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

[Ookla the Pom]

9 hours ago, Briar King said:

Gotta say the sheer amount of “grr, umm, hmm, ugh’s” in snooty teen tones is very grating to my almost 40 yr old ears.

So was this game a PS3 or PSP one? I’m really reminded of the physical mech of FF Type O which was PSP to PS4 with its very bare bones and repeating dungeons. The characters themselves look really good though. 
 

I have a 4 person party now. Machis came crawling backwards. I like his gun range.

man it is kinda depressing with no flavor to the background in this bare bone dull dungeon. Keep in mind I’ve come off Death Stranding and Xenoblade 2 which is both full of eye candy..

and this god(?) Aidios... sigh

bye bye lol

This was ps3. Falcom always seems to be a generation or two behind other developers when it comes to graphics. Trails in the Sky for example could be easily mistook for a psx game at first, but it came out in 2004. Cold Steel was their first full 3d game and it shows. From what I know, they use a new engine for CS3, CS4, and Hajimari, and I seem to remember reading somewhere that they have yet a new engine for the next arc, so things get better.

Umm, what about Aidios?

17 hours ago, Weltall said:

@Eluvianii Amusingly, the first time they did this (Trails from Zero) they didn't even give you a chance to fight, you just saw a sequence from waaaaay later in the game and got to run around a bit but it ended before any actual fighting could happen. Though I guess you could also call the start of Trails in the Sky The 3rd a similar deal, except without any flash-forward stuff. There you got endgame-level Quartz to play with for the Prologue and then the game took them away from you to make you work for your victory. I have a feeling that Hajimari is going to have a similar feel, since like The 3rd it's shaping up to be the series equivalent of a D&D epic-level campaign.

Speaking of that, don't we have tidbits of The 3rd that are yet to be explained? And we're getting another game like that. The amount of theorizing that is to come will be amazing, I can tell.

[Briar King]

So how many game hours is this game?

Aidios way to much like adios=bye bye in Spanish depending on who has said it so far. 
 

So CS2 has a more appealing graphical background? I mean I’m an 80’s kid who grew up on 8 bit so I can take it but I won’t lie this is very jarring coming from those other games to this for sure...

[Ookla the Pom]

13 minutes ago, Briar King said:

So how many game hours is this game?

Aidios way to much like adios=bye bye in Spanish depending on who has said it so far. 
 

So CS2 has a more appealing graphical background? I mean I’m an 80’s kid who grew up on 8 bit so I can take it but I won’t lie this is very jarring coming from those other games to this for sure...

I don't really know, I had to stop playing because 10-minute loading screens is a little too much, but I made it to chapter 6 at around something over 70 hours.

And I see what you mean, though I always associated it with Ay Dios, which makes it even more funny considering we're talking about a goddess. That's why I usually stick to the japanese name, Eidos.

I think CS2 is still pretty similar to the first one since it uses the same engine, but I'd like to believe the animations get smoother there at least. The areas probably look the same though, I wouldn't expect them to redo them. The jump is in the third game.

[Weltall]

11 hours ago, Briar King said:

So was this game a PS3 or PSP one?

It was originally developed for PS3 and Vita, which means it was kind of limited by what could be fit on a single cart for the latter. That said, Falcom always puts graphics last in their priority with this series so while the games can look really nice, they're never going to be the kind of jaw-dropping visuals you'll get out of a AAA title.

2 hours ago, Eluvianii said:

Speaking of that, don't we have tidbits of The 3rd that are yet to be explained?

Yeah, just a few things yet to be explained... including the acid trip that was the final Moon Door. xD

[Briar King]

So Sara has sent me to the student council building to get something but I’m going to explore a bit 1st. Got a quiz already. Sigh that’s going to be a pain I think. Not knowing anything about this franchise I maybe screwed on that part.

People are asking me about clubs...I assume their are skill/stat perks for each? Or is this just dialogue school mumbo jumbo? Am I going to get out of this setting at all this game? Been a long time since I was in school in RL so the teenie bopping stuff will get old very quickly.

[Ookla the Pom]

17 minutes ago, Briar King said:

So Sara has sent me to the student council building to get something but I’m going to explore a bit 1st. Got a quiz already. Sigh that’s going to be a pain I think. Not knowing anything about this franchise I maybe screwed on that part.

People are asking me about clubs...I assume their are skill/stat perks for each? Or is this just dialogue school mumbo jumbo? Am I going to get out of this setting at all this game? Been a long time since I was in school in RL so the teenie bopping stuff will get old very quickly.

Usually the game gives you the answer to all questions somewhere before the quiz. Also, well, umm you won't get to choose a club, Rean has special circumstances.

You will get out of school. You spend some time doing stuff at the academy, and then you get to travel somewhere because Class VII is special and the plot advances. That would be the gameplay loop for this game in a nutshell.

[Briar King]

That sounds....wonderful. I was getting nervous about that. So can I just zip through the school stuff if i choose? Will I miss anything important if I don’t talk to anyone beside who I need to for quest?

[Ookla the Pom]

12 minutes ago, Briar King said:

That sounds....wonderful. I was getting nervous about that. So can I just zip through the school stuff if i choose? Will I miss anything important if I don’t talk to anyone beside who I need to for quest?

Technically? No. You would miss character development for the NPCs though.

One of the selling points of the series is that each NPC, no matter how unimportant, has enough dialogue throughout the game to make a story solely focused on them. There are some NPCs that have their own stories spanning multiple arcs even. But it's up to the player if they're interested in that or not.

If that's not your cup of tea, you can just do the mandatory quests and wait for the next trip.

[Weltall]

One caveat to the above about not talking to characters you don't need to: Aside from seeing their own stories and the worldbuilding that comes with them, NPCs can give you things like recipes, books and (for Thors students and faculty) entries in the character notebook. On their own none of them are essential but recipes can be used to make useful items for combat, the books can be traded for a very useful item late in the game and having a sufficient number of character notebook entries is a requirement for several rewards, and all of these count towards various trophies if you care about those. The books at least can be purchased later if you miss them but the other stuff is time-limited. So you certainly can skip all unnecessary conversations but you'll miss out on some potential goodies down the road.

[Briar King]

Ok I’m trying to find something for Collete.. she says it’s on 2nd floor but I can’t find anything with an icon or glow. I’m running all over the place in main building.

ok this is frustrating and my ambien is kicking in making coordination harder. If y’all remember what this quest was and where it’s please say so I can find in AM.

Edited April 19, 2020 by Briar King

[Weltall]

Check the sofas on the second floor, you'll find her missing book.

[Briar King]

Ughhhhh I can’t tell you how many times I went through that part and never got an icon ding. Got it now so thanks. Have rep

 

k what exactly is Sepith? I’m in cafe and it has an exchange option to trade for $ i assume. Should I be doing all the stuff I get or not?

Edited April 19, 2020 by Briar King

[Ookla the Pom]

12 minutes ago, Briar King said:

k what exactly is Sepith? I’m in cafe and it has an exchange option to trade for $ i assume. Should I be doing all the stuff I get or not?

Sepith is what the quartz in your orbments are made from. I would advise you against selling it unless it's a real emergency. To get money though, since in this arc you're students with no income, sepith mass was introduced. That one you can sell safely in an orbal factory (in Trista you can find it at the Academy, left from the Student Union building). Also, it's there where the sepith will come in handy since there is where you make quartz. 

[Briar King]

Ok so I went and talked to most everyone atleast once at all locations and I’m now back underground finally fighting again with Elliot and Gaius. I’m going to grind a bit if I can if enemies respawn. Anddd they do so I’m lvling these guys up a bit so I can be OP early.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Briar King

[Ookla the Pom]

33 minutes ago, Briar King said:

Ok so I went and talked to most everyone atleast once at all locations and I’m now back underground finally fighting again with Elliot and Gaius. I’m going to grind a bit if I can if enemies respawn. Anddd they do so I’m lvling these guys up a bit so I can be OP early.

A thing about this series though, grinding is near impossible as long as you don't skip combat during dungeons or travels. Levels will come painfully slow once you're at the level you need. It's a nice feature because it gives more time for the plot.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Eluvianii

[Weltall]

Yeah, one thing this series has done since the start is scale EXP to your level. The enemies in a given area will give more experience when your characters are below the level the game thinks you should be at, then it starts to fall off a cliff once you get above that point. This means it's extremely tedious to grind for experience and largely pointless since an hour of grinding in one area will give you about the same return as a couple of battles in the next area.

Grinding for cooking ingredients, sepith and the like is entirely reasonable, mind you. It's just EXP that provides such diminishing returns that it's rarely worth it. One way to easily tell if you're overleveled (aside from getting lousy EXP) is if you can not just stun but kill enemies with field attacks.

Edited April 20, 2020 by Weltall

[Ookla the Pom]

1 hour ago, Weltall said:

The enemies in a given area will give more experience when your characters are below the level the game thinks you should be at, then it starts to fall off a cliff once you get above that point.

Yeah, that reminds me of something great that happened during my run of SC.

I didn't use Olivier in all the game, but I wanted him to come during the final dungeon because stuff. Obviously I planned to level him up, but it wasn't necessary because after the first battle the guy got like 50 levels. It was beautiful.

[Briar King]

Yeah I was blasted last night and started throwing hundreds of sepith around not understanding what I was really doing unlocking new lines. Oh well. I’m making some back up with the early morning grind.

[aneonfoxtribute]

7 hours ago, Briar King said:

Yeah I was blasted last night and started throwing hundreds of sepith around not understanding what I was really doing unlocking new lines. Oh well. I’m making some back up with the early morning grind.

That's fine. I always focus on unlocking lines because I typically have enough quartz just from exploring to put on people. 

[Briar King]

I’m currently

on a train bound for a merchant town I’ve already forgotten the name of. So I used my 3 buddy points for Elliot, Machis and Alsia who was just becoming super annoying with the excessive “hrmm’s” and over blown teen drama. I absolutely love combat in this game. The vampire free ch of a book really reminded me of a feature I adore on Elder Scrolls games, its lore/books. I can see myself sinking some time into just reading.

 

I really need $.. I’m so used to games giving it on killing enemies. I had $500 but sunk $300 the other day to +1 each character’s weapons. Elliot is extremely helpful in combat.

 

[Weltall]

Ooooh, if you like lore and in-universe books (and especially both at once) you're gonna love this series. xD

As far as money goes, every game in this series has a trick you can perform that makes it easy to earn a lot of it in a short while without grinding fights, once you figure it out. If you want to know:

Spoiler

It's cooking. There's always at least one recipe in a game that requires only purchasable ingredients and which can produce something that sells for more than the cost of the ingredients themselves. In CS1 it's the Simple Omelette if you have Elliot do the cooking. He can produce two possible results, both of which sell above cost. It's an easy way to make a bit of extra cash in a hurry, especially since you can cook in bulk.

 

[Briar King]

And that’s the only one I have right now anyway.. will look into it.

[Briar King]

Some dragonflies just gave me an utter beat down... Alisa and Laura were out for the count and I don’t have the supplies nor funds for supplies for any phoenix down clones. So I just restarted. Hopefully I can avoid those this time. Wasn’t expecting that steep a power climb of enemies. Also yeah ok I’m talking to everybody and I guess was just rewarded for that as some random gal gave me ch 2 of the vampire story!

[aneonfoxtribute]

Yeah random people give you stories from time to time. And they're usually relevant and have typically actually happened. For instance, the first book in the series, Carnelia, is a real story involving two real characters that we actually meet. 

[Briar King]

Where is a Orbal rest point in Celdic!? I need to recharge but the inn is trying to charge me $100 and I sure can’t part with that right now. I haven’t seen one yet and that Highway did me in EP wise!

Oh and Laura is a beast.