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

Even with more EP, I found that any arts other than the Lost Arts and healing ones weren't worth using unless there was nothing else I could do.

Same here. They're good, but it doesn't really upset the overly high EP cost. I guess they wanted to keep you from spamming Arts like in Sky, but now you've the got the opposite problem in that you're just spamming crafts instead. I still really enjoy the gameplay, but they need to have a proper balance between Arts and Crafts, not just tilt it towards one or the other.

Eh? It all depends on how you build your characters, you can make Emma and Elliott absolute beasts with arts and regen their EP pretty quickly with the right Quartz equipped.

You can damn near break the game with an elemental bell and cast 2 equipped, speedy casting and you get your next turn really fast if you cast a spell of whatever element the bell is.

Sure it isn't actually breaking the game like an evasion build Fie + the Insight art but it isn't useless.

Also EP healing items are actually really easy to get so spam away.

Lost Arts I found pretty useless unless you happen to land on a free spell turn, only Laura never used EP with the way I play. >.>

edited 10th Jul '17 5:37:20 PM by Memers

I tended to open fights with Lost Arts after I unlocked them.

IMO part of the problem comes from Crafts being buffed a bit too much. Rean and Fie delay everyone by a ton, Alisa can restore CP for you, Elliot can give everyone regenerating health and another boost at the same time...

Just in terms of more efficient turns, the crafts activate immediately and tend to have stronger effects. They also have much larger effective ranges and fewer single-target ones compared to Sky.

While I prefer crafts like this compared to Sky (differentiates the cast a bit more, IMO), arts in general need more going for them to justify the EP cost compounded by the waiting time.

Because Sky was more like:

Arts:
+ larger attack range
+ likely to have a large variety (due to how quartz worked)
+ better utility effects
- waiting time (which means relatively little in this one because of how much slower the combat is)
- must use items to restore EP

Crafts:
+ immediate use
- CP restores so slowly that the 3rd needed to add a thing that restores it to full

But Cold Steel is:

Arts:
+ larger attack range
- noticeably weaker overall effects than crafts, with a handful of exceptions
- waiting time
- cannot unbalance
- must use items to restore EP

Crafts:
+ immediate use
+ can unbalance
+ easily accessible items and quartz restore CP really quickly as you get around halfway through the game

So it's not a huge shocker which is better than the other in which games.

edited 10th Jul '17 5:46:56 PM by burnpsy

Don't get me wrong, crafts are generally better than Arts and imo they could have used more of a buff than they got in CS 2.

They can still be really effective if you set it up right.

Emma set up with Mirage MQ (which has Silver Bell, Claiomh Solarion and +14 EP per turn) , Cast 2, Silver bell, Ep Cut 2, Action 3 will just wreck face. The Silver Bell effect built in stacks with the Quartz you place in it so you get your turn 75%? faster after casting a mirage element spell.

Equip her with the restore EP on Kill and restore EP while walking accessories and she does not run out of EP very easily.

Pair her with Jusis for his craft that ups arts skills and speed as well as his attacks that reduce arts defense for more effective nukes.

It doesn't hold a candle to the 100% evade Fie build in the broken department but it's damn good for field wide nukes. It beats all the bosses that summon adds around the field every turn instead of say parking Rean near the corner to control the constantly spawning mobs.

edited 11th Jul '17 4:23:40 AM by Memers

well this is interesting, 8 people apparently were playing the game yesterday according to steamspy.

edited 11th Jul '17 6:35:44 AM by Memers

Well yeah, the port needs to be checked for bugs, and one PC setup won't catch all potential issues.

Pretty sure that means that the game is farther off than July, sadly, if they are still testing now.

edited 11th Jul '17 7:12:44 AM by Memers

I disagree. No manufacturing lead time and nearly all other aspects being complete before they started means the delay caused by any bugs only costs them the time required for a fix.

And for all we know, this could be their testers doing one last pass to ensure all the bugs are gone before they greenlight marketing to start sending emails announcing a release for next week.

I'm sure they'll keep their July promise, it says nowhere in July when it'll be open to the public, and Xseed are thorough about their in-house ports.

I wish they would just say something... anything.

They are usually pretty vocal but we have heard nothing.

edited 11th Jul '17 9:58:14 AM by Memers

That being said, Xseed are also equally known for their delays. So it might, but I'm willing to bet they'll keep their word, we've not even reached the first half of the month. As much as we all want the game out, patience is the key.

Aaaaand CS was changed from July to August, so I can eat my words. AH well, I've got a ton of SC to get through, and not even purchased TC yet.

What chapter are you in SC?

I wouldn't worry about getting through TC before CS 1 comes out, you really don't need to play it for required knowledge for CS 1. All it does it put some context on 2 people.

Playing TC after CS 1 gives some great "Oooh" nerd moments though IMO which is probably more effective than playing it straight.

so an Xseed admin says its still possible for a July release Also there will be 400 save slots instead of 20 and there will be a launcher with more options than Sky, which was already a lot as is.

edited 13th Jul '17 2:30:17 PM by Memers

Cold Steel 3 returning cast info (spoilers)

Group shot of Class VII in Cold Steel 3 (spoiler by omission)◊

XSEED's doing great work again, between Cold Steel PC and Ys SEVEN getting an in-house PC port. Hope that means Crossbell happens, sooner rather than later!

On top of being a great translation team, they could make serious buck just porting games to the PC. They do much better jobs than any existing PC ports they have to work with, Akiba's Beat can be downright painful to play at times.

I was looking into what Crossbell is about, and it sounds like the setting is really unique and fun, but the main character's the worst of the high standards of Trails protagonists, so it could be a mixed bag.

From what you see of it in CS 2 it does look interesting, and from the looks of it we kinda do need to know about those two games going into CS 3.

Although the biggest thing I wanna see the one major unsolved plot line from Sky go to its conclusion.

edited 15th Jul '17 6:14:43 PM by Memers

We absolutely need those games for full context before Cold Steel 3 (because it's pretty definite that the plot will involve the liberation of Crossbell that's mentioned at the end of that duology).

I doubt we'll actually get them in time for that, though.

Yeah, not happening. No way they could get those games out in any form by the time 3 could be localized.

Speaking of CS, this post on their blog gives a confirmed date of August 2nd, which is great so there's not much longer to wait. It's also an interesting read with the first of 3 parts going into how they ported the game.

Yeah, I was gonna link that.

TL;DR: Durante had to completely redo the rendering to use DX11. This was a ton of work, but insreased performance almost 5 times over.

—

On the subject of likelyhood for the Crossbell games...

It's theoretically possible if they buy the fan translation for Zero and clean it up (not unprecedented for XSEED, IIRC), then immediately work on Azure.

They were able to push out SC and Cold Steel 2 at almost the same time since they outsourced SC, and XSEED doesn't let localizers touch their games until release, so this would mean Azure and Cold Steel 3 are worked on concurrently.

edited 19th Jul '17 1:09:00 PM by burnpsy

Its going to be $40 apparently... That is way too much for a port of a 4 year old game, no sign that the DLC is going to be included as well.

.... it should be 30, 35 max.

That is asking just a bit much, yeah. I wouldn't call it unreasonable, but lowering the price by five or ten less bucks would definitely increase sales, it'd border on the range of most willing to buy.

Still, given the game's popularity, it should still do fine, along with existing Sky fans wanting to see what all this stuff on Erobonia is all about.

As for Crossbell, unless we get a miracle (pun not intended) it's doubtful it'll be done in time for a hypothetical CS 3 release in English, which is already off the known horizon at this point.

On the bright side, Nayuta no Kiseki already has a fan translation, so in a year or so when Zero's fan work is done, it'll just be Azure and CS 3 and the English fandom will finally be caught up on Kiseki in some form or another. Like, it's conceivable the whole translation side could be done in 3-5 years.

I see Crossbell as happening in a 1 1/2 - 2 year period. 2019 maybe? Clearly after CS 3.

And yeah I'll wait on a sale for CS. Still have my Ys backlog too.

I'm not entirely convinced Cold Steel 3 won't itself take until 2019 to come over. Cold Steel 1 took us 2 years and 3 months to get from the Japanese release, and Cold Steel 2 was just shy of 2 years after Japan got it.

Anyway, $40 is fair due to all the additional voicework.

edited 19th Jul '17 5:08:29 PM by burnpsy