Trails franchise (Trails In The Sky, Trails Of Cold Steel etc)

There's only a Japanese PC version of Zero, and Chinese from a different company for Azure. Something tells me they'll need to port the games again themselves. They did it with Cold Steel.

Huh didn't check Azure. Maybe they'd get the Chinese version and just drop in the English script? Though come to think of it they hard translated the signs in Sky, they'd probably try to do the same for the Crossbell games.

I believe that Falcom actually did all the actual editing and coding of the game itself. I know they did it themselves for Cold Steel since they ran into the issue of recorded more lines for Rean than the Japanese version and Falcom was unwilling to encode them into the game.

Something that is getting fixed in the PC version.

Aside from the unbalancing attack animation, which also has the English word over it, you can not find any Japanese in Cold Steel. The amount of English signs though, even blackboards are in English.

edited 9th Jun '17 7:23:08 PM by Memers

Which leads to lore-breaking shit like this◊. (No spoilers.)

Wow, so we actually got a bonus the Japanese version doesn't have in the voiced dialogue? Heh, neat.

I've heard on a technical level, we do have the better in-house ports by X Seed. Apparently the PSP version of FC has the voice clips from SC, which they put into the Steam release and the code I've heard is more stable. Plus the chest messages, which feel like something so iconic to Trails its as if it'd always been there.

And thankfully I don't know what it is, but there was apparently some cut content of a major side quest or something in the PSP version of TC, and a few improvements from there put in its Steam release.

To the point where I've heard some Japanese fans feed in their own script and play the Steam versions.

Damn, this series has the most badass localization team of all time.

It's actually an Interface Spoiler for FC since only characters who become future party members will get lines, the lines for all 3 games were recorded at once.

The chest messages are a bit of a lucky mistake, the original Japanese version had a generic 'Its empty' message however each chest had its own 'its empty' text file so they added the lines. By the time of TC they took to twitter for ideas and added trivia about the series and its translation as well as full on stories. (I have yet to piece them together.)

Erobonia (Cold Steel) lacks the chest messages, which Liberl's chests lampshade this. Cold Steel II manages to put them back in via the trial chests that require a set party but only if you show up without the right members.

The cut content for TC is censoring. Let's just say it was DARK and Sony had likely issues with it, I don't actually blame them.

And yeah our PC release is way better, the original only was 480p, not widescreen and had a lot less gfx options. A few places you can tell it wasn't made to be widescreen.

Edit: the amount of new lines is around 5k, a 50% increase, according to X Seed.

edited 9th Jun '17 10:37:34 PM by Memers

Been finally plowing through Cold Steel II again, nightmare no level carry over, man I forgot how great the supporting cast is.

While the main Sky cast is superior to Steel's I think the supporting cast of Thors students and such take the cake. It doesn't help that the persona style calendar system pushes that especially in II where you have half a country available to you and every day things change and move forward.

edited 11th Jun '17 9:05:03 AM by Memers

Eh, I honestly think Cold Steel's main cast has Trails' beat. Don't get me wrong, I still like the Sky crew, and Estelle is an awesome protagonist, but I just feel like the CS cast (barring Rean,) have more Character Development and depth than the most of the Sky crew ever did, and seeing just how good the Sky crew already was, that's saying a lot. The only thing holding them back is Rean, who I still like, but he's no Estelle. I think the biggest difference though is that while Sky was focused mostly just on Estelle and Joshua, (and later Keven and Reis,) CS is more of an Ensemble Cast. Sure, Rean's still clearly the protagonist, but everyone else still gets a lot more focus and development compared to most everyone who wasn't Estelle or Joshua in Trails. Trails still has the better protagonist, but CS has the better overall main cast.

edited 11th Jun '17 9:11:33 AM by kkhohoho

I don't know, everyone in Sky really got their time to shine even those who didn't get much in FC got a bunch in SC then TC hit them out of the park with the doors especially for Tita, Agate, Zin and Olivier.

Several in Cold Steel feel a little too flat, mostly Gaius and Rean now that I think about it, everyone else is pretty great. I will say Angelica > Zin by miles.

Edit: we are probably a little too hard on Rean, aside from him being a little too 'anime' there isn't much wrong... following the best RPG protagonist ever (IMO) is a tough act to follow.

For side characters aside from Nial and Dorothy nothing in Sky really comes close to the likes of Patsy, Annabelle, Becky or Dorothee.

Speaking of Becky, in the Japanese version does she speak Tohoku-ben or Kansai-ben? The former makes sense given her extreme accent in the English version but her making money style personality could be the latter.

edited 11th Jun '17 9:44:53 AM by Memers

Is Estelle something of a Tough Act to Follow among fans?

Let's put it this way. Joshua was OK and all, but even the developers realized that Estelle would work that much better as a protagonist. She's just so much more lively and energetic and loveable, and on top of that, she kicks ass without having any sort of special powers or manwomanpain beyond just using orbments and ki. (Which as Zane/Zin proves is more than enough.) She's just much more fresh compared to someone like Joshua. He wouldn't be bad as a protagonist, but Estelle's just so much more awesome.

Rean is basically Joshua 2.0. Like Joshua, he's got a Dark and Troubled Past, special abilities beyond normal human capabilities, and a somewhat similar aloof if polite personality who nonetheless stays focused on the task at hand. They're not exactly the same, but they've got enough similarities that it's hard not to notice them. (They even have short black hair!) And yet, whereas Josua is the deuragonist, Rean's the protagonist. The result is that you've got a protagonist that, while still likeable and interesting and far from bad, doesn't really live up to Estelle, who just stands out as a JRPG protagonist a lot more. (No clue what to say about the Zero/Ao guy though.)

edited 11th Jun '17 11:09:46 AM by kkhohoho

From what little I know of Lloyd (the Zero/Ao protagonist), some people (including the YMMV page on this site), thinks he's too perfect.

Yeah Rean is basically Joshua 2.0 but with a little less interesting mysterious past. He makes up for it in the fact that unlike Joshua he has better interactions with every single member of the cast really huge cast instead of really just the Bright Family and his 'harem' of like 5, including Olivier.

Actually a lot of Steel's cast takes elements of Sky's cast but with some twists. Alisa is basically an older Tita if her family took a dark turn, I really cant wait to see if the two of them hit it off in Steel III. I wonder if Erika and Irina have any kind of relationship.

edited 11th Jun '17 9:49:18 PM by Memers

Man I forgot how stingy they are with the money in Steel 2, after the whole Celdic incident and weapons are 9k each while I only have 19k total after all that.

With all the hype around Steel, I'm dying to have a release date for the PC port. I've heard lots of buzz about it lately, the impression I get is quite a few, if not most Trails players newer to the franchise started out with Cold Steel as their introduction.

I can't wait as well, lacking a PS 4 the PC release will be the only way I can play Cold Steel 3.

As an entry Cold Steel 1 is built to be exactly that. Which can annoy vets of Sky since at the start it is introducing much of the same stuff, occasionally in the same way. But that's only really at the start.

Anyone know if they will be including the DLC? Or adding 2's DLC to 1? Not really one for costume DLC but if it's included I wouldn't mind equipping Rean and Alisa in Joshua and Estelle's outfits.

edited 12th Jun '17 5:03:43 AM by Memers

There's no news on that front either way. Word on the forum is "straight ports, no changes beyond new lines". That's in reference to CSII engine improvements though.

What upgrades? Aside from a few less framerate drops not much changed between entires and a competent PC version fixes that in general.

Or were they talking about battle system? I wouldn't expect them to add CSII's battle upgrades to I, the Dot Hack games taught everyone a lesson on that.

edited 12th Jun '17 11:07:57 PM by Memers

After seeing the story mode of Tekken 7, it occurred to me it would be hilarious seeing fanart of Estelle bump into Kazuya in a shop over a last pair of new Stregas.

The joke is that he's consistently said to love specifically collecting sneakers in his profiles.

Stregas are serious business! Priests, Bracers, Nobles, schools and even world renowned swordsmen go gaga over them.

I am waiting for the great Strega war! Kevin, Estelle, Laura, and Angelica all duke it out over the greatest pair of Stregas you can get! I forget the actual name of those Stregas though. Adding Kazuya into the mix would be interesting although Angelica or Kevin would probably one shot him.

Have you been to Zeiss yet in SC?

edited 13th Jun '17 8:13:51 AM by Memers

Almost about to, I've really been slacking on Trails, it's consumed everything else I've been playing/watching, something I suspect isn't all that uncommon, Zemuria's lore is easy to get lost in.

That quest testing out the Alpha Stregas in FC was adorable, Estelle was in perma-squea mode. Those had better be some really supportable and comfy shoes.

Damn that was in FC, right, I was going to bring that quest up as incoming in SC. I wasnt trying to hurry ya I just got the games mixed up

SC has that gun test instead........ oh holy crap... my mind was just blown with the continuity there. Not a spoiler per say but safety tagging just in case That gun is what Olivier gave to Towa in CSII, I never connected the two till just now, and Towa made such a big deal about it being a prototype from Liberl. Damnit Trails why you gotta be so good at continuity!

edited 13th Jun '17 9:25:51 AM by Memers

Do they ever say who Angelica's Taito master is? All she says in the voiced lines is it was a girl, so it would either be Rin or Kilika.

edited 14th Jun '17 7:35:18 PM by Memers

They don't.

Wonder how I didn't see this a while ago. FC Evo has been patched.

I still can't get used to Joshua's voice personally.