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

Just from the games I've played, Renne's such an amazing character. Definitely one of my favorites outside the core Sky party.

With the release of Cold Steel II on PC I will once again have no life for about a week or more. Can't wait till it finishes downloading.

Still gotta get back to the first once I'm done with The 3rd.

The Plane with the colorless Jenis is driving me insane. There's a few Dark Knights I'm scouring the place for and I can't find them to finish the damn thing. Been looking for several hours.

Man, the fight with Philip was cool, I just wish my party wasn't so disgustingly strong, kinda feel bad for the guy he wasn't more of a challenge. Still, dude got an S-Break and voice clips, that's cool Falcom put in the effort for that fight.

So I just completed Trails in the Sky FC and that ending was brutal; you spend upwards of 40 hours with these kids watching their relationship build all for some squinty bastard to walk in and be like "I'mma ruin your day now Joshua". When Joshua made his escape after Estelle's confession by drugging her, I was legitimately shocked. Starting up SC (on hard, kinda regretting my choice but hopefully the difficulty stabilizes as the game progresses) I'm at the fortress with the Jaegers and am stuck on the spear wielding Jaeger boss, so I'm doing a bit of grinding until the EXP flow dries up. Dunno the policy on spoilers for these games here so I won't mention much spoiler stuff for SC, but I am liking how things are going. I will say seeing Estelle in such a delusional state early on was pretty painful, especially after she cries it out with Kevin but keeps on believing Josh just went home.

That was a fantastic scene, yup. The fact that you're not able to control her in that sequence is a nice touch to show her helplessness. I also love that she wonders if she left some of her underwear lying around in her room, and it's meant like any other guy would say it.

Hard will screw you over in that respect. It's consider one of the most RNG-est bosses in the series past normal. Things start to even out later when you get resources, but don't feel bad if you decide to restart, it's a really BS setup.

That boss you are stuck on is actually the hardest boss in the game on hard/nightmare because of the limited options you have, you can not even farm Poms.

It wont get MUCH easier though as the other chapter end bosses are pretty crazy and the overpowered abilities from FC are nerfed pretty hard and a certain solo fight which gets you BP is insane on hard/nightmare.

edited 16th Feb '18 8:20:48 AM by Memers

Since I'm not looking to have a crazy hard time with this game, and I found FC to be a reasonable difficulty on normal, I decided to restart and went down to Normal this time. Having a much better time of it than the previous run, and the bosses weren't complete pushovers, so I suspect they will scale up well like in the first game.

SC is actually quite a bit harder than FC even on normal.

I think I've lost the most party members and health in general due to missing and counters. CS II RNG can be cheesy as hell.

edited 18th Feb '18 11:13:44 PM by TerminusEst

"Defeat me. That is all."

HOW DO THEY EXPECT ANYONE TO BEAT THIS?

Lose once and try again on a lower difficulty, that's how.

Ended up beating Cassius on the hard difficulty with Anelace and Richard delaying the crap out of him.

Getting into the endgame, Zin is ridiculously strong when given the Zemurian weapon, Ruby, a Tiger Heart, and various odds and ends. I reduced things to Renne casting arts and her amazing upgraded S-Break, a Fool's Emblem Super Gladiator Belt Reis constantly doing Holy Blessing on the aforementioned Zin with another Belt, and occasional Joshua Craft spam. There's so many exploits.

On a darker note, just got through Star Door 15 and Kevin's backstory. Oh Aidios, this game gets really, really dark.

I know the term "dark" gets thrown around a lot as a superlative, but this game means it. Poor girl.

Oh yeah that’s one of the darkest moments in video games I think, it was straight up censored in all versions but the original PC release. it makes you want to cheer Estelle on harder though.

Make sure to remember damn near every star door though, every single one matters in a future game, It’s actually scary.

Also if you thought Cassius was hard.... do the final match in the arena. :)

edited 23rd Feb '18 8:51:36 PM by Memers

The Nightmare Arena is slaughtering me. I can barely limp my way to the second round, let alone the final match. I don't have any Celestial Balms or Zemurian anything to refill CP, and grinding the Abyss is giving increasingly diminishing returns.

If you do the Abyss and all bosses in one go then a group of Tempest Poms spawn in the depths, an S-Craft from anyone with 3000 of whatever stat the S-craft uses should one shot them for stupid amounts of XP. It’s only 4 fights for a lot of levels.

The final fight is worth it just to see it, Aidios help you to win it on hard mode.

edited 23rd Feb '18 9:39:57 PM by Memers

The Delayer build has made me facepalm continuously, due to how broken it just is.

What was...how the...

That's pure fucking sadism what that was.

Arseid School of Courtmanship. But of course.

Phiew, Holy shit. I beat Nightmare Arena on Hard Mode. Thank Aidios for Orbal Gear Tita, a ton of Tear All Balms at the slightest bit of damage, an insanely fast Ries, and a few token Ogre Slashes.

Then I went and did it with Anelace. Jeez, so not worth the preparation for, now though I realize why the fight's considered easy, the AI is incredibly predictable.

Fuck this, I'm not dealing with this cheap final boss. The beginning section takes far too long, and combined with lack of resources and not having a key party member with no chance to restart at an earlier point, I'm not dealing with this crap.

I didn't have that much of a problem with him once I spammed Earth Gate and Kevin's first S-craft, but then again, I was playing on Normal mode.

Try McBurn in CS2. The guy can TPK you on Easy Mode.

edited 27th Feb '18 10:04:48 PM by TerminusEst

Using a previous save I found to go back. Not changing the party setup aside from doing a bit more level grinding, having a few more resources, and most importantly, putting in Tita. Her Orbal Gear should be tanky and strsurvive and do solid damage.ong enough to