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[shiroryu]

Character conversation portraits are high res for me but everything else isn't. If they're going to update the rest maybe I'll put this on hold and rock my face with MGR so that I'll need something calm.

BD didn't have much of a plot, but the real killer was the aaawwwfffuuulll conversations. If the characters in this are cool then it's all good.

For reference, I liked Ys Oath, Lunar:SSSC, and DQ8, so I can do leisurely story if the characters are charming enough.

It's basically a coming-of-age story. There is an overarching plot that ties it together, but the game balances both low-intensity sidequesty stuff and the plot quests. In sheer volume, the sidequests are longer but technically optional (though they'll help you a lot in navigating the main story battles).

But yes, compared to the average JRPG, it's "slow". To me, though, the slowness helps because when the plot starts to develop in bits and pieces, it actually has impact, and you're thirsty for more. Contrast with the "typical" JRPG that may have the protagonist's village in flames and the antagonists established by the end of the prologue.

There's also an interesting touch that as you advance the main quest bit by bit, the NPCs in the towns will actually react to incidents, and proceed along their lives. As a result it's hard to shake the OCD of finishing a minor bit of the main quest, then talking to people to see their reactions and what's changed.

 

[Basileus777]

Character conversation portraits are high res for me but everything else isn't. If they're going to update the rest maybe I'll put this on hold and rock my face with MGR so that I'll need something calm.

BD didn't have much of a plot, but the real killer was the aaawwwfffuuulll conversations. If the characters in this are cool then it's all good.

For reference, I liked Ys Oath, Lunar:SSSC, and DQ8, so I can do leisurely story if the characters are charming enough.

The characterization and writing in this are much better than the trash in Bravely Default. It's slow paced and verbose, but characters are handled well.

 

[Finalow]

as usual Falcom delivers with the ost, really good.

if I don't complete all the sidequests and I don't get all the BPs, do I miss something important or just exp/mira/items?

 

[chaosblade]

as usual Falcom delivers with the ost, really good.

if I don't complete all the sidequests and I don't get all the BPs, do I miss something important or just exp/mira/items?

You missed the super secret ending that ties in with the main plot in SC!

(No, you didn't miss anything too important, apparently max BP just gets you a sepith up quartz in SC)

 

[Finalow]

You missed the super secret ending that ties in with the main plot in SC!

(No, you didn't miss anything too important, apparently max BP just gets you a sepith up quartz in SC)

I see, I won't bother to complete all of them then.

 

[creid]

Wow, you guys weren't kidding about that ending. It surpassed my high expectations. I took about a zillion screenshots so hopefully I can refresh my memory pretty thoroughly when SC rolls around.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

I really want to play the second title :'''(

Spoiler

I need to know if Joshua and Estelle meet up again

 

[Ingueferroque]

Sorry, now that the PC version is out.. is there any reason the Vita/PSP release is no longer recommended at this point?

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

I really want to play the second title :'''(

Spoiler

I need to know if Joshua and Estelle meet up again

Spoiler

Trails in the Sky SC |OT|: The Thirst is Quenched

 

[Admiral Woofington]

Spoiler

Trails in the Sky SC |OT|: The Thirst is Quenched

 

[Eusis]

I really want to play the second title :'''(

Spoiler

I need to know if Joshua and Estelle meet up again

Uhhh,

Spoiler

covers for Kiseki stuff kind of give that one away, hahaha.

Personally

Spoiler

I'm more concerned about certain characters surviving for the same reason. And just knowing later entries get darker.

 

[Dragon1893]

Sorry, now that the PC version is out.. is there any reason the Vita/PSP release is no longer recommended at this point?

They have the advantage of being on a portable, otherwise this PC version is the definitive version.
If portability is a huge factor this version shouldn't stop you from playing it on PSP/Vita but you'll be missing out on improved visuals and some fixes they made to the script.

 

[BassForever]

Finally got a chance to play again, hd assets look weird and weren't all loading correctly so I turned them off, game is beautiful enough as is

 

[Psxphile]

Finally got a chance to play again, hd assets look weird and weren't all loading correctly so I turned them off, game is beautiful enough as is

You mean how the Sepith/Quartz icon at the bottom of a line-up in menus are still cut off? Or something else? And where?

Huh. I guess there was a new update recently. Right off the bat I noticed the graphics in the Inventory menu in the camp screen seemed a little sharper. Not sure what else is different, or what was (not)fixed.

 

[BassForever]

You mean how the Sepith/Quartz icon at the bottom of a line-up in menus are still cut off? Or something else? And where?

Huh. I guess there was a new update recently. Right off the bat I noticed the graphics in the Inventory menu in the camp screen seemed a little sharper. Not sure what else is different, or what was (not)fixed.

Yeah the Sepith/Quartz icon line is cut off, and occasionally the character icon would bug out and appear split and flipped in the menu.

 

[tm24]

Just finished the game. Oh god i need answers

 

[Psxphile]

I expect most things to get addressed in SC, so I never bothered to ask about the dangling threads that game leaves us with. I am, however, curious if the Carmelia story is just a simple work of fiction or is there something more to it. Is it just flavor text? The way it ended made me believe otherwise, though I couldn't explain to you why.

 

[Arthea]

After I took a break and several updates took place, everything seems to run nicely, except some minor bugs in menus.
Thanks Xseed for sticking with it and fixing.

 

[Knurek]

After I took a break and several updates took place, everything seems to run nicely, except some minor bugs in menus.
Thanks Xseed for sticking with it and fixing.

Same here, took a break after the Prologue to play Bioshock Infinite.
HD assets are nice, although they break the menus here and there.
Looking forward to Bose.

 

[Llyranor]

Just finished this today. About 40 hrs.

The plot was slow, sure, but I quite enjoyed the adventure/journey. Fun characters and lighthearted story. Had some good Lunar/Grandia vibes from it.

Music was ok/good. Some pretty good tracks, but not enough of those!

Combat was basic, but enjoyable. Being able to mess around with turn order and take advantage of positioning was nice. I spent a lot of time optimizing quartz customization, which was good fun. Being able to avoid most/all encounters was great, and XP gain being relative to your level (allowing lower-level scrubs to catch up!) was excellent. As such, it never felt tedious.

If other devs did JRPGs like this nowadays, I'd probably still be playing them!

Bring on SC!

 

[Varion]

I expect most things to get addressed in SC, so I never bothered to ask about the dangling threads that game leaves us with. I am, however, curious if the Carmelia story is just a simple work of fiction or is there something more to it. Is it just flavor text? The way it ended made me believe otherwise, though I couldn't explain to you why.

Yes and no.

A bit more specifically

Spoiler

the story itself is a work of fiction, but some of the characters in it are based on actual characters in the series who will appear later on.

 

[BassForever]

Finished up the play at Janis, pretty entertaining part of the game, I'm really enjoying Kloe she's probably my favorite party member story wise so far.

 

[Krelian91]

Question: for the "no s-crafts" achievement, do I need to not use s-crafts in all the final battles (so

Spoiler

Richard, Reverie 1 and 2

) or only on the last form of

Spoiler

Reverie

?

 

[Durante]

I've started playing TitS on PC now, with a guide. I already got a lot further than on PSP.

The game has a lot of good points (the writing, combat system, characters, movement speed during exploration, very quick m/kb interface), I just wish they had fewer repetitive sidequests, and got rid of the completely meaningless backtracking in some parts of the main story. Go to mine through dungeon, figure out you need a key, go all the way back to town to get the key, and go back to mine to unlock it, without anything at all relevant happening throughout? Come on.

It's not as bad regarding sidequests as, say, Xenoblade (there, they killed the game for me, twice), but it's still highly unnecessary. I do realize that the my own insistence to complete these sidequests is at least partially to blame for my annoyance, but that doesn't make it better.

 

[shiroryu]

The game has a lot of good points (the writing, combat system, characters, movement speed during exploration, very quick m/kb interface), I just wish they had fewer repetitive sidequests, and got rid of the completely meaningless backtracking in some parts of the main story. Go to mine through dungeon, figure out you need a key, go all the way back to town to get the key, and go back to mine to unlock it, without anything at all relevant happening throughout? Come on.

I was raging at that part too. It doesn't help that the path to get there is narrow, so dodging monsters all the way x2 is fucking annoying.

I mean, they could have the guys ask the elder if the mine is locked and get the key then and there.

 

[Knurek]

got rid of the completely meaningless backtracking in some parts of the main story. Go to mine through dungeon, figure out you need a key, go all the way back to town to get the key, and go back to mine to unlock it, without anything at all relevant happening throughout? Come on.

But, but, every NPC in the village has new dialogue during that visit. And you get to meet another bracer if you visit the bar. And the trek back is, like, 3 minutes tops (if you get into some fights, that is)...

 

[BassForever]

I've started playing TitS on PC now, with a guide. I already got a lot further than on PSP.

The game has a lot of good points (the writing, combat system, characters, movement speed during exploration, very quick m/kb interface), I just wish they had fewer repetitive sidequests, and got rid of the completely meaningless backtracking in some parts of the main story. Go to mine through dungeon, figure out you need a key, go all the way back to town to get the key, and go back to mine to unlock it, without anything at all relevant happening throughout? Come on.

It's not as bad regarding sidequests as, say, Xenoblade (there, they killed the game for me, twice), but it's still highly unnecessary. I do realize that the my own insistence to complete these sidequests is at least partially to blame for my annoyance, but that doesn't make it better.

I would agree with this, but every time you do a sidequest or talk to npcs after going through a town dialogue updates and reflects the things you have or have not done. It creates the feeling of a living world which very few jrpgs do well, I honestly enjoy going back to old areas.

 

[slayn]

I ended up being really surprised by this. Hadn't heard of it until I stumbled upon the gaf OT. Looked interesting so I played through it. I liked it way more than I expected for some jRPG I had never heard of.

I didn't mind the pace of the story at all and the characters were fun. I also appreciated the way the game makes what you need to do/where to go very explicitly clear without waypoints. I hate waypoints but I also hate games just being really obtuse about what you should be doing. This game used dialog really well to inform me on what to do.

Level progression and encounter rates were really smooth. The xp curve based on fighting higher level monsters means you can kind of take encounters at your own pace. Combat was a touch on the easy side though. Aside from the occasional enemy that would interrupt spells, it would have been nice to see enemies behave with some kind of apparent strategy instead of just (melee -> bumrush, ranged -> stay put and fire).

Especially late game when you get equipment to keep your CP high so you always have an AoE interrupt ready to just kill everything. In the last acts of the game like every hard battle was me going Joshua -> 200cp -> kill all the things.

I enjoyed the constantly changing cast forcing you to re-evaluate your skills and tactics for each new party.

It did hit on one pet peeve of mine which is quests that you fail based on time without clear indication of when that will happen. I missed some quests because I thought I had a bit more time to do them but then got railroaded by an unexpected story twist and sent down a long linear story path with no opportunity to complete them. Especially when there isn't really much justification for why the quest was time dependent (such as the kill ___ monster ones).

And it would have been nice for the spell list to be a bit bigger with more complex gem combinations than just more red = more of everything on fire. It felt awkward to me that the buff spells tended to be single target as slow single target buffs don't really make much sense in this combat system. More good utility spells could have added a bit more depth to the combat.

end game story stuff:

Spoiler

And story/character wise I thought Joshua/Estelle were generally executed well although I did begin to roll my eyes more and more at the romance angle. I'm not opposed to it being there but man do they slap you in the face with it during every single story arc.

And I was a bit annoyed that the father is gone for the entire game only to Deux Ex his way into the last room to steal the glory of the final boss kill.

Looking forward to part 2.

edit: One of my favorite things was looting empty chests. The amount of unique messages they wrote for that is mind blowing.

 

[chaosblade]

edit: One of my favorite things was looting empty chests. The amount of unique messages they wrote for that is mind blowing.

What's mind-boggling to me is that it was possible at all. It just seems crazy that Falcom had an individual text string for every chest in the game instead of just calling a single one.

Based on Jess' hair pulling on Twitter it seems like every string in the game is unique, and it ends up being a pain when you have duplicate strings with different character limits.

 

[Puru]

I'm pretty sure some chests used the same message at one point, with a touch of new ones.

Like for example i'm sure i saw

Spoiler

"This chest is as empty as your thieving heart"

two times.

 

[slayn]

Yeah there are definitely duplicates. I was assuming it randomly assigned each chest a string based on a large string table so given enough random samples you would hit repeats.

I would estimate I had about an 80% unique string rate and 20% duplicates. Was still very impressive though for something so silly.

 

[Psxphile]

Question: for the "no s-crafts" achievement, do I need to not use s-crafts in all the final battles (so

Spoiler

Richard, Reverie 1 and 2

) or only on the last form of

Spoiler

Reverie

?

I got it by not using S-crafts fighting the final, final form (the one you don't get to fight if your Bracer level isn't high enough). Which is

Spoiler

pathetically easy anyway due to the nature of the fight

. However, as I understand it you *can* use S-Crafts. You're only prohibited from using S-Breaks, though I've yet to test this (well, actually I guess I can't) but from reading a few posts on GameFAQs that seems to be the case. So basically, don't use them to break turn order and you'll get the achievement.

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

monster guide in yet?

 

[slayn]

Well, now I need to ask. What does Bracer level do, and how do I know if I fought the true final boss or whatever? I didn't use a guide and for sure didn't get max BP or encounter any secret surrounding BP. I just accepted my own decisions/actions for quests.

It's been a week but I remember fighting:

Spoiler

The big machine with the right/left arms that are immune to physical/magical attacks. Then the arms attach to the body and you fight it again with those drone things. Then dad comes in and chops an arm off and there is a final 'fight' that is basically just a victory lap.

 

[SliceSabre]

I'm on the final fights of the game and let's just say boy

Spoiler

do I not feel smart about bringing Tifa along.

 

[chaosblade]

Yeah there are definitely duplicates. I was assuming it randomly assigned each chest a string based on a large string table so given enough random samples you would hit repeats.

I would estimate I had about an 80% unique string rate and 20% duplicates. Was still very impressive though for something so silly.

I don't think they are drawn randomly, rather each chest just has it's own line that probably says something like "This chest is empty" in the Japanese version. So XSEED/Jess took it upon themselves to add in the text we got for the English version. She might have just run out of ideas after over 100 chests and just copied in some duplicates.

Makes me wonder if we can look forward to new chest dialogue in SC.

Well, now I need to ask. What does Bracer level do, and how do I know if I fought the true final boss or whatever? I didn't use a guide and for sure didn't get max BP or encounter any secret surrounding BP. I just accepted my own decisions/actions for quests.

It's been a week but I remember fighting:

Spoiler

The big machine with the right/left arms that are immune to physical/magical attacks. Then the arms attach to the body and you fight it again with those drone things. Then dad comes in and chops an arm off and there is a final 'fight' that is basically just a victory lap.

You get rewards for each rank, and as long as you get above rank 5 you get the "full ending." Apparently you have to miss almost every optional BP possible to get a worse rank than that though.

 

[Varion]

I don't think they are drawn randomly, rather each chest just has it's own line that probably says something like "This chest is empty" in the Japanese version. So XSEED/Jess took it upon themselves to add in the text we got for the English version.

Yeah, that's how it is. Every chest has a fixed line, and there are indeed some duplicates. The vast majority are unique though, and there's over a hundred of the things.

 

[BassForever]

So are the chest lines not in the Japanese version and mostly made up by Xseed to add flavor?

 

[SliceSabre]

Welp. Somehow with my Sub-par team I beat the game and I gotta say I loved every minute of it.

Mad props to XSEED.

 

[StarCreator]

So are the chest lines not in the Japanese version and mostly made up by Xseed to add flavor?

Yes - in the script files, all 360+ spots allocated to chest empty messages were just the same line over and over again in the original Japanese language. Someone had the bright idea of taking advantage of each chest having its own script location to have some fun, and Falcom was OK with it. I'm pretty sure the story is detailed by XSEED themselves somewhere.

The password to get extra download goodies from the XSEED website was buried in the game as a chest message in the PSP version even. Not sure if that particular chest made it over to the PC version.

 

[ColossalLazy]

The password to get extra download goodies from the XSEED website was buried in the game as a chest message in the PSP version even. Not sure if that particular chest made it over to the PC version.

Yes it is there.

 

[max_505]

...

You get rewards for each rank, and as long as you get above rank 5 you get the "full ending." Apparently you have to miss almost every optional BP possible to get a worse rank than that though.

By "full ending", did you mean

Spoiler

the movie that plays after the credits roll? I think it's the teaser for SC?

Because my brother finished FC once and he didn't see that part.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

I would agree with this, but every time you do a sidequest or talk to npcs after going through a town dialogue updates and reflects the things you have or have not done. It creates the feeling of a living world which very few jrpgs do well, I honestly enjoy going back to old areas.

That and it has an option to do a Job. I don't know, maybe I've been playing too many focus-tested gogogogogogo-made games lately, or recently doing what I do with a new MMO and taking my time leveling the first time, but I appreciate the holistic nature of that. It's not built to be beaten, or be in the rear-view mirror, but in the now, this one thing, if that makes sense. I hope more people come to respect that when a GOOD use of that like this appears and accept it as variety.

Especially when there isn't really much justification for why the quest was time dependent (such as the kill ___ monster ones).

Other Bracers got 'em. Again, it's a bit of a holistic thing, and I appreciate it in this day and age more than I would have a decade ago.

Yes - in the script files, all 360+ spots allocated to chest empty messages were just the same line over and over again in the original Japanese language. Someone had the bright idea of taking advantage of each chest having its own script location to have some fun, and Falcom was OK with it. I'm pretty sure the story is detailed by XSEED themselves somewhere.

The password to get extra download goodies from the XSEED website was buried in the game as a chest message in the PSP version even. Not sure if that particular chest made it over to the PC version.

Huh! No foolin'? That is interesting.

 

[Arthea]

It probably was asked many times in this thread, but it's too big to search. Is the monster book coming anytime soon?

Yes - in the script files, all 360+ spots allocated to chest empty messages were just the same line over and over again in the original Japanese language. Someone had the bright idea of taking advantage of each chest having its own script location to have some fun, and Falcom was OK with it. I'm pretty sure the story is detailed by XSEED themselves somewhere.

The password to get extra download goodies from the XSEED website was buried in the game as a chest message in the PSP version even. Not sure if that particular chest made it over to the PC version.

oh, I didn't know that. Props to Xseed, those oneliners are great!

 

[Psxphile]

It probably was asked many times in this thread, but it's too big to search. Is the monster book coming anytime soon?

We know it's coming, we just don't know when. Maybe an Xseeder will see this and give us an update.

 

[ActStriker]

Made it through to Chapter 2 over the weekend.

Spoiler

Got to when you first get to Ruan and the first run-in with the Ravens.

I really like the world-building, and the quests aren't too bad.

I wish the chest count in the achievements was accurate; I was scared I missed one

 

[wyrdwad]

We know it's coming, we just don't know when. Maybe an Xseeder will see this and give us an update.

Wish I could, but it's kind of one of those "when it's done, it's done" things. Can't imagine it'll be too much longer, but I know Sara is also hard at work on Corpse Party PC, so that could delay things a little.

-Tom

 

[Arthea]

Wish I could, but it's kind of one of those "when it's done, it's done" things. Can't imagine it'll be too much longer, but I know Sara is also hard at work on Corpse Party PC, so that could delay things a little.

-Tom

thanks for reply.
Is there any chance we'll get SC this year still?

 

[Chaos17]

I would agree with this, but every time you do a sidequest or talk to npcs after going through a town dialogue updates and reflects the things you have or have not done. It creates the feeling of a living world which very few jrpgs do well, I honestly enjoy going back to old areas.

but news travel really too fast, I always found it awkward when that happens.

 

[chaosblade]

thanks for reply.
Is there any chance we'll get SC this year still?

I wouldn't count on it.