YianGaruga
Banned
Late game magic quartz question
Is it worth using the Time / Cast 3 quartz? It drops your ATS significantly and I'm not sure if it makes up for that with casting time.
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC |OT| More Olivier Than Ever
- Thread starter Dandy Crocodile
- Start date
If it lowers ATS significantly, put it on a healer/buff/debuff character. Those are fixed values which aren't affected by ATS. Casting speed for stuff like that can make a boss fight way easier too.
YianGaruga
Banned
I just have 1 magic user which does both, eveyone else just hits stuff
EDIT:
It actually lowers STR, DEF and ATS by 14% each, so the casting time improvement has to be REALLY good for me to consider it
I just have 1 magic user which does both, eveyone else just hits stuff
One thing I did get out of chapter 7 was the variety of playing with different party combinations. A mage party can actually be really, really powerful, but the downside is that you really start falling asleep on normal battles if you have to use spells to deal more damage because the animations can be repetitive and a bit slow. I did a full melee party for one of the towers, and Chaining became insane for big fights. Full 4 character chains with high STR with a wide attack radius and enemies clustered together = WOOOOOOOOW.
Hahahahaha. Fuck that shit imo!
I don't think it's worth it, you could balance it out with the wind quartz that raises arts, but Cast 2 is usually quick enough already. For the last battles Kloe was fast enough with that to cast her healing spells without getting interrupted.
YianGaruga
Banned
And that's exactly the reason I only have one. Normal encounters are slow already, I couldn't handle that, and so far one caster/healer + items hasn't let me down in terms of survivability.
Yeah that's what I'll do for now as well. The drawbacks seem extreme.
BassForever
Member
I almost always go 2 mages 2 melee units thankfully Estelle is flexible enough to do either role based upon who I have to take with me. I guess
is too though really making him a mage is a waste
Joshua
I actually don't really think of the top-tier characters (
) as "mages" or "melee" at this point. They're all strong enough to deal solid damage with either weapons or with spells. So basically they're useful as melee attackers for most normal battles, and for more advanced encounters it really depends on the situation. Enemy with auto-destruct? Everyone just spams one spell without getting near. Enemies clustered together and are weak to a certain element? Party time. Single boss unit with lots of HP? Time to ignore spells and CHAIN that shit! Etc.
The rest of the party selection is definitely much more geared towards one or the other though. But with the possibility of having 3 characters who can serve both purposes really well, it really doesn't matter what sort of character you use to fill the final slot imo!
Estelle, Joshua, Kevin
The rest of the party selection is definitely much more geared towards one or the other though. But with the possibility of having 3 characters who can serve both purposes really well, it really doesn't matter what sort of character you use to fill the final slot imo!
YianGaruga
Banned
Estelle shouldn't use magic. Hitting things with a large stick is what she does, and she does it well.
Considering how easy the last few chapters have been, I'm not sure how important really the party or even orb make-up is.
The balance was just right for the first few chapters but now it's FC easy.
Just beat the first boss in chapter 7 and I only used s-breaks because I was bored seeing them on 200 all the time.
I don't know whether I'm seriously overlevelled or I'm abusing time arts too much. But even then it would just take longer rather being strategically challenging.
The balance was just right for the first few chapters but now it's FC easy.
Just beat the first boss in chapter 7 and I only used s-breaks because I was bored seeing them on 200 all the time.
I don't know whether I'm seriously overlevelled or I'm abusing time arts too much. But even then it would just take longer rather being strategically challenging.
There aren't a lot of battles that pose a challenge near the end, but I think that makes up for the sheer amount of boss battles you encounter late in the game.
Also, I got to admit, I actually liked this. It gave me a feeling of power - I actually got the feeling that my party got stronger during the quest we endured and that we mastered our skills. I think this is a feeing you don't get all too often in RPGs, since it's mostly more of a struggle right until the end.
The last dungeon has how many boss battles? 8?
Also, I got to admit, I actually liked this. It gave me a feeling of power - I actually got the feeling that my party got stronger during the quest we endured and that we mastered our skills. I think this is a feeing you don't get all too often in RPGs, since it's mostly more of a struggle right until the end.
I actually don't mind the easy battles and like the feeling of power too. And the faster I can get through the battles the better.
But then I'm not sure what to do with all the foodstuff (which are ridiculously powerfully lol) and dozens of EP charges and balms I've been storing up. And I've got a whole load of mira. I'll save it all for the last chapter!
But then I'm not sure what to do with all the foodstuff (which are ridiculously powerfully lol) and dozens of EP charges and balms I've been storing up. And I've got a whole load of mira. I'll save it all for the last chapter!
Se7enSword
Banned
Estelle shouldn't use magic. Hitting things with a large stick is what she does, and she does it well.
My Estelle does both, but with more focus on hitting things with her stick.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
She ain't half-bad, but I think Estelle's one of the more disappointing characters in this game. I can find better replacements for La Forte, Comet, and her underpowered physical S-Crafts (Estelle shouldn't use magic. Hitting things with a large stick is what she does, and she does it well.
she never gets an Area-based S-Craft
Kevin
Se7enSword
Banned
Thanks for spoiling me what to expect, DER. You could at least spoiler the name. -__-
Place her dead center in the party formation. Make sure she's really quick and gets the first turn. Use Morale. Everyone else starts chaining. Probably the best way to start any boss battle or chest monster battle.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
Chaining's something I reserve for bonus turns, and the later battles spread combatants out more often such that I'm usually speeding a caster up to use buffs like La Forte. And much as I would like to get her the first turn everytime, I would have to jigger her Orbment with more Time Quartz than I want assuming I need her more for support Arts like Earth Wall (most party members at this point can easily use Clock-Up EX and even Clock Down).
The equipment she can use late-game isn't oriented towards speed, so Joshua's usually that much ahead; Estelle was delivering food more often than before
Yeah Estelle is the hit-things person. But in all seriousness Estelle is the all-rounder character that can do pretty much anything you want her to.
Regarding difficulty... I felt like some of the bosses could've used some strategic buffs. Just like FC, the monster on the road fights tend to be more challenging. One of the Chapter 3 monster bosses just kept kicking my shit in over and over again, and I don't even want to talk about cactuses OR karate sheep right now.
That being said, I wonder how many people who say the game is easy is using Kloe? :^)
Regarding difficulty... I felt like some of the bosses could've used some strategic buffs. Just like FC, the monster on the road fights tend to be more challenging. One of the Chapter 3 monster bosses just kept kicking my shit in over and over again, and I don't even want to talk about cactuses OR karate sheep right now.
That being said, I wonder how many people who say the game is easy is using Kloe? :^)
Yeah Estelle is the hit-things person.
Regarding difficulty... I felt like some of the bosses could've used some strategic buffs. Just like FC, the monster on the road fights tend to be more challenging. One of the Chapter 3 monster bosses just kept kicking my shit in over and over again, and I don't even want to talk about cactuses OR karate sheep right now.
That being said, I wonder how many people who say the game is easy is using Kloe?
I use Kloe on and off (she's def not my highest level char) and I haven't used her overpowered s-craft in a long while. To be honest I've found some of the other characters to be just as powerful as her but maybe that's because they are higher levelled.
BassForever
Member
How is
Estelle top tier? She's really good but she doesn't mage better then Kloe, Kevin, or Olivier nor does she melee better then Agate, Zane, or Joshua
Better how is
Kevin
SatelliteOfLove
Member
I hate to say it, but I think chapter 7 is fucking boring on the gameplay front. Probably the worst chapter so far in terms of gameplay, while chapter 2 is the low point story wise. When you strip away the sense of adventure progression, the exploration of towns, the side quests, etc, and build an entire chapter around just pure dungeon crawling over and over, it's repetitive and not very fun.
Gotta... push through this.... zzzzzzzz
Yeah, that repetitiveness ate into good story beats and dungeon crawling, plus those had the only bad track in the game (kinda like FC's army checkpoint theme).
Finished Chapter 7. The boss at the end was definitely disappointing.
I'll say that so far out of the 51 hours or so I've played of SC, chapter 2 and chapter 7 are the low points of the game. Everything else has been really awesome, and chapter 8 is already off to a greaaaaaaaat start.
Aside from the Deathblow and Petrify effects, the first Renne fight was really meh. When her mecha showed up for the second fight, I got really excited, but alas it was nothing like the final boss in FC or even the chapter 1 boss in SC. Boring attacks, extremely slow, it was a cakewalk.
I'll say that so far out of the 51 hours or so I've played of SC, chapter 2 and chapter 7 are the low points of the game. Everything else has been really awesome, and chapter 8 is already off to a greaaaaaaaat start.
Am I right to assume that this is when the game completely opens up and I can visit any of the regions in any order I want and take on a bunch of different quests from each guild while doing the main quest objectives? Seems really cool!
Chapter 6+ party composition spoiler
This fight is buuuulllshit.
This fight is buuuulllshit.
Going to the Hot Springs and getting 200 CP on every character thanks to a bath, and then giving
Joshua
True Black Fang
LASER FROM ORBIT
Pellegri Testament
Member
Yes,
just don't save Grancel for last. If you do all 3 guild branches for the story, it locks you into the point of no return and you can't do anything in Grancel except the story.
Took me 3 attempts with different layouts.
Finally decided on a strategy of
using Agate and Zane like meat shields and spreading everybody out like crazy lol
So you prejudged the romance based upon past experience and let it cloud your opinion on it
Nah, haha. Saying it's well done, but I'd rather it have taken another direction.
Still a damn good pair of games, though! Top ten JRPG of all time material for me.
YianGaruga
Banned
The trick is to only focus on one worm at a time, since they only use Earth Shaker when they recieve damage. Clock Down most of them and their normal attacks can't really do anything.
ChickenHunter
Member
Just take them down one by one. Have two heavy hitters on constant offense and two others keeping everyone's HP up. Clock Down the whole group of enemies so they get fewer moves as well. It's time consuming but un-enraged worms don't do much damage at all.
WELP, fight just got 200% easier lol.
YianGaruga
Banned
Always read the enemy descriptions
(It took me two game overs until I figured it out.)
Wow, now I feel like a dumbass for formulating and properly executing a strategy that killed almost all the worms in one turn and then killing off the two remaining ones with whatever.
I tried maxing CP to kill them all as quick as I could. After about 4 attempts I got really close but then I noticed the thing about the earth move being a counter attack.
After that I did the clock down, one at a time strategy. It took a while but if you move away once in a while and use AT delay moves, they literally never touch you. Went from hardest fight so far to the easiest.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
You can speed the fight up by equipping Emerald Talismans on your physical attackers, too. It really shouldn't be that difficult even on a first try, though the hardest part by far is the opening where you need to buff and debuff quickly. After that it's a matter of divide and conquer; setting your characters with single-target S-Breaks helps.
YianGaruga
Banned
The Best JRPG Of The Decade (So Far)
Schreier is the best
It's just a small recommendation rather than a full review, but it's from Kotaku so it carries some weight at least. Share it around if you can
----
Final Chapter character spoilers
Schreier is the best
It's just a small recommendation rather than a full review, but it's from Kotaku so it carries some weight at least. Share it around if you can
----
Final Chapter character spoilers
I CAN PUT MUELLER IN MY PARTY? O M G
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
I just wish you got the final chapter characters sooner. I wanted more time with them as party members.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
The Best JRPG Of The Decade (So Far)
Schreier is the best
It's just a small recommendation rather than a full review, but it's from Kotaku so it carries some weight at least. Share it around if you can
----
Final Chapter character spoilers
I CAN PUT MUELLER IN MY PARTY? O M G
I'm glad we're able to use Julia and Mueller at all, though I've skipped them for the moment since I wanted to use simply the original PC characters
Article's premise is...questionable. FC came out in 2004, Schreier! I don't agree with his criteria for what counts, and it seems he's snubbing other games which have features like what FC/SC have (Mother 2's overworld encounters long preceded this duo's). But at least he mentions the
Ruan hotel side-quest
Se7enSword
Banned
The Kotaku article was already posted/mentioned/discussed in this thread ages ago. You're slacking, Yian :v
devious.one
Member
Oh wow... I reloaded a save and switched equipment and everything specifically for that fight. D'oh
Ended up abusing the hell out of Heaven's Kiss from Schera, Clockdown and
Joshuas
Augemitbutter
Member
chasing chicken for fresh eggs is the true endgame.
10 mira at shops.
devious.one
Member
The music on the (Chapter 9 spoiler)
is so good.
Cradle
Am I missing something? That article Yian linked was just posted today.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
That Steam sale thing is going to hurt this game, SC really needed the exposure from being a front page deal to pick up some momentum since it was overshadowed so heavily by the Halloween sale at launch.
At least FC managed some success before the change. Going to be that much harder to get the word of mouth engine to full output.
At least FC managed some success before the change. Going to be that much harder to get the word of mouth engine to full output.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
Honestly I thought Falcom included that bit just because they hadn't done a good job of using the unique overworld sprites they made for Estelle, yet she's being a big ham in the latter part of the dialogue. But yeah, they still wear their old relationship on their sleeves, it's just that SC was an awkward transition for both of them into romance while saving their country
Speaking of Finale, the world-building's still there, just largely in the background as it's integrated with dungeon crawling. Chapter 7's folly is
putting you through four dungeons back-to-back while keeping you cooped up in the Arseille. Why not have, for example, a Jaegar squadron intercept the Arseille in the middle of all this and try to shoot it down, leading to you guys pulling what Joshua did at the start of Chapter 6 by grappling on-board the ships to subdue the attackers? There's fun NPC development on the ship itself, but that's not enough when half of the dungeons you explore here are flawed padding. Meanwhile Finale does what FC's final dungeon should have, being far less of an enemy-chest dump while having unique layouts and sights everywhere you go. Only the slow elevator/Halo Rail animations drag this part down; you also get to finish up exploring the Glorious, which is really cool. You learn how Liberl's structure both differs from and mimics that of the Liber Ark (with Axis Pillar being surprisingly different from Grancel Castle). There's more implication of what changed in Liberl over more than a millennium based on what you see in this place. And you can easily pick out which parts of the dungeons are worth doing and which are worth skipping based on how strong your party is, whereas Chapter 7 has some forced non-boss encounters
SC is more inconsistent than FC re: focusing on dungeons and monster-of-the-week tropes, but tonally it's about the same and even avoids dips in writing quality I noticed in FC (Cassius's deus ex machina when Estelle/Joshua are saving Luke/Pat is an early one). The chapter structure in SC is what allows for its strengths and weaknesses, since chapters aren't necessarily defined by changes in region, but
the potential to meet Joshua (then Society activity, and then figuring out how to stop Weissmann)
circle around again, starting from Ruan going counter-clockwise in this case
they really should have known better than to make a chapter just for the asset-reuse dungeons they no doubt scrambled together
Finally,
I hesitate to call anyone but Walter and Campanella Saturday Morning Cartoon Villains, as even Weissmann drops hints about his past life all throughout (and he's busy doing the enlightened villain thing unironically). At first I thought Blueblanc was one-note, but I can empathize with him simply because, to prepare his riddles, he needed to disguise himself, analyze every region he visited from the commoner's level (very apparent in Rolent), and then challenge the Bracers after basking in this little kingdom. The moment between him and Loewe in Ruan suggests he's only in Ouroboros for the cool gadgets, or at least that his involvement is more theoretical and respectable in that he's a magnificent bastard (not unlike a certain prince on our side). Walter's love story with Kilika, though implied, went nowhere at the end, and her saying that Master Ryuga had cancer makes sense but doesn't impact too strongly because, well, she's had to relay the message rather than make a true fool of Walter. His concession that Zane was always superior, and that he's been trying to compensate by training his mere brawn, is more interesting, but not enough. Luciola, as I explained a while back, has the most interesting backstory, both standalone and in terms of what it suggests for themes in the Calvard arc. All of them aren't the real villains here anyway: Renne and Loewe had the potential, but it's Weissmann and Campanella who have it out for the country, and I appreciate why the latter's still a mystery. These guys are here to spin wheels, so them delaying the inevitable, while predictable, makes sense, and I don't think it's possible for each of them to teleport really far across the country with beta Gospels just so they can tag-team the Bracers each time. I think Chapter 8 should have ended with you fighting them at Grancel, though, with Richard and Cid helping outonly worry then would be Renne's S-Craft, lol
Also, I read more of the Kiseki Community Thread just now. Me and Bebpo will have to respectfully disagree on how side-quests fit into Trails in the Sky's pacingI've got no trouble interrupting plot to do NPC stuff when that comes up.
Chapter 4 Sidequest question:
For the fishing sidequest, I've found 4 spots so far: Verte Checkpoint, Milch Main Road, Elize Highway Bridge, and the Bright Family House. How many more are left? About to head into Mistwald soon, so I want to make sure I don't miss finishing this quest.
Chie Satonaka
Member
This was the one fight I had trouble with for the entire game, not counting the prologue, which was surprisingly rough.
One at a time, slow and steady wins the race.
Dice//
Banned
That quest lasts till the very end. There IS one in Mistwald, unfortunately it's where the boss there is and you're gonna have to go on back there. Also, the sort of other "hidden" spot is in the tutorial sewers from FC.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
There are six total, but one isn't available until after you beat the chapter boss. So don't worry about progressing too far just yet. That sort of tips off one of them, and the last one isn't very obvious - a strange place for fishing.