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

FYI:

Trails FC is discounted -50% right now on both GOG and Steam. (Not Humble Store though, for some reason.)

Great time to tell someone to get into the first game.

Alright! First thing I learned about SC: don't try hard, and especially not nightmare. Seriously. It will kick your ass.

Gonna restart on normal tomorrow...

Seconded

A nice (if a bit embellished) article on the tumultuous time XSEED had localizing SC

I found this◊ while playing yesterday and after reading , my appreciation for the game has risen once again.

XSEED *and* Carpe Fulgur had plenty of troubles. It wasn't just XSEED.

As someone who also suffers from chronic depression I honestly can't say that I feel too much for Andrew Dice; he was clearly in over his head, but instead of talking to other people about it he just kept everything bottled up and ended up making things much, much worse. And ultimately it's partly his fault that SC took so long to come out. Also ew Kotaku and ew Schreier.

Also holy crap Agate is incredible, just spam S-Crafts all day erryday. Getting the best spellcaster in the game right afterward is pretty great too.

I haven't played the first game for a while so I don't remember how much I used Agate but in this he's pretty much a staple. Even without the 'El-Cheapo tactic' he's a solid beater with a decent health pool and great crafts. I'm in chapter 6 and he's still a staple party member for me, along with Tita.

I did find it pretty hilarious how the game is perfectly willing to let Agate kill himself with Wild Rage, rather than either not letting him use it if he doesn't have >70% hp or bringing his HP to one, thus not only killing him but also wasting all the CP he's already earned.

Bravo Falcom, bravo.

Yeah, I had to learn that the hard way. At first, I thought it meant '70% of HP Agate currently as in. As in, if he had 2300 hp, then he'd lose 70%. So course, I was rather bemused to discover that when they said, '70% of Max HP', they meant it.

Though I have to admit, having Agate commit suicide is in itself rather amusing.

Finally beat SC, Final time of 97 hours compared to the 140 I spent in 5 playthroughs of FC. I did end up having to kinda cheat to get past Lowe at the end; that guy's just unfair. it took spamming nothing but S-crafts and my entire supply of of the 2 revive + CP restore items to get through.

Glad someone beat it. I'm having trouble getting through it myself, mainly because I'm 30 hours in and on Chapter 3, and yet I still feel like I'm just starting the game. Not much is really happening, and so I'm gradually losing my interest to keep going forward. Don't get me wrong, the writing and characterization are still brilliant, but the pacing's left something to be desired so far. At least FC introduced new places and characters on a regular basis, but SC doesn't have that luxury. I actually feel like I'm still playing FC to some extent and that SC hasn't even started yet, which I guess makes sense considering this was originally meant to be one game.

At this point, I'm just waiting for things to get going. To anyone who's finished the game or at least has gotten far enough along, when would you say things start to pick up?

There's a bit where it picks up right at the end of Chapter 3 but then Chapter 4 is back to the usual pattern of these early chapters.

I'd say chapter 5 after the first story quest.

Incidentally for Loewe I found Clock Down and La Crest really helped.

edited 10th Nov '15 3:52:03 PM by Skullman

Thanks. I guess I'll just keep plowing through it for now.

I'm in the Finale chapter with 68 hours clocked in. Think I'm pretty satisfied with this as the sequel overall.

I really, really like how often the leitmotif for the Terracyclic towers come up in SC's OST. The title screen piece, the various battle themes(Fate of the Fairies in particular), the overworld theme for the Liber Ark, etc. It speaks a lot about the importance of this Zemurian society to the world's lore and plot, since I'll assume that's what the tune is associated with. Hoshi no Arika's a neat tune that showed up often in FC but I really do prefer this tune over it.

edited 11th Nov '15 4:14:41 AM by danna45

So has there actually been a release date for Cold Steel yet? Amazon has the 22nd listed but nowhere else seems to have a date yet.

Nvm it seems it really is the 22nd.

edited 3rd Dec '15 12:38:56 AM by Memers

Coulda sworn I saw a place that listed it for the 17th.

If it does come out on the 22nd though, I won't be able to get it for a while since I'll be on vacation then.

So umm do we start a new thread on that game or have this renamed to be a franchise page?

edited 4th Dec '15 6:30:58 AM by Memers

I say, let's just rename this thread and have it be a general franchise topic instead of just opening up a new thread. It's not like this series has such a legion of fans that we'd need to open a new thread just so that we could still talk about SC. Best to keep it all in one place.

Although, I'm not sure I'll be able to even start playing Cold Steel when it actually comes out. I just hit the 60 hour mark yesterday in SC, and I'm still on Chapter 5, or about midway through the game. On the bright side, things are finally moving, so the game ought to be a lot more entertaining from here on out. I just wish that was the case from the start. What the game should have done IMO is have the prologue happen as is, and then have the Society enact their little experiment in Chapter 1, except rather than only having Blueblanc there, Walter and Lulicotti (I think that's her name, but I could be wrong,) all show up as well. Then, have the team head over to Bose in Chapter 2 where the dragon attacks. Anything else you really needed that happened in the other chapters up to Chapter 5 could have been placed somewhere else in the game, because there is a lot of fat that could have been cut. I've still enjoyed the game, but it could really have used a more shrewd editor.

edited 4th Dec '15 10:22:29 AM by kkhohoho

I'm still trying to perfect file FC again thanks to loosing my data on my old PSP...

So I should report the thread for a rename right? To what? This?

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

Also should Sen no Kiseki be changed to Trails Of Cold Steel?

That'll work.

Thread renamed per request.

Thank ya big time.

So playing through FC again and man I forgot how awesome Estelle is, man she might be one of my fav main characters ever.

She gets even better in SC. Without Joshua to lean on, Estelle has to rely on herself to pick up the slack, and she steadily matures over the first few chapters without losing what made her so likable in the first place. By the time the two finally reunite, you can tell just how far she's come.

edited 8th Dec '15 6:17:13 PM by kkhohoho