I keep trying to post my thoughts on CS1 and CS2, but ATT and forums combine to repeatedly delete my fucking post, I don't give enough of a shit to do it in Word or whatever and C/P. It should be fucking stable enough to either not crash, or it shouldn't auto-refresh the fucking box in 2018 AD. I had like, 5 giant paragraphs talking about the game itself instead of the characters, and it's all gone. All gone forever.
Trails of Cold Steel 1 and Cold Steel 2 are both good games. CS1 is a 60 hour prologue and CS2 is the first game of a new series, and it is extremely good and fun. The villains' motivations make no goddamn sense. The last few fights of CS2 are horrible bullshit that undermine 50 hours of a very enjoyable battle system.
Rean is a good protagonist despite how easy he could be to make bad. He's not Estelle Bright, but that's asking a little much for anyone to follow.
Elliot fucking sucks and is a wanker. His two personality traits are that he's a pussy and he likes music. He is the only Trails character I actively dislike to date. (For all I gave Tita shit in TitS, my main objection was "she's a combat character! and she uses an orbal cannon she can't logically lift") Elliot is like having a Fire Emblem character in a Trails Game. In combat, right up until the last third or so of CS2 he's like, the best in-battle character in the game.
Gaius is also kind of Fire Emblem-y and one note. However, his one note makes him merely "boring" instead of "intolerable." Actually, Gauis' big flaw isn't even a flaw. He's just... too well-adjusted and self-actualized to be particularly interesting. The way to have made Gaius work better would have been to have him forced, like, just about everywhere. He's this solid rock you can lean on. Because of how CS' orbments are the opposite of logic and reason, he's got the best orbment despite being the worst mage.
Jusis is a dickhead, but he has some decent lines, and, honestly, he has some pretty good excuses for being a dickhead. He's the most generic in combat character there is, and is never either a good or a bad idea to take on your team, unless you somehow were to know in advance if enemies could be frozen, in which case he's very, very good.
Machias is an unlikeable shit for most of the first game, and his default Quartz in the first game is god-awful. Both of these are flipped entirely in game two, where he's probably the most consistently funny character (though he has a lot of competition for that), and Iron is suddenly ridiculously good. Machias is the only reason I managed to beat the main story. You can't actually damage Machias short of quadruple turning him. Granted, several of the late-game enemies actually can do this, since he's not very fast at all. FUN FACT: Every fight I had against Duvalie was won by Machias hitting her with his S-Craft. She's too focused on the wrong party member.
Laura is kind of boring in the first game, and also mean for no reason to one of the better/more likable characters. She gets over both of these things. Laura's actually cool and good. Sort of the opposite of Elliot in that her big flaw is not showing enough vulnerability, but then she actually starts to, and every time she does, it's endearing. You don't have to try so hard, Laura. We all know you're kind of a badass, so if like, the Golden Rakshasa and whatever the other guy's ostentatious title is are in the same room menacing you, just... go ahead and faint. You're allowed. In combat, Laura's... OK. She's not bad at any one thing, aside from speed (which is a really big thing, mind). Her Quartz is a terrible fit for her in the second half of the first game and the entirety of the second game. In game 1 I gave her Tauros and she just packed a huge whallop, and in game 2 I gave her Wing, and she was the multi-tool character that I used Jusis for in game 1. (....where I gave him Wing, which is just a really good Quartz)
Alisa is very nearly the second Trails character I don't really like, since she's kind of a spoiled rich girl, but she has this one facial expression (Rean also has it) where she just looks totally fucking bewildered and I cannot help but laugh every single time it pops up. Also a lot of what I don't like about Alisa is she seems forced on you as a Romantic interest, but you actually get to pick your romantic interest, and pretty much every option available (and notably one that isn't) is both a better fit and a more interesting character. In battle, she's very handy. She's a battery character like Machias, but a slightly better mage, and a significantly worse tank. She's a much better Battery though, since she gives CP instead of EP, and she gives a lot of it.
Emma is probably the least developed character in the cast, and that's honestly impressive given the cast includes Gaius and Elliot. She's kept a mystery for almost all of game 1 and then, as near as I can tell, in Game 2 they decided that making Celine a character with a ton of lines also made Emma more of a character, but it doesn't work that way. She gets upstaged by her own (annoying!) familiar, and suffers for it. Still, what exists isn't actually bad. I liked the way she sort of was hiding things in the first game, and I like what little character moments exist for her in the second, I just wish she was more her own thing instead of playing second fiddle to a non-entity. In battle, like Elliot, she's ridiculously good until she's very very suddenly not. Even then, her arts are just insane. In CS2 I gave Elliot Criminal and kept Emma with her default setup, and would use an Emma/Elliot overdrive against bosses, spamming Claimoh Solarion and Altair Cannon for six turns in a row for just massive damage. She's got a command revive that restores an absolute ton of HP and also gives a ton of CP, which is great.
Fie is my favorite member of the cast, and I feel that's probably true for the writers as well. She gets what feels like more characterization than most, She's up there with Machias and Millium for having the best lines, and her "climbing through ducts" song is adorable. We appear to share a neurological condition. In combat, she's the speed freak and also evade tank, and is the logical partner for Rean on the "make the enemies get zero turns forever" squad. She's great for most of the game, right up until she isn't, which is essentially the very end and "coincidentally" the same point Emma and Elliot become useless and Machias overtakes everyone but Rean for the mantle of "the best". (It's because her HP sucks)
Millium is Scrappy Doo in the first game, but in the second game, she's extremely likeable, legitimately very funny, and generally just a blast to have around. I'll say this here, since it comes up most with Millium, but you know what's ABSOLUTE bullshit? Reflect in CS2 is just rigged against you and it's not even trying to hide it. Millium reflects things at enemies, and it deals maybe, maybe a tenth of the damage the ability would have, sometimes considerably less than that. An enemy reflects YOUR skill? You're taking full fucking damage, maybe half if it's an S-craft (which will still murder you). That's a goddamn sin of game design. I get that she'd be way too good if Reflect were better, but either make reflect equally good (and not give it to Millium so freely!) or make it equally bad (because seriously, this is bull shit.) Game 1 did it about right, in that it made a huge difference, but it ended up being a huge difference in exactly one fight.
Instructor Sara feels almost like she was meant to be Schera from TitS and then they chose to go another direction, and we ended up with a damned good character (with much better VA). Like TitS2 version of Schera, Sara is somewhat above average at literally everything (and quite a bit above average at one or two things), and is therefor one of the best characters in the game for every portion of the game. I wanted to make a joke about her being the love child of Flik and someone, but shockingly, there's no immediate "red lightning" character that comes to mind.
Instructor Thomas rules, I accidentally read the NG+ spoilers about him, and he just rules even fucking harder.
