails from Zero.