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

Game is pre-loading and my vacation time was approved. Is it 11 AM on Wednesday yet?

CSIV Eugent lives. Somehow.

Also I just now noticed that Ries can be seen stuffing her face at the wedding. Lol.

Edited by LordVatek on Sep 24th 2018 at 11:43:02 AM

Aw, I wanted Alfin to take the throne.

Seriously, is there a reason they didn't kill him off? I mean, I have no opinion on the guy...which is kind of why I'd want him replaced with someone I have an opinion on.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Sep 24th 2018 at 11:51:39 AM

CS 4 Too precious for this world. Shame they apparently only show up so last-second, I'd love to catch up on what those two have been up too.

CSIV I mean even if he had died, his wife probably would have continued in his place. Of course with Cedric being a wackjob, Alfin's the crown princess anyway so it'll happen eventually.

Edited by LordVatek on Sep 24th 2018 at 12:06:20 PM

I had assumed that the line of succession went by eldest male heir, then eldest female heir if none of the former were available, with the spouse not really entering into it.

Also, I had kind of bought into a theory that she was Enforcer III, if only because she had been a complete nonentity otherwise, and there were some compelling points for it.

Anyway, my view of it is that since the Empire was going through a period of extreme crisis, now was as good a time as any to crown a new ruler.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Sep 24th 2018 at 12:07:24 PM

CSIV I should probably clarify that I don't know for a fact that Eugent is still the emperor. I just know he's alive (he's at the wedding). It's possible he abdicated (or is getting ready to).

Edited by LordVatek on Sep 24th 2018 at 12:11:38 PM

Ah, okay, that would be fine. I really just want a change for the nation. Guess we'll find out.

CS4: Cedric is no longer a wackjob by the end of the game actually. He realizes all of the bad stuff he did and joins Ouroboros *because* he gets it. He seemed to feel unworthy of being Olivert and Alfin's siblings or something. You appear to be correct in that Alfin's first in line now though.

Edited by burnpsy on Sep 25th 2018 at 3:38:11 PM

CSIV: Alright but... those still don't exactly sound like the actions of a sane person to me.

CS4 impressions at ~14 hours:

Enemies seem way harder than they should be; I'm having to revive characters and use S-crafts constantly even in fights against the smaller field monters. Field bosses two shot people, story bosses one or two shot people and commonly get 2-3 turns for each of mine; I've stopped bothering to open trial chests.

I've probably had to do more retries in 14 hours of CS4 than my entire time in 1-3 combined and am using S-crafts so frequently that I already have the trophy for 100 S-crafts part way through chapter 1.

It also seems like they used significantly fewer voiced lines for the main story and used more voices for cameos (Anton has voiced lines, every sigle Thors student and teacher I've encountered has voiced lines) it probably doesn't make a huge difference in general but for me it makes it really hard to follow the story since while I can understand spoken Japanese fairly well reading it is a much different story.

Edited by Jaustin89* on Sep 26th 2018 at 2:15:58 PM

To be fair, the difficulty seems to be an intentional case of escalation. Transition from 1 to 2 was sometimes a bit weird due to the high miss rate, lower damage and that I was spamming S-crafts all the time. The bosses were also really nasty in the damage department at lower difficulties. Although I think I only had to retry at the very last one.

Edited by TerminusEst on Sep 26th 2018 at 11:39:44 AM

CSIV Oh and in case anyone was curious about bonding events, word is that all of the Class VII girls, Sara, and Towa get full romance paths, Juna and Musse get the "After you graduate" treatment, and Elise and Alfin get rejected.

CS4 day 2

Managed to break free on the early game hell and the game got a lot more fun; still difficult but it no longer feels like I accidentally picked hard dificulty to start with. Fairly standard Trails progression in that once I pulled together some decent quarts setups everything got much easier it's just that getting to that point this time around was harder.

Currently in Crossbell and just met up with Estelle, not a party member yet but her introduction was awesome; can't wait to see her reaction when she sees my ride to the area (Josette and the Bobcat).

Well I had a big post with this and gushing about CS4's midgame sequence but the forums ate it and I'm not spending another half hour retyping it. To sum it up: In my opinion the midgame sequence of CS4 tops anything else in the series I've seen so far; including SC's endgame. Can't wait to see what CS4's endgame has in store.

The PS4 remasters of CS1&2 are coming over early next year; I suspect this means XSeed is targeting a late 2019/ early 2020 launch for CS3 (provided they got the licence to bring it over; but if they're bothering to release more versions of 1 and 2 I'd think they did).

Edited by Jaustin89* on Oct 1st 2018 at 8:05:10 AM

They're also dual audio, so the Japanese-only fans can finally stop complaining.

The PC version is getting a patch for them too.

Yeah 2019 for III, 2020 for IV is my guess. That would also match how the first two were released (two years after their original release dates).

Also I started playing Zero for the first time. I already know who the big bad is but there are still like... eight characters walking around who are hella suspicious.

Edited by LordVatek on Oct 1st 2018 at 12:16:32 PM

That's about accurate for any Trails game. Trust no one.

Definitally. FC's twist ending was a thing of genius in that sense.

I don't think they'll ever repeat that kind of magic again, but this series really does redefine the term Walking Spoiler. Isn't that right, Kevin.

I just finished Azure a few days ago.

Honestly, by the end it was easier to list which characters weren't hiding something. Most of the characters suspicious in Zero hid it all the way to near the end of Azure though.

So Crossbell's in it for the long game then. I know discounting like, the 3rd, Zero's the only game that doesn't end on a substantial character reveal/cliffhanger. I've heard both games are slightly shorter than SC a piece.

Each took me about 40-50 hours.

You know, it probably would have behooved them to not give Joachim a portrait so early on. I'm only on Chapter 2 but he has been a complete nonentity except for the fact that he had one and that signifies that he will be important later on.

Sure I know what his actual deal is but it kind of feels like they tipped their "THIS GUY IS IMPORTANT" hand a bit too early.

Edited by LordVatek on Oct 2nd 2018 at 12:30:43 PM