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

Man, and I have barely begun Zero.

hangs head in shame

That's really great news.

That's some really bad timing on Geofront's part to announce this now given current events.

The SSS are at least good cops though.

Also Japan doesn't quite have the same issues with police as America does, so there's a much different context for a game about heroic police coming from Japan than coming from America.

No, they do, there's protests going in Japan as well.

Not as bad, maybe, though I suspect, now, that the way they were portrayed in Persona 5 wasn't just because they were a perfect thematic fit.

What I'd argue is that there will never not be a bad time to announce this after what happened to George Floyd because the reputation of the institution of the police in the US has been thorougly shattered, in a way I don't think it'll recover until a few years after all the reforms people are talking about are implemented and start taking root.

So they might as well ignore it and announce whatever there is to announce whenever it is ready, 'cause I doubt it'll make much of a difference either way.b

Just looked it up. I'd heard they were in solidarity due to sympathizing with the movement, I hadn't realized BLM had a chapter in Japan. They were organizing in protest of the same sort of mistreatment of non-Japanese people by Japanese police as is being done to Black people in America, and were showing solidarity for the American protests as a joint rallying cry against the police institutions.

Can anyone explain to me why this Singa dude gets so much hate?

He is the one who primarily does the Rock music in Falcom games, like the painful ill-fitting ones like 'Ashita e no Kiseki' and 'Blue Stardust' but also good ones like 'Sword of Biting Gale'. He didn't work on CS 1 and CS 2 IIRC.

He was the one who made most of the Evo remixes and a lot of fans hate said remixes. I personally... think the Evo tracks are hit or miss but they also abuse the electric guitar.

Generally if its got a rock slant to it, he made it.

Edited by Memers on Jun 13th 2020 at 10:19:34 AM

I think the hate is ridiculously overblown, personally.

There are a few songs where I prefer the EVO version, like the penultimate boss theme from Sky 3rd, but for the most part it's just not as good.

When has widespread fan-hatred ever not been overblown?

Edited by HailMuffins on Jun 14th 2020 at 11:44:51 AM

For what that is, there's reasons to dislike his work. His mixing and production is consistently below Falcom's average, a lot of his work is tonally unfitting with where they play, the dynamics are squashed, and the orchestration techniques he uses feel really artificial and not articulated especially well. He's not a bad composer by any means, but if he slowed down his releases and put more effort into what he does make, he'd not earn so much hate from Falcom diehards.

When things escalate into doxxing, every following criticism is in bad faith.

Edited by HailMuffins on Jun 14th 2020 at 12:41:03 PM

Just in case people didn't notice, the Geofront got a few more recruits two month ago and they are now finished with the editing of Y vs Kiseki.

So, what does that leave untranslated, then? 'Cause I can only think of that platformer spin-off, maybe the old Gagharv Trilogy.

Gagharv would be great to have, but I'd honestly prefer Nayuta. It's one of Falcom's last high quality shorter games before they got sucked into the one big game per year formula.

The Gagharv Trilogy has been officially translated.

They're kind of meh and out of order, but there are official English releases.

Also we might have gotten our first look at the Calvard protagonist *Spoilers, obviously*.◊

Edited by LordVatek on Jun 15th 2020 at 3:01:08 PM

Fine, re-translated, then, like that dude did with FFVII.

Isn't that just Adol in Mostrum Nox?

Edited by HailMuffins on Jun 15th 2020 at 4:03:18 PM

It's not Adol. This came from a shot of a Kiseki-focused calendar.

Edited by LordVatek on Jun 15th 2020 at 3:05:43 PM

I know, I'm joking. Does looks like him, though

Monstrum Adol is genuinely one of Falcom's best character designs. It's a cool update that still preserves enough of his distinct appearance.

Cold Steel IV got a new trailer. Major spoilers, FYI.

Game's coming out late October.

Damn; they spoiled the best part of the game. Granted it's largely a forgone conclusion but still.

(Courtesy spoiler to obfuscate context for those that want to go in blind; shouldn't really spoil anything if you read it without watching the trailer) That battle is probably the second best experience I've had playting the Trails games (Behind the Aureole cut scene; it's going to be hard for anything to top that.); it actually made me swing from hating Ashita e no Kiseki to loving it despite the screaming metal portion in the middle just from it being the BGM.

Fucking hell, that scene was so good.

The music helps a lot:

It is certainly emblematic of how the slow burn approach Trails takes to the story is to its benefit in the long: ancient ruins, flying optional, are a dime-a-dozen in JRPGs, but with the giant trek it takes to get to that part really highlights just how much of a big deal something like that is supposed to be.

Helps that you'll probably see the real wham coming half a second before it actually hits.

Yeah, getting to see and explore stuff like that 140 hours in, seeing Estelle's journey step by step to this point is like nothing else.

Sky's still my favorite arc for how character-focused it is in progression.