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The Trails of Cold Steel collection of role-playing games — published by the developer Falcom during the 2010s — was an grand project, considering the quantity of individuals and plot points involved. It required the studio a quintet of games to completely flesh out these characters. Emma's personal character development is unfolded in parallel with Cold Steel’s central narrative, but it's via the subtle change in her powers that we comprehend the depth of her personal transformation.

Note: The following content contains some story reveals for the primary narrative of the Cold Steel series.

In The Legend of Heroes: Cold Steel, the character Emma is a typical student, like the other members of Thors Academy's her class. As the class president, she's approachable to each person and works to prevent any disagreements between her peers. Although Emma takes her student life with great dedication, she lives a double life. She is in fact a witch, a member of the Hexen Clan. Joining Thors Military Academy is one step in her underlying objective of assisting Rean Schwarzer, the central character of her class, who is destined to awaken a Divine Knight.

In all Trails game, nearly all party members have at least one special technique, a unique skill that demands you to have a certain level of skill points to activate. These finishing moves are designed to be your ace in each battle. Special Crafts are additionally a mechanism for the game to narrate the transformations characters are going through. They can symbolize the advancement of a character’s combat prowess, like Rean's special ability his new technique in the fourth game, which he unlocks after earning the title of Divine Blade. In other cases, like the witch Emma's, Falcom uses ultimate abilities to communicate the personal growth a character experiences.

When the war in Erebonia erupts in Trails of Cold Steel I, the character's approach to the circumstances is the inexperienced but understandable notion that combat means engaging offensively. The conflict continues to the second game in the saga, where the pair of S-Crafts she wields are Albireon and her second S-Craft. These two are attack-oriented moves that affect every opponents on the arena.

When we have the chance to encounter Emma again a second time in Cold Steel 3, we witness a different character. She has completed her studies from the academy, and after practicing with her family, she appears to have realized an crucial revelation about herself. Although she grows into a powerful magic user, she realizes that, primarily, she’s a guardian. She is willing to put others first to keep all her friends — but most notably Rean — out of harm's way. Her wish to occupy this role is hinted at by her S-Craft, which in Trails of Cold Steel III becomes Palace of Eregion.

When you use the special move Emma's new skill, she conjures four semi-transparent magical towers, and magical walls form joining them and encircling the battlefield. The allies under the influence of this technique receive one or two instances of Absolute Reflect, a buff that negates damage of all types. The character had not once been a combative individual, so she moves to a protective style, echoing the caring attitude she had consistently extended to her allies.

It’s intriguing to witness how Nihon Falcom utilizes a protagonist's skill set to enrich the game’s story. RPGs frequently use storytelling or cutscenes to inform players what a character is experiencing. But Emma shows that even a spell can provide additional depth of meaning.