I finished it just now and can confirm, I loved it personally! It has a similar meandering Act 2 to Cold Steel 2, but it's not as bad (the Act 2 of CS2 was the lowest point in the entire series for my taste), it's just that it's sandwiched between some super high octane moments so it feels almost boring in comparison. Overall, I am genuinely not capable of understanding how could someone play and like the saga up to Cold Steel 3 and then decide "nah Cold Steel 4 is bad". It has what I would consider shortcomings, but they're the exact same of the rest of the arc (like, Rean is sometimes too corny, there are many "power of bonds and friendship" sappy dialogues etc... like every other Cold Steel games) so I really don't get it. I'd understand someone liking Sky but not Steel, but liking half of Steel and then drawing the line at CS3/CS4 is bamboozling to me.

Cold Steel 3 has my least favourite soundtrack in the series overall, but then again, I wouldn't call it bad by any means, it's just not as good as the others. 4's soundtrack is notably superior, though, at least for my taste. It has some fantastic town/overworld themes and incredibly hype battle themes, with Endure Grief and Seductive Shudder in particular being my go-to tracks. It's a matter of preference for sure, but I loved the soundtrack a lot.

I honestly can't wait to delve into Reverie, but I'll force myself to take a bit of a break first haha

The interlude has got to be the hypest moment in the whole Trails saga so far... and I say that having played Azure haha! Up to now (I'm halfway through I think, in Act 2) this game is definitely living up to its not so enviable role of being the climax of a whopping 9-JRPG-odyssey. Unless the writing quality suddenly and inexplicably falls down the stairs from this very moment onwards, I think this is gonna be a fantastic ride!

From what I've experienced so far, people being disappointed with CS4 must be tripping balls lol. It's still Cold Steel, so it's still very anime-y, often quite corny and enamored with specific sets of tropes, but I mean... realistically, if one got to Cold Steel 3 it must means at the very least one is okay with those characteristics, so panning CS4 for them is quite absurd. Personally, I'm loving it and I'm also loving how they're tackling the usual tropes, but I can't go into details because spoilers. Suffice to say I'm enjoying myself a lot and I hope it keeps being like this.

Also, the soundtrack is absolute fire. Again, people b1tching about it and Mitsuo Singa as a composer are tripping balls and make absolutely no sense. I've already added at least 5 battle themes to my playlist and it also has some of the best overworld themes since How to Walk in Liberl. Maybe my ears are wired differently from the ears of those annoying downers, but if that's really the case, I'm glad they are because I'm adoring these tracks haha

It almost doesn't feel real, but after Unicorn Overlord it's time for Trails of Cold Steel IV! Despite all, the idea of concluding the major part of a journey I've started four years ago feels monumental already

Oh yeah absolutely. If you haven't gotten around to Hugo and Claw, they are a must. ESPECIALLY the spoiler character...

I was looking at your collection and info and thought we had similar tastes and your collection isn't bad yourself.

Somehow, my backlog account turned eight today! Where does the time go??

Ys IX gets undeserved amounts of flak, I really liked it personally. I stand by that precious few things happen during the first chapters of the game, so pacing isn't very tight, and the game doesn't look great. You can hear the poor ol' engine practically creaking with age at that point, plus the setting is quite drab for the majority of time. So I can see how some people didn't really like it. But the gameplay is the culmination of that particular Ys style, the plot is fantastic once it does happen and as always I liked the characters and writing. Ys still brings to the table a feeling of adventure that's not quite available elsewhere.

I have to say that the music is fantastic though, and I want to give the numerous Singa haters a giant middle finger. I don't engage in fanbases usually, but I rarely have seen a worse one than Falcom's. It's insufferable in a number of things, but especially regarding the music. With all their dogpiling on Singa, I'm quite convinced they don't have functioning ears. Pretty much everything the man did for Monstrum Nox is an absolute banger. Those people act like music connoisseurs, then at the first sign of an unconventional song structure, rhythm or progressive style of songwriting they act like it broke some fundamental laws of music or something lol. They're the worst.

It does run quite good on PC, my system is old at this point (it was mid-high range when I assembled it in 2016) and it runs at 1080p@60FPS without issue. I'm at the final character-related chapter and I hope the story picks up because while the game has been enjoyable until now, I feel like the vast majority of what I've seen so far seems inconsequential lol

Vanillaware games are absolutely recommended. 13 Sentinels is a complete masterpiece of sci-fi storytelling. It's an incredibly dense and complex plot that homages each and every sci-fi trope, but somehow comes out fresh and perfectly comprehensible once you start to get the full picture.

Great news about the job! Make the most out of it for as long as you can, after all no one can stop you from pursuing another, more ideal position a year or two down the line with additional experience under your belt!

I'll let you know my spoiler-free thoughts on Cold Steel as a whole when I find IV on sale and can finally play it! Though, it could be a while since after Ys IX I'll be getting Unicorn Overlord when it comes out. I'm a massive Vanillaware fan.

As for Ys IX... I dig it! It's been more than a year since I've played an Ys game, which was Celceta, and this definitely seems better. Not better than Lacrimosa for sure (as of now at least), but that's not quite fair to me as Lacrimosa really was a special game, everything in the mechanics, the story and exploration came together in a scarily perfect way, every single thing was thematically appropriate and it all felt absolutely seamless. It was kind of lightning in a bottle! I'm digging the ambition in the exploration side of things, and plot seems really promising, though it takes its time to make you know the various characters and whatnot. Gameplay is still the Lacrimosa, solid iteration of the party based Ys games. I'm liking it well enough so far, and I think things might only get better from here.

I know the feeling of being considered by a place that wasn't your first choice far too well! I wish you the best luck for finding an agreeable position for you. Keep me posted if you want!

Yeah, I really liked the characters of Cold Steel 3. I personally connected to them really well through Rean, who is far better suited to the role of instructor and is a more compelling character than in the past (though he's still as corny as ever lol). The plot, overall, I also think was quite good, with the only frustrating thing being that sometimes you can see a lot of untapped potential. It's really a thing of Cold Steel as a whole though. The trope of not ever killing off characters is the biggest offender for me, it's not like you can't do that, but when you write of constantly escalating stakes, wars, doom prophecies and such, if you start to realize there are no real consequences it kind of cheapens the whole... but overall the history of Zemuria, the lore and the actual events are really interesting, they just aren't what they might be. The whole "massive saga idea" might have been kind of a trap for the writers, I'm happy for the journey and I'm enjoying it a lot, don't get me wrong, but I'm really glad that they managed to conclude it and I hope that Daybreak starts off as a clean slate of sorts. I also hope that they learned from the experience of Cold Steel and won't write themselves in a corner by overblowing the stakes lol

Hey, how are you? I saw you've embarked in a Rock Band/Guitar Hero journey

Things are good for me. I moved to live on my own to a place 500km away from home since getting a job a year and a half ago. On the down side, my family is far away and my girlfriend as well (which is why I'd like to return home if a job opportunity over there arises, because we're both near 29 and we've been together for 7 years and a half, so we'd REALLY like to live together at last); on the plus side, by living alone I can spare quite a bit of time to play games. It's because of this that I said to myself "Man, this as perfect an occasion of finally finishing the Cold Steel Saga as I'll ever have in the near future". I plan on playing at least Cold Steel 4 before I move back home. If I end up going back before then... that's good news still, as it means I can finally start working towards living together with my girlfriend.

As for Cold Steel 3 itself... it's really good for me! Not a major departure from the writing style of the first two, so it's overall a bit more sappy, corny and trope-y than Sky was, but it has that nice, familiar, slow pace of the "first" in any given arc (this is the 3rd, sure, but after the timeskip post-2 it has a similar pace to the "start of arc" games). The biggest downside is that at this point the whole structure is kind of predictable (I hope that the Daybreak games will change things up quite a bit at long last), but luckily the plot itself is not. Some twists got me good. Plus, it's the beginning of the culmination of the entire journey, so the returning characters hit really really hard for me. I'd also say that the new characters are great and the bond that you can forge between Rean and the new students is really something I'm a fan of. Much like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I find myself thinking "I will lay down my life for my idiot children" multiple times!

A break from Trails was well deserved for me, but what can I say? It feels so good to be back, they are the games I know and love even if the usual shortcomings are mostly all still there.

wow. i picked up the game around 2018... time flies, huh. they badly fumbled the remake too so any hopes of the series returning is... lol. i quite enjoyed rings of fate, and the script and VA work were really charming but it doesn;t match the quality of the original sadly ^^;;

hiya-- you're welcome! i love crystal chronicles but i only seem to pick it up once every year so progress is slow ^^;;

I've listened Demons & Wizards almost twice right now! I really like The Spell, Traveller in Time and Poet's Justice; Is a really cool album overall!

Thank you for the recommendation! I'm gonna give a listen to both of 'em and I'll let you know what I think, if you're interested.

From The Beatles I love "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". You can't go wrong with the first half of the album.
I also really like many single tracks like "Yesterday", "Help!", "The Night Before" from "Help!" and "Now and Then" which is a pretty recent track.

The Genesis are a bit more hard to pinpoint single albums since they had a more prolific carrier with much more material.
My absolute favourite tracks are "Supper's Ready" from "Foxtrot", "One for the Vine" from "Wind & Wuthering" and "Domino" from "Invisible Touch". The best overall album overall is probably "Selling England by the Pound", where shines "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" and "Firth of Firth". They've a more raw sound in the 70's compared to other prog rock bands of the time, but I love them since they're so unique and have composed some of the best keyboard and guitar solos ever imho (Supper's Ready and Firth of Firth especially).

Let me know if you like 'em, I'm really curious.

Hell yes, I'm looking forward to Genealogy. I've heard it's excellent, but other FE's have been taking priority recently.

Happy new year!

I really liked many songs from Rush (especially 2112 which is still a phenomenal track), but I never chewed whole albums sadly.. like Van Halen (although I still think 1984 is a masterpiece as a whole).
I've always knew Uriah Heep and Styx by name, but never met a single soul that was into them lol have you some tracks or albums to recommend me?
I like all kinds of genres and artists, but right now I'm really into Beatles, Robert Palmer, Nick Drake, 80's Genesis and Death

After this shredding year, who are some of your top bands/artists at the moment?

Howdy howdy!

Crystal Chronicles was admittedly very hard to get into at first. However, once it clicked for me, I "got it". I could see the vision and wow is it ever impressive. Had a blast playing both with friends and randoms online while I was actively playing it. If you ever get the itch to start up a new save, let's do some adventuring together.

Hope your holiday season is peaceful, and that you find the time to finish Trails from Zero.

And wow, just like that, another year almost gone. Videogaming managed to be even slower this year than last year. I've done a ton more writing and drawing and reading than video games. According to Goodreads, I've read 29 books this year. It should go up to 30 once I finish The Soprano Sorceress. Anyway, how do I even do a Top 10? It would basically just be Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, as well as Choice of Games and maybe one or two others. They're completely different genres and just about impossible to compare. So I guess I'll do something like this. A GH/RB top 10, and a CoG top three. That should work.
GH/RB
1. Rock Band 3
2. Guitar Hero 2
3. Rock Band 2
4. Guitar Hero III
5. Guitar Hero: World Tour
6. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
7. LEGO Rock Band
8. Rock Band 4
9. Guitar Hero
10. Rock Band

Choice of Games
1. I, the Forgotten One
2. Vampire: The Masquerade - Night Road
3. Vampire: The Masquerade - Parliament of Knives

Honourable Mentions:
Chaos;Head NoAH
The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero (Haven't finished yet, but would like to before the end of the year...)