DrROBschiz
Member
Agreed!
This encompasses how i feel about the series as well
How this ended up as some hidden treasure is mind boggling
I hope we can finally put these games on the map
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel |OT| Class Warfare
- Thread starter Dandy Crocodile
- Start date
Agreed!
This encompasses how i feel about the series as well
How this ended up as some hidden treasure is mind boggling
I hope we can finally put these games on the map
I can't think of a single link between the two of them, but a nice find nonetheless.Oh right, here's something I noticed, speculation:
Yes, I've finished the game, like I've said. I'm now curious if the design similarities between "C" and Tio's outfit are intentional.
The best thing you can do is just recommend it to, and buy it for, people. I recommended it to one friend because she's really into politics, to another because she's really into world-building.
Hopefully PSN will implement a gift feature soon.
YianGaruga
Banned
Just got my Vita LE from VGP, the box is made out of super-cardboard or something. It's so awesome.
I kind of hope XSEED gives more games this premium-premium packaging treatment in the future. I'm not a big fan of super expensive LEs with tons of stuff I don't need, so this is perfect imo.
Gonna play the hell out of it over new years
I kind of hope XSEED gives more games this premium-premium packaging treatment in the future. I'm not a big fan of super expensive LEs with tons of stuff I don't need, so this is perfect imo.
Gonna play the hell out of it over new years
Finished Chapter 1 today. During the prologue I had my doubts, but now it's pretty clear that yes, it's a Trails game. The characters are pretty stereotypical when they're introduced, but they're getting better very quickly. And the dialogue is really good, too (I don't even mind the dub!). Instructor Sara is the best.
Combat is so much more fun in this game than in FC or SC. So many quality-of-life improvements, including animation skipping. I love you, animation skipping. CP seems really easy to come by in this game, and there are also several methods of distributing or generating CP, both of which seem to promote using arts over regular attacks. The addition of the Zero Art turn thingy is also a neat addition.
Can't wait to play more of this tomorrow.
Is it a Kiseki staple to have an alcoholic authority figure in every game? There's Schera (and Aina) in Sora, and Sara in Sen. Is there one in Zero/Ao?
Combat is so much more fun in this game than in FC or SC. So many quality-of-life improvements, including animation skipping. I love you, animation skipping. CP seems really easy to come by in this game, and there are also several methods of distributing or generating CP, both of which seem to promote using arts over regular attacks. The addition of the Zero Art turn thingy is also a neat addition.
Can't wait to play more of this tomorrow.
NoctisCaelum
Member
Damn. Hearing you guys talk about it really made me want to play this game. Hope they port it to PS4/PC and It will be day 0 purchase for me.
Any news regarding porting the game?
Any news regarding porting the game?
That would be on Falcom, XSEED doesn't 'port' games. At the moment, no.
That being said, Trails in the Sky was released on PS3 a while after it was released on PC and PSP, and they're no strangers to 'remakes' or porting things to newer consoles - that being said, I don't think they're going to do it all that soon. Cold Steel came out in 2013 and they're busy making Cold Steel 3 and Ys 8 right now - who knows, they might outsource a Trails of Cold Steel Evolution that would be impossible to bring over for the same reasons the Evolution remakes of earlier titles are a clusterfuck of rights management (because they're outsourced) for XSEED to bring over.
Se7enSword
Banned
Chapter 4...
Super Saiyan Rean...Elise has some sort of awakening ability?
That red door's words...that black cat and emma again...
I hope I get some answers soon, at least. Definitely curious to know Rean's background/ancestry.
Also, It really seems like I'll enounter more mecha/giant puppets as bosses. Had that feeling from SC that something like this would happen eventually in a trails game...
That red door's words...that black cat and emma again...
I hope I get some answers soon, at least. Definitely curious to know Rean's background/ancestry.
Also, It really seems like I'll enounter more mecha/giant puppets as bosses. Had that feeling from SC that something like this would happen eventually in a trails game...
Yes. Cold Steel was made as a jumping in point for newcomers. You'll get some really cool references to FC/SC if you play those games first, but it's not required by any means.
Novel Mike
Member
Absolutely, I'm in Chapter 6 and I haven't been lost at all and honestly it really just makes me want to play FC/SC now which I will likely start once I finish this.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
This
is getting old fast.
old schoolhouse
Really? I always look forward to it, mainly for the bosses.
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
I just feel like it gets in the way of exploring more of Erebonia. School segments/bonding sequences are great for fleshing out characters, field study segments are also great for the same reason but also for fleshing out the world. Old schoolhouse is just dungeon crawling. It's not terrible, but it's easily my least favorite part of the game.
BassForever
Member
Agreed, I don't hate the old school house segments, but they do often feel like filler. I get why its there (rare time the player can choose their party) but I wish they felt more significant to the plot. I kinda wish it had been an optional thing the player could do on free days as opposed to mandatory exploration each month.
Se7enSword
Banned
I'd advise you both to be patient with it. It's there for a reason.
Hell yeah. Can't say more.
Exchange sepith for mira at vendors is your friend. When you kill monsters sepith masses will drop and you will want to sell them any chance you get. It'll be really helpful for your money issues. Specifically, exchanging sepith masses, not the regular sepith of various types.
The regular 'sepith' is something you need to unlock the slots on your characters' orbments so you can give them more quartz that allows for more skills and customization. You can also use it to make quartz. Don't sell the regular sepith early on, just the sepith masses at the bottom of the list (if you're talking to an orbment vendor.)
I recall somebody mentioning that the game really takes off starting at Chapter 4, I'm glad to know that, because I've felt like the game really deflates the moment you start the Chapter 3 Field Mission.
What that chunk of the game does wrong:
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The boss fights (on Hard) were pretty dope, though.
Such an awkward time for the pacing to drive into a ditch. It also comes at the 20~25 hour mark, which I think is a time that reviewers are willing to put down games they aren't feeling.
What that chunk of the game does wrong:
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Long, long, loooong series of cutscenes to actually get to the location.
Even when you get the location, there's nothing to do on the first day.
Horse riding is tremendously slow and boring to even get from point A to point B in the huge field.
There's basically no reason to fight any enemies, and they are all just sitting off in the distance without aggroing, which leaves the bulk of the chapter completely unexciting in a way that other chapters or the Old Schoolhouse aren't.
It gives you the option of exploring the side areas when you can't even do anything there.
The side quests aren't interesting.
And then, when you're done with it all, there's like 15~20 cutscenes after the last boss but before you actually get control of your character again.
The boss fights (on Hard) were pretty dope, though.
Such an awkward time for the pacing to drive into a ditch. It also comes at the 20~25 hour mark, which I think is a time that reviewers are willing to put down games they aren't feeling.
BassForever
Member
Oh I'm sure it'll pay off story wise, I just wish it felt a bit more important upfront and less busy work.
Besides for what was said above
- you can change links every turn without penalty, you should never attack without a link partner as there's always a chance for a follow up attack. This is more relevant when you have 3 party members.
- if you want a cheap way to make money, at any point elliot is in the party have him make the first recipe and sell it, the ingridents cost less then the special dish he can make. Its a bit slow but its nice if you don't want to grind septium masses
- the character on the world map's weapon determines what kind of advantage you get when you hit a foe, this lets characters like fie, emma, elliot, and laura be more useful in the field as their weapons will triple advantage more enemies.
- don't be afraid to use cp attacks that hit multiple enemies, often you'll get back almost all the cp you spent using the move
- for characters with a lower magic attack stat, make sure they have some kind of buff/debuff in their orbment that way if their turn comes up on an art zero turn they can instantly get a buff/debuff off
- a buff/debuff can be used twice on the same target to increase its potency and increase the turns its active, this combos well with characters who's master quartz starts them with a buff (laura, fie, machcias, and gauis by default). As an example laura will usually start with 1-2 turns of attack up, Rein's motivate will buff that parties attack will give Laura 4 turns with max buffed attack which will let her dominate enemies.
Chaos2Frozen
Member
is it okay to leave the other characters initial master quarts? Any reason to change them?
Nah, I went through the whole game without really changing any of them since some of them are flat out really good. I think I only ever changed Rean's and Elliot's master quartz for other quartz.
It just depends on whether you like the idea of what each of those quartz can do (they will level up over time, so their 'ultimate form' might be something you wanna keep around - Alisa's default one, for example, will revive her and give her 200 CP once per battle if she dies, which is awesome.)
Except for having fun. I had so much fun with the battle system the game hardly posed any challenged except for one fight.
Chaos2Frozen
Member
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Emmas also beast if you sether up right. Im going to experiment on a Jusis-Machias-Emma-Laura team next old schoolhouse trip for this reason.
*breathes into paper bag*
*breathes into paper bag*
YankeeDonB
Member
I like Emma as magic DPS -- she has so many MP that it's less painful to cast some of those 100 MP super spells. Jusis' first-turn magic attack buff is awfully nice too, of course.
The one character I haven't quite found a place for is Gaius -- he does OK dps, but not on par w/ Rean and Laura (or Fie given her speed). He seems kind of like a dodge/counter-oriented tank w/ his insight auto-buff and air slots. This is how I've been using him because I only bring out Machias for his special that recovers folks' MP.
So, how many stars need to align for that game to actually make it into English?
- SC needs to sell well enough to justify The Third, as a PC exclusive.
- Then they do Zero. (PC exclusive!)
- Then they do Ao. (PC exclusive!)
And they're all, like, huge? So 2018, maybe, possibly?
YianGaruga
Banned
We certainly need multiple miracles for that to happen. But I believe.
Here are the stars that have to align.
1. The Third coming out at all, which will require a bit of programming fuckery, since SC was also a pain, to bring it up to the standards XSEED has for Steam release.
2. XSEED to start the Zero/Ao duology afterwards.
3. Zero no Kiseki will need to be fucked with a ton programming-wise and the insertion of the higher quality portrait art and stuff (XSEED did this for FC and SC by putting the higher quality portrait art in and inserting the improvements to the game that the PSP version had back into the PC version, aka backporting). This Zero port was a Chinese outsource porting job, and the Japanese PC release was just that but with DRM stripped out.
4. That game comes out.
5. Ao no Kiseki will not only need to be fucked with, they'll need to get the DRM stripped out of the game and change a bunch of things - IIRC the Ao port runs at the Vita native resolution and has a bunch of Chinese DRM built into it because Ao PC was ported by a third party Chinese company, like Ys Seven and Zero was.
.Another problem with Ao's PC version is that it hasn't been released in Japan that. This means that as long as there's a third party involved (like how the Evolution remakes or Cold Steel's voices cannot be brought over), XSEED's possibilities are limited. And I doubt they would start working on Zero without Ao PC somewhere on the horizon.
max_505
Member
Sara's the best. She's like tons of Schera with a little bit of Olivier mixed in.
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
Just wondering why it's a issue releasing these games in English? Is it mainly due to fear of bad sales and translating the games since they are heavily text based.
YianGaruga
Banned
Mostly because they're on difficult platforms. Zero and Ao are PSP games which no one wants to release and/or buy these days, and the PC ports have several issues which need to be fixed. The Vita remakes aren't possible due to licensing. It's just a huge mess.
Nightengale
Member
XSEED presumably doesn't have the resources for it, but it would be nice if they could enter into the same licensing agreement that Kadokawa or the Chinese companies had with Falcom, where they get to actually make a new SKU themselves, rather than just port what's available with Falcom currently.
It's expensive to localise.
It doesn't sell particularly well.
Limited SKU options for localisation.
It's expensive to localise.
It doesn't sell particularly well.
Limited SKU options for localisation.
They're basically high-risk / low-reward to whoever brings them to the West, basically. Niche games with huge localisation cost/work needed.
I think the Evolution series' success has done more harm than good in this matter.
Yes and yes. Both were a major factor in killing the Trails series before it even had a chance here in the west 4 years ago. Releasing on PSP was another.
If it wasn't for PC, Steam and Sara I don't think we'd be here right now.
Basileus777
Member
The Crossbell games might as well be an impossible dream at this point. The more immediate hope should be for the Third and Cold Steel 3.
I have absolutely no doubt that Sara could fix the issues with the PC ports of Zero and Ao if XSEED got their hands on them. Remember that FC and SC originally had fixed resolutions, couldn't run in HD, didn't have a 16:9 ratio, etc etc. On top of that, the PSP additions were also added to the PC games.
We basically have completely different games here than what Japan got with the first two games- this is something Falcom never did.
I think this quote bears repeating because people don't realize how true it is.
Also, I think people are underestimating the old school building. There are a lot of things about it that are, in my opinion, very important to the series as a whole. It's just hard to see them without context from other games.
We basically have completely different games here than what Japan got with the first two games- this is something Falcom never did.
I think this quote bears repeating because people don't realize how true it is.
Also, I think people are underestimating the old school building. There are a lot of things about it that are, in my opinion, very important to the series as a whole. It's just hard to see them without context from other games.
Okay, here's the thing.
The first Trails title was released on PSP by XSEED in 2011. It sold abysmally.
Then, when XSEED was able to release a Steam version a few years later in preparation for the release of the second chapter, that Steam release sold a lot more than expected. It did pretty great.
However, Trails in the Sky SC is the biggest Trails game. It has 2.5 million Japanese characters in it. It is a god damned huge undertaking to translate, and it also shares the same world as other games in the series, so you need to make internally consistent terms and names for things that will pop up later or which already appeared in it. It took four years of translation for SC to get out the door, and it was a ridiculously stressful ordeal.
Now that SC is out, here's the thing. We were four games behind! Holy shit, how do we catch up?
Now, cue Falcom coming in re: XSEED and going 'what the fuck man, we're on Cold Steel by now, we designed Cold Steel as a great jumping in point so PLEASE HURRY THE FUCK UP and localize Cold Steel before the PS3 dies.'
XSEED, having learned a ton from the localization of SC and having a way slicker workflow (and Cold Steel is a smaller game than SC) was able to announce and release Cold Steel the same year it was announced. Not only that, Cold Steel II is coming to the West in 2016 so we'll at least be 'caught up' even if we skipped a few titles.
Now here's the thing - in this process, we have skipped the third Sky title, Zero and Azure. Zero and Azure are a duology that takes place in a different nation, Crossbell, which is close to both Erebonia (where Cold Steel is) and Liberl (which is where Sky is.)
The problem here is that all three of these titles will have to be PC only - Trails SC was XSEED's last PSP title, and Sony is shutting down the PSP store anyway so yeah. Not only are XSEED's standards high enough to not fuck with their fans by giving them the PC versions that currently exist of Zero/Azure (both are Chinese outsourced PC ports running at a shitty resolution, the latter having Chinese DRM in it and not being released even in Japan,) they would need to do a ton of programming and tweaking and re-insertion of higher quality art from Falcom, et cetera. It's just a big fuckery right now.
The benefit to localizing Cold Steel now is that they're PS3/Vita and Falcom wants them to hurry the fuck up (which they did) and bring the West into the series.
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
Gotcha thanks! Just wanted to confirm that I was assuming it was something like that. Also kinda want to also assume those problems are mainly related to the older games such as releasing on psp, tech issues, etc. The newer upcoming games such as Ys8 and CS3 will be "easier" to be localized.
edit:
LOL i enjoyed your explanation alot.
edit:
LOL i enjoyed your explanation alot.
You can jump in at Cold Steel if you want. It was designed as a nice jumping in point for newcomers. There are returning characters and cameos and references that you'll really like if you played Trails in the Sky FC/SC (which you're looking at on PSP/vita right now) but it's not necessary.
Yes. XSEED will no longer release PSP games after SC, they are completely done with it forever. This means they need to do some PC programming stuff to get them up to par for a PC release. Imagine the shitty press if they released a port of a PSP game with tiny windowed resolution bad framerate and Chinese-DRM ridden on Steam with tons of bugs (since even SC, which originated as a PC game, had to be extensively tested and messed with before release)
BassForever
Member
I think we'll see third for sure after Cold Steel 2 is out unless Falcom lets Xseed start CS3's translation while CS3 is still in development. Its truly the crossbell games that might be boned to be Japanese/fan translated only unless Sara/Brittany/Xseed passion project the fuck out of them.
Funnily, the only reason Brandish was translated by XSEED was because Wyrdwad/Tom did it by himself as a passion side project. That being said, it would be ridiculous to compare Trails of Azure to Brandish: The Dark Revenant in terms of stuff to translate.