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Trails of Cold Steel (and the Kiseki series in general)


Zurvanight

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Hajimari ending DON'T CLICK

Spoiler

seriously last chance to turn back

Spoiler

Noooooo Rean alter died! Now I am very very sad. I wanted them to save him in the end, hoping against hope. Hoping that maybe he'd at least pull a heel turn at the end and help out, but no he doesn't come to his senses until he's already dying. :(

 

Feeling really depressed now. We'll never get to romp around Erebonia with Class VII again, never get to revisit revisit Celdic or Bareahard or Parm or Ymir. No more catching up with the people of Thors. That's it. It's over.

Edited by Val the Moofia Boss
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17 hours ago, Eluvianii said:

Can't wait to hear the other two. And the first boss theme. I spoil myself the first boss theme in these games because otherwise the wait might be too much.

Rean's battle theme

C's battle theme.

 

EDIT:

This is the theme from the first trailer. And honestly it's my favorite battle theme in the entire Kiseki series. I cannot believe how good this sounds. 

Edited by Zurvanite
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Going absolutely nuts over here. Brought the PS4 hoping to hook up but it’s just not gonna work out. Planning to attempt to trek back to Louisiana Saturday to scope out our sliced home in person. Booted up yesterday for all of 2 seconds to get my consecutive days played before evacuating but it’s just gonna be interrupted today and that’s that I guess.

I was in the process of beefing up a tad to retake the palace bosses. 

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I'm not sure how I feel about the departure from the turn based battle system, but I will admit that the system peaked during the Zero duology. Spoilers because I discuss some technical aspects of gameplay and certain bosses in Sky and Azure.

Spoiler

I don't know about CS IV and Hajimari, but the first two Cold Steel games weren't that balanced when it came to gameplay (read: Rean spamming Gale to clear every encounter), and the third just chucked everything out the window with Break gauges and a certain person's Brave Order Sledgehammer which let you trivialize any fight, basically. The best boss battle in the series, for me, come from Trails in the Sky and Trails of Azure, specifically the final fight against the Bladelord, and that time it took the entire might of the Special Support Section to break a helmet. Good times.

 

Edited by aeromancer
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I got C's (Hajimari) identity spoiled by a YouTube video lol. It was a boss theme but it had gameplay so be careful guys (that theme is a real banger tho and I'll try to find a version of it without gameplay). C was literally the last person I expected him to be.

Edited by Zurvanite
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I got C's identity spoiled because of Persona 5, of all things. Spoilers for both below.

Spoiler

I don't know where or when but I remembered seeing somebody say that both CS and P5 had a person named Crow be the traitor and for some reason that stuck with me for years. I didn't play CS until three years after P5, and it wasn't on the more recent side that I read it, but I just remembered that there is someone named Crow in Trails that was a traitor.

 

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4 minutes ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

I got C's identity spoiled because of Persona 5, of all things. Spoilers for both below.

  Hide contents

I don't know where or when but I remembered seeing somebody say that both CS and P5 had a person named Crow be the traitor and for some reason that stuck with me for years. I didn't play CS until three years after P5, and it wasn't on the more recent side that I read it, but I just remembered that there is someone named Crow in Trails that was a traitor.

 

I mean C in Hajimari not Cold Steel. I could easily guess who C in Cold Steel was but the new C in Hajimari comes completely out of left field. 

Edited by Zurvanite
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I'm still spoiler-free on Hajimari's C and hope to keep it that way, but I have a funny story about the original C from Cold Steel 1. So spoilers for anyone who hasn't beaten that game yet.

Spoiler

At one point while discussing it with people I flippantly nicknamed C 'Zemurian Zero' because the outfit and especially the helmet reminded me of Lelouch's disguise as 'Zero' in Code Geass. People further in the game than I was were laughing their asses off, I was told later, because of course Lelouch was a terrorist leader hiding in plain sight in a high school and C was... a terrorist leader hiding in plain sight in a high school.

I'd been so convinced C was Duke Cayenne too...

I'm starting Chapter 2 now and it's already been one hell of a wild ride. Even when there's stuff you know is coming, seeing it actually happen is a completely different story.

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55 minutes ago, Eluvianii said:

Everyone is getting C's identity spoiled, help. I think I should get a time off of facebook. 

The FB Falcom group I'm in has a spoiler thread and the mods basically warn or delete anything related to Hajimari that could spoil the story or ask them to move the post to that thread. I've heard a few stories that others groups have freely been sharing spoilers and people are upset though...

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Yeah, I've heard people in a couple places I frequent complain about getting spoiled. Part of it's what happens when the game breaks street date and people start speedrunning through it, part is just people being idiots and not thinking about others. I've been lucky so far by more or less going into a social media blackout  A few thoughts on some stuff I've encountered on C's route through what I'm guessing is the middle of Chapter 2.

Spoiler

I love this quartet so far. Nadia and Lapis are a very dangerous combination for C's bank account... wherever he's getting it. The fact that an advance payment was able to convince an uninterested Swin to agree to the contract (much less the offer for a completed job) means he's got some really deep pockets. And the way that Class VII was able to track them around the city because Millium recognized the guidebook Nadia was using was hilarious. And that back to back fight at Mater Park where you switch which side you're on mid-battle was amazing.

And oh boy, the True Reverie Corridor. That is going to be such a time-sink, I can tell. I've already done a few resets of the first level to get Silver Stones for item pulls and the randomized chests. And the fact that the first RP reward is twenty five points and the last is five hundred tells me there's going to be a lot to do in there. It's like they took the entirety of The 3rd and then said 'What if we make this a game-spanning piece of side content alongside the main story?' and then they went kind of overboard on adding stuff to it. I love it!

 

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Aaaand with that my thirst for godly music is satisfied, though I probably listened to more than I intended. 

And regarding C. It's not that I've seen any downright spoilers, but there have been several posts from people talking about how they got spoiled one way or another, and I feel like any of those might turn into a spoiler in itself. I know I'm overreacting here, I'm paranoid, it happens whenever there's a new game. I think it's healthy to be like that for a while after a release.

I'm a bit late here but I have to say, the new party looks really interesting, I mean, impossible to know without actually getting to meet them in-game, but they somehow don't look like the "My dream has always been to help people" that almost every previous protagonist has been introduced as. I'm not sure how to explain it.

On a side note, I've been procrastinating on CS. I was already playing way too many games but I started Tokyo Xanadu because I have commitment issues, and I have to say, it's kind of addictive. The gameplay loop is really reminiscent of Persona but this feels more free (Persona is way too realistic in its "Do a single activity and the entire day flies by"), I love the style, and in general, urban fantasy is one of my favorite things ever and I feel like I don't see enough games along these lines.

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Well, I'm in Chapter 3 now and oh boy has Stuff been Happening.

1 hour ago, Eluvianii said:

I'm a bit late here but I have to say, the new party looks really interesting, I mean, impossible to know without actually getting to meet them in-game, but they somehow don't look like the "My dream has always been to help people" that almost every previous protagonist has been introduced as. I'm not sure how to explain it.

Yeah, it's a different sort of dynamic. I think a lot of it is owed to the fact that Hajimari is a single title, isn't a typical game and lacks the traditional sidequest/point reward system so the gameplay mechanics allow for a party that has motives like theirs.

Quote

On a side note, I've been procrastinating on CS. I was already playing way too many games but I started Tokyo Xanadu because I have commitment issues, and I have to say, it's kind of addictive. The gameplay loop is really reminiscent of Persona but this feels more free (Persona is way too realistic in its "Do a single activity and the entire day flies by"), I love the style, and in general, urban fantasy is one of my favorite things ever and I feel like I don't see enough games along these lines.

Yeah, my feeling on TX is that it takes a while to build things up but it's a lot of fun with some neat worldbuilding and a fun cast. I'm really hoping they eventually make another game; doesn't have to be a sequel even, set in the same world would be just fine. And possibly have some sort of cosmic crossover event where the two Towas meet, outside the pages of the Falcom Gakuen comics anyways.

Are you playing the eX+ version then?

Edited by Weltall
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1 hour ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

Man thinking about it, it's always very obvious that a major character with some sort of mask or helmet is a character you already know. Like, there is no reason to specifically hide someone's face like that if you don't know who they are. I can only think of a few times where that's untrue. 

Yeah, there are even comments about people being dissapointed with it, idk. I'll find out in two years.

28 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Are you playing the eX+ version then?

Yep. Not sure what the difference is though. I just figured ultimate version = better. Is the original even available on PC?

Edited by Eluvianii
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3 minutes ago, Eluvianii said:

Yep. Not sure what the difference is though. I just figured ultimate version = better. Is the original even available on PC?

Nope, the only way to play the original version is on the Vita. I was curious because there's a whole lot of extra content in eX+ so it's really the one to get. So you're all set!

The bulk of the extra content comes in side-stories that take place between the chapters (including some new playable characters) and an additional postgame chapter. There's also additional stuff like a new mechanic, minigames and new items but the story expansion is the big draw.

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Into Chapter 4 of Hajimari now (I took a break over the weekend) and if I thought stuff was happening at the start of Chapter 3, well, let's just say it's ramped up a lot. Every route has had something crazy/awesome going on, or more frequently multiple such things, back to back. And I may or may not have stopped advancing the main plot for a few sessions to rerun areas so I could afford a bunch of upgrades, not because they're needed to progress but because it's fun. And I've been pleasantly surprised how many dungeon mechanics they've quietly been reintroducing from earlier arcs to keep things interesting. Can't wait to see where things are going from here.

EDIT: Well, now I have a good chunk of one route worth of material to work with and now I'm really curious what's going to happen in the others.

Edited by Weltall
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