The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV Review (CidX777)
A Saga That Collapsed Under Its Own Weight
🎬 Story – A Narrative Lost in the Fog
Cold Steel IV is supposed to be the grand finale — the emotional payoff to years of build-up. Instead, it's like watching five anime shows play at the same time, none of them finishing a single episode before switching.
The main plot? Constantly shoved aside. Just as things get interesting — like Rean breaking out of the Black Workshop — the game slams the brakes and forces you to go flower-picking or help some NPC you haven’t seen since Cold Steel II. Meanwhile, the world’s supposedly ending.
The pacing is a disaster. You’ll go from major story events to three dungeons and 12 bonding scenes for side characters you barely remember. It's exhausting. You're juggling 500 characters, all with subplots, flashbacks, and dramatic speeches that don’t lead anywhere. The bloat would be tolerable if it was optional — but the game pushes it like it's mandatory.
🧍‍♂️ Characters – Everyone Is a Trope
There are just too many. Most fall into classic anime archetypes:
Stoic swordsman
Perky airhead
Shy magic girl
Mysterious guy with glasses
And they all want Rean. Even characters who barely interacted with him before are suddenly dropping love confessions or pinning him to walls. It’s not romance — it’s a fan club disguised as a war story.
With 30+ characters in the mix, no one gets real development. Just recycled catchphrases and overdone dramatic moments.
💬 Dialogue – Padding the Padding
The writing is weak and repetitive. Characters spend whole scenes reacting with “…” or restating the same info three different ways. Conversations often go nowhere and feel like they’re stalling for time.
Then there’s the voice acting: one line voiced, next five not. Dramatic yell, then silence. It feels half-finished, like they ran out of budget mid-cutscene.
⚔️ Combat – Still Solid (But Drags)
Combat’s still good — strategic, customizable, satisfying. But the game abuses it. You'll get thrown into long dungeons just to delay story progress. Bosses can last 30–40 minutes, and some have one-shot moves that force you to restart from scratch. It goes from fun to fatiguing real fast.
🧠Pacing & Side Content – A Forced Marathon
Reaching a big story moment? Too bad — now you’re doing three bonding events, a fetch quest, and maybe fishing.
Skip side content, and you miss upgrades and important dialogue. Do it all, and you burn out before anything meaningful happens. The game treats every side activity like it’s as important as the main story — and it kills the momentum completely.
📉 Final Thoughts
Cold Steel IV could’ve been incredible. But it lost focus and drowned in its own side content. The main story is buried under hours of filler. Characters are thin, the pacing is painful, and the payoff rarely feels earned.
If you’re into bonding scenes, waifus, and checking in on every NPC from the last decade? This game’s for you.
But if you’re here for pacing, momentum, and a satisfying end to the saga?
You’ll be stuck wondering how a story this big managed to feel so empty.