BEFORE STARTING THE REVIEW:
Please for the love of god play Trails in the Sky FC, Trails in the Sky SC, Trails in the Sky the 3rd, Trails from Zero, and Trails to Azure before even playing ANY of the Cold Steel games. It will make you much more invested and immersed in the overall world and playing Cold Steel games before them would be doing yourself a HUGE disservice. Trust me, every game is worth every second spent in them and the overall story in the past nine games (including this one as the ninth) has been truly amazing and a well worth experience.

First things first, man this was a whole emotional roller coaster and a half for me. The amount of times the game gut punched me in the heart is kind of insane and I loved every moment of it. Story wise, this continues pretty much off of the ending of Trails of Cold Steel 3's story. It the prelude and first act are pretty interesting and overall setup the rest of the game really well. The further you get into the story the more twists that end up coming along, especially from returning characters. Every act in the game felt like it was paced really well, and the preludes/interludes/epilogue were really nicely done (especially the interlude where you can finally romance Towa). The overall story notes are pretty much consistent with the previous Cold Steel games, and they even bring back smaller characters from Cold Steel 1 and 2 from the graduating classes. I would definitely say that overall I really enjoyed how the true ending brought about the end of the Cold Steel saga (excluding Reverie). Every moment for me was really enjoyable and well written.

Gameplay wise, it's pretty much the exact same style as you would expect from Trails of Cold Steel 3. With some exceptions like going to a bath house and having bonding scenes there with different characters. The ones with Towa were of course especially cute. Though the one downside is that there are still certain characters that you can't really play as in the game that I would have loved to use. Like Towa has an Orbal Pistol that she can fight with and her own orders she can issue out (her order is really nice and only costs 2 BP). If they added that then it would be absolutely perfect. Though on thing they did improve was not having bosses that kept refreshing their health to an insane degree (with the exception of one character in Act 3). Overall, pretty balanced.

As for the characters, they're all still lovable and the more in-depth bonding scenes with the cast really add more depth and love to each one of them. Both new and old class 7 become more fleshed out with each bonding scene you view, giving more background to their past experiences. What's even better about the bonding system in Cold Steel 4 versus Cold Steel 3 is that you aren't restricted to only Laura, Emma, and Alisa this time around for romantic options. They actually decided to open it up again (like Cold Steel 1 and 2) and let you choose your favorite character to romance. I personally went down the Towa romance/bond route and it was worth every second. My heart can't handle how cute and also emotional everything was with her. Even dialogue for just chatting with her normally after a certain point in the game is just super adorable. It was well worth max bonding only her in all four games.

As for the art style/graphics, they remained on par with how Cold Steel 3 portrayed everything. I still absolutely love the new art style for all the characters, and the higher quality 3D models they use in Cold Steel 3 and 4 all look great. I personally put the game up to 4k resolution and was pretty satisfied with how the game looked overall. Although some characters kinda look awkward around the mouth like Gaius and Sully . That was pretty much limited to only two characters though and I really enjoyed the new Towa model that both Cold Steel 3 and 4 use a bit more personally. Though the original model they used for her in Cold Steel 1 and 2 also had a lot of personality too and was really cute.

As for miscellaneous stuff, the Pom Pom Party mini game in Cold Steel 4 felt oddly more fleshed out than it ever had been before. Some characters are actually SUPER cracked at the game and it's kind of insane. I didn't unlock all of them, but the further you go down the Pom Pom Party list, the more difficult and fast the characters become ( like for real why is Olivier SO GOOD AT POM POM PARTY? HE'S SO FAST. Surely he's gotta be playing a lot while Mueller isn't looking ). I also did appreciate Falcom telling me about the true ending unlocking so that I could actually go and do that over the normal ending. The whole scenes in the credits and after the credits with my chosen character Towa were SO CUTE, I loved every second of it.

Overall, I highly recommend picking up this game whether it's on sale or full price, definitely worth it in the amount of quality that went into this game. It's a really nice way to end the Trails of Cold Steel saga before heading into Trails into Reverie and then into Kuro no Kiseki 1 & 2 -Crimson Sin-.


Another side note:
I accomplished my mission, I romanced Towa in all four Cold Steel games. Truly the best character in all of Cold Steel. My Towa brainrot is extreme and incurable.