@mookysam lol Trails in the Sky put me off the entire series. The thought of having to play TitS (laugh it up, mental twelve years olds!) SC and 3rd has stymied any progress I could have made on the series this year.
When you say ToCS1 on Vita was a wretched experience, do you mean you didn't like the game, or something about the performance?
@nessisonett Are the other TitS games REALLY needed to properly appreciate later games in this series? If not, I'm just jumping into the Crossbell games.
@Ralizah Absolutely yes. The bad guys are introduced in SC and they’re still the bad guys by Cold Steel 4. SC is way way better than the first one though. I liked 3rd but it’s definitely divisive as it’s a straight dungeon crawler. Crossbell really does follow straight on from the Sky games so I couldn’t really imagine jumping in there.
@Ralizah The performance was woeful in parts and never fully stable. Most of the game is tolerable, but there's an entire section at the academy near end of the game where it completely tanks for the whole time you're in the area, rendering it practically unplayable. Other than that I didn't see why it felt the need to adopt some of smuttier elements of modern Japanese games, and the whole waifu harem thing it had going on just made me roll my eyes. So I rebelled and had Rean go on a date with one of his male classmates.
And like @nessisonett says, TitS (my inner 12 year-old giggles) SC is pretty important for the overarching story of the series. It is a much better game than the first one, with a more sustained, exciting plot. I know you were put off by the incestuous storyline in the first one, which continues in force. Estelle probably needed a Moonstruck Cher slap to snap her out of it.
So I rebelled and had Rean go on a date with one of his male classmates.
And like nessisonett says, TitS (my inner 12 year-old giggles) SC is pretty important for the overarching story of the series. It is a much better game than the first one, with a more sustained, exciting plot. I know you were put off by the incestuous storyline in the first one, which continues in force. Estelle probably needed a Moonstruck Cher slap to snap her out of it.
You can date your male classmates?
That sucks about the performance, though. Falcom's Ys games on PSP seemed to run pretty well, so you'd think they'd have some experience with optimizing games to run decently on Sony's portable systems.
k, fine, FINE, I trust you and @nessisonett on this. I'll give it a shot, incest or no.
@Ralizah Yeah, the Estelle and Joshua stuff never stops being a bit icky but from what I’ve heard of Cold Steel, I think I’d prefer that to going down the dodgy harem side of things!
@nessisonett Out of curiosity since I haven't played the Trails in the Sky titles, who were the bad guys in the second game? (put it under spoiler tags) Because as far as I'm concerned, the villains in Cold Steel that were in Liberl show up in pretty much every CS title, so by the time you get to CS4 you're already well-acquainted with them. I definitely didn't feel a need to have played the Sky games for that reason.
However, there are definitely a lot of sections in CS3 that didn't resonate with me as much because I hadn't played the Sky titles. But for the most part, CS1 and CS2 are perfectly playable without prior knowledge. I'd personally recommend to @Ralizah to play CS1 and CS2 while you wait for the Crossbell titles to come out next year and then play them before CS3 and CS4 as those two games will delve heavily into the Liberl/Crossbell arcs.
@nessisonettSo like Campanella, McBurn and Bleublanc?
The thing is that you get to meet these characters a lot in the Cold Steel games that I didn't feel lost about who they are whenever they showed up. If I never learned that they were from the previous games, I would've easily believed that their first appearance was in Cold Steel. That's how much they're integrated in the Erebonia arc.
I just want to clarify: if you are interested in this series and are willing to start with Trails in the Sky, then you should absolutely do that in order to get the full experience. However, the way @Ralizah described it, it doesn't sound like you want to play the Sky games. And at the end of the day, playing through nine full-length JRPGs is a massive undertaking which will surely discourage even the most passionate gamer. Not to mention that playing through so many games might make you burned out on the series and you might even get frustrated with the later titles as they reuse the same formula. Moreover, the Trails of Cold Steel games will get longer and longer. I think it took me 60-70 hours to complete 1 and 2 respectively, while it took over 100 hours to finish 3 and 4 respectively. And at the end of 4, I was just fed up with the same formula. So I can't imagine how it must feel like when you've already played another five games in the series before Trails of Cold Steel.
It's definitely not as clear-cut as to say that one should play through all of them as it depends on your mood. I would personally recommend to play Cold Steel 1 and 2 (as they're basically one story) just to test the waters and see if you're even going to like this series. Then before continuing with 3 and 4 (as they delve heavily into Liberl and Crossbell), you can decide whether you want to play Trails in the Sky, the Crossbell games and/or jump straight into 3. Because what's the point of starting from the beginning if you're never going to see this through due to lack of motivation. I made that mistake with Final Fantasy and I realised that now that I'm playing through FF7 that I should've just started with the game that I actually wanted to play. I get that FF games are standalone compared to Trails so they don't rely on past knowledge of the series, but the point is that you should also factor in what game you absolutely want to play right now.
@LtSarge The first and third ones you’ve mentioned show up quite a bit in SC. You might say that you didn’t feel lost but you also probably didn’t get the full experience as there are several enforcers that come back later such as one in Ao and then the other apparently is back in Kuro.
@nessisonett I think the amount of enforcers, anguis etc. that show up does increase in Cold Steel 3 and 4, but in terms of Cold Steel 1 and 2 there are very few returning ones. I mean, the whole point of CS1 and CS2 is to introduce Erebonia to the players so naturally there won't be nearly as many references to past games as in CS3 and CS4.
On a side note, I don't have a good way of playing the Trails in the Sky titles but I definitely want to play the Crossbell games when they come out on PS4 next year. Out of curiosity, which arc would you say is the most significant one to the overall story, Liberl or Crossbell?
@LtSarge Well, both are important really. Liberl leads directly into Crossbell but then Crossbell leads directly into Erebonia. The Sky games are on Steam but I played the translations of the Vita versions which I imported. I also did the same with Zero but with Ao I’m playing the translation of the PC version by Geofront that’s coming to PS4 next year. Your best bet is PC if you’re wanting to play the other games.
Credits are rolling on A Plague Tale: Innocence as I type this.
Honestly, I heard good things about this but I didn't think it would be this good. Also thought it would be shorter and it's actually a full length story driven game.
I didn't get all the trophies so I guess I'll have to replay some chapters.
@Voltan Glad you enjoyed it! Took me by surprise also on how good it was.
I really did think they would be swallowed up by MS, seeing as they worked on MS Flight Sim, so was pleasantly surprised when the sequel was also announced for PlayStation!
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
To level her up past 20 you have to get to Inazuma for her ascension materials which are located there.
And for some stupid reason she's not voiced by Ashley Burch... It's very notable
That's a shame the Vita version didn't play all that well @mookysam! I can't imagine 2 would play any better so good idea on the getting the PS4 version.
As I said to Kratos/LtSarge playing ToCSII right it after 1 was a bit of a mistake in hindsight... but I was pretty pumped after the first 😅
I'd argue there are a lot of flaws to me though with the second even without burnout coming into play
Previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
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"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of"
@Voltan Glad you enjoyed it as well. Near the end of the game nearly broke me though, with the cart section especially. I died so many times I lost count, especially since it took me several hours. Killing the boss at the very end was frustrating too, but that cart section was ridiculous for me.
It was disappointing since I otherwise loved the game. Obviously I still highly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the sequel. I just doubt I would ever play it again because of the last chapter.
PSN ID/Xbox Live Gamertag: KilloWertz
Switch Friend Code: SW-6448-2688-7386
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Yep. It's actually quite fun. My plan is to just ignore the gacha elements for as long as possible (although I'll do pulls when I happen to acquire enough materials in-game to do ten at a time so I'm guaranteed a 4-star character) and see if it eventually impacts the core experience of the game. My guess is that endgame minmaxing is heavily reliant on gacha, for the best weapons, materials, and characters, but my plan is to mainly do the story stuff and daily commissions. I'll probably play in small bursts after I hit adventure rank 20 and snag Aloy, so I'll probably remain behind story updates enough that the gacha won't be an issue.
So far, it still feels like a proper game to me. Really enjoying it, even though my new bluetooth adapter doesn't want to play nice with my controllers, so I'm forced to use the Steam Controller for a proper pad + gyro experience. It took a bit of getting used to, but this game actually feels pretty good with the Steam Controller (something that has been locked up in my closet for years because I hated the weird trackpads and tiny in-set buttons). DS4 would have been my preference, but I'll probably be hanging that up as my go-to PC controller until Sony has the sense to mass produce another adapter for the PC like Microsoft does for their Xbox controller.
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