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The Legend of Heroes Thread - Trails of Cold Steel in the Sky

Jinn

Jinn

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Nov 8, 2007
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Well, I just finished SC. I love the game, and what a finale for the Estelle and Joshua arc! But goddamn was it LOOOOOONG. I think I can accept there being a reason for the pacing, considering how concerned with world-building the series is (which at the end of the day I find greatly endearing), but I have mixed feeling about how drawn out some parts of SC is. Minor annoyances really, considering what a fucking gem of a game it is, and how beautiful it is to have completed the two games that kicked off such a unique and amazing series. Went ahead and bought 3rd right away, though I'm not sure when I'll be getting to it. Octopath Traveler is coming out on PC in about a month, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 is out next week, so it'll probably be waiting for a couple months at least. It'll be good to take a break and to return to the Trails series with a game that seems to deviate quite a bit from the structure in FC and SC. I'm of course tempted to jump straight ahead to Cold Steel I, which I also own, but I know once I fire up 3rd I'll be more than happy to play through it.

So that ending mega-dungeon... If I had kept playing on Hard, I probably would have rage quit the game honestly. Too many fucking boss fights. I know they wanted to make it impactful, but holy shit, after the slog of Chapter 8, I can't imagine going through this huge area and dying several times on multiple boss fights. Would have been excruciating. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed exploring the Ark and learning about everything it entails, but I kind of hate how JRPGs tend to draw out the moments before the final boss, and SC did it for about 10 hours. On normal, it ended up being a little too easy, but I faced some decent challenge and it was fun enough. There really should be a difficulty between Normal and Hard. That being said, I'll probably do a more relaxed Normal run when I get to 3rd. I have to apologize to HoboForEternity for playfully scolding him a few pages back for advising someone against Hard. It worked well in FC, but it was pretty poorly implemented in SC overall. Probably won't be touching a Trails Hard mode again until I play Cold Steel. I think you were right though, Hobo. These games are probably more enjoyable on Normal, or at least SC is.

Anyway, can't say much more about SC that hasn't already been said in this thread. I loved it probably 90% of the time, and was annoyed with it the other 10%. I love Estelle and Joshua, but I'm mostly looking forward to only seeing them as cameos in later games. I'm happy to be done following their story and look forward to exploring the world of Trails filtered through another protagonist's perspective. And boy am I excited for that Crossbell translation to finally come out.
 
HoboForEternity

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Yeah, at least the first time around, you better play in normal, then if you feel like it, play with the above difficulty. As much i love this series, the harder difficulty fell into your typical jrpg difficulty creep with inflated HP bosses and other stuff.
 
Cromwell

Cromwell

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Feb 16, 2013
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5,443
IF SC is the finale to estelles arc can I savely skip third and start cold steel or do I miss too much?
 
HoboForEternity

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Cromwell said:
IF SC is the finale to estelles arc can I savely skip third and start cold steel or do I miss too much?
Click to expand...
dont skip 3. It is, on its own a great story, also alot of lore exposition that set the rest of tbe series. It even foreshadows the future games that hasn't been released yet.
1. It tells you alot about the future location you will visit.
2. Introduce you to some background lore, about politics in certain regions, also more about ouroboros.
3. It also flesh out some of sky supporting character that never got explored in fc and sc.
4. Estelle's story isn't over. Her and joshua story continue up to the first crossbell game, and while waiting for the crossbell games to be fan translated, sky 3rd explain her motivation travelling to crossbell, as well set her up as potential player in future games.
5. Sets up cold steel games quite nicely.
6. Kevin is an awesome protagonist
7. 3rd has some of the best boss battles both optional and not in the series so far
8. Set up the super important septian church and the church itself is an amazing organization full of layers.

Tl;dr: dont dare you skip 3.
 
SecondAmendment

SecondAmendment

Savant
Joined
Nov 22, 2018
Messages
289
Trails the 3rd is by far the best mechanically, narratively, and has the best presentation of any of the Trails series. I didn't know if I would like it, having liked Trails and loved SC, but I was blown away by Trails the 3rd.

I honestly can't understand playing Octopath rather than finishing the Trails series other than you need a break from the emotions after SC.
 
Endemic

Endemic

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Joined
Jul 16, 2012
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4,326
Related:

PjvL2BD.jpg
 
Jinn

Jinn

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
4,952
SecondAmendment said:
I honestly can't understand playing Octopath rather than finishing the Trails series other than you need a break from the emotions after SC.
Click to expand...

Mainly need a break from the tone, atmosphere, mechanics, and style. I love Trails games, but they are still anime as fuck and it wears me out sometimes. If I kept playing the games consecutively I'd definitely get burnt out, end up not enjoying myself as much, and kind of ruin the games a bit in the process. The urge is there, but I've been looking forward to Octopath and need to recharge my lust for JRPG before jumping into that too.
 
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Jinn

Jinn

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Welp, I lied. While anime fatigue is indeed setting in a bit, I was curious enough about how 3rd was going to be set up that I had to jump right in. I figure I'll just get as far into it as I can before Kiwami 2 comes out on Thursday, then come back to it and finish it up whenever I can in the future. Never really had a problem with letting these games rest for a month or two anyway.

About 3 hours in. Really like how different it is already and I can tell Kevin will probably be my favorite protagonist of the currently released series. So much more interesting, fun and relatable to me already than Estelle, who, again, I still love despite her ultimately being pretty obnoxiously naive and optimistic through the entirety of FC and SC.

Started on Hard because I've read they handled it much better in 3rd, but will not hesitate to drop back to normal if it becomes anywhere near as bullshit as SC. Going to probably hit it fairly hard the next few days and get at least to the midway point.

Also, sorry for the double post. Thread is pretty dead these days, but this post seemed significant enough to not be an edit on my prior one.
 
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Dodo1610

Dodo1610

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May 3, 2018
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Location
Germany
Started playing Trails in the Sky 1. I like the tone and humour but I personally prefer Trails of Cold Steel games. Really miss the voiced dialogue though. Still, it's so much better than most of the more famous JRPGs from that time.
 
StaticSpine

StaticSpine

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Dec 14, 2013
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Moscow
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
So...
67DDBB7918076A95B0981BEB1241BCB1A25556B5

Both CS games solidified LoH series as one of my all-time fav. I feel exhausted, thought. I need some rest to start missing the characters.

The final randomized dungeon with a rehashed CS1 shadow boss was pointless. It didn't add anything to the experience or the story. Lol, there even were no motivation to kill the boss ("Yup, we know this is a hollow trial, but we don't need a purpose to kill you!" I think it was better to end the game earlier.
 

Nostaljaded

Savant
Joined
Jun 4, 2015
Messages
361
Dodo1610 said:
Started playing Trails in the Sky 1. I like the tone and humour but I personally prefer Trails of Cold Steel games. Really miss the voiced dialogue though. Still, it's so much better than most of the more famous JRPGs from that time.
Click to expand...
If you don't mind jap voiced lines and getting your hands dirty for Sky,



https://github.com/ZhenjianYang/SoraVoice
The converted Sora Evolution Jap voice files may be on the net, make sure to have those first before attempting to patch. Then mod in the undub patch as well to replace the Eng battle voices for consistency.
(Might as well get used to it since Crossbell/Zero Eng fan translation will only have Jap voice lines upon release)

Always prefer the original voice lines over dubs, regardless of the media's country of origin.
 
Somberlain

Somberlain

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Mar 5, 2012
Messages
6,202
Location
Basement
One of the strengths of Sen 3/4 is that the new Class 7 is smaller and all the members get more screentime and opportunities to interact with each other and not just Rean.

The original class 7 is kind of pushed to the sidelines, though.
 
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