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The Kiseki / Trails (of the Sky/Zero/Ao/Sen/Etc) Community Thread: SPOILERTAGS OR DIE
- Thread starter Bebpo
- Start date
Yeah but Ys dungeons are actually fun. Lol.
The dungeons in 3rd don't really remind me that much of dungeons in other games in the series. If you're worried about that, I wouldn't be too concerned.
That's good because Kiseki dungeons are kinda bad!
BassForever
Member
As I've loved all 4 English games in the series my only real concern with 3rd is the loss of mundane world building when you see people in town and what little conversations they have about the events unfolding.
Maintenance
Member
Oh, that.
CrichtonKicks
Member
Unfortunately we have a lack of data on the Western side to make accurate conclusions. That's why we focus on FC->SC Steam. We don't know CS1 and 2 numbers overall nor do we know the retention from CS 1 to 2.
However given the numbers I posted earlier, it seems pretty clear CS1 is 100k sold minimum and likely a fair bit more. So its numbers are actually reasonably consistent with FC and a huge jump over SC. And I would argue that a Steam release of CS1 would be more than enough to put it over the top and make it the biggest selling entry in the West.
And I would argue that we are seeing continual drivers of the back catalog. FC continues to sell and SC sales have doubled from this time a year ago. I absolutely think that CS is driving sales here. It's just that back catalog time hasn't been available very long compared to Japan. 18 months ago there was a single Kiskei title released in the US. Now we have 4, soon to 5. So it will take time for that back catalog numbers to grow.
Does someone have a list of Japanese sales for each entry? Are SC's sales really bigger than FC's? That would shock me if true.
I think that's a good point to. At least in terms of behaviors of each market. Japan is notoriously focused on first week sales. You can almost always reasonably project the lifetime total of a title based off of how it does week one. Steam, on the other hand, is notoriously long tailed with periodic spikes when sales hit. Those who finish FC will almost certainly move on to SC at some point, which is borne out considering that SC's sales have doubled since this time last year.
I never made the connection of the 3rd being like Ys Origin and, now that you mention it, it's very true.
Yeah, that point is lost in the game, but you end up learning more details about characters and lore. While the content of conversation is smaller than other titles, it's much more important to the overarching narrative.
That sounds incredibly appealing
Glitter and Gold
Banned
Wouldn't that lead to less sales?
If the majority of steam users are hoarders, wouldn't they buy the sequels whether they completed the previous game or not?
CrichtonKicks
Member
Not if they aren't on sale. Lowest Trails has been is 50% and I don't believe either game has had a permanent price reduction yet.
they don't hoard at high prices (SC cheapest pricepoint is more than 2x the FC one) and most of then didn't even start FC so there is no motivation to buy a sequel. It's not only that 12% finished the game... 39% finished the prologue.
Also I didn't say the majority of steam users are hoarders lol
Glitter and Gold
Banned
The japanese completion rates aren't much different though. The completion rate for Sen on PSN is about 11-13% right now. Wasn't Sen II the best selling game in the history of the series?
Ok but you suggested that's the biggest difference between the US and Japanese audience. I'm trying to figure out A: on what basis do you make that claim and B: How that translates to higher or lower sales.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
Isn't the used market bigger in Japan? I've seen that mentioned a lot which would correlate with less hoarding, but I don't know why that would impact new sales at all.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
I don't know. I'm just challenging this widespread idea in this thread that SC under performed because of it being a direct sequel.
I think people are missing the forest for the trees with that conclusion. In reality all three of the latest Xseed Falcom backlog releases(SC, Napishtim and Xanadu Next) have failed to even remotely approach the success of their earlier releases. I think the problem may lie less with the individual qualities of those titles and more with the fact that Steam just may not be as viable of a market for these games as we once thought.
XSEED, much like other niche publishers, got into the market when it was ripe for the taking. The biggest and best example for this is Carpe Fulgur. If you search for the sales numbers of every game released throughout these years, you don't really need to think hard about what happened.
That doesn't mean no company is thriving in the market, but for this particular niche, it's not working as it used to be for some companies.
That doesn't mean no company is thriving in the market, but for this particular niche, it's not working as it used to be for some companies.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
I think those three games all have unique situations and problems.
Ark of Napishtim has had word of mouth actually act against it. Few people recommend that over Oath in Felghana and Origin (for good reason). It's not exactly doing poorly either, it's just not selling as quickly as the other games did.
Xanadu Next just recently released with no fanfare whatsoever and isn't exactly an appealing looking game. It doesn't look very good visually and a trailer doesn't do a good job selling what it offers. It's going to take some effort to sell that one.
SC probably suffers from FC being what it is, and maybe a little from the platform. It isn't uncommon for people to see FC as boring, slow, uninteresting, etc. Basically most of FC lacks a strong hook for a lot of people, unlike Final Fantasy and the like that setup bigger stakes more quickly. The Cold Steel games have presumably been decently successful, but PS3->PC isn't the most clean or natural platform change so a lot of PS3 owners probably haven't picked them up on PC. Vita owners have direct access to FC and SC, and those sales wouldn't be reflected in Steamspy numbers anyway.
Japan doesn't really have any problem with platform. The entire series is playable on Vita, either original or enhanced ports. And Vita is a natural progression from PSP, so even that platform change isn't really a problem. And PS3 has 5 of the 7 games, only missing the Crossbell arc. It will be interesting to see how CS3 does over there since it is PS4 exclusive, and every prior game was available on PSP/Vita.
Regardless, XSEED's marketing is a big factor across the board. A lot of it is preaching to the choir via social media which doesn't do much to expand their audience.
And SC hasn't been cheap enough for impulse buys to be a factor. There are probably people who will buy it without having played FC, but probably not for more than $10.
Ark of Napishtim has had word of mouth actually act against it. Few people recommend that over Oath in Felghana and Origin (for good reason). It's not exactly doing poorly either, it's just not selling as quickly as the other games did.
Xanadu Next just recently released with no fanfare whatsoever and isn't exactly an appealing looking game. It doesn't look very good visually and a trailer doesn't do a good job selling what it offers. It's going to take some effort to sell that one.
SC probably suffers from FC being what it is, and maybe a little from the platform. It isn't uncommon for people to see FC as boring, slow, uninteresting, etc. Basically most of FC lacks a strong hook for a lot of people, unlike Final Fantasy and the like that setup bigger stakes more quickly. The Cold Steel games have presumably been decently successful, but PS3->PC isn't the most clean or natural platform change so a lot of PS3 owners probably haven't picked them up on PC. Vita owners have direct access to FC and SC, and those sales wouldn't be reflected in Steamspy numbers anyway.
Japan doesn't really have any problem with platform. The entire series is playable on Vita, either original or enhanced ports. And Vita is a natural progression from PSP, so even that platform change isn't really a problem. And PS3 has 5 of the 7 games, only missing the Crossbell arc. It will be interesting to see how CS3 does over there since it is PS4 exclusive, and every prior game was available on PSP/Vita.
Regardless, XSEED's marketing is a big factor across the board. A lot of it is preaching to the choir via social media which doesn't do much to expand their audience.
And SC hasn't been cheap enough for impulse buys to be a factor. There are probably people who will buy it without having played FC, but probably not for more than $10.
I can't check that because you need to have a trophy to check the % of users that got it and I don't have the japanese version of the games but if what you say is true, it would be really weird that many people jumped to sen2 without even finishing the first.
I mean, the way the japanese market works, it's hard to believe that there are a sizable amount of people buying hundreds of games that they may never play. That's something that happens here more often.
My point of view is that it is less SC underperforming and more FC overperforming because of cheap price and good word of mouth from many people that tell everyone to buy the game but then most of them never get to play it as shown by the prologue stats.
SC sales will keep crawling as long as it keep getting on sale and more people finish FC, but its current ltd numbers on steam are probably closer to the real audience these games can achieve in steam than the FC ltd, boosted by those factors. Also they just gave the game on humble monthly so that's a new batch of owners that may never touch the game
CrichtonKicks
Member
I don' t think you can lump those together. Ys is partly being hurt by a lot of existing Ys on the platform that preceded it plus its a lesser game (though still good) than all of those. That being said, they still moved over 50k. There is no way that wasn't insanely profitable for them since the localization had already been done unless they have absolutely horrible licensing terms with Falcom.
Xanadu Next is a whole 'nother problem. That game frankly needed publicity. Even compared to Ys that series is just a total unknown in the west. The OT on Neogaf, which should be far more prone to lap it up than the average buyer, only made it to 17 pages.
So why do you think it underperformed? It can't be because Steam isn't a viable platform when it's that same platform that allowed FC to sell far better than any reasonable expectation.
I think it underperformed because it simply does not meet the perception of value. Fair or not, most people look at it and see an old ass "retro" type game which they would pay 10 dollars for. It launched at a price which was not competitive on the platform, and it had the baggage of being this game which was supposed to have come out years ago. On the other hand FC was cheaper and went on sale quicker, possibly with the intention of hooking people to get SC after they picked up FC, but it really just made the value proposition worse for anyone who wasn't already a fan.
SC sold more initially than FC's total sales at the time, but FC continued selling after SC was released so the total keeps increasing. Which is what I was talking about, even direct sequels are able to bring in new gamers who then went back and played the previous games. Word of mouth keeps growing year on year. This is something that doesn't seem to be happening in the US.
I made this post last year: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=216910924
It's really interesting to see how the Kiseki series blew up. There are many factors there which don't apply to XSEED's release of the series outside of Japan. I think being able to release a new game on PSP almost every year for the entire period of the PSP's best years helped grow mindshare of the series a ton. This is something XSEED totally failed at, with how they handled the time lapse between FC and SC. I mean sure, it's not easy and they tried their best, but there's no question that it hurt the growth of the series significantly.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
Exactly.
I also think a big part of it is that the Steam Marketplace is just flooded with content nowadays. Compared to when games like Ys Origins did their numbers.
Now these Falcom games not only have to compete with the known brands of far bigger publishers occupying their tags, but they're also lost among the noise of a lot of other small games in those same spaces. With almost all of them undercutting SC's "premium" price point.
SC at 29.99 is a hard sell when I can get Disgaea and Tales of Symphonia for 20.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
I think another factor is that the games were able to gradually grow with technology. The games were releasing on current platforms while they were relevan in Japan.. Xseed has always been playing catch up with the series and releasing them, out of order and inconsistently, on platforms in their twilight years.
Obviously not their fault, but it's hard to grow a brand like that. As much as I want Crossbell to happen, honestly it makes the most sense to just build on the momentum of the Cold Steel games(which I believe did pretty well for themselves) and move forward from there now that they have a foothold on current platforms.
CrichtonKicks
Member
Are you talking about on PC? Because the link you provided (Thanks!) shows that FC is still the highest selling title on the series in Japan and had higher LTD sales on PSP even on initial release than SC. But, yeah, it's insanely consistent. Bizarrely so- Ao sold more on release than Zero had LTD. I get Cold Steel blowing up (more modern visual package, high concept, and targeted as a fresh entry point) but Ao doesn't meet any of that criteria.
Not to that extent, obviously. But we are only 15 months out from SC release here so it's a bit premature to compare the series growth to over a decade in Japan. Especially when we don't have Cold Steel numbers.
They are working hard to make up for it (4 series releases in less than two years). That's why I think that's they are localizing 3rd at all- just to keep up mindshare and awareness as much as possible between releases. And it's our best bet to for eventual Zero/Azure localizations- as stop gaps post CS3 release.
I think it would be huge for XSeed if Falcom were to put out PC ports of Cold Steel but who knows if that would happen. PS4 remasters would probably be almost as good and that's probably more likely.
Well that's exactly what XSeed has said they are doing and why they jumped to Cold Steel. But it doesn't mean Crossbell can't happen in the post CS3 gap just like we are getting 3rd now post CS2.
Unfortunately CS3 will probably be the only time for long, long while that a localization will happen on current hardware. I fully expect that whatever Falcom does post CS3 they will stick with PS4 for at least one more game. But by the time that releases we will probably already have PS5 and it will be a CS1/2 situation all over again.
kubricks
Member
I just learn this from your post. God damn it.
I feel so awful now.... Falcom why don't you complete the trilogy on Vita? Putting it on console means I will never play the game, ever. ;(
Nightengale
Member
I feel that the whole "SC is doing well relative to actual completion rate of FC" perspective, while valid, is too defensive to the position of the reality that SC ultimately doesn't have a very strong retention. Or to say, it means that only the hardcore small percentage of completionist actually bought SC.
Or to put it differently, SC has zero appeal to anyone except the ones who finished FC. I would consider that to be worrisome.
Going by historic games completion trends, many gamers fundamentally don't finish games and if that's the case, then sequels are forever doomed to never sell better than 20-30% of what the first game did. But many do, even when they're direct sequels or core to the story. The purity of a story's progression thread from game-to-game... is not as important to many gamers as we would imagine ourselves to be, given that we are core Kiseki fans and deeply invested in the lore.
I'm more in line with duckroll's view that FC's success was buoyant a lot on the value perception of it, the timing of its release, and that it also benefited from the first-mover advantage for the Trails brand during its first release.
Honestly, it's a tough situation to be in. It's hard to think what would be the best way to elevate Trails above this situation.
From a Trails fans perspective, the simple answer is of course, localise 3rd, Zero, Ao in good succession with enough window for all games to breathe, localise CS3 as soon as possible, and try to maximise the benefits of it being the first seemingly high-production value Trails game on par with a Tales game, and hope that a PC ver of CS1/2/3 can happen.
But honestly? Looking at SC's sales, I wonder if that's truly the best choice from a business sense.
Practically speaking, if I had the power to convince Falcom to make one PC port of Cold Steel series happen, I would ask for a PC release of Cold Steel 3, and then put in all the effort possible to sell Cold Steel 3 as a RPG worth paying attention to by your broad JRPG audience on Steam and PS4, and make that game the gateway to the Trails brand by combination of two modern platforms, a product that appears relatively high quality to the JRPG market, and I'll pull the Mass Effect 2/3 thing of "y-y-you can totally jump in with the third game in the series!!!"
Or to put it differently, SC has zero appeal to anyone except the ones who finished FC. I would consider that to be worrisome.
Going by historic games completion trends, many gamers fundamentally don't finish games and if that's the case, then sequels are forever doomed to never sell better than 20-30% of what the first game did. But many do, even when they're direct sequels or core to the story. The purity of a story's progression thread from game-to-game... is not as important to many gamers as we would imagine ourselves to be, given that we are core Kiseki fans and deeply invested in the lore.
I'm more in line with duckroll's view that FC's success was buoyant a lot on the value perception of it, the timing of its release, and that it also benefited from the first-mover advantage for the Trails brand during its first release.
Honestly, it's a tough situation to be in. It's hard to think what would be the best way to elevate Trails above this situation.
From a Trails fans perspective, the simple answer is of course, localise 3rd, Zero, Ao in good succession with enough window for all games to breathe, localise CS3 as soon as possible, and try to maximise the benefits of it being the first seemingly high-production value Trails game on par with a Tales game, and hope that a PC ver of CS1/2/3 can happen.
But honestly? Looking at SC's sales, I wonder if that's truly the best choice from a business sense.
Practically speaking, if I had the power to convince Falcom to make one PC port of Cold Steel series happen, I would ask for a PC release of Cold Steel 3, and then put in all the effort possible to sell Cold Steel 3 as a RPG worth paying attention to by your broad JRPG audience on Steam and PS4, and make that game the gateway to the Trails brand by combination of two modern platforms, a product that appears relatively high quality to the JRPG market, and I'll pull the Mass Effect 2/3 thing of "y-y-you can totally jump in with the third game in the series!!!"
You misunderstand what I'm saying. The numbers there are total sales by the end of the respective years for each title. FC sold less in a year than SC did, but continued to sell after SC was released. For example, FC opened at 14k in the first week of sales, while SC opened at 23k. In the year FC was released on PSP, it only sold 31k total. This also flies in the face of the conventional pattern of games in Japan doing most of their sales near release. It's certainly more true for the games now, since the series has become much more popular and growth has slowed down, but going from a non-starter opening of 14k, to a series that now has a consistent base of >200k is pretty crazy. Especially when there are 7 entries in the series.
What is interesting though, is what we will sell at the end of this year. Will CS3 being a PS4 exclusive herald the first significant decline for Kiseki on home entertainment systems in Japan ever?
Nightengale
Member
What would constitute as significant?
My expectation/hope is that the decline would be within the 15-20% ballpark, which is not a small number, but not that bad either since it's an amount that would be made up quite easily by Taiwan/HK/Korea's sales of a PS4 SKU.
My pipe-dream is of course, for CS3 to be successful pivot for the franchise with its higher production quality, with good marketing to bring in new fans despite being the 3rd game in the series and push it to Tales level sales.
CrichtonKicks
Member
Ah, the opening numbers weren't in your post. I had assumed, in typical Japanese fashion, that most of the numbers for a year were first week sales. I get it now.
And, yeah, the level of consistency in that series is remarkable.
It would be shocking if this wasn't the case. Hopefully the drop isn't too awful awful though.
CS3 just feels like a really precarious place for the series to be. I hope that they have their PS4 production pipeline down well by the end of CS3 and have pre-production done for the next title too. Because the 3 year gap from CS2 to CS3 is already big considering it's not the beginning of a new series. I think it will really hurt them if the next title doesn't come until 2020
A 40-50% drop off would be significant. A 30% drop off would be concerning. Anything less than that would be an impressive hold given the circumstances. I think 15-20% is very optimistic of you.
I don't think Asian releases automatically "make up" for declining Japanese sales though. It's easy to think the numbers just add up like that, but they don't. Firstly we have to assume that there is an investment into localization and distribution in other regions. These aren't the Japanese games being sold in Asia and selling large amounts. These are games released in Chinese and Korean, for those territories. They are also sold for a lower price than they are in Japan. I'm not saying that they are not significant, but it should be viewed as market expansion in emerging markets, rather than a direct substitute for Japanese sales.
Nightengale
Member
I felt the hold from Zero/Ao to Sen was pretty good at the time when numbers for Sen first came out (can't remember what it was off the top of my head) so I'm more optimistic than not.
And I guess in general I look at the Kiseki fanbase as a more core fanbase that would be willing to invest in a new hardware to play the continuation of their 7-game (and counting) journey.
Between PS4 install base increasing over the next 9 months and my blind hope, I'm more optimistic than I am fearful.
And I guess in general I look at the Kiseki fanbase as a more core fanbase that would be willing to invest in a new hardware to play the continuation of their 7-game (and counting) journey.
Between PS4 install base increasing over the next 9 months and my blind hope, I'm more optimistic than I am fearful.
But in general the hold from PSP to Vita for most franchises in Japan were pretty good. It is the PS4 jump where everything falls in the abyss. Which is reason for concern.
Nightengale
Member
Fair enough. I'll keep on hoping until pre-order tracking numbers pop out and kill my soul/reassure my faith in Japanese Kiseki fans.
The short gap between Zero/Ao and CS1/2 is really only made possible by the fact most of the game takes place within the same environments as their first game. In general, taking 3 years for the subsequent huge upgrade/change of setting within the series seems to be the expected trend for Kiseki games.
If there is a Cold Steel 4, I expect that to be 2018 in Japan, but if we're going to Calvard after CS3 then I would expect another 3 years between CS3 and Trails of Calvard. I mean, Falcom would still be plenty busy with Tokyo Xanadu 2 and Ys anyway.
Also, a personal random tales-from-my-arse is that I would not be surprised if Falcom ended up remaking Zero/Ao with CS3 level production quality between Cold Steel and the next Trails installment, since there's a lot of Crossbell assets made already.
The short gap between Zero/Ao and CS1/2 is really only made possible by the fact most of the game takes place within the same environments as their first game. In general, taking 3 years for the subsequent huge upgrade/change of setting within the series seems to be the expected trend for Kiseki games.
If there is a Cold Steel 4, I expect that to be 2018 in Japan, but if we're going to Calvard after CS3 then I would expect another 3 years between CS3 and Trails of Calvard. I mean, Falcom would still be plenty busy with Tokyo Xanadu 2 and Ys anyway.
Also, a personal random tales-from-my-arse is that I would not be surprised if Falcom ended up remaking Zero/Ao with CS3 level production quality between Cold Steel and the next Trails installment, since there's a lot of Crossbell assets made already.
CrichtonKicks
Member
Is Crossbell (the location) referenced at all in FC and SC? It seems weird that I feel like I know a lot about Erebonia and maybe a bit about Calvard but the location of the series that would follow Sora doesn't feel well represented.
Yeah, I'm operating under the assumption that there won't be a CS4. Just feels like a big loss of momentum to be pretty close to annual releases (except 3rd to Zero) and then go potentially 6 years with only one new entry.
Yeah, I'm operating under the assumption that there won't be a CS4. Just feels like a big loss of momentum to be pretty close to annual releases (except 3rd to Zero) and then go potentially 6 years with only one new entry.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
Yes. It's mentioned several times in SC, especially towards the end. The reason it is not mentioned as much as Erebonia and Calvard is because it is a small city state that is rather far from Liberl and borders both Erebonia and Calvard.
LizardKing
Member
Anecdotally I bought tits fc about a year and a half ago on pc based on positive word of mouth for the series. I started playing it about 6-7 months ago and I'm still trying to finish it. Usually it only takes me less than a month to finish this type of game. It has just been so slow, mainly in the combat (but also story, I just entered Zeiss and it seems to be picking up a bit so I'm hopeful).
Before I even started I bought CS on release. Then I bought tits SC during the steam holiday sale. I am forcing myself to get through the fc based on people saying that it builds the series for future games but it's hard to go back to the gameplay and production of most games more than a decade old. It would have probably been better if there was a good starting point with more recent production and gameplay.
Before I even started I bought CS on release. Then I bought tits SC during the steam holiday sale. I am forcing myself to get through the fc based on people saying that it builds the series for future games but it's hard to go back to the gameplay and production of most games more than a decade old. It would have probably been better if there was a good starting point with more recent production and gameplay.
BassForever
Member
Use cheat engine to speed up the combat
LizardKing
Member
Speed up in what way? The animations and movement are my largest complaints. Does it just put everything in fast forward?
CrichtonKicks
Member
Ah, I do vaguely recall that.
Currently in Chapter 6 so not quite to the end yet.
BassForever
Member
Yes thats exactly what it does
Also for the record the cold steel games have animation skip built into them. I think zero/ao do as well?
Holundrian
Unconfirmed Member
Zero only has it for SCraft.
LizardKing
Member
OK cool I'll check it out thanks.
CrichtonKicks
Member
Which has also now been patched into FC and SC thank goodness.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
That would bode well for English releases if it were to happen. I was recently thinking ports similar to the PS3 remasters of the Sky trilogy might not be entirely out of the question, since Zero/Ao are the only games not available on a home console and CS3 seems like it will tie in a lot with them.
I haven't played the Cold Steel games but just from a visual standpoint, I much prefer the visuals/style of the Sky trilogy and Zero/Ao than the Cold Steel games so I'd probably prefer that sort of port over a remake in the current style. But I'm weird and have awful taste so don't mind me.
CertifiedFP
Member
Well, I'm an idiot.
Turns out my brick-wall was that I hadn't bought any new equipment since entering Zeiss.
Story battle that was ploughing me up the arse in ways I didn't think possible suddenly became a cakewalk.
EDIT:
God though, this game is way too fond of the dreaded pre-2010's "Heads I Win; Tails You Lose" JRPG trope.
Turns out my brick-wall was that I hadn't bought any new equipment since entering Zeiss.
Story battle that was ploughing me up the arse in ways I didn't think possible suddenly became a cakewalk.
EDIT:
God though, this game is way too fond of the dreaded pre-2010's "Heads I Win; Tails You Lose" JRPG trope.
FeelTheKick
Member
I did that as soon as I got to the final chapter in CS. Thanks for the tip though ^^
Man, when you get around to playing Cold Steel...!
ShadowSoldier89
Member
ugggh....for real though
CS is so much worse about it too. Also I didnt know the trope term given to it. Thats a good one to know.