Game 10 in the Trails of series, the finale of the Liberl, Crossbell, and Erebonia arcs. This is a goodbye to a majority of the cast for maybe ever in game form, and honestly in that context it’s exactly what it should be. A silly mess of a game, with a good plot that follows through and ends a bunch of character arcs at places where we really don’t need to see beyond where they are at.

Never thought I’d call one of these an ecchi game without the “Not really” thing in front of it, but with this one it feels like it fits. This is a fanservice game in all accounts of the word, though still light on the sexy stuff.

Not really going to go into depth on much here, just thought I’d do a more proper write up then the Cold Steel ones.

Story-6

Overall feelings is that it was better then Cold Steel 4. Liked it more then 3. A lot of needed closing stuff happened, like Rean getting over martyr life style and actually playing the liberation of Crossbell instead of it mostly being off screen.

So the game follows 3 parties led by Rean, Lloyd, and the mysterious C through a series of events triggered by one Rufus Albarea taking over Crossbell on it’s day of Independence. Honestly the scene of that happening was my least liked part of the whole thing as one man should not be able to defeat all 7 members of the SSS, but plot has to plot. There were definitely better ways to handle that.

After that and we got to start explaining things it got better. I enjoyed it even if it felt very anime silly at times. A lot of time is spent ending old character arcs and revisiting things for just a bit. Unless you are a part of old Class 7, then you just kind of exist to fight a bit which honestly that’s all most of them have done since 3. Jusis probably gets the most closure of the whole set.

It does drag with a feeling of visiting old characters just to show their face, unless you come from Sky 3rd and then you just get name dropped. Not even off screen talking. Which was odd for the send off game.

Basically, this was a nice treat for all my time invested, but has no value for someone without at least Cold Steel or Crossbell games under their belt. It does give some brief glimpses into Kuro no Kiseki stuff, like I think some backstory for one of the main female leads and a villain with some non sense sword style. Also ninjas. I’ve heard its a darker story with some actual deaths which should help the amusement park feeling of Cold Steel to go away and make the series feel serious, though hopefully it doesn’t get silly grimdark. There’s a fine line there.

Gameplay-5

I’m not going to go into specifics about the battle system in the 5th game to use it, but an overview is it’s Neptunia’s circle based field with more status effects, turn management, and a lot of accessories esque equipment in the quartz system.

What I do want to say is that this system only got more broken as the games went on. In this one it’s possible to have a 100+ turn fight where enemies never get a turn. The only difficult part of the game is the start, once you get some tools the game falls over. Basically, once each team of the 3 reach the Reverie Corridor(the side dungeon thing that doubles as the rogue dungeon for fun thing), which fuses their inventories. the game difficulty falls apart regardless of which one you picked. This is why once I beat the game I switched to Very Easy for all of post game, just to make it faster as the way I fought didn’t change much at all.

The new mechanic, United Fronts, is basically an ultimate that uses a gauge you never really needed in the other games. Less then halfway into the game 70% of normal fights get one turned with this mechanic.

The only real improvement is that arts aka spells are finally fully worth using on just about anyone. In return, crafts aka physical skills are mostly not worth using compared to arts damage output. A team of 3 mages and an evasion tank(with 100% evasion and crits on very evade counter and does 250% damage on top of the crit and draws all aggro, which is easy to do for some reason) makes every fight play out the same. Move tank to other side of field then casters. Spam spells, use United Front to recharge EP(this games MP) to good damage on tank turn, and use defense orders when enemy used ultimates. This is the easy and obvious way to deal with 99% of the game. Or you know, you can abuse the give yourself 2 turns spell and Accelerate which immediately gives any ally the next turn. The issue isn’t that these exist, it’s that they are easy to do and easy to find.

Other stuff… a bunch of minigames. Just about every one from Cold Steel 4 is back and a few more on top. The Corridor is basically a randomized dungeon for infinite play that you can reroll. Mech fights have almost entirely been taken out, with only 1 as part of the end boss.

Overall, it can be fun but eventually the answer to each fight becomes to obvious and easy to do. Despite the giant roster(51 characters) everyone casting spells makes them very samey. It feels like a playground, where all the tools are thrown at you all the time and you are just suppose to do as you please.

NG+ is also kind of pointless thanks to the infinite dungeon thing. Unless you missed some achievement stuff you don’t get anything special in NG+ like the other games, though there are 4 enemies you do have to NG+ to fight. Copies of your teammates which require 3 full runs of the game to see them to fill the bestiary. Devs didn’t make them mandatory for the achievement, which was good thinking. I didn’t bother with them either.

Lewdness-5

Before we talk about costumes and boobs and ass, this game is a fanservice treat in the normal sense as well. Reverie Corridor has a section called Daydreams, which act as both plot fill ins and just treats for lore followers. Really the whole game is one to fans of the Crossbell games, with them having a whole game about taking Crossbell back instead of it just being an offscreen event. The only lacking thing is the Rean love interest not playing off at all, which might be for the better. There’s cool in engine fights, basically everyone except the Sky 3 cast showing up, getting McBurn as a special recruit in post game, lots of ends of storylines. It’s great.

But really, the amount of costumes is kind of dumb. I mean I love it, so few games have free costumes with any effort in them, but Juna and Musse get like 15 outfits each while the Liberl cast each get a towel and their normal clothes. It’s so lopsided toward Class 7 and SSS its silly. There’s a whole set of magical girl outfits, new swimsuits for the entire Class 7 cast(SSS get a set as well, but that’s in the only game play content dlc), and a bunch random stuff. Basically anything from CS 3 and 4 is here except Emma and Rean’s nude ruin outfits, and even some Japanese exclusive stuff from CS4 showed up. There’s also some ultimate cut ins that change based on costume, though the only one I know for sure is Rixia in her dancer outfit.

On that note, Rixia is hot. Period. She also seems to have some new jiggle stuff in her model, as her boobs move very differently then Emma or Sara’s do. As far as I could tell, the game has 3 different chest styles. No movement(guy’s, loli’s, and Ellie for some weird reason), the CS3 and 4 bounce, and this new wiggle like one. Comparing Rixia and Emma is the easiest way. Emma’s pendent moves in time with her boobs, and her boobs really only move when you stop running and in her idle animation. There is a notable bounce when she stops moving and then everything just falls back into place. Rixia’s chest wiggles around a lot. Her win animation, walking, running, most of her animations will have some chest movement, though more subtle then you’d expect of her size. This combined with her base outfit showing her ass cheeks makes her the sex symbol of the game by a wide margin. And she only gets more curvy when she returns in the next duology.

Beyond that, the other notable fanservice thing is the flirt on the beach minigame. In the Corridor is a visit to the beach thing in the amusement park. Here is a minigame where Rean(Lloyd in the dlc) sits with any girl of your choosing from his group and you yes no to around 8 questions. During this you have free 1st person camera control. If you succeed in the game you get an item, but also the girl will now react to where you stare at her. This is also the only VR compatible thing in the game. In a way it also replaced giving Rean a close off to your romance choice of the series, as the two times that does get mentioned are a line long each and the girl in question cannot be in the party.

Final Thoughts

Enjoyable. Post game felt bland, but the core game was fun and chock full of content for fans of the series and just general things to do. Combat falls apart and there is nothing the devs can really do to stop that, though they tried with the new difficulty giving enemies triple speed. Not enough though.

As for the fan translation of Kuro, as much as I want to jump on that now I won’t. I’m not sure if my saves would import into a Japanese region game, and for all the issues with the translation I’d rather play the common played version rather then the underground “better” version.

Save for Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie

End game, all costumes and the book is basically full except for some NG+ only enemies and I missed a chest somehow? Clear game good to go.

Gameplay: 5/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 6/10

Completion: Beat game, full bestiary requires 3 runs of the game(I didn’t do this), all costumes requires beach minigame and just shuffling the Reverie Corridors shop a bunch. To my knowledge there are no save import requirements for Kuro, just have a clear save and you are good.