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

[Jinn]

Yeah pretty much got bored with the story/characters, trying to stick with it because I'm curious where it's going.

I'm certain a lot of people felt this way, myself included. If you stick with it, there is going to be a certain point when the world, story, and characters click into place for you, at which point I guarantee you'll be hooked for the next 8 games to come. The 12 hour point was that moment for me. There was a brief point in SC where I struggled too, but that was the last time.

I'm playing on Hard and it is ball-bustingly difficult

The Sky games can be absurdly difficulty on Hard sometimes, yet extremely rewarding. Utilize and customize your orbments to their full degree, do all Bracer contracts, fight every initial encounter in a new area you see, and stay well equipped. This should set you up for success.

 

[HoboForEternity]

wait until you see the drinking scene with sara

Yosharian use arts focused character and start building orbments setting with high level arts ASAP. the old game's balance seems to be designed around arts as your main tool as opposed to crafts like in cold steel. high level attack arts, then aoe healing ,aoe buff, debuff etc. speed is broken stat, have joshua as high speed as possible and use his delay ability to cheese some fights.

 

[Shadenuat]

Playing through Ao with its current translation is possible, but enjoying it? How did you manage to do that? Unless i'm mistaken and most people in this thread actually understand japanese but from I've seen the Ao translation is tragically inconsistent. For one of the most text-heavy jrpg series out there I'm surprised so many people don't find the current translation of Ao to be a deal-breaker.

not a problem if you grown up on anime being distributed in subway stations on pirated vhs tapes with subtitles made in a bathroom.


btw i think this is underrated, and inside underrated series, represents well the underrateness so postin

 

[HoboForEternity]

Playing through Ao with its current translation is possible, but enjoying it? How did you manage to do that? Unless i'm mistaken and most people in this thread actually understand japanese but from I've seen the Ao translation is tragically inconsistent. For one of the most text-heavy jrpg series out there I'm surprised so many people don't find the current translation of Ao to be a deal-breaker.

not a problem if you grown up on anime being distributed in subway stations on pirated vhs tapes with subtitles made in a bathroom.


btw i think this is underrated, and inside underrated series, represents well the underrateness so postin

Not underrated tbh, it is just very inaccessible until very recently. Almost every trails fan i know has their mind blown by ao and crosbell im general including me.

It's just very hard ot obtain these games few years ago unless you know Japanese

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Playing through Ao with its current translation is possible, but enjoying it? How did you manage to do that? Unless i'm mistaken and most people in this thread actually understand japanese but from I've seen the Ao translation is tragically inconsistent. For one of the most text-heavy jrpg series out there I'm surprised so many people don't find the current translation of Ao to be a deal-breaker.

The translation is nowhere near Xseed or even Geofront quality, but it is passable, especially if you get the latest patch as detailed here.

I just played through a huge, Zemuria-affecting event in Azure and the quality of the translations at least in that section got close to Xseed. I forgot I was playing an amateur attempt at translation and it felt like I was just playing Trails. But it isn't consistent across the whole game.

 

[Reinhardt]

After playing Rance with machine translator any translation is fine(until translators start pushing their agenda)

 

[StaticSpine]

Spoiler

The fight with the whole Stahlritter squad, Steel Maiden included, was p. cool.

 

[Valestein]

Spoilers for the final dungeon of chapter 3:

Spoiler

Aurelia is a guest player character

 

[Ysaye]

Spoilers for the final dungeon of chapter 3:

Spoiler

Aurelia is a guest player character

"Oh? this duct leads to another room....but it's too cramped for a chest of my size....what say we just destroy the whole wall instead?"

 

[Valestein]

Countess Le Guin proved to be a top tier waifu at the end of chapter when...

Spoiler

She brought Arianrhod to her knees.

 

[Slaver1]

Well, it took until like the middle of chapter 3 for the game for to truly begin, but it finally did.

Spoiler

Edit: This also marks the return of...

Spoiler

The waifu-mobile!

What about Sara with the brown wig tho

Btw, it's quite interesting that Prince Oliverts' romantic interest is also a

Spoiler

28-year old Bracer who enjoys the odd drink.

 

[Valestein]

Anyone know if there's save import function with CS4 with a CS3 save?

 

[Yosharian]

Does the combat in this series get interesting at some point? Finished Sky's prologue and getting real tired of it

 

[rashiakas]

Skys combat is overrated as fuck. Its mostly using the right orbments, not what you actually do in combat. CS has way better combat.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Skys combat is overrated as fuck. Its mostly using the right orbments, not what you actually do in combat. CS has way better combat.

I definitely think the combat in the series has improved. If you play all the games in order you can see how complexity is added over time and the old "hit them with your stick hard" tactics of the first game just don't work and greater emphasis is put on arts, orders, and mastering the turn orders. The way orbments are dealt with in Cold Steel are also better in my view, and by the time you get to Cold Steel 2 you can almost turn almost any character into any 'class' you want just by fiddling with their quartz and accessories.

Having said that I went back to TITS 1 and 2 recently and played them on Nightmare, and they are tough as hell. Same thing with Azure on Hard.

So yes, the Cold Steel games have the most detail and complexity to the combat, therefore making it "better" in terms of being more interesting, but the older games are still hard if you play on a high difficulty.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Imo cs3 system is the best, followed by Ao with old orbment system but with master quartz, then zero which is just more varied sky sytem, cs1/2 next. The added brave system, and weaknesses to certain enemy attacks encourage you to switch around characters while balancing crafts instead of focusing mostly on arts because breaks system and BP.

Sky is definitely the simplest, but i actually enjoyed playing orbment tetris.

Imo orbment tetris reached its peak fun in mid game where the options are open for you but havent got the huge amount of resources that you can basically buy anything. It's satisfying creating a team or even 1 guy with optimized stat and arts with limited resources.

 

[Valestein]

Just got to this scene with Principal Aurelia...

Spoiler

Just when I thought this Aurelia moment couldn't be topped...

Spoiler

 

[HoboForEternity]

then you get to give her the glasses accessory which makes her even hotter mamma

 

[Valestein]

then you get to give her the glasses accessory which makes her even hotter mamma

There's a blonde hair option too.

 

[Somberlain]

Aurelia

 

[Jinn]

Yeeesh, they're really going deep with this ecchi fanservice shit in later installments, huh? Kind of embarrassing. Trails shouldn't have to stoop to such levels, but I guess Japan gonna Japan. Pretty though.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Yeeesh, they're really going deep with this ecchi fanservice shit in later installments, huh? Kind of embarrassing. Trails shouldn't have to stoop to such levels, but I guess Japan gonna Japan. Pretty though.

I don't really care about that stuff to be honest. Most of the game isn't about it. The incest stuff triggers me way more. Estelle & Joshua. Lloyd & Cecile. Rean & Elise.

 

[Valestein]

I don't mind Estelle and Josh since they met late enough that maybe westermarck effect didn't take place, but Rean and Elise is just weird, but fortunately Rean doesn't reciprocate. I haven't played any of the Crossbell games so no opinion on that.

 

[Jinn]

I don't mind Estelle and Josh since they met late enough that you can pretend the westermark effect didn't take place

Agree. It's a little weird, but not outright disgusting. They aren't related by blood and they met later in life. Like childhood friends that had a brother/sister undertone to their relationship, which developed into deeper feelings from there. I can't really look at it as incestuous.

I haven't played any of the Crossbell games so no opinion on that.

Cecile and Lloyd stuff is preeetty mild, unless there is some hidden relationship stuff I missed? Even then, it's his brother's girlfriend, so again, not really strictly incestuous.

 

[HoboForEternity]

rean and elise tho . .

ugh