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

[Weltall]

7 minutes ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

I was told not to watch it without finishing Hajimari. Thoughts?

Uhhhh, probably not a bad idea. There's some stuff in the teaser that won't directly spoil you on plot (in fact you won't even know what it is if you go in blind) but it's stuff that first shows up in Hajimari so the effect works better if you finish Haji first.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Weltall

[aneonfoxtribute]

Mmk. I'll finish first. I can wait a couple weeks to watch it. 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Spoiler

Starting to get worried that Zephyr is going to suffer from overexposure, as it looks like Fie is going to have a subplot about tracking down that other Zephyr woman who we saw in flashbacks but never showed up in Cold Steel.

On the other hand, Fie being in Calvard means that there is the possibility of more Fie x Rean shipping screentime.

Zin's new outfit looks cool but I wish he had more facial hair.

 

[aneonfoxtribute]

Eh I decided to watch anyway, there wasn't anything major that I could see. Mostly just stuff I could have guessed, plus one surprise that ig is probably the thing from Hajimari? Nothing I'm broken up about tho. 

14 minutes ago, Val the Moofia Boss said:

  Hide contents

Starting to get worried that Zephyr is going to suffer from overexposure, as it looks like Fie is going to have a subplot about tracking down that other Zephyr woman who we saw in flashbacks but never showed up in Cold Steel.

On the other hand, Fie being in Calvard means that there is the possibility of more Fie x Rean shipping screentime.

Zin's new outfit looks cool but I wish he had more facial hair.

 

Spoiler

tbf you don't just leave a plot thread like that hanging. That woman showed up more than Leonidas in Fie's flashbacks. She better be relevant

 

[Weltall]

8 minutes ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

Eh I decided to watch anyway, there wasn't anything major that I could see. Mostly just stuff I could have guessed, plus one surprise that ig is probably the thing from Hajimari? Nothing I'm broken up about tho.

Nahhh, like I said the Hajimari stuff isn't something you'd recognize until you've beaten it.

[Eluvianii he/him]

Does that mean I'm safe being four games behind? I have a terrible itch to watch it. 

[Weltall]

I mean, there's no dialogue or anything like that so there's not too much you can get spoiled on by visuals alone. Like I mentioned there's a bit more of an impact if you've finished Hajimari first because you'll recognize some characters who don't appear beforehand but there's only one thing in it that could even be tenuously called a visual spoiler and I don't really think it counts.

Edited June 4, 2021 by Weltall

[Val the Moofia Boss]

more kuro stuff

Spoiler

The special edition pre-order bonus gives us a look at what Professor Hamilton looks like (basically Quistis from FF8/Touko from the Nasuverse). Um... aren't the 3 disciples of Epstein supposed to be at least 60-70 years old? Epstein died in 1154, and Kuro takes place 54 years later. So if the professors were at the minimum age of 10 when they became Epstein's students... they would be at least 64 years old today! Probably in their 70s! And this woman looks like she is in her 20s/30s at the most. Instructor Beatrix was the health professional and not even she looks this young. Maybe she found the sept-terion of time and stopped aging or something

 

[Weltall]

She's voiced by Inoue Kikuko so she's only seventeen.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Continuing with Hajimari, got to the suspension of C route. More importantly

Spoiler

I GOT MY BABY RENNE BACK <3! I wonder if the party members in Rufus' route will all be former antagonists or who did unsavory things, other than Lapis ofc. Crow and Arios I think are likely to join, Joshua could join tho idk what would separate him from Estelle. Duvalie maybe, but that's based more on the fact that she's behind C in the OP rather than anything else.

 

[Briar King]

I have officially passed the prologue in today’s 4pm session. Stopped there. I may continue a bit more after I eat and watch some more Sweet Tooth.

[Eluvianii he/him]

Alright, I think I'm officially at the point I stopped playing Cold Steel the first time. Which is to say the climax of chapter 6. Of course, since back then I avoided doors like plague in order to see as few loading screens as possible, it took me about 70-something hours, whereas now, being able to talk to everyone at my leisure it took me 93 hours.

From now on everything is new for me... save for the generous amount of spoilers I've gathered over the years, which I'm not too happy about but oh well, gotta enjoy what I can. 

[NattyBo]

Credits rolling on Azure.

 

Very glad I didn’t skip the crossbell arc and I can see why both Zero and Azure are spoken of so highly. Quite the tour de force 

[Eluvianii he/him]

Ok, just how much can a turn be delayed? 

Spoiler

C

just beat me, literally 2 moves away from me beating them, because the two people that were still alive were delayed into infinity and weren't getting any turns whatsoever. Fie, the fastest character in the game, spent a good 10 rounds doing nothing. Is there something I should be watching for in this battle that screws you for good?

Edit: Still don't know how he did that, but I countered it with the two anti-delay accessories I had. Plus I equipped protection against faint which was being a big problem during the first half of the fight. Worked like a charm as long as the party was on red defense to protect against one hit kills. 

That is until I won and the game decided to crash mid-cutscene... 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Eluvianii

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You want to have a character set aside for casting support buffs, like casting Crescent Mirror to reflect arts back at the big floating Archaisims, and casting Adamantine Shield to negate damage from the mines.

Also, reminder you can double stack buffs, like casting Chrono Drive on your party twice to get their speed up to 50% speed increase (as opposed to just 25% speed increase from one stack), and double cast Motivate to increase attack power by 50% and give some CP to the rest of the crew. 50% defense up will help you survive the S-crafts.

Having the support character use the Angel master quartz is real nice because it means if they do get one shotted by the boss' S-craft, they can just pop right back up and you don't need to waste turns rezzing and healing them.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Val the Moofia Boss

[Weltall]

10 hours ago, Eluvianii said:

Ok, just how much can a turn be delayed?

Quite a long time, though it depends on the stats of the relevant parties and inflicting move. It's possible in CS1/2 for Rean to stunlock non-resistant enemies with Arc Slash due to that Craft inflicting a lot of Delay and having a very short cooldown.

[Briar King]

Bought a ps card yesterday. Will likely pull trigger on Sky 1&2 later tonight.

[NattyBo]

 

Finished CS1 prologue today. Machias is EASILY the most annoying member of the cast so far, yeesh

[aneonfoxtribute]

59 minutes ago, Briar King said:

Bought a ps card yesterday. Will likely pull trigger on Sky 1&2 later tonight.

What are you buying it on? Vita? I'd recommend getting it on Steam more, since Vita version is censored.

[Briar King]

29 minutes ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

What are you buying it on? Vita? I'd recommend getting it on Steam more, since Vita version is censored.

PS3. I don’t game on PC. Censored how?

[aneonfoxtribute]

3 minutes ago, Briar King said:

PS3. I don’t game on PC. Censored how?

It's on PS3? I didn't know that. I don't remember what the censorship is in FC and SC, but there is a really major censorship in 3rd which I think hurt it a lot. In 3rd there is a scene that is...... I'll just say "super messed up". Like one of the darkest things I've ever read. They change it to make it less messed up and I think that downplaying how messed up it was doesn't do it justice. 

[aneonfoxtribute]

27 minutes ago, Briar King said:

PS3. I don’t game on PC. Censored how?

ABORT! ABORT! I have just learned that you CANNOT play Sky on PS3 in English. The version listed on the PS3 PSN is exclusively for PSP and Vita

[Eluvianii he/him]

12 hours ago, Val the Moofia Boss said:

You want to have a character set aside for casting support buffs, like casting Crescent Mirror to reflect arts back at the big floating Archaisims, and casting Adamantine Shield to negate damage from the mines.

Also, reminder you can double stack buffs, like casting Chrono Drive on your party twice to get their speed up to 50% speed increase (as opposed to just 25% speed increase from one stack), and double cast Motivate to increase attack power by 50% and give some CP to the rest of the crew. 50% defense up will help you survive the S-crafts.

Having the support character use the Angel master quartz is real nice because it means if they do get one shotted by the boss' S-craft, they can just pop right back up and you don't need to waste turns rezzing and healing them.

I had three out of four members casting buffs of some kind. Rean and Fie double casting Chrono Drive has been one of my main strategies for a while. Elliot had gladiator belt so he could spam resounding beat. Did Motivation every time I could and used Impassion as needed. When things got too ugly I had Elliot cast Seraphic Ring. Still kind of scared of this boss' delaying abilities.

Also had to do it twice because of the crash so all in all I spent about two hours on this fight. 

[Briar King]

39 minutes ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

ABORT! ABORT! I have just learned that you CANNOT play Sky on PS3 in English. The version listed on the PS3 PSN is exclusively for PSP and Vita

Well wth...

The two on there say XSeed USA for sure I saw.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Just now, Briar King said:

Well wth...

The two on there say XSeed USA for sure I saw.

Yes, but it was never released for PS3 outside of Japan. That is the English version of the game, but it is not available on PS3. You would be purchasing the PSP/Vita version.