The New Classics #58: Trails of Cold Steel III

 

The Backstory: The Cold Steel subseries started on the Vita way back in 2013 and graced Sony’s legacy piece of kit with two entries, before moving on to the PS4 in 2017 and to the Switch in 2020 — fully showcasing Nihon Falcom’s patience and dedication to their craft. I kept securing those Cold Steel entries all these years — without playing a single one of them, and thus without knowing if I even loved the series at all. As the 4^th game is supposed to be the final one, the time is ripe to check if I have a glorious epic at my fingertips — or a quartet of pawn-shop-headed cartridges. 

 

 

The Game: Most Switch RPGs I’ve played lately feature skippable cutscenes — and Cold Steel III is no exception, to my utter delight. Once the skipping was done, I was let loose in a dungeon with a full crew of characters, free to roam and slaughter stuff. You know I really love my in medias res introductions in RPGs, dear fellow gamers; and I like them even more when the in medias res factor spreads all the way to the gameplay. 

 

 

Talking about the gameplay, it was mostly combat — which I obviously lapped up. I was let free to tinker with the controls and explore the fighting system at will, and no nosy tutorial came to interrupt me. That’s how I discovered three types of offensive moves with different ranges and mechanics, party member combo dynamics and devastating uber-powerful attacks — all that in a mere three battles, thank you very much! Cold Steel III’s fighting system is nicely approachable yet quite deep, the perfect vehicle to fight it your way. Cherry on the cake, it offers plenty of eye-popping animations and the possibility to skip them on the fly.  

 

 

  

The Verdict: I didn’t push very far, as: a) I didn’t want to spoil myself, and b) I had seen enough to know that I definitely wanted more of Cold Steel. It offers some polished and stylish fighting, which is always a must in RPGs; and a saga that spans over four games has to be interesting, even to my jaded, ‘I-don’t-care-about-no-story-in-my-RPG’ eyes. Until now, I was afraid I might not enjoy modern Falcom games, which would have been a blow to my gaming morale; but my stint with Cold Steel III reassures me — now I can peacefully wait for all these Legend of Heroes Switch remakes!