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

[Cat Dude]

Any character who looks like Gaius always was created for a side kick in anime and jrpg.

 

[Sarathiour]

The relationship between the two is one of the many lower points of this game. It never evolves past hissy fits.

Damn. Oh well. Machias has still a shotgun. That will take time to get old.

It evolve a bit through the saga, basically in cs1 there arc is pretty much over after chapter 2. It's just play for the laugh most of the time, but they got their moment.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Cold Steel characters are like "I am a disciple of the 8 leaf lotus blade master fighting style"

Machias is like "That's cool, I have a shotgun."

 

[Rahdulan]

beat Ao, took me 80h

The more I hear about how long each earlier game takes to beat the more I'm convinced I'll never get around to Cold Steel. Also still looking to at least complete the Trails in the Sky trilogy before starting.

 

[Rean]

80 hours is nothing.
CSIII took me about 120.

 

[Kaivokz]

I think these games attract autists who talk to every NPC and get S rank in every chapter. You could beat them much faster if you wanted to.

 

[cruel]

Talking to people and doing side stuff is part of the charm, not autism. If the game is good, I want to play it as long as possible.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

 

[Kaivokz]

We're all autists here, cruel.

 

[Rean]

Talking to NPCs qualifies as the opposite of autism, autists have severe problems with lack of empathy and have very little interest whatsoever in other individuals.
More likely to find autists playing shooters.

 

[Kaivokz]

You’re describing a psychopath, not autism. Lack of natural empathy != no interest in other people. I question your inference that “talking to NPCs” means “being interested in other individuals.” At least, when I read NPC dialogue it is not generally because I am interested in that NPC as an “individual person”, nor do I think of it in any significant way as being equivalent to talking to a real person. Rather, I, and I would venture most people, primarily talk to NPCs because we want to know more about the world and lore of the game.

That is all irrelevant, however, because I was obviously using “autistic” in the colloquial internet sense to mean something like: obsessively focused on one thing (a game/game series) and compulsive (an urge to talk to every NPC even if it is boring).

 

[Lyre Mors]

One of the absolute best common battle themes in the series.



One of the best travel themes in the series.



One of the best town themes in the series (some serious feeling with context)



One of the best dungeon themes in the series.



Musical biases aside, almost three months after completing it and after plenty of reflection, I feel confident saying IV is my favorite game in the Cold Steel series, and one of my favorite in the entire Trails series.

 

[Shadenuat]

(hums Arios entering theme)

 

[Sarathiour]

gameplay footage of kuro :

Real time seems extremely streamlined, and basically dedicated to trash. No concrete footage of turn base, more like craft exhibition,, which could allegedly only be used on trun-base.

Spoiler

seems like fie kept her craft pretty much untouched

 

[Ysaye]

gameplay footage of kuro :

Real time seems extremely streamlined, and basically dedicated to trash. No concrete footage of turn base, more like craft exhibition,, which could allegedly only be used on trun-base.

Spoiler

seems like fie kept her craft pretty much untouched

Yep I saw that about the crafts being turn based only - if real time is for trash mobs that is probably better design - what someone was saying was that the trash mobs are pretty tanky so it will be faster to just enter turn based and use crafts if you want to finish them off.

Although I note that I don't think I have seen any enemies actually get a hit on a single player character yet? Well apart from spoiler enemy character at the end of the video, and that seems like it is in turn based mode.

 

[Sarathiour]

gameplay footage of kuro :

Real time seems extremely streamlined, and basically dedicated to trash. No concrete footage of turn base, more like craft exhibition,, which could allegedly only be used on trun-base.

Spoiler

seems like fie kept her craft pretty much untouched

Yep I saw that about the crafts being turn based only - if real time is for trash mobs that is probably better design - what someone was saying was that the trash mobs are pretty tanky so it will be faster to just enter turn based and use crafts if you want to finish them off.

Although I note that I don't think I have seen any enemies actually get a hit on a single player character yet? Well apart from spoiler enemy character at the end of the video, and that seems like it is in turn based mode.

Seems indeed like placeholder, they might even have purposefully beefed up trash hp in order to show character's whole combo.

 

[Rean]

Long haired Fie

 

[Shadenuat]

but muh TB

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Yay, finished Cold Steel 1. Whole game of filler and setup but the ending was entertaining. Kinda ballsy to end your story on the act 1 inciting incident, I'd be pissed if I had to wait another year to keep going. Then again it's also *hilariously* optimistic to think I'd play through the first game what, 8 times? just to see every dancing scene or whatever.

-Impressed that they start you off at level 40 in the next game, figured you'd de-level between games.

-Did not realize there was

Spoiler

mecha

in this series, that's like an automatic 2 bonus points right there, very pleasant surprise.

-Since the point of the game is to set up all the characters, I'd almost expect to play the alternate parties in each chapter, but that would make the game even longer and more boring. I'd say about half of Class 7 grew on me by the end.

-Game wasn't hard except when a boss would randomly use an S-craft and wipe the party. ??? Not really sure how you're supposed to plan around that but the system is hilariously unbalanced. I usually just blitzed them with my own S-crafts before they could use theirs. Some bosses could be delayed forever and never get a turn.

-Using In Media Res was a bad move. While it was nice that it gives you a taste of the battles early on it spoils too much and ruins much of the tension. They even tell you the exact day the fortress is getting attacked in the opening so there's no suspense whatsoever. To top it off it was followed by the much less dramatic mine attack event. Seems like chapters 5 and 6 should be reversed.

-I guessed

Spoiler

Crow

was the bad guy by chapter 4 and confirmed it in chapter 6. I remember thinking "this character is totally worthless in the story so they have to be the villain just to conserve drama."

-What is the obsession with Towa? She's so bland and average. Otaku nerds like women who seem like they might be attainable IRL? Spoilers, they're all unattainable when you never leave the house.

-I didn't get why the Orbment setup was so convoluted until I remembered the system had more depth to it in TitS. Offensive spells didn't really seem useful and were mostly too costly to use regularly so I barely touched them except for Emma. If a spell blows 50% of my mana in one shot it should do more than a regular craft hit on a boss.

-Just assume every maid in an anime is a ninja. Confirmed.

-The villains were p. dumb. You foil their entire plan and they are like, "nah we wanted you to stop us, blow up all our stuff, kill half our guys, and give us all a severe beating." Um, okay? If your plan is to get beaten up by highschoolers that is a shitty plan. In the end I struggle to see what they even accomplished. I suppose you could say their attacks provoked the final confrontation but they even point out that the government covered it all up. Basically it didn't seem like the final events of the story *needed* the terrorists' attacks to go forward (except the one event the player isn't conveniently around to thwart) and they were only there to give the player an excuse to interact with the villains. Just bad plotting.

-The whole "Beat the boss in battle but then in the cutscene afterwards they reveal they were holding back/had some escape plan" is gay as fuck, but I'm sure the series won't beat that trope into ground going forward right?

 

[Sarathiour]

Game wasn't hard except when a boss would randomly use an S-craft and wipe the party. ??? Not really sure how you're supposed to plan around that but the system is hilariously unbalanced. I usually just blitzed them with my own S-crafts before they could use theirs. Some bosses could be delayed forever and never get a turn.

Adamantite Shield, emergency puppet and angel MQ in CS1. Though even in nightmare, they should only manage to OS only the most squishier characters. Also they all have a "tell" tied to an hp threshold before doing it, at least in the first game.

-What is the obsession with Towa? She's so bland and average. Otaku nerds like women who seem like they might be attainable IRL? Spoilers, they're all unattainable when you never leave the house.

I don't get it either, even if had to do something like a waifu rating or whatever weeabo thing, she would be close to the bottom.

-I didn't get why the Orbment setup was so convoluted until I remembered the system had more depth to it in TitS. Offensive spells didn't really seem useful and were mostly too costly to use regularly so I barely touched them except for Emma. If a spell blows 50% of my mana in one shot it should do more than a regular craft hit on a boss.

It's because pandora is a shit MQ. Level 5 MQ + bell utterly broke the game, with enough speed you can chain cast low-level art for 1 delay. Alisa and Jusis got more speed than emma and can reach this point earlier on.

 

[Kaivokz]

There are lots of broken strategies in cold steel 1 (infinite turns with Machias, the quartz that makes items aoe, level 1 arts with cast speed), but if you use the master quartz that returns a % of damage dealt as EP and stack speed/m.atk on Emma, she can basically one shot every trash encounter in the game before they move and get a full EP refund. That only gets more broken in 2.

I don’t really enjoy fighting trash so I mostly face-rolled the first two games that way.

 

[Sarathiour]

Domination + emblem is probably the fastest way.

I left out the holy trinity of cheese, which is chrono burst, delay stacking and zeram spam. They is generally one more broken strat per game : double bell in CS1, damage stacking in CS2 and break stacking in CS3.

 

[Ysaye]

-The whole "Beat the boss in battle but then in the cutscene afterwards they reveal they were holding back/had some escape plan" is gay as fuck, but I'm sure the series won't beat that trope into ground going forward right?

That trope gives way in CS2 (although there is one notable super-spoiler exception, but by this point you know what is going to happen); it is more that there are battles in which you have to hold out for a period before you are totally wiped by the enemy that really is just much stronger than the characters.

CS3 has points in which you need to get a more powerful enemy down a certain point to rather than beat, enemies do at times literally teleport away from situations after being badly beaten but claiming it was all part of the plan and also certain enemies which still totally overwhelm you at a point as well, but it also adds into the mix that Rean is also massively holding back nearly all game (for good plot reasons), and his old allies now have tricks up their sleeves resulting in the infamous "That won't be necessary!" repeated trope for most of the game until....

CS4 is more initially get them down to a point as well and then finally beating them into the ground at the end of the ground (apart from one character who is canonically really strong because of spoiler reasons).

 

[Rean]

After significant rumination and letting my thoughts on the game settle, I have to say that story-wise CS4 was not as grand as CS3 was (aside from the cliffhanger true ending) and it would even classify as a letdown.
Gameplay-wise, it was an obvious improvement, if only for the fact that you can play a massive cast of characters and use everything at will.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I don't know how you can look at moments in Cold Steel IV like

Spoiler

Infiltration, rescue of Rean, and escape from the Black Workshop

and

Spoiler

The meeting of Heroes on the Pantegruel, meeting of Mille Mirage.

as well as

Spoiler

The joint infiltrations of the Salt Spires.

and say that Cold Steel III was more grand story-wise. Those are some all-time great moments in the entire series. There's several more pivotal reveals and plot points that put it miles above III in terms of grandiosity, and mark it as a massive turning point plot-wise in the whole Trails series.

I'd agree that the finale of III absolutely trumps IV's, and is probably the best finale in the series. But that would probably be the only plot points where III comes out ahead for me. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the plot of III, or it's function as an introduction to some important new characters and events. It's just that IV is absolutely more grand in the literal meaning of the word.

 

[Rean]

I don't know how you can look at moments in Cold Steel IV like

Spoiler

Infiltration, rescue of Rean, and escape from the Black Workshop

and

Spoiler

The meeting of Heroes on the Pantegruel, meeting of Mille Mirage.

as well as

Spoiler

The joint infiltrations of the Salt Spires.

and say that Cold Steel III was more grand story-wise. Those are some all-time great moments in the entire series. There's several more pivotal reveals and plot points that put it miles above III in terms of grandiosity, and mark it as a massive turning point plot-wise in the whole Trails series.

I'd agree that the finale of III absolutely trumps IV's, and is probably the best finale in the series. But that would probably be the only plot points where III comes out ahead for me. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the plot of III, or it's function as an introduction to some important new characters and events. It's just that IV is absolutely more grand in the literal meaning of the word.

It all goes back to what I was saying when I first started playing it, and that is the opposing forces' weak motives and lack of desire to fully commit to their beliefs. In 3, a lot of characters remained highly enigmatic and their impetuses mysterious, that made everything exciting.
The moments you outline are cool from a visual/scale perspective, sure, but that's unrelated to what I'm talking about.

Spoiler

The way that Osborne at the end pretty much says to Rean 'I did all this for you to stop me and I'm so proud of you' is the culmination of every villain in the game.

The end result of this character writing is not even morally gray (which appears is what the writers were going for in the end).