Things I definitely liked:
- Link Attacks. Very satisfying to pull off in combat.
- Transition to 3D is pretty smooth.
- I think the low poly graphics are actually pretty charming.
- Erebonia itself is really cool. I sorta felt in Liberl the cities looked very similar because of the asset reuse (I could still tell them apart because of the layout and music), but here there’s a good amount more variety. The stated population of these cities is a lot more believable. Locations are nice. I do like the colder, more militaristic atmosphere of these games compared to the RPG Adventure of Sky.
- The music is great. Favorite track is probably either Atrocious Raid or Don’t Be Defeated by a Friend.
- Towa is canonically atowable.
- Jusis is peak.
- Laura and Fie’s friendship is really sweet. Fie deserves headpats.
- Really, I think most of Class VII is pretty cool by the end, I’d say. Keyword being “by the end,” more on that later.
- Vivi and Linde. Actually, a lot of the non-Class VII students were really cool. Trails NPCs are always really cool and their stories are fun. I’d say I enjoyed these NPCs more than Liberl’s.
- 50 mira.
Things I’m sorta neutral-ish on:
- Rean as a protagonist is alright, I like him, he’s just not Estelle or Kevin tier yet. I’m not against the Anime Tropes™ like some people are, tropes are just tropes and what matters is how they’re executed. The harem stuff is fine, and I really don’t think it’s that present in this game anyway beyond the dance at the festival. Also Rean being an overprotective brother is funny don’t @ me.
- I liked the scene of Laura calling him out in chapter 2, I liked his scene with Alisa in chapter 3. Otherwise, though, Rean’s best scenes are mostly in the last section of the game.
- The main cast being all around the same age is… I don’t really have a strong opinion on it. I think it fits the vibe this game has, but I did like the variety of party members you got in Sky. They still have interesting backgrounds though.
- Combat is satisfying but it’s a bit too easy to break it in half. Some of these crafts are… Idk what they were thinking with these. 50% petrify? 50% freeze? I played on Nightmare and it was about on par with Hard difficulty for Sky. By the time I reached the endgame, Rean, Fie, and Machias were inflicting ailments with basically every attack. The strength of ailments in this game made bosses that are immune to most ailments a bit of a slog; a lot of them just felt like HP sponges.
Things I wasn’t really big on:
- Too many sources of free HP/EP healing. Unlike in Sky, there were very few times I had to use healing items in the overworld, and I think that makes exploration less satisfying because of the lower stakes and lack of resource management. Not a dealbreaker, but kind of annoying.
- Some of the characters felt a bit too… unsubtle and predictable? I don’t know exactly how to describe it. I liked most of them by the end, but they were a bit too much at the beginning. Take Machias, for example: he’s a commoner and doesn’t like nobles—sure, that makes sense. But I feel like, even though he does acknowledge later he was being stupid, his initial attitude towards nobles could have been written more believably? Or Patrick being humbled. They’re fine, I’m not against tropey characters, but I think they could have been more smoothly executed.
- The villains are… okay? They’re not BAD, but the ILF didn’t really grip me. They’ll probably be more fleshed out in II, but here they’re… fine. There’s nothing I find offensive about them. C is good, but G, S, and V are… okay.
- Speaking of the last section of the game, this game’s narrative is pretty slow. Which is fine, I don’t have a problem with that.
- What I do wish this game had is more of a conclusion before the cliffhanger of an ending. Like, take Sky FC: defeat the main antagonist, celebrate, emotional cliffhanger. Whereas in CSI, the fake-out defeat is a lot less satisfying (which, yes, it IS a fake-out, but I think it could have been more convincingly done), the celebration is pretty neat, and the cliffhanger is more surprising than emotional (not necessarily BAD, but you’ve got a REALLY high bar to live up to).
- Gaius is kind of boring. I like Elliot, he’s just a little guy who wants to play the violin and I think his scenes with his dad are funny, but Gaius kinda doesn’t get to do anything. Curse of having parents confirmed to be alive, I guess. This isn’t an issue exclusive to CS, I was largely uninterested in Scherazard beyond her being a big sister to Estelle for example, but yeah.
Still a pretty solid game overall. I definitely enjoyed my time with it.
