Val the Moofia Boss

Two new pieces of art of the Kuro no Kiseki characters by Enami Katsumi are out. Is this just a one off commission of Enami Katsumi? Or is Katsumi going to be doing the character art for a Trails game again? (Enami also did the art for Zero. The Ao art was done in house). I'm not sure, because the Trails 2020 Calendar that featured the red hair guy seemed to be done in the style of Fumika Murakami (the Cold Steel artist). The blonde haired girl is being described as "the heroine of Kuro no Kiseki" by translators, so does that mean Elaine is not going to be the heroine? Is she going to get Kloed? Damn that would suck. Unless they're going the harem route.

The man on the cover looks like he might either be President Gramhart (possibly the villain?) or the Thousand Oathbreaker (possibly the villain?). The blue haired swordsman is either Rean or he's the Elaine's other love interest (the guy who joined the Rocksmith Agency). Awww red haired dude isn't a Taito user... BUT HE WIELDS A CHINESE DAO!!! Interestingly, it seems that Elaine is not in any of the screenshots, despite being apart of the trio of the redhead and the blue haired guy. So the blonde haired girl is someone else? Kondo has promised that there will be a proper ending (so an epilogue like CS2? Nice!)

It's Olivier ofcourse he's going to do it. Also, the kids are probably making better use of the Courageous in Eastern Erebonia than if Olivier had taken it to the West. There is heavy fighting in the West and the NA's airforce is over there (the Pantagruel and other NA ships), and the Courageous alone won't really help (you can't rely on a single super ship to win the war, you need multiple bombers and transport airships), and the Courageous isn't really that good in a fight. They say in CS1 that the Courageous is lightly armed, and we don't see any evidence that it can be used for bombing runs. What the Courageous is good at is entering hostile territory very quickly and dropping off a strike team. Victor, Olivier, Mueller, and Claire are already fighting in the West, so it makes sense to give the Courageous to the lesser powerful kids in the East to help them out.

Yeah I loved the Pantagruel section. Act 2 is more relaxed and gameplay focused. It's the freedom point of the game where you can basically go wherever and do what you want. It's really satisfying mixing and matching your party and trying out different builds and party compositions to take down the Cryptid superbosses. Felt like a classic JRPG like FFVII. Some of the sidequests are also pretty fun.

Falcom releases 1 game every year. It takes 2 years after a Falcom game comes out for it to be localized and released in the West. The localization company (right now that is NISA) that localizes Falcom games is always at least 1 or 2 games behind the latest release. It will ALWAYS be more profitable to localize the latest Falcom game over localizing Crossbell. It will probably even be more profitable to localize other, non-Falcom games over Crossbell. Therefore, unless NISA somehow begins localizing Falcom games at a faster rate, and they somehow run out of newer Falcom games and more profitable non-Falcom games to localize, they will never localize Crossbell.

The Asian localized versions are going up on Steam.

Congrats CS4 ending

@Weltall I would be interested in hearing your comparison. My interpretation of the Trails plot structure is: The protagonist becomes an adventurer working for an organization. Slice of life shenagains interlaced with the political plot. Supernatural plot sprinkled in background Political villains take over the country. The protagonist's friend is taken away. Protagonist is now on the run. Protagonist links up the Resistance. They assault the capital. Protagonist rescues his friend. Political villains are defeated, political plot is resolved. The masterminds of the supernatural plot reveal themselves to be behind everything, supernatural plot becomes the focus. Masterminds summon the final dungeon, which causes a nationwide crisis. The protagonists go to the final dungeon and defeat the bosses, who escape. The protagonists defeat the masterminds. Petty villain mastermind 1 is taken out by competent mastermind 2. Ouroboros makes off with the ancient magic. The end More thorough breakdown (spoilers for every game from FC to CS4). Kinda got really long winded here. Using this, I'm going to guess the plot structure of arc 4 (presumably in Calvard).

Historically it has taken two years for a modern Falcom game to get localized. CS1 was released in Japan in 2013, and CS2 in 2014. XSEED acquired the rights to CS1 and CS2 at the same time. CS1 wasn't released in the West until 2015 and CS2 until 2016. NISA acquired the rights to CS3 in 2017/early 2018 and it wasn't released in the West until 2019. Ys IX released in Japan in 2019 and won't be releasing in the West until 2021.

And now for the killer two year wait for Hajimari. Good luck dodging the spoilers!

Just spread out your team across the map so that they don't get hit by the AoE, and have one party member heal whoever gets attacked by the boss. Have everyone else attack the boss with their arts.

Glad you're enjoying it! CS2 is my favorite JRPG.

As a fan of the Cold Steel games, this makes me sad. But it was also very funny. Took me a while to figure out who the Ouro guy in the left was during the Machias segment. That was a good advertisement. Don't watch if you haven't beaten CS2 yet!

A friendly reminder for those playing CS4: Kill all of the Cryptids (there should be five of them). On the last day, before you go to the final dungeon, do all of the sidequests. If you did all of that, you should get a phone call on your ARCUS.

You want to cook the Salty Onigiri recipe using Elise, Claire, or Emma to make the Tri-colored Onigiri, which you sell for a profit. You can go to Ymir Valley, pick which party members to bring along, and cook the food there.

You can get more turns to heal and do damage by having a character cat Chrono Drive on the party twice, for 50% speed boost. Also, if you stack delay on characters like Rean, and spam their delay crafts, like Arc Slash, you can get even more turns to heal and do damage. For the adds that spawn, you can have Gaius deal with them. Beef up his STR and HP. Use Wild Rage for instant CP (Wild Rage takes a percentage chunk out of your HP, so the most HP you have the more likely he will survive any followup attacks), and then spam Savage Fang (which also deals delay, so try to stack that stat too!). Don't use his S-craft or he will bumped to the bottom of the turn order. You can also have Rean use Arc Slash or Gale to deal with the adds too. Stack STR on Millium and have her hit the adds hard too with her AoE crafts. If you brought Fie, she can use Sweep to debuff the speed of the enemies, giving you even more turns. If you brought Machias or Elliot, you can stack petrify or nightmare on them, and then spam their condition AoE crafts, Petrify Shot or Nocturne Bell on the adds. That will disable the adds. If you brought Claire, stack freeze on her and spam Frigid Rain on the adds to freeze them. If a character is low on health, you can swap out with a character in reserve that is at full health and use their EP to cast healing arts and stuff. Alisa and Toval are probably best used as support characters, Alisa using her Heavenly Gift and Blessed Arrow to heal up the party, give CP, and give the Shining Status (50% evasion buff). Toval has super fast arts cast time. Kill video

New story DLC for Hajimari is out. Looks like it's setting up an interesting subplot for Calvard.

I was a lurker who followed the Trails discussion thread. It is refreshingly one of the few discussions of Trails in the West that is pretty chill. I signed up to tell someone not to watch the trailers before they finished the prior game, lest they be spoiled. I don't really pay attention to any other threads.

CS2 Act 1 Nord

It'd be funny because it would never happen. Crossbell will never be localized so long as there is a newer Falcom game to localize. Newer Falcom games will simply be more profitable. Since Falcom releases one new Falcom game per year, and it takes two years for a Falcom game to be localized, any company that localizes Falcom games will never catch up to the latest release. Therefore, Crossbell will never be localized. If XSEED or NISA had obtained the rights to localize the Crossbell games, then they would have given the Geofront team a tap on the shoulder and told them not to waste their time trying to work on the games.

Hajimari ending DON'T CLICK 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.

Did you like turn based battles in Trails? Well, RIP. Hajimari is going to be the last Trails game with the turn based battle system. Next game is going to be action based. If the next game is about Calvardian Intellgience Division agents, then I expect the gameplay will be stealth based, like Hitman or MGS. If the next game is about Heiyue, then the gameplay could be an action beat em up like Yakuza.

I watched Chinaman's stream of Hajimari no Kiseki, he just got to chapter 1 of the C route. Some thoughts (spoilers for Trails of Cold Steel IV's ending don't click) Not going to look at anymore spoilers. Can already tell this is going to be a fantastic game. Urgh the two year wait is going to be so rough!

I doubt that the Calvardian Intelligence Division would be the next protagonist group. For one, what kind of undercover operative goes around in a party of standout characters, introducing themselves to every NPC in town, raising a ruckus by massacring monsters and leaving a trail of corpses behind them, and gaining attention from every local authority and organization by doing sidequests for people? Realistically, an undercover operative would spend most of their time alone, not traveling in a large group. Thus, you would have a party of one, and the Trails battle system isn't really designed around controlling just one character. Turn based systems are best for groups of characters you control. Action gameplay is more conducive for controlling a singleplayer, which would make sense if you were a secret agent trying to stealth around. But I doubt that Trails is going to change from turn based to action based. Furthermore, the CID aren't really protagonist material. A running theme throughout the Trails series has been about fighting against ultranationalism, and the CID go around trying to violently subvert Calvard's rivals, even if it means killing people and paving the war for bloody war. I think that it's more likely that the next protagonist will be a part of Heiyue, and the antagonists will be the CID. Heiyue will be treated as a romanticization of the local mafia/mob/triad/yakuza, where they might had bad attitudes but they are actually good guys and they are helping out the community. We've already seen this in Crossbell and CS3, where in contrast to the Revache, Heiyue is never depicted doing anything evil. They are presented as your cool frenemies like Zephyr in CS2, people who sometimes show up to mess with you for the lolz, but are actually good guys and you'd be fine chilling out on the sofa and playing cards with them. Also, there was that picture of the Falcom 2020 Calendar that showed a long, red haired man with Eastern-style buildings behind him, and what might be Cao-Lee standing in the background. The red haired man is almost certainly a playable party member, and possibly the protagonist, and there is a good chance he is associated with Heiyue (or at least on good terms with them, like the SSS). Note that Cao Lee is absent from Crossbell during CS3+4 and is away in Calvard, so this could mean that the game is actually set in Calvard during the year 1206, when Cao Lee was in Calvard visiting the boss (Shin's grandfather). The CID will probably be the antagonists of part 2. Part 1 will be about fighting the Anti-Immigration League, and then they will be defeated, and the CID will become too powerful and their evils will be exposed, and they will be fought, before Ouroboros inevitably hijacks the plot at the end.