The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - The End of Saga

The Good
Let me start with a bold statement: The Legend of Heroes ruined JRPGs for me. During the last ten years I played my fair share of the genre and I like it, but since I started with this series in 2018, none - not even the much acclaimed Persona 5 - managed to hold my attention for longer than 20 hours.

This is due to one strength: I have never played a game with more likeable, more interesting and better written characters. Like in most JRPGs the characters tend to talk a bit too long and they repeat their points too often, but compared to the earlier games of the series this is almost no issue anymore. However, this praise does not only apply to the main characters - even the smallest NPCs without names have their own (although sometimes clichéd) personality and character arcs. After every main plot event almost every reachable NPC has new dialogue and I love doing the rounds. I assume a quarter of my playing time was spent with optional dialogue and I enjoyed every moment!

The character development and combat hits the sweet spot between not too complicated but deep enough to avoid becoming boring. The systems are almost unchanged since the first installment - Falcom only added more sub-systems over time - which is welcome because they work perfectly for me.

The Bad
The series always had pacing problems, but in this installment they are worse than ever: after an huge info-dump at the beginning, the first fourty hours are almost exclusively spent with traversing linear overland sections and dungeons. And dungeons are Falcom's big weakness: they are mostly visually uninteresting and always have a boring design. As usually the payoff is worth it, but I wished Falcom would have cut Act I down. The game is already much longer than the predecessors (it took me almost 150 hours compared to about 100 hours for Cold Steel I, II and III) so those parts were not not necessary.

The story is not as good as in the previous games: the plot twists are predicable and the conclusion of the main plot is only OK. However, the character endings and especially the credits sequence can only be described as fantastic.

I have to be a bit vague on the last point because of spoilers: you quickly assemble a huge cast of playable characters which are all known from the previous games. This is a good fan-service, but in practice I almost never used more than my usual four active characters. However, until the very end Falcom restricts the characters that can be used and often supplies guest characters which can't be customized at all. Personally I prefer a small cast like in the Crossbell arc - I never felt so close to a RPG party before.

The Bottom Line
This review is ultimately pointless: everyone who played the series before already bought Cold Steel IV on day one. And everyone else should start with Trails in the Sky or at least Trails of Cold Steel. I have to emphasize this point: there is no enjoyment to find for new players. The game is written and designed for people who played the predecessors - and they will have a blast.