Yay, finished Cold Steel 1. Whole game of filler and setup but the ending was entertaining. Kinda ballsy to end your story on the act 1 inciting incident, I'd be pissed if I had to wait another year to keep going. Then again it's also *hilariously* optimistic to think I'd play through the first game what, 8 times? just to see every dancing scene or whatever.
-Impressed that they start you off at level 40 in the next game, figured you'd de-level between games.
-Did not realize there was
in this series, that's like an automatic 2 bonus points right there, very pleasant surprise.
-Since the point of the game is to set up all the characters, I'd almost expect to play the alternate parties in each chapter, but that would make the game even longer and more boring. I'd say about half of Class 7 grew on me by the end.
-Game wasn't hard except when a boss would randomly use an S-craft and wipe the party. ??? Not really sure how you're supposed to plan around that but the system is hilariously unbalanced. I usually just blitzed them with my own S-crafts before they could use theirs. Some bosses could be delayed forever and never get a turn.
-Using In Media Res was a bad move. While it was nice that it gives you a taste of the battles early on it spoils too much and ruins much of the tension. They even tell you the exact day the fortress is getting attacked in the opening so there's no suspense whatsoever. To top it off it was followed by the much less dramatic mine attack event. Seems like chapters 5 and 6 should be reversed.
-I guessed
was the bad guy by chapter 4 and confirmed it in chapter 6. I remember thinking "this character is totally worthless in the story so they have to be the villain just to conserve drama."
-What is the obsession with Towa? She's so bland and average. Otaku nerds like women who seem like they might be attainable IRL? Spoilers, they're all unattainable when you never leave the house.
-I didn't get why the Orbment setup was so convoluted until I remembered the system had more depth to it in TitS. Offensive spells didn't really seem useful and were mostly too costly to use regularly so I barely touched them except for Emma. If a spell blows 50% of my mana in one shot it should do more than a regular craft hit on a boss.
-Just assume every maid in an anime is a ninja. Confirmed.
-The villains were p. dumb. You foil their entire plan and they are like, "nah we wanted you to stop us, blow up all our stuff, kill half our guys, and give us all a severe beating." Um, okay? If your plan is to get beaten up by highschoolers that is a shitty plan. In the end I struggle to see what they even accomplished. I suppose you could say their attacks provoked the final confrontation but they even point out that the government covered it all up. Basically it didn't seem like the final events of the story *needed* the terrorists' attacks to go forward (except the one event the player isn't conveniently around to thwart) and they were only there to give the player an excuse to interact with the villains. Just bad plotting.
-The whole "Beat the boss in battle but then in the cutscene afterwards they reveal they were holding back/had some escape plan" is gay as fuck, but I'm sure the series won't beat that trope into ground going forward right?
Long haired Fie
