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

[StaticSpine]

I don't like Swin and Nadia.

I liked Swin's humble personality, hairstyle, and his cool combination orbment sword that casts arts. I fit him into my party of favorites when I was doing the Reverie Corridor. Just wish that gameplay wise he was better. His crafts are mediocre and you are better off turning him into a caster and relying on other warriors to do heavy physical damage with their crafts.

He was okay in Reverie combat-wise with his crit marks.

I mean, he and Nadia are just less interesting as characters compared to previous casts. And that "12 y.o. retired assassins" bio is too funny to be believable.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I don't like Swin and Nadia.

I liked Swin's humble personality, hairstyle, and his cool combination orbment sword that casts arts. I fit him into my party of favorites when I was doing the Reverie Corridor. Just wish that gameplay wise he was better. His crafts are mediocre and you are better off turning him into a caster and relying on other warriors to do heavy physical damage with their crafts.

He was okay in Reverie combat-wise with his crit marks.

I mean, he and Nadia are just less interesting as characters compared to previous casts. And that "12 y.o. retired assassins" bio is too funny to be believable.

Nothing we haven't already seen multiple times before with Joshua, Renne, Fie, Millium, Altina, etc.

 

[Rean]

W-why?!

 

[Jinn]

He was okay in Reverie combat-wise with his crit marks.

I mean, he and Nadia are just less interesting as characters compared to previous casts. And that "12 y.o. retired assassins" bio is too funny to be believable.

Nothing we haven't already seen multiple times before with Joshua, Renne, Fie, Millium, Altina, etc.

Seriously. It's like a series staple at this point. Not out of place in the setting at all.

 

[Valestein]

He was okay in Reverie combat-wise with his crit marks.

I mean, he and Nadia are just less interesting as characters compared to previous casts. And that "12 y.o. retired assassins" bio is too funny to be believable.

Nothing we haven't already seen multiple times before with Joshua, Renne, Fie, Millium, Altina, etc.

Seriously. It's like a series staple at this point. Not out of place in the setting at all.

Tita in FC used a grenade launcher and a minigun FFS.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am with you in being peeved at the child prodigy thing Trails has. It's just that I don't feel like picking out Swin as I already come to expect that is just a guilty pleasure that Falcom writers like to indulge in and it's not going to get excised, and Swin I feel is one of the more inoffensive instances of it.

Renne is the most egregious in how she has a giant mecha AND is a superpowerful boss enforcer who can solo a four man party including Zin AND is a bad guy who killed so many people she is called "The Angel of Slaughter" AND gets let off the hook and everybody loves her AND turns out to be a super genius who is a hacker who invented Google/ChatGPT and has multiple PHDs AND has this increasingly lentghy sob backstory, first with Paradise and becoming the sole survivor of Dr. Novartis' 60+ experiments to hook people up to Pater Mater in 3rd and then the cultist stuff retconned in with Zero... and it's just so much packed into one single character. Swin comparatively was just apart of an evil organization, wasn't that powerful and struggled to escape and was never portrayed as superpowerful, and the only special thing he has is combination sword-orbment contraption.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I recently finished Trails in the Sky FC (2004). I picked it up since it looked like a tactical RPG and had grid-based isometric combat. The combat system wasn't what I expected, since you can either do a positional movement or attack a creature, but the game doesn't allow you to move to a selected spot on the grid and then select who you will attack. You can either select a spot to move to or use an attack, ability, or item. I got the hang of it after a few beginning battles, but if I had known this before hand I might not have purchased the game. That said, the game is definitely charming and I'll likely purchase the second chapter so that I can finish the story (FC ends on quite a cliffhanger), but I doubt I'll continue on with the series after that. I'm invested enough to see Estelle's and Joshua's resolution but the other games don't sound all that interesting to me since they introduce new protagonists. This is a cozy JRPG and can be challenging at the start of the game when you are still trying to figure out how to equip and use orbments, but it becomes easy towards the end. I can definitely recommend to fans of jRPGs, but although it is somewhat unique and more tactical then most jRPGs, the combat just isn't something I'm into. It is still better than most Final Fantasy games since IX (X-2 is a guilty pleasure, but I like job systems).

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The combat system wasn't what I expected, since you can either do a positional movement or attack a creature, but the game doesn't allow you to move to a selected spot on the grid and then select who you will attack.

In the CS games it becomes more practicable to forgo attacking to position a character, namely for the purposes of attracting aggro via proximity to a mob and angling that mob's conal/line AoE attacks away from other characters so a whole party doesn't get hit. In the new Kuro games you can now move to position your character AND attack on the same turn.

 

[StaticSpine]

I don't like Swin and Nadia.

I liked Swin's humble personality, hairstyle, and his cool combination orbment sword that casts arts. I fit him into my party of favorites when I was doing the Reverie Corridor. Just wish that gameplay wise he was better. His crafts are mediocre and you are better off turning him into a caster and relying on other warriors to do heavy physical damage with their crafts.

He was okay in Reverie combat-wise with his crit marks.

I mean, he and Nadia are just less interesting as characters compared to previous casts. And that "12 y.o. retired assassins" bio is too funny to be believable.

Nothing we haven't already seen multiple times before with Joshua, Renne, Fie, Millium, Altina, etc.

Yeah, fair point.

Maybe those two are just the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of that trope for me. Or perhaps I felt those two to be redundant along with Lapis in Reverie because there were already so many of the characters I liked.

 

[Endemic]

Prologue

Ah, if only Falcom had the guts to do this and make it stick.

Would alienate their core fanbase, unfortunately.

 

[Rean]

Even the gacha system in Daybreak 2 is worse than Reverie?

Sigh...

I was gonna start whining about the MMO-like grind segments too, but it's fine. IT'S FINE. IT'S ALRIGHT, OKAY?
It's alright if you take a day's break between redoing the level. But, seriously, couldn't this be done ANY better? Like the Reverie dungeon? Or fucking Phantasma from A MILLION YEARS AGO?

 

[Valestein]

Prologue

Ah, if only Falcom had the guts to do this and make it stick.

Would alienate their core fanbase, unfortunately.

They should've made the two companion deaths in cold steel stick.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Finished Van chapter 2.



The food poisoning/roofie sidequest is unnerving to think about. I was always warned against buying from neighborhood icecream trucks, but I didn't think about chefs in a professional looking hat and apron manning a foodtruck like the ones you see outside of convention centers.

This track is pretty nice.




*Groan* once again, I eviscerated a boss, and then in the following cutscene my guys are panting on the floor while he's still standing.

I gasped when I ran through the doors in the Great Spire and there was giant mecha right in front of me swinging immediately and I dodged just in time. Didn't expect that to happen in a Trails game.

Goodness gracious. "Fufu, I was only pretending to be evil! It was my plan all along for you to raid our base, beat up our guys in front of the public, smash our priceless pottery and the new terminator robots we just bought, and beat me up!" "Yes Cao, you are a genius!".




The Heiyue stuff really is one of the lowest points of the Kuro series. The Langport chapters both in this game and in Kuro 1 end with you being a bystander while Heiyue leaders walk in and stand around talking about nonsense that has nothing to do with the main plot objective or our heroes. And then there is unearned melodrama as people start breaking down crying or screaming at the moon, and I just don't care about these foreign crimelords. I would rather see them hang from the lamposts. And then it is followed up by one of the franchise's worst sins: bad guys teleporting away after having just fought a pointless battle to the death with you.

We have had climatic scenes before where characters barge in to stand around and talk, like Osborne and Rufus walking in at the top of the Inferno Castle at the end of CS2, but that had a world changing reveal that affected the entire cast and recontextualized our journey across 200 hours, had a twist personal to the main protagonist and several party members, the explanation for the scheme they just executed sounded coherent, featured characters I cared about, the voice acting and camera framing and music choice elevated the dialogue scene, etc.


Swin chapter 2



Agnes, you have been brainwashed. This looks like a prison.





Goodness gracious. Our heroes have willingly signed up to go to a panopticon go to a modern public school and play basketball in the courtyard.

Welp, Agnes is level 32 while Swin and Nadia are 22. I should do the Marchen Garten to level them up. It is frustrating how much time it takes to reach the relevant layers of the Garten. It seems that each layer spans a 2 to 3 level range, and I only had the level 16-19 layer unlocked so I am going to have to go through 5 or 6 layers to reach level 32 mobs. But each layer requires you to run through 5 maps and each map has a requirement (ie light 3 lamposts with arts, kill 5 medium sized mobs, etc) you have to fulfill to unlock the teleporter to the next map. So I am going to have to complete 30+ something maps and requirements, and then I finally will be at the level appropriate area... for just this moment. And when my characters fall behind in levels I am going to do this all over again. With Reverie Corridor the levels of the mobs were spread out far fewer maps and there were no requirements, so it was pretty easy to just run to the level appropriate spot.

 

[Valestein]

This track is bangin'.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Well i like the combat more than daybreak 1. I am actually enjoying the stort too. Swin and nadia are just so fun so i am glad they have a lot of screentime. I guess the dreaded chapter 3 is still looming, but i am still in chapter 2 and enjoying it so far.

The difficulty is better than daybreak 1. Does it feel a bit overtuned? Yes, but at least they pose a challenge (on nightmare). It probably will plateau as you unlock more orbment slots and eventually reach the OP shard skills like judgement wing.

My complain is still the same: bosses are too immune to stat down so debuffing mostly are useless. It wasnt the case with previous trails games.