izigame.me

Trails of Cold Steel III takes place a couple of years after the events of its predecessor and marks the beginning of a sort of convergence, bringing everything from the preceding games together. The new Class VII fixes a massive the problem the old class had, chemistry. It's aided by being a significantly smaller cast, but much more cohesive nonetheless. While I do feel that the character writing has consistently been on a decline since the first Cold Steel entry, I'm happy to say CSIII makes a great attempt at getting back on its feet. At times the formulaic approach was tedious, especially since it was very similar to CSI. The lore and world-building however are still gripping and expansive.
My BIGGEST gripe with this game was the awful sound design and in my opinion having the weakest soundtrack within the entire series so far. Perhaps it was a result of the music always being way too quiet even at max volume, but nearly none of the tracks that weren't just reuses/remixes of older tracks were at all memorable. Trails has always excelled very much in the battle themes, and with them being mixed so poorly I found nearly all the battles just... not exciting. I have a very strong preference towards music in games, it can be a make or break for me, and this complaint alone probably puts CSIII to the least of my favorite Trails game. I have the same complaint with Ys VIII regarding the mixing of the score, but at least it was fantastic, yet I still worry this will be a consistent problem going forward with Falcom releases.
Despite that, I still recommend the game. It's a good game, and obviously an essential part going forward in this amazing world Falcom have crafted.