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

[aneonfoxtribute]

44 minutes ago, Val the Moofia Boss said:

The final boss of Ys 1 was unbeatable for me. Apparently his movement speed is tied to your resolution and frame rate.

I didn't know about that but what I do know is that the fight was awful and his movement speed wouldn't change that. 

[Eluvianii]

I just found that I missed a hidden quest and I want to reset the entire game. 

[Briar King]

Most annoying thing about CS3 is that it’s the 1st game ever that the save files don’t auto sort so I have to be really careful. I can get it to auto but it doesn’t stick.

[Briar King]

Got my 1st game over of CS3. Big ass bug gave me a whooping.

[NattyBo]

The writing is Trails in the Sky 3rd is very funny, in a good way. I’ve had several real laugh out loud moments. I’m really enjoying playing with all these secondary cast members.

[Briar King]

CS3 ch 1 stuff

despite being a very cool feature I just can’t do the hair/eye color change especially on O7 peeps. It just is jarring after a year with them. I can leave the blonde on Juna for a time but no way can I stand to have a red hair Rean or dark hair Fie. It’s such a cool thing to just way to late for me. Speaking of Fie that hybrid ducktail/mullet....just no even though she can fit right in Cajun land here with it lol

[aneonfoxtribute]

1 minute ago, Briar King said:

CS3 ch 1 stuff

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despite being a very cool feature I just can’t do the hair/eye color change especially on O7 peeps. It just is jarring after a year with them. I can leave the blonde on Juna for a time but no way can I stand to have a red hair Rean or dark hair Fie. It’s such a cool thing to just way to late for me. Speaking of Fie that hybrid ducktail/mullet....just no even though she can fit right in Cajun land here with it lol

 

Yeah I didn't do much accessorizing either. The only thing I did was put on Juna's Lloyd outfit because it was just too perfect not to do, and put the glasses on Rean. I also put on 

Spoiler

Millium's color scheme for Altina for a while but I dropped it after a while

 

[Briar King]

It’s such a neat new feature to but like I said it’s kinda “to late in the game” for some of them. I’ve found most outfits rather silly each game to but CS2 definitely had the best with casual 2. I’m using main camp thus far in CS3 just to stand out from the rest.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I gave Kurt a ponytail to salvage his bland character design.

Also kept bouncing back and forth between giving Rean that small extra hair tuft extension.

I really wish that the old Class VII outfits from CS1+2 had been remade for CS3, so I could put Fie in her CS1 casuals + shades, and Millium in her CS2 sailor uniform, and Sara into her CS1+2 outfit.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Val the Moofia Boss

[NattyBo]

Noticed some nice fantasy references in Trails in the Sky SC and 3rd so far.  Obvious one is the Wheel of Time. Also, in the PSP version of Trails SC, one of the revive spells is called Athelas. I see in the PC version/3rd that's changed to just Thelas. Wonder if the Tolkien estate sent Nihon Falcom a nice little letter about that :-)

I'm sure I've missed others in the first two games and few chapters of 3rd I've played so far.

In any case, I really enjoy the orbment magic system now that I get it.  It reminds me of materia from FF7, both in terms of looks and also how equipping it works. I also like the (what I can only assume) are nods to Xenogears - granted, that could just be the edgy borrowing of Judeo-Christian names and iconography, but the Merkabah's being prominent is one example.

So far, my favorite character is Olivier, by leaps and bounds. Seig is pretty awesome, too

Trails in the Sky SC Chapter 8/end spoilers

 

I was so glad when Olivier's heel turn was just acting.

Edited March 2, 2021 by NattyBo

[Eluvianii]

6 minutes ago, NattyBo said:

Noticed some nice fantasy references in Trails in the Sky SC and 3rd so far.  Obvious one is the Wheel of Time. Also, in the PSP version of Trails SC, one of the revive spells is called Athelas. I see in the PC version/3rd that's changed to just Thelas. Wonder if the Tolkien estate sent Nihon Falcom a nice little letter about that :-)

Athelas is the strong version of Thelas. Thelas revives you with a little health and Athelas with full health.

8 minutes ago, NattyBo said:

So far, my favorite character is Olivier, by leaps and bounds. Seig is pretty awesome, too

That is a fortunate choice for a favorite character. He's pretty active. 

Spoiler

And yeah, that scene was amazing. Especially considering they almost gave hints at him being a villain. One of the best parts for sure, he sure fooled me. 

 

[NattyBo]

1 minute ago, Eluvianii said:

 

That is a fortunate choice for a favorite character. He's pretty active. 

  Reveal hidden contents

And yeah, that scene was amazing. Especially considering they almost gave hints at him being a villain. One of the best parts for sure, he sure fooled me. 

 

One of my favorite scenes in all of what I have played so far is when Olivier and one of the enforcers get into a seriously heated discussion about the nature of beauty, etc. I was laughing my ass off.

[aneonfoxtribute]

I don't actually think Wheel of Time is a reference. I think they just thought it sounded cool. I would be surprised if Falcom was aware of much Western fantasy literature, even the big stuff.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The only consistent fantasy literature reference I've seen in Trails is LotR names, with Lechter Arundel's last name being a reference to an elf. There is the Osgiliath Basin in Erebonia. Some spell names are named after LotR stuff, etc.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Yeah LotR references make sense but I mean, it's only the most well known fantasy series ever written. Of course they're aware of that. Though is the Osgiliath Basin really a reference to LotR? I thought it was more a reference to.... Well, Giliath Osborne.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Osgiliath was a Gondorian city. The "Giliath" in Osborne's name could be an abbreviated reference. Osborne's real first name is Gideon, IIRC, and I don't recall "Giliath" being an alternative name for that (like how "Bill" is an alternative name for "William")

[aneonfoxtribute]

Osborne's real first name is Giliath, assuming we're still talking about Trails Osborne. Gideon is a completely different character. 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Oh, really? Huh. Not sure where I got the Gideon first name from then.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Yeah I'm not sure either. There is a character NAMED Gideon, but he's a member of the Imperial Liberation Front, the people AGAINST Osborne. 

[Weltall]

5 hours ago, NattyBo said:

Noticed some nice fantasy references in Trails in the Sky SC and 3rd so far.  Obvious one is the Wheel of Time. Also, in the PSP version of Trails SC, one of the revive spells is called Athelas. I see in the PC version/3rd that's changed to just Thelas. Wonder if the Tolkien estate sent Nihon Falcom a nice little letter about that :-)

If the estate sent letters to everyone who borrowed ideas from Tolkien that would be a full-time job. I mean, the number of places that mention mithril alone...

Quote

I also like the (what I can only assume) are nods to Xenogears - granted, that could just be the edgy borrowing of Judeo-Christian names and iconography, but the Merkabah's being prominent is one example.

That one isn't a deliberate Xenogears nod, it's that both are drawing from the same material. Contrast to the end of CS1:

Spoiler

That the unarmed stance Rean first uses with Valimar resembles Weltall's combat pose is probably intentional. The line Valimar asks when forming a contract with Rean isn't identical in Japanese to Grahf's iconic line but it's close and XSEED rendered it the same way so that's possibly intentional on Falcom's part and definitely intentional on XSEED's.

Likewise a sword named Vierge being described as a self-defense weapon for noble girls isn't intentionally a nod to Elie's Gear but draws on the same imagery, Rean's sword is named Uzuki not because of Citan, Shion and Jin but because it's a traditional Japanese month and so on.

That said, if you look for them you'll find lots of very definite references to anime, manga, novels and games. For example, there's an enemy in Trails to Azure called the Ra Cailum and Tio and Elie both have nods to Lyrical Nanoha in their Craft selections, the strongest Earth art in CS3/4 is called Gravion Hammer, Shio's Vorpal Weapon in Tokyo Xanadu resembles a slightly tweaked version of the Eva Series' giant swords from End of Evangelion and for bonus points the name itself comes from Lewis Carroll, etc.

Falcom clearly has a lot of fun when they decide what to name things in their games. xD

5 hours ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

I don't actually think Wheel of Time is a reference. I think they just thought it sounded cool. I would be surprised if Falcom was aware of much Western fantasy literature, even the big stuff.

This one most definitely isn't on Falcom's part, but it might have been on XSEED's. One thing that can't generally be conveyed in localization is that some characters have Craft names written in kanji (the writing system adopted from Chinese) while others use mainly katakana (one of the two phonetic systems, used especially to sound out foreign words). Estelle's S-Craft is one of the former and is one of the cases where you can actually see it in localization, because her animation includes the text cutin; you can see it with most of Rean's S-Crafts too. Her Craft is, in Japanese, Ougi - Taikyokurin, which translates roughly to 'Secret Technique - Ring of All Creation'. That being a mouthful, it got localized as Wheel of Time and that might have been a deliberate nod from XSEED.

By the by, there are more references to western fantasy than just to Tolkien but those are the most obvious. You can also find references to Earthsea and The Belgariad in the Japanese text, to say nothing of all the mythology they pull things from.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Weltall

[Eluvianii]

Sometimes I forget how this works. I finish a chapter. The game asks if I want to save. I'm like "Alright, but I won't finish this session until I get control again, it should be quick". 

Then about 30 minutes of cutscenes happened. 

[NattyBo]

For any lurkers, Cold Steel III is at a historical low right now on PC ($35)

[Weltall]

We got a nice teaser for Kuro no Kiseki today, more to come in a week.

Mechanics stuff:

Spoiler

As already implied, you can switch freely between Action Battle and Command Battle modes. In the former mode, Circle performs normal attacks, X dodges, Triangle opens the menu and target selection is done with the d-pad. The Square button is associated with a command called 'Deploy Shard' whose purpose is unknown but is implied to have to do with the new Xipha-model Orbment.

In Command Battle L1 and R1 are used to open the Arts and Crafts menus respectively. How these work in Action Battle hasn't been revealed yet. Square triggers or cancels a feature called S-Boost, likewise we don't know how it works in Action Battle yet.

There are several types of normal attack available including more powerful hits and combos.

You can switch between active characters and the ones you aren't controlling in Action Battle mode will fight automatically.

Enemies have 'Field' and 'Battle' states and they'll react differently depending on which one they're in. By untargeting an enemy and backing off, you can retreat from combat.

Cooperative attacks of some form exist and there are conditions on the use of S-Crafts but they haven't been described.

We get a description of one Craft each for our still nameless protagonist and heroine, 'Blue Crusher' for the former and Etoile Ray for the latter. The Stun Calibur the former uses as their main weapon can inflict the Faint effect on enemies.

Likewise we see a list of Arts and most of them are familiar. Firebolt and the first three Tear spells appear along with a new one called Spark Edge. Arts targeting will be different from previous games but we don't get details.

In Command Battle mode, something resembling the old AT Bar appears including turn bonuses and S-Breaks can be performed.

A new system that appears to be called 'SCLM Chain' appears but isn't described.

Story stuff (Hajimari spoiler):

Spoiler

Spriggan is a profession rather than an organization. They exist to do jobs that private individuals would prefer to remain private, take jobs on behalf of the CID that the latter doesn't want to give to the Bracers Guild and they also do work for criminals and other underground groups. Their policy is to take requests from anybody.

The capital of Calvard is named Edyth (or Edith) and was constructed after the democratic revolution. Monuments to that revolution exist and the description calls out that the city has a multiplex cinema as one of its features. The city uses subways for mass transit.

The heroine is confirmed to be the blonde girl from Renne's segment of Beyond the Beginning and the text indirectly mentions Aramis Academy.

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by Weltall

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Kondo hopes to end his career by finishing the Trails series by 2031.

 

[Weltall]

Perfect ending (or result) for the series and a milestone for his career, not the ending to his career. If he has plans to end his career on anything, it would be a remake of Gagharv.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Weltall