After 3 months and 120 hours of dragging through this disaster, finally finished Cold Steel 4. (Cold Steel 3 is also 120 hours, so unlike CS 1/2 which is about 130-140 hours combined, CS 3/4 are about 240ish hours to tell their story). I may use Cold Steel 4/Sen 4 interchangeably throughout this review, both refer to the same game.Boy was this bad. Like I can't remember a worse sequel since Xenosaga episode 2 or Devil May Cry 2. And the sad part is that at least XS had ep3 to try to turn it back around somewhat and DMC had DMC3. Cold Steel 4 ends the Erebonia arc and it also ends the overarching Sky/3rd/Crossbell arcs basically concluding the first half of the overall Kiseki story. And all that unfortunately happens in one of the worst written rpgs of all time.I don't even understand how Kondo, who wrote solid stories in Sky FC+SC, in 3rd, in Crossbell, could be the same person that wrote CS4. The only thing I can think is that the guy went crazy from his head so far up his ass that he kept writing and writing and writing and no one could tell him no. Cold Steel 3/4 are longer than basically every Kiseki game put together prior to Cold Steel and yet in CS4 less stuff happens than Sky SC. Far less.I feel like in the 120 hours of CS4 there's maybe about 20 hours worth of plot. The rest of the game is Kondo just writing 100 hours of filler which means to do that he has to just have the same characters fight each other over and over and over and then he has to make up logical reasons for this to happen and I think this must've broken him somewhere along the way. It sorta feels by CS4 like he gave up and just made up stuff left and right because trying to logically make 100 hours of explanations for why the same people would keep fighting each other over and over and changing sides throughout was too difficult. The plot does what it wants, if anyone whose a friend changes sides to fight you it'll be glares and not explaining anything and then after 3-4-5-6 times fighting them they'll give a 2 line answers that they were just doing it to help you get stronger all along! CS4 loves 2 line answers. Even the final end boss of the entire arc gets a whopping 2-3 lines explaining why they are the final boss, and obviously not until 99% through the game.Somehow Kondo has managed to write a 400 hour story between CS1-4 and yet have almost everyone feel undeveloped and the plot undercooked. This is what happens when you need to keep the mystery for everything and never explain anything until the last minute and then if you're Kondo you realize when writing CS4 that means you've pushed dozens of subplots and probably 50-100 characters and their pathways to a single game and you just do not have the skills or drive to actually follow through and pull it all together.So instead you copy & paste.You take Cold Steel 1 & 2 and you just copy them in formula. CS3 is a longer and better version of CS1 that has school and school outtings where you build up the mysteries and develop new main characters and end on a cliffhanger promising crazy awesome stuff to happen in the next game. CS4 follows the whole Chapter 1a, 1b, 1c, etc... 2a, 2b, 2c where you do one thing and then you repeat it another 2 times. Except in CS4 since there's more characters and it's longer you just repeat things more and more. At the start of the final dungeon you basically repeat the same single hallway dungeon copy & paste 5 times with 5 different teams. By the 3rd time I was bored out of my mind, by the 5th time I was convinced Kondo was trolling me and every Kiseki fan.I mean he knows anyone that's put hundreds of hours into this series and 250+ hours into Erebonia with CS1-3's going to see CS4 through no matter what because they have to see how it ends. So maybe since he knows everyone is on the line he can take out his stress and troll and torture series fans for 100 hours, sucking days from their lifespans, all so he can have the last laugh. Maybe Kondo's the real final villian.Because oh yeah, there aren't any bad guys in Erebonia. You fight the same tons and tons of people (people you've been fighting for 3 games now!) and you fight them over and over again and they just walk away after each fight and come back. They don't even do ANYTHING. The problem with having all the antagonists just fight you over and over again is that if that's all they are doing (showing up and fighting and leaving) then that's ALL THEIR SCENES IN THE GAME and they never actually have any moments of doing anything in the plot.And I haven't even got into the plot, aka the real SC style Erebonia story, but there's no way to talk about it at all without spoilers so I'll just say it's really really bad and really really PG.There's just so much nonsense in CS4 and everything you expect to be in CS4 (or at least in Erebonia's plotline after 400 hours) like Church members and holy beasts and stuff don't pay off. I didn't have this issue with CS1-2 because by the end of CS2 it felt like it was setting up for some real interesting things in CS3/4 (especially the secret ending of CS2), I even think CS3 might be the best game in the series on its own because it's a better CS1 and the setup for CS4 is more interesting. But since CS4 doesn't pay off at.all on anything CS3 sets up I think it retroactively hurts CS3 because it's a bunch of setup for nothing.The quests also feel weak compared to previous arcs/games. Sure the sidequests in Kiseki are all slice of life, but as the plot got more in the limelight there'd be some interesting sidequests scattered about that would add to the lore and characters and be more interesting than just the surface level running errands. CS4's sidequests even in the final chapter feel like filler. There's maybe one semi-interesting sidequest the whole game.In fact, if you're playing CS for its additions to the world lore of Zemuria and Kiseki, it feels like in the 240 hours of CS3/4 there was basically one scene that added to the world lore and that's it. Erebonia is such a nothing story.Gameplay-wise the battle system is more broke than ever and there's no real challenge because you can break the game so much with the new order system that's introduced in CS3. Dungeon-design is boring and if you want 100% you play the card mini-game about 30+ times.Cold Steel 4's been getting really negative reviews from the Japanese fanbase since its release. The top review (which is well written and hits most of the plot issues I have with the game) on Amazon JPN basically concludes with saying they've been around since Sky FC and they won't be around for the first game in the next arc after this. Cold Steel 3/4 already lost half their sales and were down to 100k openings due to the lack of a Vita/portable version. I wouldn't be surprised if the next entry opens at like 50k because of all the fanbase they're going to lose with how they finished Erebonia, especially because it lacklusterly finished certain plotlines from SC/3rd/Crossbell in completely unsatisfying ways.Going back to why Cold Steel 4 ended up as bad as it was, I think the other issue besides Kondo just writing off the deep end with no editor is that Cold Steel's concept of a school cast and having 10 main cast characters (plus another 5 added in CS3/4, so like 15 main characters total) just didn't work. Sky FC's cast size was good and everyone got proper development. Crossbell's cast was a little smaller at 4-6 main characters and it was better for it, everyone was developed really well and the plot had the best pacing in the series. In Cold Steel because there are so many main characters, the game constantly has to divide up the team (ever since CS1) and so every chapter you're with a different group of people. Having this always rotating roster ends up really undercooking character development and just seems to have thrown havoc on the pacing. Also having all the 2ndary NPC characters in the school fulfill all the jobs that in previous Kiseki games would go to more interesting NPCs like reporters, for example, ends up just making the side cast of NPCs feel a lot less interesting. Cold Steel/Erebonia's story is a story about nothing but kids, and that really holds it back in the end and also makes it feel like the most kiddy/PG of the franchise despite being about WAR and stuff.Another thing that's kinda funny is one of my favorite lines from a Japanese review I read said the plot is so nonsensical that a lot of the time he had no idea what the main characters were supposed to be actually doing (besides just running around filler stuff) and in fact at multiple times in the plot characters directly ask the main team what their plan is and they literally say "I don't know, but if we go around I'm sure we'll figure it out at some point". This is the exciting endgame of Erebonia finale folks. A cast that doesn't even know what they are supposed to being doing for 3/4ths of it.And the music is a huge step down in CS3/4 because they lost one of the main/best people on their sound team after CS2. CS4 somehow has even less good tracks than CS3 which is odd since you'd think they'd save the better ones for the sequel game like how CS2 has better music than CS1 but oh well.The only positive things I'll say about Cold Steel 4 is I liked the characters. Kondo is still good at writing a likeable cast of main and support characters. Also the graphics in CS3/4 are pretty nice and they really don't need to improve them much further (especially if they want Kiseki to survive in light of its sales). But that's about it. Rean was ok in 3, but sucks again 4.Anyhow, as a big fan of the series who considered it the best modern jrpg franchise, Cold Steel 4 was a total disaster. I wish someone had convinced me 3/4 were this bad a year ago. I can think of a lot of other things I could have done with 240 hours of my life.Now because so much of why CS4 sucks is spoiler-related, below is FULL OPEN SPOILERS beware beware beware
, qundi tutto guadagnato 
Ero riuscito a rimanere estraneo a tutto.... la mia vita non ha più senso.
