About Heroes Legacy:
Friend recommended me this. At first I thought the gameplay could get repetitive and the story would get bland. But I was wrong, and here’s why The characters are pretty dynamic, you fall into the tropes but they are not forced at all. They are pretty standard at first but their writing gets better with the game.The story (so far) is great, normally I go on auto-pilot for some of these games but I decided to stick around and it was worth. Some dark undertones alongside these “faction x is bad but faction y is worse” type deal but somehow makes sense.Gameplay is pretty good. Turn-based with some other elements that are kinda challenging without the need to grind. Strategy into the Orbs is great and it definitely helped me stray away from mindless gameplay.The TURBO button is a savior. Some of the animations are literally 5-10 seconds of trees and I get that sometimes people want to get into the nitty-gritty. If you are one of these people, you’ll love this feature. Cold Steel is an odd game, to say the least. Throughout most of my playthrough I simultaneously loved and hated it. It’s a hard feeling to describe, but essentially I enjoyed certain parts a lot, while also disliking certain parts a lot. I enjoyed the characters, the world, and the music. But I disliked the confusing political aspects of the narrative, the typical jrpg minigames, and most of the battle system. The pacing was also extremely slow, and I found myself playing to finish more than playing because I truly enjoyed the game, which is a shame. The combat systems are also a mixed bag. Upgrading equipment is always just a problem of grinding until you have enough money to give everybody upgraded weapons and armor. Evasion is overpowered. Crafts are superior to Arts in every way, from only taking one turn, to having an easily replenishable point pool, to often having multiple effects. Overall, the combat is extremely unbalanced. However, I do like the animations, especially the unique ones that Crafts have. I like S Crafts being extremely overpowered but extremely costly. I like being able to see everything important about an enemy’s resistances, and I especially like that bosses are almost never immune to all status effects. In most JRPGs, status effects are worthless because bosses are immune and normal enemies are too weak to bother with status effects. But in Cold Steel, you can easily see what status effects can be used, and how effective they are, which is a comforting change of pace from other games.The story, though often convoluted, is gripping at times, especially toward the end. Even with all of my reservations, I was still compelled to buy the sequel as soon as it went on sale. It feels a bit like the original Golden Sun, in that it’s designed to set up the world, characters, and story for the sequel more than being designed as a standalone game, though both are still enjoyable in their own right. The game is also trying desperately to capture the essence of the Persona franchise while also not being structured the same way. Cold Steel has fixed times where you’re forced to do normal high school stuff, and fixed times for adventures, but the reason Persona games work with that dichotomy is that the player is allowed to dictate the schedule. If you’re feeling burned out with dungeon crawling, you can return to it after a week of in-game time. If you’re burned out with grinding in Cold Steel, too bad, you have to continue the story before you get any time to relax. Both halves of this split in Cold Steel are fine on their own, but they don’t feel the way that I think they’re trying to make it feel.Overall, it’s an enjoyable experience with a lot of minor flaws. I know that I mostly focused on my criticisms, but they’re easier to talk about than trying to figure out why exactly I liked the characters, and why the story gripped me despite how complicated and political it is.
