CS1 and CS2
The biggest problem I have with the story is the harem surrounding Rean, it just doesn't make any sense that every main character is into him, the most egregious being Claire. Sara I can understand a biiit. Anyways Laura made the most sense even though they pushed Alisa like hell.
I really liked the dialogue though, it was translated well and it moved at a steady pace and I never skipped a single line on my first playthroughs, which is not an obvious thing in these melodrama-heavy games.
The voice acting was magnificent, I especially liked Laura and Rufus, spot fucking on, it's like they were born to play those roles. The black sheep though is Towa, holy fuck I can't stand to listen to her anymore, they really went overboard with that squeaking.
Now all this is well and good bar a single problem that really got on my nerves during CS2. The characters are such 'softies' as Scarlet puts it. Everybody apologizes to everybody, like three times per dialogue, it's insane. Just man up and accept a compliment when it's given to you, be aware of your skills and accomplishments, jesus is it that hard. It was cute at the beginning but it got old. I see traces of it in TitS but the characters are much more natural, especially Estelle, she is a bro.
All in all the characters were good and I really felt bad for duke cayenne at the end. You work your whole life for something and then all goes to shit in 5 minutes, and you get arrested to boot. Perfect.
I really liked the chapter after the final boss, with Lloyd. I haven't played those games but even I could feel at least a bit excited because I read about those characters, I can't imagine how someone who played two games with them would react. It is also nice that you can play with Lloyd and the other characters with the mirrors in the endgame. It's real fan service and I'm ashamed to admit I spent more hours than I can count just grinding the corridor with them. Truly great stuff.
Now since this is the codex we gotta talk about combat. In single player games I like it when there is a clearly best strategy and 90% of the fun for me is discovering that strategy. I didn't read much about the games and I didn't use walkthroughs except for a second playthrough to get 100% (I still can't believe how bad I am at finding hidden stuff, holy shit I missed pretty much everything except the huge ass chests) but I discovered pretty early in the game that delay is OP and arc slash basically carried me through both cs1 and cs2, up until the last last boss of cs2 which was immune to at delay (but not immune to Vitas spells, go figure
).
I didn't like that CS1 forced you to change up your team all the time but I guess that is a JRPG staple, I don't know, I don't play that many. CS2 on the other hand was cooler with that. Rean, Laura, Jusius, Alisa. All you ever need.
There is thing I could never understand though. I gave Jusius the black master quartz that gives a speed bonus at start of combat (raven? i believe) AND he had higher unbuffed speed than Rean, but 90% of the time it was Rean that went first at the start of a battle. Did I miss how that works? I'm probably retarded...
All in all it is a fun combat system that doesn't get old fast and even the new additions, links and master quartz, give at least a bit more added depth to the game.
TitS
I thought I would get bored of this quickly because I got used to the system in CS but I was wrong. While in CS you get showered in quartz, here getting an attack 2 as a reward is like, holy shit now I can wreck! It is a really different approach to spells which I also dig and it keeps things interesting coming from CS. It also feels much harder, I die at least twice each new area while before I maybe died twice total.
I just met Tita and the story is ok so far, very childish, especially the Ruan mayor questline (omg the kiiids, they are orphans, everything is black and white, mayor literally hitler, etc.) but I like the characters more, they feel more believable.
