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

[StaticSpine]

Bros, what's the consensus about Daybreak here?

For me, it was the breaking point of the series, after which I stopped caring or just got burned out by the soap opera. Though I saw many people praising it like it's a Second Coming of Christ.

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

It's an improvement on Rean but still worse than any of the the 2d games, it's just shitty anime at this point, it's also among the better nu-jrpgs compared to stuff like Granblue Fantasy (yuck).

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

I've seen claims that Daybreak 1 is back to being as good as Sky, but after playing through 3 chapters I haven't noticed this. It's hardly different from Cold Steel for me. Anyway this series (except for 2 or 3 games) has one recurring problem - games are very long but all the time you've invested doesn't pay off in the end. The stories typically have gripping climax, but it gets resolved in the most banal/shit/boring way possible. The gameplay has its highlights, but chapters always have a similar structure and in order to get to the interesting part you first have to stomach boring parts.

 

[Sergio]

Bros, what's the consensus about Daybreak here?

For me, it was the breaking point of the series, after which I stopped caring or just got burned out by the soap opera. Though I saw many people praising it like it's a Second Coming of Christ.

I'm only gonna talk about Daybreak 1, haven't played the jap ones, there's part 2 coming in a week so that will broaden my perspective.

I liked how it refreshed combat by adding a new layer on top of it, real time combat without triggering turn-based. It does wonders to pacing and reduces exploration boredom, because trash mobs no longer slow you down as much. It's not exactly complex but it doesn't need to be.

Narratively it's a mixed bag. It's a Trails game so you can expect the same soap opera and tropes as before. It is generally tolerable, sometimes even pretty good, but the ending hits you with cringe, absolutely AWFUL example of "friendship is power" that really takes a dump on the experience. If you expect a significant improvement over Cold Steel, you will be disappointed. Then again, I never played this series for its writing, and I find the idea of "it's meh but it has its moments" perfectly acceptable. YMMV.

The best part of the game is the fact that whenever Aaron Wei talks, a feminist gets a heart attack. 7/10.

 

[StaticSpine]

I was not clear, I did finish Daybreak and I didn't like it, but the general reception seemed overwhelmingly positive.
That's why I asked here.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Bros, what's the consensus about Daybreak here?

For me, it was the breaking point of the series, after which I stopped caring or just got burned out by the soap opera. Though I saw many people praising it like it's a Second Coming of Christ.

For me, Ao was when I became disillusioned with the series, as it firmly cemented that most of these games are boring filler and there are hardly ever satisfying payoff. It's like FF14 where the main selling point is the story, but the story only has a few good moments compared to the total runtime, and the rest of the game is not up to par, so holistically the moment to moment experience of these 60 to 130 hour long games is mediocre. I still kept going because I liked the pleasant characters (you never find them in Western games now), the aesthetics, the soundtrack, and the leisurely turn based combat.

Kuro 1 was disappointing. People had told me it was an "improvement" from the Erebonia games, but I found it to be the opposite. Erebonia was an interesting setting, with the modernizing Prussia and noble swordsmen wearing cravats and trenchcoats running dojos, castles, cool magitek mechas, lore about fairy monsters and the history of Erebonia, etc. I also liked most of the characters. But then Calvard was just boring modern globohomo urban cities and no history. Story is bad and is rife with pointless fights, and you fight a filler mafia rather than any build up towards the defeat of Gramhardt or Ouroboros. Aside from Bergard, I found the main cast of playable characters to be forgettable, and wish they had been excised and the game had been about the NPCs like Marielle, Alvis, Dasawni, etc. The combat even on nightmare difficulty was braindead easy and I never had to buckle down and plan by builds and strategy until the last 15 minutes of the 110 hour long game, whereas playing each CS game on Nightmare and Abyss was quite engaging and fun from the getgo. Kuro also suffers from the same issue as the Crossbell games where it is based in a huge urban city and every chapter you have to do lots and lots of talking to NPCs, which pads out the playtime and diminishes tension. There were only a few NPC subplots like Beth in the train station district.

 

[Jinn]

I think Kuro 1 would have been great if it had been sufficiently challenging on Nightmare, but it simply wasn't. I liked the new cast, the setting, and characters, but ultimately what keeps me engaged with a Trails game more than anything is the combat and build-craft that comes with it. The battle system itself was good. It just never has the moment to shine because of how easy it was. I've heard this has been addressed in Kuro 2, making for some of the best gameplay the series has to offer. The story is supposedly one of the worst in the series though. I'll be the judge of that, as I don't really trust others opinions on narratives in any game.

 

[Valestein]

I enjoyed Kuro personally. I was pleasantly surprised by how edgy and raunchy it could get at times, whether it's Van looking at a naked female companion or how Aaron teases him if his willy got hard seeing him in drag. That Van actually kills people(some of which by player choice) is some serious incline. They also actually reference race straight up.

 

[Rean]

They also actually reference race straight up.

Shoving in retconned racial warfare in a series that has been all about national politics and the peaceful integration of various neighboring cultures that come together to face shared threats is cheap. It's only about shitting on whitey and it will only get worse. All too transparent, and all too disgusting.

As for Van being edgy, any traces of that are countered immediately by abject cringe:

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I would have liked to have seen more estrangement between the nations. We were only allowed to see a tiny bit of that in CS3 and CS4 when you go to Crossbell and talk to some NPCs there, though it is comically black & white. Would have been interesting to see if the shops of ancestral Erebonians in Calvard had rocks thrown at their glass or their shops set on fire, and if the people of Calvard were depicted as being just as much on their high horse about how great they are compared to "the enemy" as the Erebonians in CS3 and CS4 were.

The handling of the AIL was disappointing. They were setup to be a major subplot along with the ILF in Ao, and the ILF were a major subplot in the CS games getting a lot of focus showing the dissent against the incumbent government and several sympathetic NPCs including playable characters, but then come Kuro and you get nadda from the AIL. It is also strange that we do not see the strife brought on by immigration that Zin talked about in 3rd. You should see immigrants flooding the country and causing native Calvardians to become impoverished as the immigrants work for cheaper, as well as the immigrants forming their ghetto communities rife with crime, not this comic stuff with one stereotype white guy shouting on the streets while everyone mocks him and the city RUN BY A FOREIGN CRIME SYNDICATE being depicted as a good thing while the native born white mafia are somehow "worse".

I wonder how much of this race stuff is lowcolizers passing their ideas along to Falcom.

 

[Elttharion]

I love being lectured about racial relations by a country that is +97% ethnically homogeneous.

 

[Sergio]

I love being lectured about racial relations by a country that is +97% ethnically homogeneous.

And are you sure that this is a correctly translated original script, and not just lolcalization fanfiction? Because the latter wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I love being lectured about racial relations by a country that is +97% ethnically homogeneous.

And are you sure that this is a correctly translated original script, and not just lolcalization fanfiction? Because the latter wouldn't surprise me at all.

I played with the fan translation patch back in 2023, and they were talking about how it is good to gookwash white historical figures for movies, how people are bigots for not wanting their country to be invaded by foreigners.

 

[Elttharion]

I love being lectured about racial relations by a country that is +97% ethnically homogeneous.

And are you sure that this is a correctly translated original script, and not just lolcalization fanfiction? Because the latter wouldn't surprise me at all.

Its accurate, maybe not 100% but the 'white supremacist' sentences were correctly translated

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

Gooks writing about white supremacists is some cringe shit.

 

[Rean]

And are you sure that this is a correctly translated original script, and not just lolcalization fanfiction? Because the latter wouldn't surprise me at all.

I've asked people who played with the pre-NISA translation, including our own Val the Moofia Boss multiple times. The localizers have definitely added to the compost, but the rot lies at the core now. It's actually quite easy to distinguish the localizer inserts (saying 'y'all' every other line or using social media slang) from Falcom's (large plotlines that specifically focus on racial matters and commentary).

If you had told me I'd be reading shit like that in a Trails game just a couple of years ago, I'd have fucking laughed.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

They also actually reference race straight up.

Shoving in retconned racial warfare in a series that has been all about national politics and the peaceful integration of various neighboring cultures that come together to face shared threats is cheap. It's only about shitting on whitey and it will only get worse. All too transparent, and all too disgusting.

As for Van being edgy, any traces of that are countered immediately by abject cringe:

Are these lolcowlization issue? Or OG JP script as well?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Gooks writing about white supremacists is some cringe shit.

Japan notices the west is absolutely obsessed with this subject so they figured it must be important

 

[Valestein]

Only white supremacists like Rean would not allow Eastern hunnies like Shizuna and Rixia into their country.

 

[Rean]

Fake news, I just want a wall, and Calvard will pay for it.

 

[Reinhardt]

good thing i stopped after sky. thank you, comrade rean, for being so fucking boring cardboard animu protagonist and saving me lots of time and moni.