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The Trails of Cold Steel collection of RPGs — developed by the developer Falcom across the 2010s — was an grand undertaking, accounting for the multitude of characters and events featured. It took the studio a quintet of games to completely flesh out these cast members. Emma's personal story arc is developed in tandem with Cold Steel’s primary plot, but it's by observing the subtle change in her powers that we fully understand the significance of her emotional journey.

Warning: This article contains some story reveals for the primary narrative of the Cold Steel series.

In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, the character Emma is a ordinary student, like the fellow pupils of the academy's Class Seven. As the class president, she's friendly to everyone and strives to avoid any disputes between her classmates. Although she treats her academy duties very earnestly, she has a secret identity. In truth, she is a witch, a initiate of the Hexen Clan. Joining Thors is part of her underlying objective of guiding the protagonist Rean, the central character of the group, who is destined to unleash a powerful mech.

In all Trails of Cold Steel installment, most playable personas have at least one S-Craft, a unique skill that needs you to have a sufficient quantity of Craft Points to use. These ultimate abilities are designed to be your trump card in each battle. These ultimate skills are additionally a method for the game to illustrate the transformations the cast are experiencing. They can epitomize the advancement of a persona's combat prowess, like the protagonist's ultimate move his new technique in Cold Steel 4, which he gains after reaching the title of Divine Blade. In other cases, such as Emma’s, the developers employs special moves to express the personal growth a persona undergoes.

When the great war in Erebonia begins in the first game, Emma Millstein's reaction to the events is the inexperienced but understandable idea that battle means striking. The war spills over to the next installment in the franchise, where the two S-Crafts she possesses are Albireon and her second S-Craft. Both are offensive techniques that affect every enemies on the arena.

After we have the chance to meet Emma again in Cold Steel 3, we observe a different girl. She has graduated from the academy, and after honing her skills with her clan, she seems to have realized an important insight about her own nature. Even though she evolves into a powerful sorceress, she realizes that, primarily, she’s a guardian. She’s ready to sacrifice herself to keep the group — but most notably Rean — secure. Her wish to occupy this role is shown by her ultimate skill, which in the third installment changes to her new defensive S-Craft.

When you execute the S-Craft Emma's new skill, she summons several glowing magical towers, and magical walls materialize connecting them and encircling the battlefield. The allies affected by this ability receive one or two charges of Absolute Reflect, a effect that prevents damage of any kind. The character had not once been a aggressive character, so she moves to a defensive strategy, echoing the nurturing demeanor she had consistently shown to her companions.

It’s intriguing to observe how the developers utilizes a protagonist's powers to enrich the series' plot. JRPGs typically rely on dialogue or cutscenes to inform players what a protagonist is feeling. But this character proves that right down to a spell can provide another layer of significance.