Yeah, it is pretty slow. The first half of most of the chapters gave me that urge to quit playing and do something else. It was totally worth it for chapter 4 though. Tons of fun.
Seeing this thread makes me sad that the US will probably never get SC. :\
in my party in ch.4 and they're lvl.30 & 33 respectively. I'm level...23. I've been avoiding normal battles most of the game because I find them really slow & a bit boring though I love the battle system for quest/boss battles. I just want to know if I'm going to get in trouble toward the final bosses of this game if I don't start grinding some levels?
Also ch.4 was a little slow again at first. I think it's because when I get to a new city I need to go talk to every npc, shop at every shop and explore it all and the city is pretty big! So spent a while just wandering around and the first few events were a bit slow. But
now that everyone is together and we're off to ARENA BATTLE
in my party in ch.4 and they're lvl.30 & 33 respectively. I'm level...23. I've been avoiding normal battles most of the game because I find them really slow & a bit boring though I love the battle system for quest/boss battles. I just want to know if I'm going to get in trouble toward the final bosses of this game if I don't start grinding some levels?
Also ch.4 was a little slow again at first. I think it's because when I get to a new city I need to go talk to every npc, shop at every shop and explore it all and the city is pretty big! So spent a while just wandering around and the first few events were a bit slow. But
now that everyone is together and we're off to ARENA BATTLE
Possibly. I personally fought a lot so I'm not sure how hard the game would be if I had that low a level, all I know there were some nasty boss fights that had enemies which were superfast & dealt a whole lot of damage, so they could turn out to be a bit problematic for you. Though, don't worry, the sewers that you can/have to go to are a great place to get levels fast, so if the battles seem a bit hard, you can just grind there for a while. Given your low levels, it shouldn't take long to go up a few levels there.
The party members coming back were constantly higher level than me, but not to the point of it being a problem. You'll have plenty of chances to grind exp. though (the game even kinda tells you to at a couple points).
Possibly. I personally fought a lot so I'm not sure how hard the game would be if I had that low a level, all I know there were some nasty boss fights that had enemies which were superfast & dealt a whole lot of damage, so they could turn out to be a bit problematic for you. Though, don't worry, the sewers that you can/have to go to are a great place to get levels fast, so if the battles seem a bit hard, you can just grind there for a while. Given your low levels, it shouldn't take long to go up a few levels there.
Yeah, one of the reasons I was asking is the game has always seemed a bit damage skewed with my party. It's not too hard and the battles are all winnable but like Joshua can get hit by a normal enemy for 500-600 damage and his max HP is ~1000, so I have to play a bit carefully.
The party members coming back were constantly higher level than me, but not to the point of it being a problem. You'll have plenty of chances to grind exp. though (the game even kinda tells you to at a couple points).
Yeah, the part I'm at now before the arena they literally say, "You might want to go to the shop to buy better equipment OR GO FIGHT SOME ENEMIES AND LEVEL UP before going to the arena fight". So maybe I should gain some levels.
Yeah, one of the reasons I was asking is the game has always seemed a bit damage skewed with my party. It's not too hard and the battles are all winnable but like Joshua can get hit by a normal enemy for 500-600 damage and his max HP is ~1000, so I have to play a bit carefully.
Yeah, the part I'm at now before the arena they literally say, "You might want to go to the shop to buy better equipment OR GO FIGHT SOME ENEMIES AND LEVEL UP before going to the arena fight". So maybe I should gain some levels.
I might be mistaken, but I do think they come back at higher levels (unless you grind like crazy). If you are underleveled it should only be by a level or so tops. The game also makes that suggestion before each round at the arena (and it's good advice since each round gets tougher).
Plus you can get further through the sewer area there each time, I think.
I just picked this up a week or so ago and I've played through the first few hours. The game seems great so far, very charming and the battle system seems fun. Is there any crucial information I should know starting out? How important are the Bracer side-quests? Some of the ones I've tried seem kind of vague in terms of where to go or who to talk to.
Also, the song that plays during battles is incredible.
I just picked this up a week or so ago and I've played through the first few hours. The game seems great so far, very charming and the battle system seems fun. Is there any crucial information I should know starting out? How important are the Bracer side-quests? Some of the ones I've tried seem kind of vague in terms of where to go or who to talk to.
Also, the song that plays during battles is incredible.
I didn't like the soundtrack much, but from what little I've heard it improves with each game (including those we have no chance to see in English).
I wouldn't bother trying to do all the side quests for max BP on your first go, or trying to get all the chapters of the in-game book. Both are pretty difficult to do and it's extremely easy to miss something. For reference, the reward for max BP is an item at the beginning of Trails SC, and the reward for all the book chapters is a choice between Estelle and Joshua's best weapons.
Still, doing side quest from the guild is your primarily method of collecting money, with the only other method being selling the sepith you collect from battles. But you'll want to use those for your orbment. So do them as long as you're interested, but don't bother going out of your way to do them all. At least on a first run through the game.
Newb question: there are lots of "Trails" games; what's the best way to get started? Trails in the Sky is available in English, but I've also seen Japanese originals of what look like Trails of "Blue" and "Zero" and then other versions with letters appended to the ends of the titles.
What's a good way for someone who knows nothing of the series to get into it without being spoiled? Which game should be played first?
Newb question: there are lots of "Trails" games; what's the best way to get started? Trails in the Sky is available in English, but I've also seen Japanese originals of what look like Trails of "Blue" and "Zero" and then other versions with letters appended to the ends of the titles.
What's a good way for someone who knows nothing of the series to get into it without being spoiled? Which game should be played first?
Trails in the Sky FC (this game) -> Trails in the Sky SC -> Trails in the Sky 3rd
Only the first game is available in English, the other two are announced but their statuses are kind of questionable right now due to sales of the first game.
FC and SC are basically one story across two games, but FC at least still stands alone okay and has some closure despite leading directly into SC with it's ending. 3rd is more of a side story, but it's still important for further games in the series.
Then "Trails of Zero" -> "Trails of Blue," but neither have an official translated title, nor are there any plans for localization right now. And I wouldn't get your hopes up for anything in the future either, unfortunately.
I didn't like the soundtrack much, but from what little I've heard it improves with each game (including those we have no chance to see in English).
I wouldn't bother trying to do all the side quests for max BP on your first go, or trying to get all the chapters of the in-game book. Both are pretty difficult to do and it's extremely easy to miss something. For reference, the reward for max BP is an item at the beginning of Trails SC, and the reward for all the book chapters is a choice between Estelle and Joshua's best weapons.
Still, doing side quest from the guild is your primarily method of collecting money, with the only other method being selling the sepith you collect from battles. But you'll want to use those for your orbment. So do them as long as you're interested, but don't bother going out of your way to do them all. At least on a first run through the game.
Awesome, thanks a lot for the help. It's interesting how you don't accrue money from enemy encounters. It's a refreshing touch and it makes sense from a story perspective.
How likely is it that the Zero no Kiseki full-voice version on Vita rumor is true?
Ao no Kiseki LE is getting pretty cheap, but if they're going to release the entire Zero/Ao/??? series with full voice I don't want to have to double dip on Zero AND Ao.
How likely is it that the Zero no Kiseki full-voice version on Vita rumor is true?
Ao no Kiseki LE is getting pretty cheap, but if they're going to release the entire Zero/Ao/??? series with full voice I don't want to have to double dip on Zero AND Ao.
Ok, I bet that's why Ao no Kiseki is price dropping in Japan. Everyone who hasn't bought it yet is going to wait for the full-voice release.
I'm guessing whenever they do a 3rd game in the Zero/Ao series it'll be full-voice from the start. Otherwise no one is going to buy it day 1 with the prospect of a full-voice version of the trilogy looming.
Hope Ao no Kiseki full voice isn't release too long after Zero. Want to play those games back to back when I get to them (which will still be a while with SC & 3rd to play).
I saw that this was a contender for RPG of the year alongside Witcher 2 and Dark Souls - pretty heavy stuff, so I'm buying this game today Pretty excited for an RPG that I know nothing about other than it's got great reviews.
For what it's worth, Zero FVE isn't by Falcom and its potential quality is unknown at this time. The PC port of Zero turned out poorly so I'm apprehensive.
I saw that this was a contender for RPG of the year alongside Witcher 2 and Dark Souls - pretty heavy stuff, so I'm buying this game today Pretty excited for an RPG that I know nothing about other than it's got great reviews.
For what it's worth, Zero FVE isn't by Falcom and its potential quality is unknown at this time. The PC port of Zero turned out poorly so I'm apprehensive.
That's unfortunate, it was probably the only chance the game ever had at making it to the west. Oh well, I guess it's the difference between practically nonexistent and actually nonexistent.
For what it's worth, Zero FVE isn't by Falcom and its potential quality is unknown at this time. The PC port of Zero turned out poorly so I'm apprehensive.
Why aren't they doing it in-house? How hard is it to just add voices to event scenes? It's not like there's any facial animation. If the port isn't 100% perfect and polished on Vita, I'm just going to play the original non-voice version :X PS. What was wrong with Zero PC?
I don't mind that the series is non-voice as you can imagine how the characters sound in your head, but I do feel it would have more emotion personally if the games were full voice like Tales games (with a good Japanese dub). Like in FC, a lot of the
romance stuff with Estelle/Joshua
would have stronger emotion with voices imo. And Agatt's cool dialogue as well.
Personal tastes and all; I know a lot of people prefer text. Voice also helps me since I'm playing in Japanese which isn't my native language.
I've always figured the reason Falcom didn't use voice in their games was because they were working with lower budgets. But now that the Kiseki series is a big seller, I think, like Persona franchise, they should be able to do full-voiced event scenes these days.
Well, the voice overs COULD become a problem for localization. Though I'm hoping the Vita port IS good because despite that it's the only reasonable shot we'll have at getting the Zero series of games.
Thanks for the advice, krYlon and Chaosblade. I've already ordered Trails in the Sky in English (from Amazon, at a fantastic price; $14.99 I think) so I'll tackle that first. I didn't think I still liked this anime-like JRPG style anymore, but this game get such rave reviews from GAF that at that price you almost have to give it a shot.
Well, the voice overs COULD become a problem for localization. Though I'm hoping the Vita port IS good because despite that it's the only reasonable shot we'll have at getting the Zero series of games.
Thanks for the advice, krYlon and Chaosblade. I've already ordered Trails in the Sky in English (from Amazon, at a fantastic price; $14.99 I think) so I'll tackle that first. I didn't think I still liked this anime-like JRPG style anymore, but this game get such rave reviews from GAF that at that price you almost have to give it a shot.
Taste wise, I'm kinda in the same boat, but I'm absolutely loving this game in spite of the inane story and dialogue (at least in the first chapter--I hear it gets better). The game itself is absurdly addicting and fun to play. I wish I had more time for it.
the arena battles & sewer dungeon. Olivier makes this chapter so much better than the last few. Best character in the game. Gained levels reaaaaally fast in the sewers. Went from 23-30.
Around 37 hours now. Guessing I'm headed for the finale?
Combat in this game is so much more fun when you have 4 person parties. I think the lack of that for most of the game is what makes the normal enemies battles kind of boring.
Sat down tonight at 37 hours after the arena thinking I was at the end and would finish it up by 40 hours. SEVEN HOURS LATER I clear it at 44 hours and will now be sleep deprived tomorrow
Chapter 4 was REALLY LONG Especially since it didn't even have sidequests to take up half your time! I didn't expect it to be longer than the other chapters, but man, lot of reading and umm, more reading, and then a long final dungeon. I didn't even fully explore the final dungeon, just ran through it once I got the weapons for the party I was using (used Klose and Zin).
Thought it wrapped it up pretty well for being part 1...then the cliffhanger stuff made me think otherwise. They better release the rest of the games in the US or that's just mean with that ending.
Anyhow, things I liked about chapter 4 and the game in general:
+Battle system is pretty cool. It's got a lot of nice similarities to Grandia with position and turn queue being important. I like how you can strategical build up and manage your CP to take advantage of critical and strength up turns. Has solid buffs/debuffs and some good status effects (I accidently poisoned
the lying fox lady in the final fight with her and she killed her self doing 800+ damage per turn. It was awesome, haha
). I still think the downside of the battle system is that it's kind of slow, which makes normal enemy encounters feel slowish and dull compared to other faster rpgs. That being said, thanks to the awesome accessories that let you avoid normal enemies and the fact you can pretty much skip all normal enemies in the game and just fight treasure monsters, quest monsters, and story bosses and gain your levels there, it's not too big of a deal. It's only when they force you to fight a bunch of encounters in a row that you feel the drag (when you're
raiding the mansion to save the princess and everytime you check out a room and leave you have MANDATORY FIGHT...if you're ocd in rpgs about checking every room in an area...that took fucking forever and really sucked!
).
+Characters were good. They did a good job for most of the game at straying from cliches and tropes and having a cast that felt like actual people and not just generic anime stereotypes. That being said, the game got reaaaaaaaaaally generic stereotypical in the cliffhanger (
the trope of the relationship and right when the confession comes, the guy meets EVIL BADGUY who messes with his mind and screws it all up is straight out of like every other shoujo manga from the 90s. I think they even did that in several of Yuu Watase's stories like Fushigi Yuugi or Ayashi no Ceres. Soooo generic. And then Wiseman was total Aizen-type lamo badguy.
) so I'm slightly worried that SC will start becoming dumber and more generic flashy anime writing. Hope not!
+The world building was good. Liked the map and exploring out the locations. I liked how there were locations you could visit that weren't even really used in this game.
+The cooking system was quite nice. Reminded me of the better Tales cooking systems.
+Orbment system is good, but needs better guidelines to getting the spells you want. And since you tend to want certain orbs on certain character types (atk on melee characters, s.atk, hp, spell time shortening on magic users) you don't have as much room for making your spell list as I'd like. Next game I think maybe I'll just get a list of all the possible spells you can make and go off that when equipping orbs. *edit* Just noticed in the OP here it says all the possible artes are listed in the notebook. Whoops. I thought the notebook was just the quest log.
+Pretty lengthy for being just the first chapter. I missed a few sidequests, didn't explore the final dungeon, and pretty much ran through the game as quick as I could and it still took 44 hours. Can see why it's 50+ for some people. Everyone says way more stuff happens in SC and it's 2 UMDs, so does that mean it's an even longer length game? Or do they just replace all the downtime and questing with actual story progession so the lengths are about the same?
Things I didn't like:
-Music was weak. By the end it was the same 5-10 songs over and over for all areas and events and none were particularly great. Seemed really phoned in. Had one or two good tracks, but yeah I hope the music improves in SC.
-Dungeon design. I don't know if it's because of the camera angle, the small segments with loading between them, or the lack of a map, or that EVERY ROOM LOOKS THE SAME, but the dungeons where you couldn't use your map were that bad kind of old-school low-budget maze-y where you go left/right/left/right/up/down and it's just the same room over and over until you figure out the right way and you better not lose your sense of direction while doing it! When I hear that The 3rd is more of a dungeon crawler...this kind of worries me. It was not so bad here since there just aren't a whole lot of big dungeons in this game, but I certainly hope by the 3rd game in this series they do something about the dungeon design. Grandia Xtreme worked as a dungeon crawler because the dungeons were actually fun and the camera let you see where you were going. I think I really disliked the camera angle in this game which was a big part of it. It's zoomed in too close and you can't see much. I wish it was more of a real 3/4th isometric view.
-Pacing was kind of slow. Even when it was good (ie, chapter 4), having 60 mins go by without a single battle was not bad or boring or anything, but...slowly paced. Maybe it's because I tend to play at night after work but the game was often very tiring and made me want to sleep. Which is why it took me a few months to get through it. I wouldn't mind if the future games pick up the pace a bit. In Tales games, no matter how improbable the situation, they'll find a way to throw a battle in every 10-15 mins just to kind of shake it up a bit and grab your attention. I like that thought.
-Small peeve in chapter 4
they need to freaking indicate a boss fight you're supposed to lose A LITTLE BETTER. When I was fighting masked guy with the queen I kept resetting whenever the fight got really bad because I didn't want to wait for him to kill the rest of the team so I could retry. I'd just reset when it got past the point of winning and skipping through the dialogue and try again. I did really well a few times and it seemed like I could probably beat him (I'm guessing you can). I actually thought that fight was the final boss of the game when I got to it so I just assumed there was a difficulty spike. Then finally I got curious if I was supposed to lose the battle and let him kill my cast and the story continued and I was kind of pissed off at all the time I wasted thinking I had to beat him. I hate when games don't signal fights you are supposed to lose well; those kind of fights the boss should basically 1 hit kill all your characters.
-Another personal small peeve was the final boss was a littttttle annoying.
He wasn't bad, and I was probably underleveled, but the first time I fought him he wiped the entire party on a genocide attack when he had like <1000hp left :\ I didn't have time to heal before he let it off and my max HPs were pretty low in general :\ Not a fan of big all party wipe attacks like that at the end of long battles after many forms. This is only the first final boss of the series! He should be an entry level final boss At least there was a retry option. The game actually froze for like 3-4 seconds (only time it ever did that) during that fight and I got reaaaaaally nervous because I didn't want to have to redo all the final boss rush fights again from the final save point; luckily it resumed after those 3-4 seconds.
So yeah, overall it was a fun old-school rpg. The battle system was great, the writing and characters were a nice change from most rpgs, and it was a lengthy adventure. Just wish the music and dungeon design was better really. I'd give it around a B. Good start for SnK.
For those who've played SC, what carries over from your clear save? My clear save is lvl.35 and I gotta a lot of money and items and equipment I'd like to bring over. Especially the orbments since the good ones are expensive to make!
they need to freaking indicate a boss fight you're supposed to lose A LITTLE BETTER. When I was fighting masked guy with the queen I kept resetting whenever the fight got really bad because I didn't want to wait for him to kill the rest of the team so I could retry. I'd just reset when it got past the point of winning and skipping through the dialogue and try again. I did really well a few times and it seemed like I could probably beat him (I'm guessing you can). I actually thought that fight was the final boss of the game when I got to it so I just assumed there was a difficulty spike. Then finally I got curious if I was supposed to lose the battle and let him kill my cast and the story continued and I was kind of pissed off at all the time I wasted thinking I had to beat him. I hate when games don't signal fights you are supposed to lose well; those kind of fights the boss should basically 1 hit kill all your characters.
you can win that battle but the outcome isn't too different. It's supposed to be extremely hard though. Winning it is required to obtain max BP (368?) and get the bonus item in SC.
Haven't played SC since I don't know Japanese, but I'm pretty sure the music gets better as the series progresses.
you can win that battle but the outcome isn't too different. It's supposed to be extremely hard though. Winning it is required to obtain max BP (368?) and get the bonus item in SC.
Haven't played SC since I don't know Japanese, but I'm pretty sure the music gets better as the series progresses.
yeah, I figured you could since I got really close a few times. But to beat it I would have had to go buy some accessories so my people would stop getting confused and magic sealed and that would've meant doing the entire dungeon again and skipping through all the dialogue, which wasn't worth the time for me. He wasn't too bad outside the spamming status effects on your party. If you have 3 active people, you can usually interrupt his earth guard or do 2 hits quick to kill it and if you save up s-breaks you can do enough damage at once to offset his 2000hp healing if you don't have time to interrupt it (his turn queue is reaaaally fast, which made it impossible to stop his spells at times for my party).
For those who've played SC, what carries over from your clear save? My clear save is lvl.35 and I gotta a lot of money and items and equipment I'd like to bring over. Especially the orbments since the good ones are expensive to make!
It's been a while since I played, but nothing gets carried over in the traditional sense. I guess it's to stop the beginning of SC being too easy.
From memory...
* Depending on your overall Bracer rank, you get a special item near the beginning of SC. Nothing essential, but handy during the earlygame.
* You carry over the contents of the Junior Bracer's handbook, for reminiscing or reference purposes.
* Event flags in certain FC quests are carried over, which affect dialogue slightly.
they need to freaking indicate a boss fight you're supposed to lose A LITTLE BETTER. When I was fighting masked guy with the queen I kept resetting whenever the fight got really bad because I didn't want to wait for him to kill the rest of the team so I could retry. I'd just reset when it got past the point of winning and skipping through the dialogue and try again. I did really well a few times and it seemed like I could probably beat him (I'm guessing you can). I actually thought that fight was the final boss of the game when I got to it so I just assumed there was a difficulty spike. Then finally I got curious if I was supposed to lose the battle and let him kill my cast and the story continued and I was kind of pissed off at all the time I wasted thinking I had to beat him. I hate when games don't signal fights you are supposed to lose well; those kind of fights the boss should basically 1 hit kill all your characters.
Like the guy said above, that's kinda mandatory for a POSSIBLY winnable fight. And yes, I did max out my supermeters on those 3 trying to wreck him fast.
haha
I disagree with the orbment thing, if only for it providing ways to beef up casters in a genre where min-maxing often leaves them with little +HP.
I've been playing through this game for the past couple of weeks, and I'm loving it so far. I just finished up Chapter 2 last night, and I've gotten started in Chapter 3. The story and characters are both grabbing me, and the world is pretty well fleshed out. The final couple of hours of Chapter 2 was just an amazing string of events, with some pretty big plot twists.
It's pretty straightforward. If you want to make sure you don't miss anything, do the sidequests before you continue on with the main story. The in-game tutorial and help pages are also very helpful for explaining the magic system.
What kind of "announcement" are you looking for? It's probably going to be a long time before we hear anything one way or another, but they are working on the game (even if it's not a priority project for XSEED). Or at least have their contract translators working on it.
Only thing I wish is that the screen was zoomed in some more... the sprites are a bit too tiny on the PSP screen. I spent $4k on lasik don't want to have to go back and get it again
Other than that this game is awesome so far. Estelle is awesome!
I love some of her facial expressions, especially the one where she gets embarrassed about her "romantic" feelings.
One thing that I haven't heard much praise about is how good the character portraits are at conveying the feelings and moods of the characters (and at adding charm and humour).
I love some of her facial expressions, especially the one where she gets embarrassed about her "romantic" feelings.
One thing that I haven't heard much praise about is how good the character portraits are at conveying the feelings and moods of the characters (and at adding charm and humour).
