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The Kiseki / Trails (of the Sky/Zero/Ao/Sen/Etc) Community Thread: SPOILERTAGS OR DIE

I disagree completely. If the game gives me broken options, it's the game's fault because it's badly designed. It shouldn't be up to the player to balance the game. I mean if you want to do that and enjoy doing that, sure, go for it. I've done SL1 runs in Dark Souls, I've tried (though never bothered finishing) 0-deaths runs in Shining Force 2, and so on. But, that's only after having played and replayed those games to the point of mastery. The core game is still fairly well balanced so that a first playthrough is at least moderately challening.

Right now, it's mildly amusing to beat an end-of-chapter boss unscathed and in 2 rounds, but it doesn't make for very rewarding gameplay, and saying "well then don't use 200 CP S-crafts" is a pretty lame excuse.

It's the way RPGs are balanced now outside of KS-backed CRPGs and a few console blobbers. People got comfy with a lack of restrictions...felt it to be the standard, expected, even. So we get the wide swing power struggles as an OP boss or two temporarily thwarts our OP heroes with alarming speed until said OP heroes make an adjustment in game after game.

I do like how the canonical Trails badasses tend to be those though. Its a good touch they've kept.
 
The thing about Cold Steel, as others have alluded to, is that its combat is balanced such that either you kill bosses very fast with S-crafts and other overpowered attacks or you're going to be really struggling to pull out a victory. I can't say I enjoy that kind of design that harshly penalizes you if you aren't constantly breaking the game.
 

omgfloofy

Banned
Confirms Ys VIII PS4 and Sen III for 2017
It was known before, but this should be as official as it gets

There was something else in the report that I saw while translating it that got me just as hyped.

Along with this information, Falcom has also announced three major plans for the 9/2016 ~ 9/2017 period.

* The Kiseki series, with its breakthrough release of Sen no Kiseki and Sen no Kiseki II will see the release of its next title, Sen no Kiseki III
* The highly anticipated PS4 release of Ys VIII -The Lacrimosa of Dana- will occur.
* There will be an initiative for multiple releases, not only domestically, but for North America, Europe, and Asia, and Falcom will be participating in the development for various platforms, and smartphone titles to provide a more proactive stance with their contents.

(Emphasis is mine for here.)
 

omgfloofy

Banned
How likely is it that "various platforms" includes PC? Or are they just using that to cover PS3/Vita/PS4?

I have no clue. If it's for PC, it will very likely not be developed by Falcom. But as Ys Origin and Tokyo Xanadu are showing us, they have no problems with handing porting duties to someone else.
 

Thoraxes

Member
How likely is it that "various platforms" includes PC? Or are they just using that to cover PS3/Vita/PS4?

Ys VIII on something like Switch would be killer for my gaming habits. I double-dip on all their stuff for cross-play as is, even though I think the likelihood of that happening is non-existent.
 

omgfloofy

Banned
I do have a particular idea about what may happen, regarding that third point. But I'd like to wait until the shareholder meeting until I really start talking about it, because I could be very, very off on it.

We may know some stuff a little bit early, thanks to leaks- because the shareholder meeting is happening on the same week Dengeki PS releases. If Falcom's given that info for them to reveal, we'll get an article on it as well. This may explain the timing of the meeting- in the past they've met on Thursday, but this time, it's on Tuesday afternoon (Japan time, of course)

But I also think that people at Falcom are aware of this happening, so there may be something reserved specifically for the meeting, and the meeting only. So we'll see. I actually have an odd feeling that Ys VIII and Sen III might not be the only things talked about. But as a reminder, I could be very off.
 

Knurek

Member
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but any of you have the PC version of Zero and Ao?
Could you see if there is a file called bgmtbl there (maybe bgmtbl.dat or bgmtbl.txt)?
It's a text file with song loop point values Falcom seem to use - I've seen it included in all of their PSP releases.
I can use the data from there to generate custom loop points for their music, but unfortunately, the files they included in Ao and Zero seem to be compressed.
Maybe the PC version have them in plaintext.
Anyone can help here? I'd appreciate it greatly.
 
There was something else in the report that I saw while translating it that got me just as hyped.

(Emphasis is mine for here.)

I would not be surprised if there's quite a bit more hustle to get Sen III out in English in a much quicker timeframe than even the previous Sen games were. The games seem to have been successful releases, so I imagine some of the resources are there.

(Now, where does that leave Crossbell, well... :( )
 

IvorB

Member
Yeah I really regret picking Normal. Usually in RPGs it just means "grindy" but in this case, it'd probably mean optimizing your gear, orbment loadout, CP use, etc. The
Nosferatu
battle (ch.5) actually had me optimizing my strategies and having to think about my moves and I was in real danger, but other than maybe ONE boss where I wasted all my S-crafts in the previous battle (which wasn't the real boss, but preceded it -- I didn't get caught by that again haha) and struggled a bit against the real boss (the one vs the two big-ass dogs, I think end-boss of ch. 2?) but still didn't die, I haven't been in any danger during combat at all. It's kind of boring...

As for why people said that, I don't know. There was this post, among others, on the last page:


Can't say why they'd say this. I'll definitely play CS2 on Hard unless there's a strong reason not to do that.
I might still play 3rd on Normal, though, since TitS seemed a bit more balanced? It wasn't overly hard but several bosses were legit challenging at least and S-crafts, while strong, didn't repeatedly turn the tide as ridiculously as in CS. Unless 3rd follows the same trends as CS instead of earlier TitS games and is also brain-dead easy...

Hard is in a decent place. General enemies in the field are not that difficult but monster chests and bigger, dangerous enemies do a fair amount of damage so you do have to think about what you're doing. It's still rare to wipe outside a boss battle but I do get the "you're about to wipe" music a couple of times. Having said that the last two bosses were a crazy difficulty spike so I don't know if that trend continues. Also I don't use any analyse skills 'cause I hate that stuff.
 

omgfloofy

Banned
I would not be surprised if there's quite a bit more hustle to get Sen III out in English in a much quicker timeframe than even the previous Sen games were. The games seem to have been successful releases, so I imagine some of the resources are there.

(Now, where does that leave Crossbell, well... :( )

I think that would actually be an unfortunate situation if that's the route they took, because I think Sen III is going to be definitely starting to continue that ending from Ao, too.

I have other ideas than simply that. And I also have a feeling that Falcom will still be extremely stingy on letting anyone have access to the script until the game is out, anyway.

EDIT:
Additional note, if Sen III is released at the end of the fiscal year (which it is predicted to be, I expect the last Thurs of September), then its localization won't be part of the third goal of the next year.
 
Hidden somewhere inside Sen III as an eater egg will be a trailer that ends with the following words:

CROSSBELL SAGA
REMAKE

As buffer games using Crossbell assets built for Sen III while they spend the next 3-4 years labouring on Ys V REMAKE, Tokyo Xanadu 2 and Trails in Calvard
 

omgfloofy

Banned
Hidden somewhere inside Sen III as an eater egg will be a trailer that ends with the following words:

CROSSBELL SAGA
REMAKE

What cracks me up with this, is that they've pulled something like this before.

This was at the end of a 'special edition' trailer for Ys VI, but it was advertising the release of the Songs of Zemeth vocal album. Those who preordered the album got a special disc of game trailers, and included in them was the Oath in Felghana trailer- which was the reveal of it coming out (in like a few months, even).

The trailer for the Songs of Zemeth was released a week before the album came out, and at the very end of it, they flat out teased Felghana ('Felghana no Chikai' in gray behind the 'And then, in 2005...') this way.
IFh9405.jpg
 

Slashlen

Member
I'd love to see Crossbell, but I feel like we're just as likely to see: "We have to split it into 2 games again. Sen no Kiseki 3 will focus on eastern Erebonia and 4 will focus on western Erebonia."
 

Psxphile

Member
The existence of the Evolution series kinda kills any chance of full remakes of previous titles, no? Maybe after the VITA passes into the ether, they'll consider it.

For mobile.
 

Psxphile

Member
I'd kinda just like to experience the originals. I don't really want to see them adapted in CS style.

Same. And the PSP games cleaned up real nice when they were ported to PC:

This is the closest direct comparison I could find. The jpg compression in the PSP pic is pretty bad though:


Cv7PR.jpg


VBYja.jpg



Edit: Another comparison. I made the PSP image from a Youtube video, so it's kinda bad...


GUp8a.jpg


4voKr.jpg

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=425476
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
CS1 ch. 6 practical exam.... lol

"We finally beat her!" "She's as strong as they say!"


Poor Sara didn't even have time to do a single thing. S-craft, S-craft, S-craft... boom
 
CS1 ch. 6 practical exam.... lol

"We finally beat her!" "She's as strong as they say!"


Poor Sara didn't even have time to do a single thing. S-craft, S-craft, S-craft... boom

Trails in the Sky was good at avoiding this ludonarrative dissonance problem by making the really strong enemies really tough to defeat, but here... oops.
 
The shareholders meeting is coming up. Sen III is already confirmed for next year, but this will probably be the first footage we see of it.

Edit: Oh is that link for the musical?

Yeah, this looks like a talk event with the cast of the Kiseki musical. Nothing to see here for Western fans of the games.
 

omgfloofy

Banned
I'll be livetweeting the event, like I usually do, if people are interested. It seems like it's going to be a talkshow event with cast members from the musical, but who knows what else may happen during it.

Namaotoko ch doesn't appear to allow a timeshift/save of the video, as well.

It'll all be here: @EndlessHistory
 

Sarek

Member
This wasn't originally under spoiler tags: Kondo already stated that Sen III will provide the first hints regarding the Grandmaster, which will undoubtedly include information regarding Ouroboros' purpose(s).

Would be cool if people spoiler tagged shit like that. I'm only in SC and now I already know the
Ouroboros' plotline won't be finished in SC, or any Trails game for that matter.
.
 

Holundrian

Unconfirmed Member
So quick question about stigma.
Has the series revealed the nature of that yet?
Is there any relation between the stigma of the dominion and the powers of Rean and McBurn? If is there a key difference known yet?
 

omgfloofy

Banned
So quick question about stigma.
Has the series revealed the nature of that yet?
Is there any relation between the stigma of the dominion and the powers of Rean and McBurn? If is there a key difference known yet?

To this day, the most that's learned about that comes from 3rd.
 
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