The Legend Of Heroes: Cleaning up the Trails

(IMPORTANT NOTE: I have yet to play the Sky trilogy, and I am currently awaiting the localization of the future games (Azure, Reverie, and the Kuro games))

So after some time looking at the Trails Series and it’s subsequent games on this wiki, I noticed a few problems with it. This includes (but not limited to) potential word cruft (emoting and what not), ZCE, and plain old trope misuse. This is especially apperant in the character pages.

I think the pages needs a scrubbing and some help and love.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Jan 31st 2023 at 8:10:15 PM

So, this entry here:

So, to double check: First Installment Wins is supposed to be about the first installment having the largest place in the public conciousness, isn't it? This entry is basically trying to argue that Sky is objectively better than Cold Steel. I also don't think that calling Cold Steel a "Denser and Wackier Dating Sim" is an accurate description.

Yeah, Cold Steel is often cited to be one of the main reasons the series had a Newbie Boom and the a whole “dating sim concept” thing isn’t the most talk about among fans. If anything, I see people praise the characters (as there own and not romance options) and setting than that. So I would say cut, but think some other opinions on that are needed.

The trope page does read like "first installment is most well-known" is the definition, which is not the case for Sky. The laconic suggests it can be the one with the best reputation, but that is not supported by the trope description.

Decided to remove the entry.

Also, If you have problems with that laconic, you can ask around the Laconic Description Improvement thread.

Ok, so I made a change to Rean's entry on Single-Issue Psychology some time ago, but never transferred it over to his character page due to having doubts about understanding the trope properly.

The current version on Single Issue Psychology is this:

And this is the original entry on his trope page:

So I guess what I'm asking is, do I revert the change on Single Issue, or go ahead and transfer the edit?

Edited by stargirl93 on Feb 10th 2023 at 4:08:17 AM

IIRC, The whole Superpowered Evil Side is just one part of Rean's issues. There's also his guilt of not saving Crow, daddy issues with Osborne and the fact that he had to see one his fellow classmates get sacrificed. And Single-Issue Psychology, from what I can understand, is about one issue that defines a character and their psyche. So I think your entry is ok and you can put on Rean's character page.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Feb 10th 2023 at 9:37:50 PM

Alright. I'll kick that over tomorrow.

Does Single-Issue Psychology even needs to list aversions?

Because if a character doesn't have one, then they're just...a character without Single-Issue Psychology, that's hardly noteworthy, or perhaps I should say tropeworthy, People Sit On Chairs and all that.

Personally,I think Aversion fits a bit better, but I won't mind if it's removed all together.

Edit: Alright decided to ask kn the examples thread. Waiting for a response.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Mar 2nd 2023 at 10:04:42 PM

Decided to remove the Single-Issue Psychology entry, since we don't list aversions unless they are noteworthy.

I briefly touched on this back in the main thread, but would we like to replace the three separate screenshots used for Cold Steel IV's final boss with the official artwork of its full body?

I don't see why not,but you probably need to ask the peeps over at the Image Picking thread to get a good consensus.

Just a question, does Tough Act to Follow also involve characters? Because from the trope description, its mostly applied to works (being that one work overshadowed the other works made by the same creator and any works after that don't hold up)

I ask this because YMMV.The Legend Of Heroes Kuro No Kiseki has an TATF entry in regards to how the villain in second game (The Garden Master) doesn't hold up to villain in the first game (Gerard Dantes and his right hand man Melchior) while listing Elroy as an aversion (and since we are generally not allowed to play with YMMV tropes, Elroy can be disqualified).

Any thoughts on it?

Nothing in the trope description implies it should apply to characters, but I have seen it used like that before.

Something to take up to Ask The Tropers I guess.

Removed the TAFT entry.

Crossposting from the Ensemble Darkhorse thread.

So at YMMV.The Legend Of Heroes Trails Of Cold Steel I removed the entries for Towa, Olivie, Aurielia and Altina (since they are way too major to count as the trope) but I'm very unsure with the other entries (Mint, Becky and Jessica) because they are supporting characters and in the case of Mint and Becky, they become reacurring character in the third and fourth game.

What do?

I'd say they're still not major enough to be disqualified.

Another crosspost from the Ensemble Darkhorse thread

Found these at YMMV.The Legend Of Heroes Kuro No Kiseki:

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • After the first game's initial trailer revealed her to be playable, Shizuna completely overshadowed the rest of the girls in sheer amount of fanart. She was also ranked as the #1 "most popular character among male players" in the first popularity poll, and managed to stay at the #3 spot for "most popular female character" in the second poll. from what I can tell Shizuna is fairly major character in the game and straight up Promoted to Playable in the second, so she can left out
  • Dingo ends up becoming a fan favorite after the release of the first game for his Dying Moment of Awesome by being a normal journalist exposing a superpowered madman by taking a bunch of pictures to expose his crimes when Gerard nukes Creil Village. I really can't tell if Dingo is a supporting character or a minor character, but judging from the fact he gets a focus in Renne's side story in Reverie, I think it's safe to assume he has a fairly large role and doesn't count for this trope

Crossposting from the "Is this and example" thread

While browsing Characters.Trails Series, I noticed that a few character folders have Costume Evolution in them. I feel like it's using the trope in a chairsy way because some of the entries are just characters getting new outfits in a sequel or something along those lines.

Any thoughts?

edit: Here are few specific ones

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Apr 15th 2023 at 10:05:31 PM

Found this text wall at VideoGame.The Legend Of Heroes Trails From Zero And Trails To Azure

• Inherent in the System: Many of the problems Crossbell city faces are the result of it's unique political situation and the agendas of it's neighbors. The city was made as an autonomous buffer state between two superpowers who are at each other's throats and each want to take the city for themselves due to it's resources and strategic location. Due to this, many members of the diet are installed from Erebonia and Calvard to cater to the interests of the respective nations with the well-being, opinions, and livelihoods of the citizens treated as an afterthought, resulting in rampant corruption in the law enforcement and government. Several laws and regulations in the city's charter have several loopholes in them that favor Erebonia and Calvard at the city's expense that were intentionally placed by the two that hamstring the local government's ability to handle itself and make it difficult to imprison or punish foreigners or any other signifigant changes or improvements which they then use as fuel to try and further strengthen their hold over the city. Trying to deal with the problems created by this system plays a critical part in the SSS' journey and the major antagonists are motivated with trying to outright break away from the system which they believe is doing more harm than good to Crossbell's people by any means necessary.

Anyway to shorten it?

It's still wordy, but I removed some superfluous details (and fixed some misplaced apostrophes).

Swapped!

And while we are at the topic of Text walls, I found this on Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game

• By far the most praised aspect of the Trails Series is its insanely thorough Worldbuilding. The plot begins as a Cliché Storm of familiar tropes, only to ground them and its characters into a setting so realized with politics, a meticulous history, the effects of a stock fantasy world getting swept up in the social, technological, and governmental upheaval, and the day-to-day lives of hundreds of Non Player Characters that the continent of Zemuria is rich with detail. Every NPC has their own subplots running throughout the games with new dialogue added between story events, it's this detail that has players replay the games for hundreds of hours to explore the world and the hundreds of characters that live there. The gameplay isn't bad, it's actually pretty fun at times, but the sheer volume of text ensures it's little more than some battles and several sidequests between story and NPC dialogue. Trails in the Sky FC seems to have realized this, as the Cloak Quartz can be found just before The Very Definitely Final Dungeon which skips all encounters, and can be carried on to a New Game Plus. The Cold Steel games offer an alternative — both Very Easy and Easy modes, as well as encounters that are triggered by encountering enemies on the field, which means that almost all non-boss fights can be skipped if the player chooses.

Yeah, that's very wordy (and has some run-on sentences).

As for another thing, this entry under Gameplay and Story Segregation:

Putting aside both the needlessly-verbose wall of text and the parenthetical being completely wrong (five of a kind is a valid hand and outranks straight flushes in formats that allow wildcards), both of which will need fixing if the entry remains...

Does this actually count as Gameplay and Story Segregation? Lechter and Ganz's private poker match using five-card draw with wildcards, instead of the weird hold 'em variant you can play. On the one hand, it's not like the casino is only allowed to have one format running, but on the other hand the player only has access to the one.

I'm not very sure myself, since I never played the casino games.