I must say, everything that pertains to the writing - story, characters, dialogue - was a let down for me compared to the previous games. The story in particular wasn't really engaging, mainly because the major points it was revolving around (Erebonia's internal political struggle, what transpired in Crossbell, etc) were already covered by the Sky and Crossbell arcs. Only at the end something interesting finally happened, but that's, well, the end of the game. All that precedes it left me largely indifferent. I mean, it was like that in some other Trails games too (Trails to Azure, for instance), but there you at least had a likable cast and more competently written dialogues. Namely Rean is pretty much devoid of any personality - uuuuh, well, he's got that dormant super power within him, a-and apparently he's good at making people friends (and that only because he's the main hero of the story). Otherwise it's a hollow character, plus he is utterly unlikable. The rest of the cast is little better, eventually I grew not to get annoyed by each of them but that's it. There's still hope they open up in the subsequent games, that remains to be seen.
When it comes to gameplay though, Cold Steel 1 may be the best Trails game so far, I welcome the expansion of quartz selection, for one thing. The other new features aren't too bad either, and even though they rarely made much difference (given that the game was rather on the easy side), at least they introduced some variety to battles. Regarding the difficulty, this is the easiest Trails game I've played, so much that I will have to consider playing on Nightmare next time (though I'm still uncertain, recalling how weirdly Nightmare was balanced in the Ys games). There's like 2 fights in the whole game where I struggled a little, and even so they were easier than Trails from Zero (former easiest Trails game).
Overall, it's an OK game, I wouldn't say I disliked it, but the mediocre story/characters/dialogue do drag it down. I don't even mind the school setting and goofy mecha fights, or other anime cliches, only if the writing wasn't so bland, boring, and uninspired. But it's not like I'm going to abandon the series because of this (as I said, it wasn't that bad), since I still wish to fulfill my goal of playing through all main Trails games (Sky - Crossbell - Cold Steel at the very least, and maybe Trails into Reverie if I'm lucky) this year, plus I'm in no disposition to play anything else at the moment.
