from the opening movie. I have terrible memory. Either way, mechs being in a trails game doesn't surprise me, since they were there in Sky. Its the fact that you actually pilot one and use them in battle with their own custom battle mechanics that shocked me and got me super excited. Last thing I expected was for a Trails game to start giving me Xenogears/Saga/X vibes.
Her mother is not mentioned or referred to at all, almost leading us to believe that Laura was born out of thin air. What I suspect - and this is pure speculation - is that during Laura's childhood, her mother did the occasional check in the Lohengrin Castle and in the process got possessed by the spirit of Rianne Sandlot. Following that train of thought, I suspect St. Sandlot has been moving from body to body of women who have inspected the Castle since the War of the Lions, making Laura's mother the most recent case of incarnations. Or something.
But again, it's completely speculation on my side.
This game doesn't end. Still in Chapter 6. I want to finish so I can play the new Homeworld and Dragon's Dogma!
I"M ENJOYING MYSELF BUT IT"S JUST INCREDIBLY LONG. I guess I can abuse some of the apparently gamebreaking quartz I have. It'll really cut down on the combat.
This game doesn't end. Still in Chapter 6. I want to finish so I can play the new Homeworld and Dragon's Dogma!
I"M ENJOYING MYSELF BUT IT"S JUST INCREDIBLY LONG. I guess I can abuse some of the apparently gamebreaking quartz I have. It'll really cut down on the combat.
I love the length. New uni classes are starting up which means I'll probably have even less time to play in the coming months than I did when the game arrived, so I'll probably end up finishing it when CS2 is right around the corner.
Well, maybe it won't take that long, but every week without finishing CS1 is a week closer to CS2's release!
This game doesn't end. Still in Chapter 6. I want to finish so I can play the new Homeworld and Dragon's Dogma!
I"M ENJOYING MYSELF BUT IT"S JUST INCREDIBLY LONG. I guess I can abuse some of the apparently gamebreaking quartz I have. It'll really cut down on the combat.
Lol, I guess I missed the CP part of that. I spent most of the last 2 chapters leveling up different master quartz to see what I actually liked, and megalith wasn't one i used.
That final stretch was totes insane. :O But man it has an even more annoying cliffhanger than FC. -_- Oh well, at least you'd imagine Trails of Cold Steel II will start with a more brisk pace. Hard to imagine it going back to the kind of slow burn for several chapters this game had, considering all that is going down.
From the three games I've played, I'd say it's SC > Trails of Cold Steel > FC for now with CSII all the potential to exceed SC. While Trails of Cold Steel could kind of feel more low key with all the events that actually happen to these characters, overall the bigger picture starts to become a bit more interesting earlier on, with all the shit that is going on in the background. And then Dat Ending, though a bit too much of a cliffhanger even compared to FC's, was even better than FC's.
Finished reading the translated drama cd last night. Kind of glad we didn't get Ymir (chapter 6.5) now, the chapter is mostly anime junk like accidental mixed bath onsens and the class essentially demanding that Rean
fuck his sister that he's known since age 5, including his mother egging him on
, and nothing we hadn't really learned in previous chapters through flashbacks. Nightengale was right
So, in review of Cold Steel. (ASSUME FULL SPOILERS ON BLACK BARS)
Combat: Interesting new ideas but completely busted. Game tries to fix Sky's problems initially but just ends up making an equal or more number of problems. Triple/Double Advantage is supreme overkill for your average mobs. The orbment line system favors those with multiple lines too much, and Master Quartz removes the whole arts/buff/debuff quartz dynamic they tried to create. Arts are busted, quartz are busted, crafts are busted. Running away percentage means jack all when you have smoke grenades.
But... it is fun to see how much you can break the game creatively.
How far you can push Laura's STR stat, or Emma's ATS stat?
How many turns can Fie get before the enemy can move? Can anyone even HIT Fie?
Machias with some creativity is nuts.
Jusis and stackable Noble Command.
Link system. Need I say more?
Rean's everything.
Unfortunately this means the game has no fangs. I only died once... to a status effect that no one could guess coming and basically sets you up to die (Nightmare status). Though some bosses tried to cheese me out with full screen S-Crafts or sneaky moves, thanks to my crazy supply of items and the swap system I never once felt threatened. Though it made things more hilarious because CONSTANTLY in the game after fights this is the dialogue ->
*pant, pant*
"Did... did we win?"
"Man, that was a close one."
"We barely won..."
The game is trying to sell me on us learning as a team and eking out victories when the reality is that we are effortlessly PULVERIZING these guys. lol
Graphics and Animations: I like how good the color balance is in this game. AA is acceptable for a PS3 game to me too. I like the architectural modeling and area/room modeling, you can tell that they really tried to make every area unique looking, something anime games sometimes struggle with. I also appreciate the effort behind modeling unique looks for each person, even going to the effort to avoid sameface syndrome among regular students. The campus layout is expertly done and you can't mistake one building for another! Ground texture quality is awful but can't be helped, PS3 etc.
Before I forget, the UI was quite organized and very good. The menu where you organize books, recipes, etc. was flawless.
3D models for the portrait talking while a fine idea was a really big letdown. Many characters share the same default expressions and unfortunately limits the scope of expression overall heavily. Rean has a signature derp face when he's smiling that cracked me up every time I saw it, but most of the time he has the default face, which is disappointing. I feel like a ton of Sky's facial expressions really added a huge amount to the overall expression of each character, and the more you cut that away, the less character there is.
Framerate chugging; so, I played on PS3, and the only time the framerate lagged for me was:
1) When there are a truckload of characters on screen, usually during cutscenes only
2) Final dungeon - I think it dropped to around 10fps, to the point where I could no longer time field attacks
You can tell they set the draw distance really low to prevent framerate from killing itself during many parts of the game, the pop-in is very slow on non-essential objects. Didn't hamper my enjoyment though.
Oh and you guys already know about the animations, but I'll let that slide because sometimes amateur work like that can be appealing. Fie's grenade toss and Elise surfwalking will forever live in my memory as we go on to CS2.
Pacing: I was thinking to myself how on earth a game where, while featuring locations that were all reasonably sized for the most part could still take me around 75 hours to beat despite individual tasks not taking much time to complete. I was going for a full AP run, but I have the options of fast travel & sprint, and quests don't take much time to complete at all.
But when I sat back and looked at the game, I realized that it draws things out to quite a high degree. Each "section" of the chapter usually creates new quests, new bonding moments, new events, and so forth.
General plot progression for most of the game goes like:
Free Day
Old Schoolhouse Investigation
Free Day continued
Practical Exam
Free time before Field Study
Field Study Day 1
Field Study Day 2
Field Study Day 3 (sometimes)
Field Study Day 4 (sometimes)
It's not a bad thing by any means, but it was like SC where it can wear you out pretty fast if you even reasonably attempt to make sure your party of characters are up to speed with proper quartz configurations, proper weapons, proper armor, proper boots, proper accessories while taking the time to talk to people. So I'd say, fairly good pacing on a per-chapter basis (with the exception of chapter 3 where the game makes you do full-field runs to finish some quests) as long as you don't try to burn yourself out by long-hauling through the game. Good for stop-and-go RPG players.
In my own opinion, the
old schoolhouse investigation
I felt was largely pointless, with extremely little mystery (and what mystery there was, was done in a single cutscene and single battle in chapter
4 where Elise accidentally doing all of those things at once just showed how hamfisted the old schoolhouse was.
. That part of the game felt the weakest and hurt the pacing a lot because it felt like I had to do the whole optimization exercise twice with nothing to show for it in the end for nearly the whole time (Jusis agrees). In fact, this part makes the Final Chapter
even more confusing with all the rally speeches before entering it. Any particular reason why we're getting hype over defining legacies when we have no idea what's going on period?
The game does a tremendous job of outlining and linking the story of nobles / provincial army, commoners and the government / RMP / military, the terrorists and the imperial family. In fact, the fact that they were able to tie all of these elements together without issue is really incredible, and is the absolute highlight of the game's story to me. Really, it raises the stakes, creates relevance and context to all the areas you visit as a group and the class itself! Despite the game constantly throwing you into the fray to defend the town against terrorists or fight against supernatural events, it constantly keeps you at arms length and doesn't really affect anyone once you're back to classes. Hell, Sara tells you outright to ignore it and just live up the student life (despite us just breaking Machias out of fucking PRISON about 15 minutes prior). This is OK, but I kind of wish character progression actually kept up.
I think my chief complaint is, that everyone is so dependent on Rean for anything to happen and the game is limited by the huge party size and the number of characters it has to accommodate, and it adds more later! There is very little TRUE character to character interaction outside of quips and squabbles, and actual personal character change (despite everyone championing how much they've changed when coming to Thors), this pretty much doesn't happen; Elliot is still nervous all the time, Laura is still unhealthily steadfast, Jusis is still curt as always, Machias still hates nobles, Alisa is still Alisa even after her declaration to her mother.
The romance elements being chooseable by the player pretty much eradicates any deeper romantic meaning amongst Rean and anyone else and makes the process feel cheaply segued and without any impact to Rean on a personal level and elevates him to a position he hasn't earned. Even before this rather forced romantic segment the character building and relationships are very weak. Probably the only conversation of the game that went above and beyond without random huge backstory drops was Laura calling out Rean's dishonesty in Chapter 1. Chapter 1! Otherwise it's events outside your control, exposition dumps, Elise, and everyone putting way too much stock into you without much to show for it in return other than asking questions.
Rean also needed to show that same level of character variety that he showed in Chapters 6 & 7 way earlier like when he steps between Patrick and Elise. I felt like for the mass majority of the game I was controlling a robot with little consequence that everyone kept dumping their life stories on because I was an inquisitive little robot. Finally, Rean started doing something cool that didn't involve turning into Dalles, patting your friend's head like they are little kids or apologizing for existing... Rean has finally EARNED the right to be respected by his sister!
Many characters are as bad as SC Zane in terms of expressing themselves. Fie: Has to relate everything to her previous corps Laura: Has to relate everything to her swordsmanship Alisa: Has to relate everything to her family, or how much Rean is a pervert Gaius: Somehow manages to incorporate wind into everything; EVERYTHING Machias: Has to relate everything to how much he doesn't like nobles Jusis: Breaks the mold by not liking anything. His horizons are expanded. Elliot: Actually kind of nuanced guy despite being a normal dude. An unsung hero. Towa: Incessantly acts cute (a positive for anyone who wants a cute superhuman class secretary) until Falcom crushed it all by splashing fullscreen porn of her in front of you Angelika: Has to relate everything to violating young maidens Crow: Has to relate everything to money/gambling George: George is awesome.
And I haven't even started with Millium the Compile Heart 2chan Emoji Loli that crotch slams Rean on day 1 of class incorporation. Modern anime acceptance or not, I felt like my soul was slowly being peeled away on the inside.
However like I said in the beginning, the intrigue of the world did such an amazing job, that it can even frame poorly developed characters like these well, and I think CS2 will be the start of something really great when we see that these characters are much better than they are in CS1 when they're not hanging off Rean or their locked-in topics. There's a lot to look forward to as demonstrated when
actual conflict arises in the last chapters
and characters are forced outside of their comfort zones so to speak.
I'd like to give this game my Estelle seal of approval JRPG approval stamp and say that the right idea of playing this game is not to go crazy over full completion or replay, take it slow, don't put much stock in main character chatter, pay a lot of attention to NPC chatter, and make sure you recap the Imperial Chronicle.... and for the love of god, don't rewatch the opening.
Towa: Incessantly acts cute (a positive for anyone who wants a cute superhuman class secretary) until Falcom crushed it all by splashing fullscreen porn of her in front of you
That is definitely hyperbole. I can't remotely see why someone would be banned for it, and I've seen it on each playthrough for my first/Nightmare run. It was supposed to be a contrast from her norm, but it's not nearly what you seem to be implying, as nearly pornographic or something.
I also find your criticism of the characters to be really... self limiting? It ignores the growth shown in the bonding events, where the real meat of the interactions with the characters takes place, on the personal moments, not just the more large scale rally-ish style stuff, though even then, I felt like the moments you're painting over with a broad brush are still very unfair criticisms.
I don't think that the characters are masterpieces, no, but I think they are written better than you're giving them credit for. I certainly felt that after two full playthroughs and having seen every bonding event now (phew), that you see some serious diversity in terms of how the characters are able to adapt and change based on their circumstances, except in a specific few cases...
Emma is a complaint of mine on this, though this seems to be largely because she's paralyzed by plot, and is expected to be a major factor in CSII... so I guess it's kind of a wash.
The 'anime' trope criticisms leveled at the game I've seen in here feel kind of as ham fisted as the tropes themselves being used as the criticism. Tropes are tropes. Most of the ones done in the game were really done well, and I enjoyed seeing the characters escape the limitations of their initial stereotypes.
Yeah it's kinda hard to judge the characters as a whole when we know there development is planned across two possibly three games. I'll be very interested to see if replaying CS1 after finishing CS2 and possibly CS3 gives us a different perspective on the characters seeing where they started and knowing where they went over the saga.
LOL please stop it's embarrassing. Unless you're like a virginal never seen anything but the words of the bible Christian I think nothing in that image is that bad
Finished reading the translated drama cd last night. Kind of glad we didn't get Ymir (chapter 6.5) now, the chapter is mostly anime junk like accidental mixed bath onsens and the class essentially demanding that Rean
fuck his sister that he's known since age 5, including his mother egging him on
, and nothing we hadn't really learned in previous chapters through flashbacks. Nightengale was right
So, in review of Cold Steel. (ASSUME FULL SPOILERS ON BLACK BARS)
Combat: Interesting new ideas but completely busted. Game tries to fix Sky's problems initially but just ends up making an equal or more number of problems. Triple/Double Advantage is supreme overkill for your average mobs. The orbment line system favors those with multiple lines too much, and Master Quartz removes the whole arts/buff/debuff quartz dynamic they tried to create. Arts are busted, quartz are busted, crafts are busted. Running away percentage means jack all when you have smoke grenades.
But... it is fun to see how much you can break the game creatively.
How far you can push Laura's STR stat, or Emma's ATS stat?
How many turns can Fie get before the enemy can move? Can anyone even HIT Fie?
Machias with some creativity is nuts.
Jusis and stackable Noble Command.
Link system. Need I say more?
Rean's everything.
Unfortunately this means the game has no fangs. I only died once... to a status effect that no one could guess coming and basically sets you up to die (Nightmare status). Though some bosses tried to cheese me out with full screen S-Crafts or sneaky moves, thanks to my crazy supply of items and the swap system I never once felt threatened. Though it made things more hilarious because CONSTANTLY in the game after fights this is the dialogue ->
*pant, pant*
"Did... did we win?"
"Man, that was a close one."
"We barely won..."
The game is trying to sell me on us learning as a team and eking out victories when the reality is that we are effortlessly PULVERIZING these guys. lol
Graphics and Animations: I like how good the color balance is in this game. AA is acceptable for a PS3 game to me too. I like the architectural modeling and area/room modeling, you can tell that they really tried to make every area unique looking, something anime games sometimes struggle with. I also appreciate the effort behind modeling unique looks for each person, even going to the effort to avoid sameface syndrome among regular students. The campus layout is expertly done and you can't mistake one building for another! Ground texture quality is awful but can't be helped, PS3 etc.
Before I forget, the UI was quite organized and very good. The menu where you organize books, recipes, etc. was flawless.
3D models for the portrait talking while a fine idea was a really big letdown. Many characters share the same default expressions and unfortunately limits the scope of expression overall heavily. Rean has a signature derp face when he's smiling that cracked me up every time I saw it, but most of the time he has the default face, which is disappointing. I feel like a ton of Sky's facial expressions really added a huge amount to the overall expression of each character, and the more you cut that away, the less character there is.
Framerate chugging; so, I played on PS3, and the only time the framerate lagged for me was:
1) When there are a truckload of characters on screen, usually during cutscenes only
2) Final dungeon - I think it dropped to around 10fps, to the point where I could no longer time field attacks
You can tell they set the draw distance really low to prevent framerate from killing itself during many parts of the game, the pop-in is very slow on non-essential objects. Didn't hamper my enjoyment though.
Oh and you guys already know about the animations, but I'll let that slide because sometimes amateur work like that can be appealing. Fie's grenade toss and Elise surfwalking will forever live in my memory as we go on to CS2.
Pacing: I was thinking to myself how on earth a game where, while featuring locations that were all reasonably sized for the most part could still take me around 75 hours to beat despite individual tasks not taking much time to complete. I was going for a full AP run, but I have the options of fast travel & sprint, and quests don't take much time to complete at all.
But when I sat back and looked at the game, I realized that it draws things out to quite a high degree. Each "section" of the chapter usually creates new quests, new bonding moments, new events, and so forth.
General plot progression for most of the game goes like:
Free Day
Old Schoolhouse Investigation
Free Day continued
Practical Exam
Free time before Field Study
Field Study Day 1
Field Study Day 2
Field Study Day 3 (sometimes)
Field Study Day 4 (sometimes)
It's not a bad thing by any means, but it was like SC where it can wear you out pretty fast if you even reasonably attempt to make sure your party of characters are up to speed with proper quartz configurations, proper weapons, proper armor, proper boots, proper accessories while taking the time to talk to people. So I'd say, fairly good pacing on a per-chapter basis (with the exception of chapter 3 where the game makes you do full-field runs to finish some quests) as long as you don't try to burn yourself out by long-hauling through the game. Good for stop-and-go RPG players.
In my own opinion, the
old schoolhouse investigation
I felt was largely pointless, with extremely little mystery (and what mystery there was, was done in a single cutscene and single battle in chapter
4 where Elise accidentally doing all of those things at once just showed how hamfisted the old schoolhouse was.
. That part of the game felt the weakest and hurt the pacing a lot because it felt like I had to do the whole optimization exercise twice with nothing to show for it in the end for nearly the whole time (Jusis agrees). In fact, this part makes the Final Chapter
even more confusing with all the rally speeches before entering it. Any particular reason why we're getting hype over defining legacies when we have no idea what's going on period?
The game does a tremendous job of outlining and linking the story of nobles / provincial army, commoners and the government / RMP / military, the terrorists and the imperial family. In fact, the fact that they were able to tie all of these elements together without issue is really incredible, and is the absolute highlight of the game's story to me. Really, it raises the stakes, creates relevance and context to all the areas you visit as a group and the class itself! Despite the game constantly throwing you into the fray to defend the town against terrorists or fight against supernatural events, it constantly keeps you at arms length and doesn't really affect anyone once you're back to classes. Hell, Sara tells you outright to ignore it and just live up the student life (despite us just breaking Machias out of fucking PRISON about 15 minutes prior). This is OK, but I kind of wish character progression actually kept up.
I think my chief complaint is, that everyone is so dependent on Rean for anything to happen and the game is limited by the huge party size and the number of characters it has to accommodate, and it adds more later! There is very little TRUE character to character interaction outside of quips and squabbles, and actual personal character change (despite everyone championing how much they've changed when coming to Thors), this pretty much doesn't happen; Elliot is still nervous all the time, Laura is still unhealthily steadfast, Jusis is still curt as always, Machias still hates nobles, Alisa is still Alisa even after her declaration to her mother.
The romance elements being chooseable by the player pretty much eradicates any deeper romantic meaning amongst Rean and anyone else and makes the process feel cheaply segued and without any impact to Rean on a personal level and elevates him to a position he hasn't earned. Even before this rather forced romantic segment the character building and relationships are very weak. Probably the only conversation of the game that went above and beyond without random huge backstory drops was Laura calling out Rean's dishonesty in Chapter 1. Chapter 1! Otherwise it's events outside your control, exposition dumps, Elise, and everyone putting way too much stock into you without much to show for it in return other than asking questions.
Rean also needed to show that same level of character variety that he showed in Chapters 6 & 7 way earlier like when he steps between Patrick and Elise. I felt like for the mass majority of the game I was controlling a robot with little consequence that everyone kept dumping their life stories on because I was an inquisitive little robot. Finally, Rean started doing something cool that didn't involve turning into Dalles, patting your friend's head like they are little kids or apologizing for existing... Rean has finally EARNED the right to be respected by his sister!
Many characters are as bad as SC Zane in terms of expressing themselves. Fie: Has to relate everything to her previous corps Laura: Has to relate everything to her swordsmanship Alisa: Has to relate everything to her family, or how much Rean is a pervert Gaius: Somehow manages to incorporate wind into everything; EVERYTHING Machias: Has to relate everything to how much he doesn't like nobles Jusis: Breaks the mold by not liking anything. His horizons are expanded. Elliot: Actually kind of nuanced guy despite being a normal dude. An unsung hero. Towa: Incessantly acts cute (a positive for anyone who wants a cute superhuman class secretary) until Falcom crushed it all by splashing fullscreen porn of her in front of you Angelika: Has to relate everything to violating young maidens Crow: Has to relate everything to money/gambling George: George is awesome.
And I haven't even started with Millium the Compile Heart 2chan Emoji Loli that crotch slams Rean on day 1 of class incorporation. Modern anime acceptance or not, I felt like my soul was slowly being peeled away on the inside.
However like I said in the beginning, the intrigue of the world did such an amazing job, that it can even frame poorly developed characters like these well, and I think CS2 will be the start of something really great when we see that these characters are much better than they are in CS1 when they're not hanging off Rean or their locked-in topics. There's a lot to look forward to as demonstrated when
actual conflict arises in the last chapters
and characters are forced outside of their comfort zones so to speak.
I'd like to give this game my Estelle seal of approval JRPG approval stamp and say that the right idea of playing this game is not to go crazy over full completion or replay, take it slow, don't put much stock in main character chatter, pay a lot of attention to NPC chatter, and make sure you recap the Imperial Chronicle.... and for the love of god, don't rewatch the opening.
I'm going to touch on a bit of your criticism of character development. About 50-70% of the character development actually happens in bonding events and talking to characters in free time and in between the story segments which I believe is intentional and fleshes out characters better than the dumps JRPG's like this tend to do in the main story. Following Laura for example in her problems with the pink haired swimming club girl shows a lot of her personal growth and you only get these indirectly through interactions like this which gives characters considerably more depth by allowing you to fill in the exposition gaps.
Yeah it's kinda hard to judge the characters as a whole when we know there development is planned across two possibly three games. I'll be very interested to see if replaying CS1 after finishing CS2 and possibly CS3 gives us a different perspective on the characters seeing where they started and knowing where they went over the saga.
That's what I'm banking on.
I watched the CS2 opening, and I think there are great things ahead for these characters, after CS1, which overall disappointed me on that front.
LOL please stop it's embarrassing. Unless you're like a virginal never seen anything but the words of the bible Christian I think nothing in that image is that bad
I'm a bit concerned that it's the first thing some people rush to talk about and defend though... at least there's a few posts talking about the characters
I'm a bit concerned that it's the first thing some people rush to talk about and defend though... at least there's a few posts talking about the characters
Considering people post videos and images from DoA X3 which has a confirmed underage girl running around in a bikini I'm pretty sure that image in question from a girl who may have already been 18 at the time it was taken wouldn't be a problem at all.
I'm going to touch on a bit of your criticism of character development. About 50-70% of the character development actually happens in bonding events and talking to characters in free time and in between the story segments which I believe is intentional and fleshes out characters better than the dumps JRPG's like this tend to do in the main story. Following Laura for example in her problems with the pink haired swimming club girl shows a lot of her personal growth and you only get these indirectly through interactions like this which gives characters considerably more depth by allowing you to fill in the exposition gaps.
Well, let's see if I can recall properly. I maxed out the links using bonding events and general time spending for Laura, Alisa, Fie, Emma, Jusis and Gaius.
I got very close to finishing out Machias, Crow, and Elliot. I didn't do anything for Sara and Towa and
Millium
because someone told me that Sara doesn't have an interesting event line and Towa unfortunately would've gotten in the way of the other characters I wanted to see.
I think that while the events do give you windows into these characters' personalities (I personally thought they were more fun additions most of the time ("spend time with your friends"), like helping Machias pick out a chess book, or playing lacrosse with Alisa, or trying to correct Laura's mental state during training off the top of my head), the main story plot does a better job of introduction and building; easiest example I can think of is Elliot and Machias and
their families, which have way bigger moments than their bonding events do
. Same for Laura, I did a lot of Laura's bonding events, but it just expounded more on what she was doing at the moment than compared to the things we learn
when we meet her father and friends.
Maybe this is because the game's Bonding Points are so limiting? Maybe I missed events that would've made the characters better despite me trying to follow a guide and connect with people the best I can? To me that's a big negative strike against this game to be honest, that unlike Persona 4 you cannot experience what every character has to offer.
Considering people post videos and images from DoA X3 which has a confirmed underage girl running around in a bikini I'm pretty sure that image in question from a girl who may have already been 18 at the time it was taken wouldn't be a problem at all.
Well, let's see if I can recall properly. I maxed out the links using bonding events and general time spending for Laura, Alisa, Fie, Emma, Jusis and Gaius.
I got very close to finishing out Machias, Crow, and Elliot. I didn't do anything for Sara and Towa and
Millium
because someone told me that Sara doesn't have an interesting event line and Towa unfortunately would've gotten in the way of the other characters I wanted to see.
I think that while the events do give you windows into these characters' personalities (I personally thought they were more fun additions most of the time ("spend time with your friends"), like helping Machias pick out a chess book, or playing lacrosse with Alisa, or trying to correct Laura's mental state during training off the top of my head), the main story plot does a better job of introduction and building; easiest example I can think of is Elliot and Machias and
their families, which have way bigger moments than their bonding events do
. Same for Laura, I did a lot of Laura's bonding events, but it just expounded more on what she was doing at the moment than compared to the things we learn
when we meet her father and friends.
.
Maybe this is because the game's Bonding Points are so limiting? Maybe I missed events that would've made the characters better despite me trying to follow a guide and connect with people the best I can? To me that's a big negative strike against this game to be honest, that unlike Persona 4 you cannot experience what every character has to offer.
.
That's what I'm banking on.
I watched the CS2 opening, and I think there are great things ahead for these characters, after CS1, which overall disappointed me on that front.
I was thinking more of its "underage" look.
I'm a bit concerned that it's the first thing some people rush to talk about and defend though... at least there's a few posts talking about the characters
Damned if I know why, devil's advocacy is some wierd shit.
And about her,
I didn't care about it as she's 18 and not 12. "Rean! She's coming on to you you damn sod!"
But anyways, you have a harsher view than I did about that,
I only felt Millium and Gaius lacked a good "core" from which to interact from during the game. Gaius is a smart dude with an outsider's perspective on the dysfunctional shitshow that is the Empire proper but had fuck-all to say outside of a few plot-related personal perspectives in 3 and 5. He also only journeyed in the field trips in 3 and 5, and was kind of a 5th wheel in 5 due to half of it being at the fortress and the first half being the Laura/Rean/Jusis Show.
I seriously hope they get good limelight in 2 and 3.
Well, let's see if I can recall properly. I maxed out the links using bonding events and general time spending for Laura, Alisa, Fie, Emma, Jusis and Gaius.
I got very close to finishing out Machias, Crow, and Elliot. I didn't do anything for Sara and Towa and
Millium
because someone told me that Sara doesn't have an interesting event line and Towa unfortunately would've gotten in the way of the other characters I wanted to see.
I think that while the events do give you windows into these characters' personalities (I personally thought they were more fun additions most of the time ("spend time with your friends"), like helping Machias pick out a chess book, or playing lacrosse with Alisa, or trying to correct Laura's mental state during training off the top of my head), the main story plot does a better job of introduction and building; easiest example I can think of is Elliot and Machias and
their families, which have way bigger moments than their bonding events do
. Same for Laura, I did a lot of Laura's bonding events, but it just expounded more on what she was doing at the moment than compared to the things we learn
when we meet her father and friends.
Maybe this is because the game's Bonding Points are so limiting? Maybe I missed events that would've made the characters better despite me trying to follow a guide and connect with people the best I can? To me that's a big negative strike against this game to be honest, that unlike Persona 4 you cannot experience what every character has to offer.
Oh, that's true... never mind then, you wouldn't get banned.
I also was talking about just random things that happen in free time like the Laura swim team example. Another example is when that loved crazed Class 1 girl sets her sights on Machias and Elliot gets dragged into it. They may seem trivial but they give characters a breadth to their depth and lets you see characters bounce off of random classmates to showing how their personalities hold up in various situations there's a certain subtlety to their interactions that does wonders for rounding off the corners of their personalities that you just don't get in the games normal exposition.
I don't really agree with the criticism that these people don't change. Your expectations seem to be that they should basically become completely different personalities through "character development" and that if they still act somewhat similarly later on (i.e. Elliot is a bit awkward even by the end, though not quite as awkward as in the beginning), that means the characters haven't developed at all, which is an extremely flawed premise on viewing character development.
I mean, let's take your Alisa criticism
She starts off as someone who "hates" her mother in a rebellious teenager kind of way and acts off purely based on what she thinks will most displeasures her, going as far as to enroll to a military academy without telling her. Her talks with her mother mostly seem to be about somewhat childish temper tantrums, but otherwise she doesn't really talk to her mother about what is bothering her. During the story, she comes to realize that she does care for her & would love to see her happy, as well as start to come to grips with the fact that she might have to run the company in her future and shouldn't necessarily run away from it.
She still doesn't agree with anything her mother is doing with the company, going as far as to actually having what seemed like the first real talk they had had in years where she opens up about everything that has been disturbing her about her mother's actions (other than just not spending time with her), but she at least starts to understand her own feelings better, even if her relationship with her mother isn't immediately fixed. It also shows how far she has come that when she hears her mother is on the board of directors of the academy, she ends up not letting that matter too much since she feels that even though she went there as a kind of rebellious act of defiance, she feels she's doing the right thing in continuing on that path.
Just because she doesn't have a detailed plan of what to do with the company after criticizing her mother doesn't make her character development moot. If anything, that just makes her character's development that much more believable & shows just how much she has developed, admitting flaws in her own actions and not just in her mother's. She IS still a teenager, so even though she can kind of see flaws in how her mother runs the business and be all "I'll show you how to really run this thing, bijaaatch", of course she doesn't really have the knowledge and isn't in a position to really start doing anything about it yet.
And her teasing Rean with the whole "you pervert" shtick has absolutely nothing to do with character development. That's just the kind of personality trait that doesn't necessarily change even if otherwise someone goes through a lot of character development. Just like Olivier's perverse humor is just the way he acts, even though what he has seen & experienced during his travels in Liberl & following Ereborian politics afterwards have clearly had an impact on him & how he views the world.
I also was talking about just random things that happen in free time like the Laura swim team example. Another example is when that loved crazed Class 1 girl sets her sights on Machias and Elliot gets dragged into it. They may seem trivial but they give characters a breadth to their depth and lets you see characters bounce off of random classmates to showing how their personalities hold up in various situations there's a certain subtlety to their interactions that does wonders for rounding off the corners of their personalities that you just don't get in the games normal exposition.
I understand where you're coming from. Maybe I've just assigned that sort of thing to trivial NPC behavior, and my viewpoint is different. Though in that sense, linking with Alisa is like getting hit in the face with a bag of bricks rather than rounding off corners lol
Oh, speaking of bonding, Patrick is a real favorite character of mine. He's pompous, then when you catch him off guard he drops his pompous act without realizing it. Then when he realizes you caught him acting normal he gets all mad and becomes pompous again so that you don't drop his image of him. The side story with his
butler
was very touching. It probably helps that Patrick has one of the best voice actors in the game next to Fie and Jusis.
Plus he goes right into courting
Rean's sister
with like zero hesitation, made me laugh my ass off. I also like how he
came and challenged Class VII based on pride with his cronies.
Reminded me of Groose. I even have a screencap of one of my favorite lines from him here: (chapter 4) http://i.imgur.com/2N0LZCB.png
I think we may have to fundamentally disagree. When you go through a major life shift such as
confronting your parent(s), you definitely change as a person. You don't drop your whole life story on someone through three separate occasions, perform an extraordinarily brave action such as claiming that you'll take on the biggest business in the empire the right way, live through 5 separate field studies with multiple major moments and then continue like nothing as usual has changed. Even if it was subtle I was looking forward to it, but it didn't really happen. It feels so stilted when she basically acts the same character from the beginning; I can't accept such inconsistency. Hell, as much crap as Machias gets and I gave him, he changes more for the better than Alisa does based on what he's done in the field with Rean and co.
Her mother is not mentioned or referred to at all, almost leading us to believe that Laura was born out of thin air. What I suspect - and this is pure speculation - is that during Laura's childhood, her mother did the occasional check in the Lohengrin Castle and in the process got possessed by the spirit of Rianne Sandlot. Following that train of thought, I suspect St. Sandlot has been moving from body to body of women who have inspected the Castle since the War of the Lions, making Laura's mother the most recent case of incarnations. Or something.
But again, it's completely speculation on my side.
Laura's mother is Patrick Swayze to Radiant blade master's Demi Moore? Except, you know, Swayze gets pregnant and delivers a human child. Basically, radiant blade master was training in Lohengrin as a young man, meets a banging ghost (possibly St Sandlot), sparks fly, and nine months later Laura shows up on his doorstep in a ghostly basket.
I actually thought the character development, for the most part was really well done. Yea there aren't huge gigantic shifts, that would actually be unrealistic. Instead what you see is subtle shifts in thinking and acting, or characters sometimes acting in ways you weren't expecting, due to these subtle shifts. But of course they're going to fall into some of the same habits from time to time. Habits in ways of thinking and acting are extremely hard to break.
