Val the Moofia Boss

I wish that Crossbell had been redesigned to look like an actual vast city, like Heimdallr, rather than retaining the miniature playset video game town look. Even Ordis looks larger when it has a canonically smaller population.

Artillery Class VII - CS1 main theme. Awakening - CS2 Rean's themesong, remix of the Class VII theme (thumbnail has spoilers for CS1). I was remember playing CS3 and the first DK fight was coming up, and I was so hyped to hear Awakening play again, or a remix of it... only for Lift Off to play, which was disappointing. I mean, come on! It's like dumping Brave Heart as the emotional evolution theme from Digimon! You can't do that. You can't top what is already perfect. As far as main leitmotifs go, CS1+2 got it right. Didn't overuse it a billion times, and the remixes were different enough that it took me a few relistens on youtube to realize "oh hey, this is actually the main theme!".

I'm sad that so little of the CS1+2 soundtrack was reused in the sequels. The recurring main theme melody of CS1+2 was dropped entirely too.

Rufus is the best thing that ever happened to that country.

Might be Japanese cultural thing that doesn't work well in a Western styled setting. Apparently it's rude to straight up tell people something that maybe insulting/disrespectful/insinuates that they are messing up, so you indirectly dance around the issue? But yes, it does feel weird. To me, the most bizzare part wasn't how Elise handled it, but was that Class VII was eavesdropping on the conversation (WTH guys!), and then they're acting all judgmental. ... What?

The NA annexation sounds the most likely to me, as it is relevant to most interested people (features popular characters) and showcases a location that will likely never be explored in the games. They could also showcase the other things Rean did in between CS2 and CS3. Hundred Days War... not so much, as it has to do with background characters that aren't very popular (no one goes "jeez, I want to see Morgan and Zechs in an anime!"), and doesn't showcase any new locations. EDIT: It could also be stuff that was cut from the games due to time constraints, such as the memoirs.

hahaha Hope the English dub voice actors of the games come back for the anime dub. Given that happened with the Zestiria anime dub, there is hope.

Just saw it on Gematsu. My Chrome browser translated the website bio as a he, but Gematsu is saying it's a she.

Hopefully that 69 year old character will be a party member. I can't think of any JRPG characters that old except for Rosine from Granblue Fantasy. (NOT counting "thousand year old immortals" like Kaim from Lost Odyssey). Not sure how to feel about the camera auto locking on to your target while moving the characters around during turn based combat.

You don't need to play the prior games. Everything you need to know about the story of the Cold Steel games, is given to you in the Cold Steel games. Characters from prior games make appearances, but they are not the focus of the story. Cold Steel has minor spoilers for prior games. All you get told is that there was a crisis in Liberl a couple years ago, and that there is an adventure going on in Crossbell concurrent to the Cold Steel story. And a handful of other minor spoilers that you are likely to miss, and will forget about by the time you actually get to the other games. New engine ≠ graphical leap. Graphics of Hajimari seems to be overall the same as CS3+4, just with a slightly new artstyle for the way character's faces are modelled.

Overall same as CS3. Hajimari is graphically the same. Only real notable thing is that it has mo-cap animation for a handful of scenes and S-crafts. Your mileage may very on whether or not it actually looks good, though.

Cold Steel IV releases on PC and Switch on April 9th.

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

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

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")

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.

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.

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

You don't need to play the prior games to understand the story. Everything you need to know about the story of a given game is given to you in that game. The only thing is that playing the prior Cold Steel games just gets you more invested in the characters since you've spent more time with them, seen their struggle. But you don't need to have done so to enjoy CS3.

I don't read books as much as I used to. I read Tolkien, Narnia, Dragonlance, Warhammer, Warcraft, etc. Aside from Tolkien, the books were usually short, like 200-300 pages, rarely 400 pages or more. I never really got into books of longer length or any of those famed doorstopper, epic fantasy novel series. In my experience, those longer books have too much fluff, where the pacing drags out and there are too many subplots and half of the subplots are boring or don't really contribute anything, and I just get bored and put the book down and never come back to it. I would rather read a visual novel or a manga, because even if there is bloat, at least it has nice art going for it (or in the case of visual novels, music and some voice acting). It's easier for me to stay engaged with a VN or a manga over a book nowadays. I have a small backlog of short length fantasy novels I still need to finish. I might finally get around to them this year. Attack on Titan only has one chapter left next month and then it's over. Final Fantasy XIV gets one more patch in April, and then there is nothing until the big finale comes out in Fall. I've seen all of the anime on Crunchyroll I'm interested in. I'm currently half way playing through the Utawarerumono trilogy, and if I finish that and Cold Steel IV isn't out on PC yet, then I'll probably read some books. Maybe if I finish those books, I'll consider reading Way of Kings or something. I'd also drop FFXIV in there. I think FFXIV compares favorably to Trails as the other, long running JRPG saga. I think FFXIV nails the overall main storyline far better than Trails does. In Trails, I feel like the main story about Ouroboros has never gone anywhere. You never really knock out any villains or learn more about the plot, or make any real progress towards stopping them. It's rather sad that we are... what? 9 or 10 games into Trails, and we still don't have basic info about the big bad's goals or motivations or plans. FFXIV has been very satisfying to me on that front, because I feel we are always making progress towards taking out the Ascians, or learning more about the plot, and so on. By the first expansion, we know what the bad guys are trying to do and how they're going to do it, and by the third expansion most of the bad guys have been dealt with. I guess I'm also more upbeat about FFXIV's main story because it's actually concluding later this year, and I KNOW it's going to be worth the buildup. Whereas with Trails, I don't know if I'm going to live to see the ending in decade or two, and I somewhat doubt it will be worth the buildup. I think that for a 300 hour long game, FFXIV has told a more fulfilling main story than Trails has done in 1,000 hours, but at this point I don't really play Trails for the main story anymore. I've heard that Xenoblade might become another overarching JRPG storyline, but given the Xeno series' track record, I'm not optimistic. Plus, 5 years between games isn't very fun either. For the One Piece anime, the anime up to the start of the Skypeia arc is pretty decently paced, and I'd recommend it. I found that the first couple arcs were boring, but once they met Mihawk it started picking up for me. The pacing of the anime nosedives once you reach Skypeia, but at that point you can start watching the One Pace fanedit, which cuts out the bloat. And yes, the G-8 arc was really fun, best part of the show IMO. I've stopped at Long Ring Island for now. I think that the best part of the show is the scheming in between each arc and the development of the main plot, but when the show plunges into another round of Luffy adventuring, I sorta tune out for the first half of the arc. I'm really excited for Impel Down and Marineford and Wano, but I don't feel like slogging through the other adventure arcs to get there right now.

People were speculating it may take place in the late 1180s or 1190s, because before Kuro was officially announced, Falcom teased the next Trails game by labeling the Septian Calendar years of each Trails game, and the new, at the time unannounced Trails game, was labeled as 11XX, rather than 1207 or whatever. The timeline of events in Western Zemuria from the 1190s through 1207 has been pretty thoroughly established, but the timeline of events of Central and Eastern Zemuria is pretty blank and I would not be surprised if they decide to go back and tap out what was happening before the present day. But, ofcourse, if Kuro actually takes place in the late 80s or 90s, then at least 20 years will have passed by the time we get back around to the present year of 1207, and the Kuro protagonists might be in their late 30s or early 40s if we get back to them. Which makes me sorta doubt that it will happen because JRPGs never do protagonists older than their 20s. EDIT: Found it. This is what the website looked like last year. Note that the latest game is displayed as year "1XXX". But if you go to the website now, it is displayed as "1208" Feels strange to hint that it would take place in one time period, and then say it's actually taking place in the present day.

The Evolution version of the song is also great.

Nothing happens (that I cared about) until the final chapter of Ao. Before that point, it's a lot of meandering with very little of anything interesting going on. Sure, people talk about the Trade Conference, but it was only 1 hour of a 10 hour long chapter that was otherwise forgettable. Didn't help I didn't like most of the cast (only liked Randy and Wazy). The setting of Crossbell is also boring. I didn't think that the NPCs of Crossbell were well executed either (compared to Leeves/Ymir/Trista, which had a few dozen NPCs but Rean had a personal relationship with them, and the NPCs had relationships with each other, making it feel like there is a community, and there was good NPC placement - Rean starts chapters out with an NPC right in front of him, who references another NPC, and so on, so it's very easy to get sucked into checking up on everyone and it only takes 20-30 minutes. Whereas with Crossbell, you don't have that good placement, those connections, and there are so many NPCs onscreen at once that it becomes intimidating, and there are hundreds of NPCs in Crossbell so checking up on everyone takes at least an hour and a half every time). As for CS3

FC was only 40-50 hours long. The worst part is easily the first 10-15 hours. Once I reached Ruan in chapter 2, I began becoming invested. Zeiss in chapter 3 is where it started getting good for me. SC was 60 hours long and about 2/3rds of it was a slog. Only really liked chapter 5 and the final chapter. 3rd's main story was pretty good all the way through. The doors/side stories vary in quality but thankfully the whole game is only like 45 hours long. Zero was 70 hours long. The pacing is okay... up until the final dungeon, which was a horrendous slog. Ao was an absolute slog except for the first half of the final chapter. I got so fed up I became liberally using turbo mode just to be finally done with it. CS1 was 90 hours but very well paced. It slows down a bit in chapters 5 and 6, but that's it. CS2 was 80 hours and is probably the best paced Trails game IMO. Never got bored. CS3 was 130 hours and has severe structural issues. The first half of the chapters set at the school are good. The second half of the chapters... not so much, and they drag out for far too long for too little payoff or development.

Eh, I felt that the gameplay difference was marginal. In gameplay, Rean only deals slightly more damage than the other characters. There is a dissonance in this series where characters are canonically way higher powerlevel than others in lore, like Zin > Agate >> Joshua >> Estelle, but in gameplay they pretty much deal the same damage. I would rather that the gameplay difference in powerlevel be huge, like how in Fire Emblem Fates, Xander and Ryoma were monsters who were dealing like triple damage than everyone else. You really felt that Xander and Ryoma were legit the greatest swordsmen of their age.