@trailsofpersona

One question beforehand because the answer to how Void relates to Rean's character arc is pretty complex - are you familiar with the Persona games? Especially 3 & 4?

And if it's okay, I'll post my interpretation after you've finished the entire game. Beside the fact that it's a lot to write (and quote), there's enough happening until the end of CSIV which becomes relevant to Rean's development. I mean, Kondo did state in an interview that the Cold Steel arc is a story about a man named Rean Schwarzer.

@wuolong77

I have indeed played Persona 3 and 4. Good to know there is some more stuff that may help explain some of that. I'll look forward to your thoughts once I finish the game which I hope to do by this weekend.

@TrailsofPersona I'm mostly a lurker, but I just wanted to mention that I do enjoy reading your thoughts on the game even if I don't comment much. Thanks for taking the time to share them.

I'm currently in the final act mid-way through the point of no return dungeon stuff. So I did all the npc chatting beforehand. Spoke to every npc in every town, village, fort, ship, etc. I have to say I actually really enjoyed it. This game really made it all good with conclusions and enjoyable milestones for all kinds of 'unimportant' npcs like Anton, Annabelle, Heathlith, uhh.. dockside worker kid and his noble girlfriend, etc. Like every effing town had like 2 or 3 really good make me happy moments for small side characters, it was a super treat.

I'm also digging the dungeons now being able to play as strange and new guest characters. Kinda bummed that their entire setup is completely fixed and some of it is just plain dumb.. Like a caster with an ocean bell AND NO OTHER BLUE QUARTZ WUT WHY. Someone with only 2 lines using Gloom as their MQ, how can I build a status debuff build when I only got 2 rows? bahh. I also noticed some characters having quartz not even working. I forget who, but I think it may have even been estelle.. Her staff gave like 2 or 4% crit, and she had a quartz with like 12% crit alone, and something else with crit I think, but her total crit was only 10% or something. Boo

The whole end act 3, lets party at Mishlam thing was a little surprising at first but I don't think it was too terrible. I think it's actually pretty normal (at least in literature) for parties to have one last hurrah the night before 'the suicide mission'. Not to mention I think they had to twiddle their thumbs waiting for the war to official start before they started their operation so that the forces would be distracted and unable to defend the salt pales, etc.

Anyway I plan on writing a bit blurb once I'm done the game, though that was probably dumb of me to decide upon because I'm sure to forget like half the stuff I want to bring up by the time I'm done.

How is the pom party game for you guys? I started having a hard time with it at about the time I had to face off against Kloe/tita, etc, which isn't even that far down the list. I thought for sure I'd be completely doomed playing against Renne/Tio/etc, but to my surprise, I actually won the last 4 enemies 1st try, meanwhile it took me like 8 to beat Kloe and like the next 3-4ish opponents after her. I swear they cheated in the sense I'd use a special with 800 points and their thing would only go up like 3 lines, meanwhile mine would go up 4 when they only had like 200 or something dumb like that. Despite that I thought the pom party game was fun even though I'm really not a big fan of puzzle/match 3 games.

Vantage masters though is just too simple, not a big fan. Kinda sad Falcom actually made a real cardgame like that, Very basic, not to mention totally unfair if the master cards in the real game were as unequal as they are in CS4

As far as I'm aware VM isn't an actual card game; it just uses characters and monsters from the game of the same name which was a turn based strategy game.

Ok, so not going to be finishing the game this weekend. Finished all the quests and talking to the NPCs, including the secret quest/boss. I feel the same as Ghaleon with the NPC stuff, compared to the other arcs the NPC storylines are much more fun to listen into. So even though you can spend hours going to each person to talk to them, it's fun to see their little arcs that add life to the world. Sky had a few memorable ones, and Zero I remember pretty much none of them outside of Bond and his family and the Haysworth. 

Now on to the finale, which I suspect will still be a good 5 to 10 hours to get through. I am worried this will drag like the final area of Azure. That final dungeon went on forever and I was just ready to be done. With the set up for the finale, it may keep things from getting tiring due to the nature of how it will be executed. 

@trailsofpersona

Just finished the game recently. I didn't mind the final dungeon as much, though I do think it was a bit on the easy side. I think that's more to do with CS4's battle mechanics just being So easy to abuse. I'm not even doing a lot of stacking to abuse it just like. oh look a crit MQ, let's stack crit gear with it. simple stuff like that. I'm honestly a bit bummed that the final dungeon doesn't have a 'split your party up and explore seperately' mechanic. In fact the whole game doesn't minus individual bosses, and early on in the game when you don't even have enough stuff to really 'build' your characters towards anything, and even then they are forced male/female splits. blah! It really is a shame the game makes you build multiple parties just for bosses and then boom, that work is wasted.

That said I kinda just killed all the trash enemies once or twice per enemy type, and then just ignored them and ran past. I guess I could have done something similar for Azure, but sneaking past enemies in that game is a little more nerve-wracking since they can ambush you by touching your trailing party mates. In cold steel it really feels like you can avoid them blindfolded if you really want to.

As for the multiple dungeons before the final dungeon. I mostly enjoyed those, but 2, and 4 less than the other 3. Group 2 and 4's party members feel kinda generic compared to the others in terms of playstyle. Well 5 is too I guess, but didn't feel like it since it's fun just mopping up with an obviously op party

In the words of a certain lance wielder, it's been such a long journey. Finally finished the game, getting the true ending and the extra scene. I'm ok with having to see the bad ending first before the good one since it was easy to load back to that point again, but having to reload and skip through the credits again to see the other scene was ridiculous. If I didn't know there was said scene because of spoiling myself I would've stopped after the credits ended and thought that was all. Still not nearly as atrocious as CS II having to do a complete replay to collect miss able items for one small scene (with such a huge revelation).

I feel like a lot is thrown at you at the end, especially the true ending. I need time to decompress before I really get into my full thoughts. Heck, I might make a thread because I'm going to need a lot of posts talking about all 4 games and my complete feelings on the saga. For now, CS IV by itself was a good game. It's better than CS II, but weaker than I and III. Though in some ways it might be unfair to say that, because some of my problems with IV can be attributed to other games not properly setting up what IV ultimately was supposed to wrap up. 

As my brief thoughts on the Cold Steel saga, it was an enjoyable ride. Obviously with how many hours and replays across the games I put in I like it, and in certain aspects love it. However, with the saga done and not having any other games to see how it makes the story unfold, there are many problems both large and small that make it hard for me to love like the Sky games. Hopefully Falcom learns from this and can do better going forward. 

I do look forward to what is hopefully the release of Hajimari, which I don't expect to hear anything about that for a while. Still hope for a 2022 release because I just need a break from this series. If we don't hear anything about a Hajimari release by the end of the first half of 2022 I'll start worrying a little about the future of this series continuing in the West again, but for now I'm glad to have finally finished the Cold Steel series. 

One last few things for major spoilers for the whole game about stuff I was spoiled on before and how I feel about it now having played the game.

@trailsofpersona

You asked about Rean and his mastery of Void, so let's delve into it. I'll say beforehand though that what I'm about to explain is more akin to a Crack Theory than a typical reading of in-game material because I need to constantly reference an outside source to tie Rean's swordfighting development together across all four CS games.

The Eight Leaves One Blade and Miyamoto Musashi

I'm not sure how familiar you are with this particular historical figure, but at least in Japan Miyamoto Musashi is very popular. The man is said to be one if not the best swordsman who ever emerged in Japanese history. According to semi-historical sources he won 60 life-and-death duels against various swordfighters from age 13 to 28/29 while wandering throughout the provinces as a ronin. He settled down in his later years, became a practicing Buddhist, an amateur artist and artisan and was something of a hermit shortly before his death.

So what does this have to do with the ELOB? First of all, the man is often called Kensai which can be translated as Sword-Saint. The Japanese kanji are 剣聖 which XSeed translated as 'Divine Blade'. Second, there are at least two instances when the ELOB references real world Buddhism. One instance is during the first Cold Steel drama CD, when Rean returned to Ymir with Class VII. Teo gave Rean the intermediate certification of the Eight Leaves in Master Yun's stead and one of the key messages relayed to him was the saying 'Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form', which funnily enough is also uttered by Sara during the Infernal Castle segment in CS2 after Rean wins his Divine Knight duel against Crow. This saying is a compressed passage from the Heart Sutra that is part of real world Buddhist teachings.

Another instance

And finally there is the Seventh Form Void which is probably tied to Musashi's famous book Go Rin no Sho (Book of Five Rings). The book has five chapters named after the Godai elemental system which consists of Earth(Ground), Water, Fire, Wind and Void. The connection in Japanese isn't as clear cut though, because while the ELOB Void uses 無, the Void chapter in the Book of Five Rings uses 空 which is also the kanji for Sora in Trails of Sky. In my opinion though, the content of the Seventh Form and what's actually written in Musashi's book is close enough that I find it unlikely to be a coincidence.

To clarify one thing, Rean is not Falcom's attempt to write a coming-of-age-story of a Zemurian Musashi. His overall pacifistic nature is enough of a stark contrast to the historical figure (who didn't just win his countless duels but killed his opponents in the process) that it simply wouldn't work. If anything, the most likely candidate for Zemurian Musashi is Master Yun-Ka Fai himself. As such, a more fitting source to inform us about Rean's growth as a swordsman is imagining him to be a student of Musashi and as it so happens, the Book of Five Rings is a swordfighting manual. Technically, it's much more, but I only understand so much about the book so consider my interpretation to be superficial.

'The Way of Strategy' and 'Seeing the True Nature of Things'

Let's talk about Cassius for a moment, the other Void practitioner that we have information on. Former swordmaster, then he took up and mastered staff fighting. Brilliant military strategist and if his S-Rank as a Bracer is any indication, he's extremely good at problem solving in general, no matter whether the solution involves violent or non-violent means. This is what Zin has to say about Cassius in Sky 3rd:

"It isn't his strength that makes him so incredible, but his ability to see the true nature of things. That's why he's able to function equally well in the army and as part of the Bracer Guild."

Which begs the question: What does 'Seeing the True Nature of Things' mean?

This is a condensed quote of what Musashi has to say about the 'Way of Strategy' in the Ground chapter of Go Rin no Sho:

"Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things. As if it were a straight road mapped out on the ground ... These things cannot be explained in detail. From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the Way of strategy there will not be one thing you cannot see. You must study hard."

And let's add another Musashi quote that pertains to Cassius' change from sword to staff:

"You can win with a long weapon, and yet you can also win with a short weapon. In short, the Way of the Ichi school (The name of Musashi's swordschool) is the spirit of winning, whatever the weapon and whatever its size."

What does this all mean in plain language? From my understanding, Musashi attained a fundamental understanding of deeper principles through the sixty life-and-death duels he fought and the continuous travel through various provinces it entailed. And these deeper principles he internalized could be applied to far more things than swordfighting. I mentioned above that the man became an artist in his later life. He produced recognized masterpieces of calligraphy and ink paintings and even applied himself as an architect. This is what he said about his artistic accomplishments:

"When I apply the principle of strategy to the ways of different arts and crafts, I no longer have need for a teacher in any domain."

What's important to note is that the man was a ronin, a masterless samurai, for most of his younger years. He most likely lacked any formal education but still managed to reach a certain degree of mastery in skills that usually require a formal education to become competent in. (Calligraphy is serious business in Japan and China).

Now let's finally look at Rean. At the beginning of Cold Steel 1, he is still far away from mastering the Eight Leaves. Different than Musashi, his character isn't designed to wander around as a vagabond, challenge random swordmasters all around Erebonia and duelling them to the death. But even then, he is still supposed to somehow cultivate the ability to 'See the True Nature of Things'. How does one go about this?

In Musashi's case it was to 'know ten thousand things from one single thing (his honed sense for swordfighting)". In Rean's case, he has to tackle this challenge from the other direction, namely to 'know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things, so that he can truly know one thing.'

One aspect of Rean's character that is rarely talked about is his sheer versatility in skills. And I don't think this versatility or his active pursuit of such is a coincidence. From the top of my head he is proficient in

• snowboarding
• playing the lute and orbal guitar
• Riding
• swimming
• takes up fishing
• takes up orbal bike riding
• at least a basic understanding of calligraphy (if that Vandyck sidequest in CS1 is any indication)
• Eastern Tea Ceremony
• history, duh
• firearms (the Musse bonding events)
• takes up chess, learned from Machias (the bonding event with Kurt)
• Schwarzer swordsmanship (the Drakhen Soldat boss fight in CS3)
• For the longest time the only OG Class VII member shown to pilot Soldats
• Orbal terminal programming (proficient enough to at least lead a class of beginners)
• Survival (His Eisengard training)
• Vantage Masters (Plot relevant due to that Raquel showdown)

In CS3, he admits that he familiarized himself with every skill pertaining to every club activity at the Branch Campus. I mean who does that? He is quick to participate in the double tennis match with Juna and friends and it's interesting to note that while he's certainly never going to be as good in a skill as those who truly immerse themselves (Music/Elliot, Chess/Machias), he's never shown to be bad either. He gives Kurt a hard time in chess despite the implication that Mueller's brother is uncommonly good at it and

I'm not going to include ARCUS usage or cooking because every playable character in Sen is proficient in those due to gameplay mechanics. I'm also not going to include soft skills like leadership quality, pedagogy or conflict solving because I find it hard to quantify these. Nevertheless, compared to the other OG Class VII members Rean seems to be all over the place, exacerbating the impression that he lacks a firm identity or a clear direction in life. And his unofficial club activity as Thors' (Towa's) gofer doesn't make it better in the slightest. We also rarely see him training with his sword at all, so people are certainly justified in thinking that the way of the sword isn't a big part of his character.

In my opinion though when Rean said the following words to Laura during the first Field Study in Celdic

"It's not really a matter of liking it (the path of the sword) or disliking it, I don't think. It's a part of my life, an inseparable part of who I am."

I think it has to be taken very literally. Basically, every little bracer like errand he does, his willingness to add more and more skillsets to his ever growing repertoire despite the day only having 24 hours, even him becoming an instructor at Thors Branch campus, a place that allows him to be a generalist ("I can help you with your studies even outside of history, given that I only graduated recently") it all ends up as means to pursue this illusive ability of 'Seeing the True Nature of Things' or what Musashi calls the 'Way of Strategy'.

Seventh Form Void and Persona's Wild Card Ability

To be clear, I can't say with certainty how much of Rean's ridiculous multi-skilling/multi-tasking is deliberate and how much it's a product of his low self-esteem resulting in this obsession of helping and pleasing people. But it doesn't change his day-to-day actions. As a character in the Cold Steel Arc, he can be seen as Falcom's incarnation of a Wild Card like the Persona 3 or 4 protags, although he certainly has more personality than the two self-inserts. As you know, the Wild Card protags are symbolized by the Fool, the zeroth Arcana representing limitless possibilities. In gameplay, they can freely change their Personas to suit whatever combat situation they find themselves in. And considering what Persona means as an Jungian Archetype both protags have somewhat fluid personalities in Social Link situations, becoming whatever 'mask' is needed to put the other side at ease and as a result maximize every Social Link.

Or to put it bluntly, they can be everyone and therefore they are no one.

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form.

One of Rean's major hang-ups, as you noted in your post, is his inability to find his place in the world. Because he lacks firm roots in the beginning of CS1, it leads to what I suspect is a constant anxiety to prove himself, to make himself useful. In addition, his status as a not-quite noble and when his true parentage becomes apparent not-quite commoner throws him into the position of mediator. Sean Chiplock said in an interview that

"Rean is someone who cannot lean too much on either one or the other side"

and it results in a person who is very lacking in bias or preconceived notions, who is even willing to sit down with proven terrorists and hear them out. (It also happens that a lack of bias and preconceived notions is a crucial requirement for using the Unclouded Eye). The downside though is that like the Persona protags, he doesn't seem to develop a firm personality because he tries and often manages to please everyone. His varied skillset and willingness to try out new things also gives him an excellent basis to bond with a variety of different people making him the heart/core of Class VII, with all the downside it entails once said core... malfunctions.

Now, if I understand Rean's character arc correctly, his mastery of the Void Form symbolizes his acceptance of himself as a person who simply doesn't have a firm personality in a conventional sense. His formal parentage is a mess, his place in Erebonian society is rife with untapped potential that could go many ways (even at the end of CS4, just like the Fool arcana). The important thing though is for him to realize that this is okay. Or to go one step further, this lack of a defined 'Persona' is the core of his strength.

Okay, I'll stop this post now, but it should be pretty obvious that this is an incomplete interpretation because I completely excluded Rean's Ogre Power from the equation. How that and Spirit Unification ties into all the above merits another long post. If people find it interesting, I can try to analyze that, too, though I admit that adding the Ogre Power to the mix is most likely going to make things more ambiguous, not least because Rean so rarely speaks his mind.

@wuolong77 Good read, a lot to digest though since it's a lot of stuff I'm not familiar with. If you feel like it I would like your thoughts with the Ogre form and spirit unification. 

When I look at Rean's character and arc on paper, it sounds very interesting and one I could love. I can't quite explain it right now, but there's just certain things that stop me from really enjoying him. Part of it feels the game itself doesn't do enough for me to connect things. Also, from reading your post his story is quite complex compared to more simple arcs of past protagonists. In these cases, it feels like to really make it work well you need a game where it can look at that kind of stuff in depth and keep it as the core focus. With the beast that is the Kiseki world, there are going to be 100's of other things going on that only those familiar with concepts or who relate to Rean in a way are going to get attached and really dissect his character, where for people like me I'd rather hang on to characters or other things that catch my attention.

That's just my opinion on the matter, but none the less really enjoy other's perspective on Rean even if I will never view him the same way.

Posted by: @trailsofpersona

Part of it feels the game itself doesn't do enough for me to connect things. Also, from reading your post his story is quite complex compared to more simple arcs of past protagonists. In these cases, it feels like to really make it work well you need a game where it can look at that kind of stuff in depth and keep it as the core focus. With the beast that is the Kiseki world, there are going to be 100's of other things going on....

And here's where you strike at the heart of the matter. One of the more important clues to Rean's style is 'hidden' away in the drama CD (Sara's mention of it is too much out of context) and it's not like the Book of Five Rings is exactly mandatory reading for a Western Audience. And about the hundreds of other things going on, this even plagues Rean's character writing itself (at least in relation to the arc I laid down above), because it's clustered together with his Ogre Power, him being the chosen one of Valimar, the whole PR gig of the Ashen Chevalier

I'll need some time to go over my thoughts on Spirit Unification and Rean's Ogre powers, because for that to make sense with his progression in the Void Form one needs at least a rough understanding of where one begins and the other ends. And the games don't make that very easy (though that's arguably part of the theme.)

So after having a few days to sort out my thoughts, I'm ready to give my overall thoughts on Cold Steel 4, which is complicated.

I try my best to be fair to CS IV given the fact that some of my biggest gripes aren't the fault of this specific game, but more the fault of the whole saga not doing a good enough job to build up certain aspects of the story. I mentioned Class VII as a concept being executed pretty poorly, and this game has many moments in which it is supposed to be big victories for Class VII and how far they've come. In terms of combat ability, this works. However, on the idea that they were supposed to be the seed that grows into a third faction is severely lacking. It makes those scenes not land, not because the scenes themselves are bad, but because previous games did not do enough to make that impact. Of course CS IV also lacked giving build up as well, but it was an impossible battle to make it all work when the game was supposed to be more the pay off and less the build up.

All of that could be forgiven to an extent if they stuck the landing and the climax hit home. I've given both Crossbell games having some weaknesses in how the final chapters go, whether story elements seem to wrap up conveniently or overly long battle sections between. As for Cold Steel II I feel that Act II was very weak and after the climax the game should've ended much sooner. However, all three of those games when it comes to the climax it works well, with good emotional hooks and gave a satisfying feeling. Cold Steel IV is the one Kiseki game I've played where once it was over, I was unenthusiastic with how everything wrapped up.

Outside of the stuff with Cedric which I felt worked well, all the other fights in the last act while epic at times did not fulfill me emotionally. With the Ironbloods once you beat them at best there was an answer that was somewhat satisfactory, to others where I was like "that's it!?". There was no satisfaction in the resolution of these characters, some felt like they were there just because, and one ended up just being a tease of you'll get more answers another game. I'm fine with storylines continuing on to other games/arcs (Renne is my favorite character arc which we've seen bits and pieces of in each arc), but at the same time, if there isn't at least some type of resolution it feels pointless. Once again, it all comes down to the fact that there are dozens of characters, many which don't get the time they need to develop and allow their arc to finish in a satisfactory way.

Due to all of that, I want to say CS IV is the weakest game of the saga. I can forgive a lot when the game at least gives good payoff, which CS II ended up doing. All that said, there are still a lot of great moments leading up to the start of the final areas. While Act II and III can drag a little there are a number of great moments and payoffs to the story lines we get in those acts. The amount of great NPCs storylines also kept me going, because there were a number of storylines there I was interested in seeing completed. That and even if the finale was lackluster, that picture scene you see as the final credits music starts was so good it makes up a lot.

CS IV also gets leeway from me due to the amount of references and just overall fanservice the game has (not the sexy kind of fanservice, mostly). Having the chance to play as Estelle again was a dream come true, and I cannot overstate how emotional I was seeing Renne introduced as Renne Bright. It's definitely a game that is better the more previous games you've played as small little things to those having played just the Cold Steel games are a real treat to those who've played the other sagas. Seeing how far some of these characters have come since when they were introduced put a tear in my eye.

End of the day, despite heavy flaws it's still a solid game and I would put it above Cold Steel II personally. At least the main conflict has been wrapped up, and even if there will be more Rean in Hajimari we can move on to other things. The saga is done at last and I can breath a sigh of relief.

At some point I hope to go into depth about my thoughts of the whole saga, going into detail about what worked and didn't work. For now, I got other life stuff to worry about and just need a break from all of this. Look forward to seeing more info about the new game that will be coming out in Japan, and look forward to the Ys game coming out pretty soon. 

Question. How is Estelle localized in CS3/4? I recall some of her peppiness was due to XSEED explicitly making her vocabulary and expressions more exuberant to convey the nuances that Japanese could but English couldn't. Is she tonally similar to the Sky localization, or is she different? Assuming we see enough of her to make that kind of assessment.

Posted by: @zwabbit

Question. How is Estelle localized in CS3/4? I recall some of her peppiness was due to XSEED explicitly making her vocabulary and expressions more exuberant to convey the nuances that Japanese could but English couldn't. Is she tonally similar to the Sky localization, or is she different? Assuming we see enough of her to make that kind of assessment.

Well first of all, Estelle is only in CS IV, unless you count one still portrait of her with a few other characters included in CS III as being in the game.

As for CS IV, Hard to give a complete judgement, as in the entire game she is only around for maybe 4 hours total, in small short sections throughout the game. They got the same voice actress who did the battle voices from the Sky games, and while I know some aren't a fan I love it. They do have moments where she gives some witty zingers, and I feel the game does well enough to give her that bright personality with the expressions she gives and her reactions. However, it still overall doesn't reach the heights of what she is like in the Sky games, but I would contribute that more to the fact she isn't in the game very much and is more a side character. Still, any time she was present I was always hyped and enjoying her presence, but I am also extremely biased towards her so they would have to really botch her character for me to not enjoy her being around.