The Trails of Cold Steel series of role-playing games — released by Nihon Falcom across the 2010s — was an ambitious project, considering the number of characters and events involved. It took the developer five games to develop these characters. Emma Millstein’s story arc is developed in parallel with Cold Steel’s main story, but it’s through the subtle change in her skill set that we fully understand the depth of her inner growth.
[Warning: This article contains minor spoilers for the main storyline of the Trails of Cold Steel series.]
In Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, Emma is a regular teenager, like the other members of Thors Military Academy’s Class VII. As the class president, she’s friendly to everyone and works to avoid any conflicts between her classmates. While Emma takes her student life really seriously, she lives a double life. She’s actually a witch, a member of the Hexen Clan. Enrolling in Thors is part of her true goal of guiding Rean Schwarzer, the leader figure of Class VII, who is destined to awaken a Divine Knight.
In every Trails game, most characters have at least one S-Craft, a special attack that requires you to have a minimum amount of Craft Points to use. These ultimate abilities are meant to be your ace in every encounter. S-Crafts abilities are also a way for the game to narrate the changes characters are undergoing. They can represent the development of a character’s technique, like Rean Schwarzer’s S-Craft Breaking Dawn in Cold Steel 4, which he unlocks after reaching the title of Divine Blade. In other cases, like Emma’s, Nihon Falcom uses S-Crafts to communicate the internal transformations a character goes through.
When the war in Erebonia starts in Cold Steel, Emma’s response to the situation is the naive but reasonable idea that fighting means attacking. The conflict extends to the second game in the series, where the two S-Crafts she has are Lord Albireon and Zodiac Rain. Both are offensive techniques that indiscriminately hit all enemies on the field.
Once we have the chance to meet Emma again in Cold Steel 3, we see a different girl. She has graduated from Thors, and after training with her clan, Emma seems to have understood an important truth about herself. Although she becomes a formidable magic user, Emma comprehends that, above all else, she’s a protector. She’s willing to sacrifice herself to keep everyone — but especially Rean — safe. Her desire to occupy this role is subtly indicated by her ultimate skill, which in Cold Steel 3 becomes Palace of Eregion.
When you use the S-Craft Palace of Eregion, Emma summons four translucent magical towers, and magical walls appear connecting them and surrounding the battlefield. The characters affected by this skill receive one or two stacks of Absolute Reflect, a status that prevents damage of any kind. Emma had never been a belligerent person, so she shifts to a supportive approach, reflecting the caring look she had always extended to her friends.
It’s fascinating to see how Nihon Falcom uses a character’s skill set to complement the game’s narrative. RPGs often use written text or visuals to tell us what a character is feeling or thinking. But Emma Millstein proves that even a spell can add another layer of meaning.
