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

Unless ToCS 2 and TitS 3 sell appallingly, I think it's a given that ToCS 3 and maybe the Crossbell Arc will be ported to the west (and that means Crossbell on PC). Falcom have a good relationship with Xseed.

I'm still playing ToCS 1 but I'm absolutely loving it. Twists and turns all over the place, everyone has a great backstory and goes through substantial character development. The over-reliance on Estelle and Joshua in Trails in the Sky is forgiven.

Getting into some really nice political intrigue now, and I like how the developers know how to shake the gameplay up. One long chapter that almost feels open world, followed by a city-based chapter where you're encouraged to keep moving. And some old faces from Trails in the Sky.

Fucking loving it.

 

Crossbell PC porting was made by a Chinese company, there would be too many hops to go through to port it.

And every time XSEED asked for Falcom help regarding porting stuff, they basically told them they had no programmers to spare.

 

Falcom has hilariously bad timing - stayed in the PC market when everyone was jumping off, then by the time they did jump off, Japanese companies were starting to court overseas markets through Steam and crawling back to the PC and now Falcom is behind again.

 

That's weird, because Falcom did do work for porting FC and SC. Xseed were able to do the translations by themselves, in Excel spreadsheets, but they had to send these over to Falcom programmers in order to get them in the game - and they reported bugs and managed to get PSP features added, so there was a lot of back and forth.

As for Crossbell PC porting, they would just create entirely new ports like they already did for FC and SC. The PC ports from Xseed were basically completely new ports, with PSP extras, and support for mouse and keyboard, higher resolutions, things like that.

 

So, I have tried starting Trails in the Sky FC three times before my current playthrough. Each time I got about 2 hours in before I drifted away from it again for no solid reason (maybe the intro/tutorial time is a little drawn out?). However, this time I forced myself through the first 3 hours and finally found that wonderful game everyone was talking about!

I'm about 13 hours in now and am no longer rolling my eyes at Estelle's stupid shit, enjoying the hell out of the music, world, lore, characters and have even begun enjoying the sprites and overall art style. I was also pleasantly surprised by the battle system on Hard mode, particularly considering how it's been so emphasized as being lackluster around here. I've had my shit kicked in more than once, but retried the battle with some alternate tactics and dominated. This might be because I'm intentionally trying to not grind much at all, but I seem to have struck a nice balance one way or another. While the actual battle mechanics themselves are not that particularly innovative or complex, they come together quite nicely. For instance, whacking your enemies closer together so you can pull off a devastating critical AoE that could win the day, or buffing just in time for a strength bonus, etc. I think I'm finally hooked on this series! To anyone who is like me - someone who enjoys JRPGs a fair amount, but just couldn't seem to get into this acclaimed one - try playing past that 3 hour mark. It's almost hard to put my finger on what exactly is drawing me in so hard, but I just keep getting the urge to play it. And seeing as it sounds like the progressing titles in the series only get better as they go, I'm happy to have finally been able to invest myself in Trails games.

 

Trails in the Sky starts very slow but in the end you realize that love is the truest form of beauty.

 

Well, personally the first game is my favorite precisely because of how low-key and, well, slow it is (except the finale). Really makes you feel like you're just a bunch of adventurers exploring the world and becoming more experienced as you go. The second game gets too epic and dramatic at times, and not in a good way. But I do prefer low-key in general when given the choice, and I also haven't played ToCS yet.

 

The PC ports of Ys: Seven and Ys: Memories of Celceta were done by a Chinese company as well. Supposedly the former was going to be localized but I haven't heard anything new about that in quite a while.

 

^^^Estelle is a p. funny character, definitely refreshing compare to most otaku self insert you get nowadays.

Even CS suffers from it sadly.

 

What's not to love about our beloved impulsive and hot headed ditz?

Oh and I just got done ordering CSII.

 

For those who are interested, Trails of Cold Steel is currently -50% at EU Playstation store.

 

It's also available for free....I knew making sure to refrain from updating my Vita for 2 years would pay off in the end.

 

Getting very close to finishing ToCS 1 (I'm about two hours into the Final Chapter), and ToCS 2 will be out very soon... I'll put my full thoughts on ToCS 1 here in this thread when I'm done, but in short, the game has kept getting better with each chapter and I absolutely love the characters and the universe in which all the Trails games are placed. I really want them to port over the Crossbell games now...

 

I'm currently towards the last quarter of ToCS 2 and i can tell you that it's a worthy follow up, and if you're a fan of Instructor Sara(the best character besides Olivier of course), you'll definitely have plenty to look forward to.

And it goes without saying that II has good tracks.

 

Alisa is my waifu but Sara is probably my favourite character, so that sounds good to me!

 

Sara does suffer from plot convenience a bit when she permanently joins the party in Cold Steel 2, though. Before that, she is always shown to be much more powerful than the Class VII members and she pulls off some really impressive feats in terms of power. But after she joins the party, she never saves the day or does similar stunts when Class VII members are defeated or in a really tight spot. Well, she does it once, when she learns her final S-craft, but that's it.

 

I can't wait to play the more edgier alternate version of this game.

 

I was disappoint in the two moments where I couldn't use my waifu due to (admittedly understandable) plot reasons, but her being a regular companion besides that is a godsend. Oh and needless to say, i'm ensuring that Rean will be go balls deeo into some S tier North Ambrian poonnani by the time this is all over, and she's going to all but forget about her preference for older dudes by the time he's done.

 

But why couldn't Claire be a permanent member

Though it's pretty cool that

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every single playable character from the game is available in the final dungeon, including some really OP secret characters.

 

Final Chapter, not quite finished yet (maybe 30 minutes - 1 hour left of play time?).

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Finished the last dungeon and saw the concert scene. It says a lot that the concert was the only time I actually cringed playing TOCS. It is so utterly lacking in the horrible cringiness of TITS, I consider that to be firm incline.... although in the dance scene I just watched, Rean's sister mopes about not being able to get with him... what the FUCK is it with these developers and their fascination with incest?

 

I cringed from pain whenever the characters did those group shouts that are loud enough to kill headphone users. That was fortunately fixed in the second game.

 

I didn't have any issue with Estelle and Josh(tho it is a bit odd with how everyone is perfectly fine with it and you never see Cassius' view of it), but Rean and Elise otoh i found pretty weird, especially since they've been adopted siblings at an even younger age than the former(which is why i can deal with the Estelle/Josh 'mance), but fortunately Rean doesn't reciprocate and can chase after fine hunnies like Sara and Laura instead.

Oh and without spoiling anything, there's a special kind of battle you'll experience at the very end of CS1 that you can look forward to more of in CS2.

 

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Those mech battles are visually the most satisfying battles in the games. Especially the endgame of CS2 has some pretty over the top fights.

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Using two mechs at the same time to fight a giant demon mech was pretty ridiculous and also pretty awesome at the same time.

 

Looking forward to it. I won't have access to the PS3 until very late tonight, but I'm currently listening back to this amazing track from the final dungeon. I was in that dungeon for about two hours, and this played on a loop, and I pretty much whistled along to it constantly. Fucking amazing.

 

I'm also partial to the theme of the castle in Legram.



And it's arranged vocal version, which plays during the spirit temples in CS2.



Oh i just finished the finale segment in CS2, and for those wanting a sample of the Crossbell games (and without going into details), you're in luck...