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

[Maxie]

Rean is offensively crap

 

[cruel]

Trails through Daybreak demo available now on PS4 / PS5 and Switch.

Sent from my KB2005 using Tapatalk

 

[Lyre Mors]

Trails through Daybreak demo available now on PS4 / PS5 and Switch.

Absolute bullshit they're not offering it on PC.

 

[catfood]

I want to start playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Is there any mod that I need to install to unwokeify the official trannylation?

 

[Jermu]

I want to start playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Is there any mod that I need to install to unwokeify the official trannylation?

https://old.reddit.com/r/Falcom/comments/pt9j6s/falcom_games_mod_collection_evolution_mods_hd/

I would download evo voices at least, visuals is optional preference thing

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Cold Steel 2 is the best Cold Steel game hands down, followed by 4.

Where should I start the saga?

If you are interested in the Trails of Cold Steel games then start at CS1. Do not listen to the people who say that you have to do 400 hours of homeworking playing through other games you are not interested in before you can finally start the game you were interested in the first place. Each individual Trails arc is about its own characters and gives you the information you need to understand its own plot. Do not play the series in order in the hope that there will be a satisfying payoff for the overarching storylines. There isn't any. You should instead individual Trails games/arcs for their own appeal. If the fantasy Prussia setting and magitek mecha and airships and nobles in cravats who practice anime swordsmanship sounds cool to you, then that is what you should play.

 

[Lyre Mors]

The satisfying payoff and overarching storylines are almost entirely based on character development, character recognition, and the relationships between said characters. Just because you haven't gotten your "big villain reveal" and whatever climax that you think should have happened that constitutes good storytelling in your eyes doesn't mean that satisfying overarching stories aren't happening. They're happening constantly throughout the series.

But yeah, start wherever you want. It is overall much more satisfying having started from Trails in the Sky FC, but it's not 100% necessary to understand the world and whatever is going on in a particular arc. It's just way more satisfying overall. The only things that dragged me through Cold Steel 1 were the gameplay, the built up curiosity about what the Erebonian Empire I kept hearing about through the Sky and Crossbell games was actually like, and seeing and hearing about characters I recognized from earlier games. And I'm glad I had those things to get me past the highschool bullshit, because I ended up liking a lot of the new characters by the end and it led me to the great enjoyment of CS 2, 4, and Reverie. If I had started with CS1 as my first game, I might have dropped the series and never looked back.

 

[KeAShizuku]

Comparing Baldurs Gate 3 complete lack of party banter or relationships to Zero no Kiseki.

Larian really are lazy fucks.

 

[n0wh3r3]

Cold Steel 2 is the best Cold Steel game hands down, followed by 4.

Where should I start the saga?

If you are interested in the Trails of Cold Steel games then start at CS1. Do not listen to the people who say that you have to do 400 hours of homeworking playing through other games you are not interested in before you can finally start the game you were interested in the first place. Each individual Trails arc is about its own characters and gives you the information you need to understand its own plot. Do not play the series in order in the hope that there will be a satisfying payoff for the overarching storylines. There isn't any. You should instead individual Trails games/arcs for their own appeal. If the fantasy Prussia setting and magitek mecha and airships and nobles in cravats who practice anime swordsmanship sounds cool to you, then that is what you should play.

The satisfying payoff and overarching storylines are almost entirely based on character development, character recognition, and the relationships between said characters. Just because you haven't gotten your "big villain reveal" and whatever climax that you think should have happened that constitutes good storytelling in your eyes doesn't mean that satisfying overarching stories aren't happening. They're happening constantly throughout the series.

But yeah, start wherever you want. It is overall much more satisfying having started from Trails in the Sky FC, but it's not 100% necessary to understand the world and whatever is going on in a particular arc. It's just way more satisfying overall. The only things that dragged me through Cold Steel 1 were the gameplay, the built up curiosity about what the Erebonian Empire I kept hearing about through the Sky and Crossbell games was actually like, and seeing and hearing about characters I recognized from earlier games. And I'm glad I had those things to get me past the highschool bullshit, because I ended up liking a lot of the new characters by the end and it led me to the great enjoyment of CS 2, 4, and Reverie. If I had started with CS1 as my first game, I might have dropped the series and never looked back.

So isn't Trails through Daybreak playable as a standalone title?

I would even start with Trails in the Sky but it's better for me not to play games on Steam or on PC at all (besides emulation, maybe) because for some reason that only makes me end up in endlessly increasing my backlog and library. So I have decided to only play games on my Nintendo Switch and see where this ends. But there I think the earliest you can start with the series is from Trails from Zero.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You can play Kuro no Kiseki without prior knowledge, it's just that the game itself isn't very good compared to Cold Steel or Sky. It's 110 hours long but nothing really happens until 70 hours in, and the cast is just as bland as Zero's, and the combat and character building never becomes challenging even on the highest difficulty. That being said I would still rate Kuro higher than Crossbell as it doesn't make any utterly infuriating story decisions and it looks nicer.

 

[Atlantico]

the cast is just as bland as Zero's

They said it couldn't be done, but who is laughing now?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

2nd trailer for Kai has been leaked

Crow's outfit is dumb. He's not a boy who ran away from home and did punky school concerts anymore. He is in his mid 20s and is on call as part of Erebonia's elite agents. He should dress like a man, if not a professional. Infiltrating hostile territory is no excuse.

Interesting that Altina does not appear to have a big Combat Shell trailing behind her. From the first trailer I had thought that Claiomh Solais had been modified to be able to transform into a new form. It instead looks like she is wielding completely different equipment. I wonder if Claiomh Solais' AI core was removed from the shell and installed into that.

I wonder if Rean, Crow, and Altina will meet up with their inside man Julian and the latter becomes playable.

 

[Jermu]

Spoiler

 

[HoboForEternity]

Crow's outfit is dumb. He's not a boy who ran away from home and did punky school concerts anymore. He is in his mid 20s and is on call as part of Erebonia's elite agents. He should dress like a man, if not a professional. Infiltrating hostile territory is no excuse.

Nah it's on character IMO. I mean letchter is more or less the same. He's a punk at heart

 

[Yuber]

Had to quit Cold Steel 3 after 10h. It was too cringe. How in cutscenes EVERY character has to always say one line. Then repeat. Bad writing...
The endless time wasting dialogue it was just too much. When Elliot was playing music in the church I broke and skipped every dialogue. But then I noticed that I do not even enjoy the gameplay anymore. The Maps are so boring too. I don't think this series is for me and if the new games is the same style I will skip.

 

[Stoned Ape]

Had to quit Cold Steel 3 after 10h. It was too cringe. How in cutscenes EVERY character has to always say one line. Then repeat. Bad writing...
The endless time wasting dialogue it was just too much. When Elliot was playing music in the church I broke and skipped every dialogue. But then I noticed that I do not even enjoy the gameplay anymore. The Maps are so boring too. I don't think this series is for me and if the new games is the same style I will skip.

I couldn't finish Cold Steel 3 either. I didn't like the expanded cast and the story didn't really seem to be going anywhere in particular so I stopped playing for a while. When I started it back up I had no idea where to go to progress the plot and after half an hour of wandering around uselessly I uninstalled it.

 

[catfood]

I want to start playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Is there any mod that I need to install to unwokeify the official trannylation?

https://old.reddit.com/r/Falcom/comments/pt9j6s/falcom_games_mod_collection_evolution_mods_hd/

I would download evo voices at least, visuals is optional preference thing

I finished the game yesterday. Overall it was pretty fun. It was pretty much the only thing that I played in the last two weeks. The story really picked up in the last third of the game. My only gripe was that although you have the ability to move during combat, you can't move and then attack in the same turn, so it made certain types of crafts very situational, especially those that shoot over a straight line.

As for the voice patch, I decided to not use it because I didn't want to extend the game time of an already very long game. Thank God for the turbo mode because otherwise I don't know how anyone could have patience for it. Even with the turbo mode active it took me about 42 hours to beat. The in-game clock which doesn't take into account the turbo mode registered around 75 or shoo. Sheesh.

Also Estelle is already waifu of the year for me.

 

[Jermu]

if u downloaded evo opening movies dont watch it for sc

 

[Maxie]

I want to start playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Is there any mod that I need to install to unwokeify the official trannylation?

https://old.reddit.com/r/Falcom/comments/pt9j6s/falcom_games_mod_collection_evolution_mods_hd/

I would download evo voices at least, visuals is optional preference thing

I finished the game yesterday. Overall it was pretty fun. It was pretty much the only thing that I played in the last two weeks. The story really picked up in the last third of the game. My only gripe was that although you have the ability to move during combat, you can't move and then attack in the same turn, so it made certain types of crafts very situational, especially those that shoot over a straight line.

As for the voice patch, I decided to not use it because I didn't want to extend the game time of an already very long game. Thank God for the turbo mode because otherwise I don't know how anyone could have patience for it. Even with the turbo mode active it took me about 42 hours to beat. The in-game clock which doesn't take into account the turbo mode registered around 75 or shoo. Sheesh.

Also Estelle is already waifu of the year for me.

Estelle is best girl despite Falcoms attempts at ruining her

 

[catfood]

if u downloaded evo opening movies dont watch it for sc

I didn't use the patch at all.

 

[Jermu]

The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak reviews

if you suffered through cs games it gets better now

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It doesn't. It's worse than any CS game.

 

[Reinhardt]

It's worse than any CS game.

how it's even possible?

 

[Atlantico]

It's worse than any CS game.

how it's even possible?

We now have the technology

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It's worse than any CS game.

how it's even possible?

I covered Kuro pretty thoroughly in my review of it last year. Not going to rehash that in detail again, but in short: it is yet another 110 hour long game that feels like air. Once again, the story is padded on both the macro and micro level. On the macro level, nothing happens until 70 hours in. Before then you are once again doing the exhausted SC formula of "visit a city, supervillain shows up and wrecks havoc for no reason, you fight, villain gets bored and leaves and you have accomplished jack all, rinse repeat". The story spins its wheels until you return from Longlai. The villains are not interesting or compelling like the ILF. On the micro level, you have the usual repetitive dialogues and long winded speeches and pointless fights and masturbatory posturing/referencing.

The cast was not endearing. The game also introduces a bunch of party members but doesn't do anything with them like what CS did with Class VII. Actually, I think the story would have been improved of most of them weren't permanent party members. The only party member I liked was Bergard, but he doesn't join until 70 hours in. I liked the non-playable side characters more, like Alvis, Dasawni, Dingo, Marielle, etc. If you scrubbed the Arkride crew and focused on the Edith characters then the game would have been a lot more enjoyable. Van/Marielle/Dingo should have been the main trio of the game, not Van/Aaron/Agnes or Van/Elaine/glasses guy whose name I forgot. And it was pretty disappointing you never got to fight alongside Alvis. That being said, the cast was not offensively unlikeable like Crossbell's, who actively detracted from my enjoyment whenever they were onscreen.

The game lacks charm and feels like "been there, done that". The prologue sets up the expectation that it's going to be a gritty noir thriller, but then it turns into a rehash of Tokyo Xanadu and Crossbell as you talk to all of the NPCs in this boring modern urban city. Calvard is not an interesting or well realized setting like Erebonia, which was fantasy Prussia. After 110 hours in Calvard, I couldn't tell you who the military leadership like Craigs and Zechs were, or which armored divisions were based at which installations, the names of any famous native Calvardian warriors or smaller rulers in the country like Victor or Albarea or Vander and so on. Most of the new lore isn't actually Calvardian lore, but actually foreigners. The Ikaruga clan is from the East. Heiyue are a foreign crime syndicate. The two jaeger corps we meet are from the cities to the North or from the Middle-East. Middle-Eastern prince (who is a clone of Olivier). And so on. The country doesn't feel like it has a long history like with Witches or the vampire conflict or the days of the Dark Dragon when the capital was moved to Saint-Arkh or the War of the Lions or the Hundred Days War and so on. And then the ending is also a rehash of Tokyo Xanadu's ending. There just isn't much meat to grab on here. And then we don't get a payoff on the actually interesting stuff we heard about Calvard such as bloody and ambitious as Erebonia or the immigration crisis or the ILF counterparts.

The geography of Calvard is very disappointing. In Cold Steel you could walk along the roads between the towns in Eastern Erebonia and feel like the empire was this realized, huge place. But in Calvard, the only road you can walk along in the one outside of the Verne city which was four chapters in I think? And you can never do that again. You teleport between every city, and by the end you have been to the four corners of Calvard and even a city in the Middle-East. Calvard feels disappointingly small.

Then you have the combat and character building, which is not engaging. I played on nightmare, the highest difficulty that was available. I only ever gameovered once, on the one boss fight that had a mechanic you actually had to respect (the girl with the angel robot). The game never made me have to buckle down and get into the nitty gritty of optimization and teambuilding like playing CS1 on nightmare difficulty did. Overcoming the encounters in that game felt like an accomplishment.

The soundtrack does not have anywhere near as high of a hit rate compared to CS1.

The only positive I'd give to Kuro no Kiseki is the increased visual fidelity, particularly in the S-craft animations. I was a little peeved about the optimization, though. I played with a 3070 ti but got stuttering or screentearing on the S-crafts unless I set the resolution to be pathetically small. I spent a couple hours tinkering with my Nvidia settings and all of the graphics options before giving up. It's a shame however that the devs decided to waste the increased visual fidelity by depicting every city besides Oracion as a boring modern urban city and dress everyone up in modern looking clothing rather than something charming like Erebonia.

The game was fun enough to finish and I will be getting Kuro 2, but I like the visuals and turn based combat and the character personalities are likeable (or at least, inoffensive), and I like some of the music, but I am not enthralled by the Kuro series like I was with Cold Steel.