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

So I just finished sitting through the 2 hours or so of exposition at the beginning of the final chapter of CS3 and holy shit was that insane.

To recap (major CS3 spoilers, obviously) Ash (who is a survivor of Hamel) shot and possibly killed the emperor; Osborne is using the fact he used a Calvard made gun as causus beli.

Gaius is now the freaking eight dominion the ''Phoenix of Boundless Sky"

There are two Septerrion active in Erebonia the Septerrion of fire "Arcreus" and the Septerrion of earth "Rostozeum" which fought and eventually fused into the Septerrion of iron "The Great Power" and became unstable during the dark ages necessitating the Hexen clan and the church to cooperate to seal it. They were partially successful but it split off the 7 divine knights the "Deus Excelion".

The black workshop is the remnant of the gnomes and is headed by Alisa's not so dead father (I think he might be an Anguis too) and is working to bring about the "Great Inner Darkness" (really not sure on the translation of that). Incidentally George is a gnome (really covert given the surname he uses; though it now makes perfect sense that he was able to "rediscover" how to forge Zemurian ore) and has a red puppet similar to Airgetlam and Claim Solais

All of the Anguis except Vita are working with Osborne on the Phantasmal Blaze plan and have turned the Karel Imperial Villa into the Cradle of Erebos that I now have to reach the bottom of.

I really wish I could understand more of this; I'm getting maybe a third of it and it's already absolutely insane. I have to ammend what I said earlier about this possibly being the best Trails game yet there is no question anymore; the amount of arc welding going on is incomparable.

I think just about every prior event and character has either appeared or been referenced to some degree (can't speak for the Crossbell games but the only major party members from Sky that I haven't seen explicitly named are Zin and Kevin.

I think the best summary I can make is that this game is like SC with the entire rest of the series so far being the slow build up that was FC.

Well.... Fuck. (I thought the last post had major CS3 spoilers. it didn't. Not compared to this.)

Ange; dead. Eugent; (probably) dead. Toval; dead. Victor; dead. Millium; dead. Olivier; dead. All of the revivals so far have either been awakeners and at least implied to have been so before death or faked their deaths so if we're lucky Olivier might have been hiding the golden knight and still be alive; otherwise I'm pretty certain all of those deaths are final.

Another list, those that need to pay. Cedrick for going power mad after being forced to awaken Testarossa and riding Osborne's coat tails to get his fix; Copper Georg, for shooting someone that was supposed to be one of his best friends and planting the bomb on Courageous all without a hint of regret or remorse; Black Albericht, for helping to plan this and pushing that damn button; Osbourne (who I'm now thinking may well the grandmaster given the deference everyone in Orobourus gives him and Albericht who as the head of the black workshop I believe was said in the past to be an Anguis calling him his master), for planning the whole thing; and last but not least Rean, for giving in to his rage; playing straight into Osborne's plan and unleashing a literal curse on the world. Seriously; even most of Orobourus is taken aback by the depths the people sink to.

Given people have already said there's going to be a CS4 without spoilers I'm going to assume it's okay to discuss in the clear.

I very much hope this is going to be a situation like CS1 and 2 where there was only a year between releases cause even that wait's going to be brutal; none of the past cliff hangers in the series hold a candle to this, the end of the game is literally Osbourne in his knight holding Rean and Valimar by the throat telling him that "The time has come; the fairy tail is over", then it cuts off and goes to the credits.

Apologies for the double post and the somewhat rambling nature of this one, I'm a bit drained at the moment but needed to post something about how the game ended.

Yeah there is no way Angie, Toval and Olivier are dead... especially going out like that. With Bleublanc leaving Ouroboros there is no way he would not save his rival in beauty.

Olivier is the one I'm least certain of and I wouldn't completely rule out Toval but based on the dialogue bringing Ange, Victor, or Millium back would be pretty big cop outs.

For Ange Towa specifically tells Georg that she doesn't believe he'd be capable of killing Ange since he went through the trouble of saving Crow. His responce is something along the lines of "That was a different situation, he still had a role to play." Then after the Courageous gets blown up he reiterates that Ange is dead and Towa doesn't know what he's capable of.

For Victor the reaction is fairly subdued and has several people asking the Godess to look after him, and Aurelia bidding farewell to her master; tonally I don't think there's much chance of him surviving with that kind of sendoff.

Millium is the least likely to come back given that she sacrificed herself to become a sword capable of killing the corrupted holy beast; self sacrifice and becoming a key item like that is almost never reversible.

Also; they changed the way NG+ works. You no longer have to beat the game multiple times to select everything to carryover but you also can't carryover character levels anymore; you can select to keep all the crafts and orders you unlocked but levels and stats get wiped (master quartz levels and link levels are seperate options and can be, it's just character levels that can't). That's going to significantly reduce the replayability of the game for me (For reference I've got ~350 hours and 6 clears on my CS2 save seeing just how ridiculously over powered I can get everyone.).

edited 16th Oct '17 11:05:33 PM by Jaustin89*

Nah, I think Angelica is a pretty murky scenario since we're never shown the actual death. It's always possible that George mistook her for dead and someone came to save her after he left. Meanwhile, Olivier gets the characters who knew him having flashbacks and a farewell. Effectively the villains were giving him a Really Dead Montage.

Also, that whole explosion could have just been an attempt to trigger No One Could Survive That!.

edited 16th Oct '17 11:18:58 PM by burnpsy

Alright, so here's something I'm not getting: why are Ouroboros working with Osborne!? Didn't the dude double-crossed them in CSII? Why the hell are they working with him now? And Arianrhod and Campanella for fucks sake, the two most loyal to the Grandmaster!!

Also, the Grandmaster was confirmed to be female in The Third. That much is reliable 'cause it was so even in Japanese. If Falcom wanted to keep her gender secret they could, given how pronouns work in that language.

That is basically why Vita left, she was betrayed by the other Anguis who chose to support Osborne and Bleublanc has sided with her. Arianrhod too has basically left as well over that and some other stuff.

Beat the chapter 4 end boss. My heart, it's cute, but sad. But also really adorable, tiny Estelle! And Schera is so adorable. And Lena's just...there, with portraits and everything. Estelle looks so much like her.

Just you wait to see how she behaves in The Third flashback. It's beyond moe, man!

It's so nice to see the Cold teel cast hanging out. I make the comparison a bit too much I think, but compared to how Persona is considered the gold standard for high school RPG stories, the characters feel like characters, not just scheduled romance segments or characters that only talk to the protagonist, as some of that series' cast can feel like at their weakest.

I kinda wish we got to see how the alternate field studies went though, the mentions from the other VII group sound like they'd be fun to see.

I just finished chapter 1 after getting to chapter 3 on Normal before I went back for Hard since I felt it was getting too easy. And it was pretty doable, then the ch1 end boss roflstopped the party a dozen times before I broke down and did a little grinding. Getting everyone up to lv 14 did the trick. The CP regeneration in CS is absolutely ridiculous. I pretty much one the fight with Alisa spamming Blessed Arrow the fact that it heals everyonee for great damage and gives a ton of CP is incredible. Pooled CP into Laura, had her use Forte, and Elliot kept everyone buffed with the occasional Soul Blur to keep them off and Rean Motivated. Her Motivated Foreted Critical 200 S-Break was godly.

So. Trails in the Sky's endgame.

eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

I don't know what to talk about first, I love everything about it. I'm not done-done but I'm puttering through the last dungeon and putting together my final builds. I'm also trying to decide whether I want to run with the Last Episode, New Character because I'm pretty sure my M Cs can carry the party between their ultimate weapons and pimped out orbment slots.

And yes I find the idea of tackling the finale with Joshua's harem to be hilarious.

Those Last Episode, New Character were added in the PSP version originally then Xseed retroactively added them to the western PC version. I wouldn't worry about not using them in SC, one of them is literally the second character you get in 3rd and the other isnt too far behind.

My advice is when you get to a story boss figure out who it is then reset and come back with the relevant rival or relation, the story changes greatly if you have them with you.

Also thoughts on the climax of chapter 6? the lore in 7? and the open world of 8?

edited 27th Oct '17 1:01:54 AM by Memers

Oh, they were additions? Neat! (wish X Seed would have added the boosted battle Sepith cap...) I thought they were crutch characters for if you kept switching the party around, they're higher level than Estelle.

I think I talked about chapter VI and VII together. The ship scenes were awesome and then the beach scene was d'aww worthy. I like how little drama there was at the start of chapter 7, and while the tower dungeons themselves were neat the best part was being able to start reading the backstory in the crystals. Oh and then the Treasure itself? Oooooooooh fuuuuuuuuuck yes.

Chapter 8.... hm. Big parts of it worked, like FINALLY being able to travel the whole country. Needing a ZFG to cast was obnoxious and I disliked that the three actual sidequests were all hidden AND behing story advancement. I see what you meant about variable length.

So I'm at the end of The Third and going up against the final boss with Kevin, Ries, Anelace, and Renne, all at Lv.142 or thereabouts. Now, I've fought him once already, and most of the fight wasn't a problem. It wasn't easy and could get kind of rough at times, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. And then halfway through the fight, he belted out a S-Craft that wiped out my entire party in one go. Even with everyone's HP at maximum, the only one who could have possibly survived is Anelace, and I'm not even sure if that's really the case. Anyone got any tips for surviving that thing?

EDIT: Never mind. Managed to take it down after spamming Earth Wall to high heaven. But it's still darn cheap.

Anyway, that's the Third. It's not the best Trails game, but it's still very good, and for anyone who's played the first two games, it's a must. That said, it's more of a dungeon crawler than the other games, and while the main story is good, it isn't focused on that much until late game. Instead, we've got the doors, though most of them are fine little vignettes in their own rights that help flesh out the rest of the cast, so I don't have anything against them. Again, it's a very good game in its own right. It's just not as good as some of the others.

Anyhoo, time to figure out which Trails game to play next. I'm probably just going to go back to Cold Steel II, but I really want to give Zero/Ao a whirl. Everything about it — the noir trappings, Ao being hailed as the best game in the series, Renne's story arc is focused on — it's seriously making me consider keeping CSII on the backburner. As long as it's in English, even if it's mediocre English, I'm easy.

edited 27th Oct '17 11:22:28 AM by kkhohoho

Yeah, I'm strongly tempted to try Zero when CS 1 is done, both to wait for the PC port of 2 and follow the timeline without spoiling too much.

Got a friend into playing CS, I've told him a lot about my adventures with Sky, but it's his first Trails game.

I really recommend going to Zero. Even the poor English didn't get in the way of it being the most tight, well put together Trails game I've played, if not one of the most engaging games period.

Although, fair warning, Renne's story isn't focused on THAT much, the spotlight is firmly on the new cast. Which isn't a bad thing, because the new cast is just fucking magnificent.

I would do CS 2 first then Zero, give them time to finish editing it. CS 2 is so long that by the time you are done Zero should be ready to go.

Yeah, seriously. Even if you want to play Zero's fan translation, there's no reason to jump right into it without getting all the official releases out of the way first at this juncture.

I'm not so sure about that. It's taken them 6 months just to get to 40%, right? So who's to say it won't take them another 6 months? And I can probably beat CS 2 in at least half that.

You have made two assumptions. The first assumption being it will take 6+ months to finish editing Zero. The second being you will finish Cold Steel 2 in less than 6 months.

Neither assumption is necessary. There is no real downside to just playing Cold Steel 2 first and playing Zero later, so even if you finish it and Zero isn't done being edited... what have you lost in the process? In the chance that they do finish it, you get to play Zero with a fully edited translation, but if they don't, all that happens is you play Zero after Cold Steel 2.

edited 27th Oct '17 10:54:53 PM by burnpsy

Playing Zero now instead of having to wait to play it later? And I beat SC in three months. If I can beat SC in three months, I can probably beat CSII in the same amount of time.

Having to swap the order in which you play 2 games you would have played anyway is not a loss. If you consider it to be one, I really have no words.

Also HLTB claims Cold Steel 2's main story is somewhat longer than Sky SC's, which lines up with my experience. Doesn't mean you can't do it in 3 months, but just throwing that out there.

edited 28th Oct '17 12:44:29 AM by burnpsy

There's nothing like a first-time experience, even if it's protracted over a few months, it still would effect my enjoyment of the end product.

Regardless, when I'm done with SC, I'll probably take a month off or so from the series to soak up everything I've learned and look over stuff I might've missed. Plus I've really meant to dive back into my Ys backlog.

Also just in general, where the hell can you find Mint? I swear she's about as tricky to spot as a Shining Pom, yet I've found and regularly read about most of the other students. BTW I love Vivi and Linde, the rose sidequest was amazing.

Part of Trails' charm is its dialog and well the broken English of the current Zero really killed that for me. When it is finished and edited by fans of the games I expect it to be so much better and closer to actual Trails.

Also seeing the appearances in CS 2 it really helped me along for Zero with giving characters from Crossbell voices and speech patterns.

And Mint... umm lets just say she manged to get lost her first day and ends up in the Janitor's room, when she manages to find where she is going its usually the Band room and the Teacher's lounge playing the Dojikko hardcore Genius Ditz.

edited 28th Oct '17 4:07:16 AM by Memers

Just throwing my worthless two cents, but I would not expect the Geofront patch to get done before August next year at the earliest.

Yes, they went from 15% to 40% in about three months, but remember that that was in the middle of summer vacation. In the rest of the year, things like college, work and life will get in the way of the editing process, greatly reducing the speed in which the whole project will advance

Also, the biggest reason I went straight into Zero rather Cold Steel (Spoiler Hound that I am, I already knew most plot twists) is 'cause my PC can't run CS and I'm not likely to get a new one anytime soon. So yeah, there's this .