General Trails thread (Trails of Cold Steel 4 (PS4) out now).

[Thane]

8 hours ago, Rapier said:

You can play Cold Steel 1 without being spoiled much. The events on Crossbell are kept a secret there and we only have a few references to it.

I actually watched a walkthrough of Zero no Kiseki on YouTube, but it didn't do it for me so I've got no real interest in the sequel, even after I gave it a quick look. I guess I could read up on what happens. 

There seem to be quite a few common story points (I guess you could call it) across the games/arcs. We've got an Estelle/Joshua situation in Cold Steel as well, but I also noticed what I'll call the "smol to smoler" phenomenon.

The Sky games first introduced Tita, then Renne.

The Crossbell games first introduced Tio, then KeA. 

The Cold Steel games first introduced Fie, then Millium.

At this point I'm expecting ol' Giliath to be an eight-year-old girl in disguise.

Besides Fie and especially Millium I like pretty much everyone so far in Cold Steel. I was a bit worried when people told me it was more anime - and it is - but the worldbuilding is as stellar a ever and the character interactions remain good. Sara and other support characters are quite strong too. I just really, really hope Millium goes away soon. She's the Florence of this game.

 

Edited January 3, 2019 by Thane

[Armagon]

4 hours ago, Jedi said:

Probably the first person I've ever seen praise how CS did orbiments compared to Sky and Crossbell, I see people missing how they work more than anything else.

I'm actually surprised more people like the way Sky and Crossbell did it. I personally like Cold Steel's way of doing it where Arts actually have their own Quartz instead of the previous method where you had to combine Quartz. Thus, the managing was a lot easier.

Plus, Cold Steel introduced the elementaless sepith and this was wonderful because now the game doesn't punish you for trading in sepith for mira.

 

[Anomalocaris]

So, to be clear, Gilbert is the real Grandmaster of Ouroboros and the only reason we see him join as a low-rung grunt is because it's an episode of Undercover Bosses, right?

[Armagon]

29 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

So, to be clear, Gilbert is the real Grandmaster of Ouroboros and the only reason we see him join as a low-rung grunt is because it's an episode of Undercover Bosses, right?

That would be the plot twist of the century.

On a more serious note, i'm surprised we still haven't actually seen the Grandmaster nor do we know why she wants to do all these crazy experiments.

The Grandmaster is just a poor man's version of Wilhelm from Xenosaga, don't @ me.

 

Edited January 4, 2019 by Armagon

[Jedi]

28 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

So, to be clear, Gilbert is the real Grandmaster of Ouroboros and the only reason we see him join as a low-rung grunt is because it's an episode of Undercover Bosses, right?

We know from 3rd EVO that the Grandmaster is a woman so no.

[Anomalocaris]

1 minute ago, Jedi said:

We know from 3rd EVO that the Grandmaster is a woman so no.

To be fair, blue hair and a feminine voice is applicable to Gilbert too.

[Jedi]

On chapter 3 of CS3 via the transcript and I have to say I’m digging it a lot so far, some of my issues with how CS2 left things off are pretty much gone considering the current stuff going on. Pretty much everything both from CS1/2 and Zero/AO are starting to come to a head, (I hear in particular 3rd and Zero are the most key for certain aspects in CS4 which is cool for me since those are two of my favorites in particular).

Gameplay is probably my favorite in the series right now. New Class VII is generally cool too although Juna isn’t really growing on me yet. I still prefer the old group currently, but Altina, Kurt and Musse are cool and Ash brings an interesting contrast.

[Thane]

Got Trails of Cold Steel II after being dumb enough to watch a walkthrough of the first game instead - was a bit under the weather and busy. Let's hope my computer can handle it.

I worry about my save file not transferring since it might impact my shot at hooking up with anime studs, but I will make do. Gaius or Emma must fall for my irresistible protagonist charms.

[Armagon]

5 hours ago, Thane said:

I worry about my save file not transferring since it might impact my shot at hooking up with anime studs, but I will make do. Gaius or Emma must fall for my irresistible protagonist charms.

It probably won't. You'll only be missing out on some slightly altered scenes and small item bonuses (and possibly some quests or maybe the game will act like you played CS1 and give you those quests anyway) but it shouldn't affect whoever you decide to get in the end. 

Edited January 5, 2019 by Armagon

[Rapier]

5 hours ago, Thane said:

I worry about my save file not transferring since it might impact my shot at hooking up with anime studs, but I will make do. Gaius or Emma must fall for my irresistible protagonist charms.

Just pick any save from here and enjoy your ride.

[Thane]

7 hours ago, Rapier said:

Just pick any save from here and enjoy your ride.

Thanks man! Might consider that for an eventual replay. Gotten too far now though; up against Xeno and Leonidas and getting absolutely wrecked. I reckon this is not the kind of fight where the game expects you to actually defeat them both, but I get so thoroughly owned that I'm not sure what to do exactly.

[Rapier]

33 minutes ago, Thane said:

Thanks man! Might consider that for an eventual replay. Gotten too far now though; up against Xeno and Leonidas and getting absolutely wrecked. I reckon this is not the kind of fight where the game expects you to actually defeat them both, but I get so thoroughly owned that I'm not sure what to do exactly.

It's the fight that tests if you know how to use that what's-its-name mechanic introduced in CS2 where you stop time and deal absurd damage. I got owned once before thinking up on ways to abuse this feature, then I managed to lower their HP to half at least (which triggers the extra points).

[Armagon]

37 minutes ago, Rapier said:

It's the fight that tests if you know how to use that what's-its-name mechanic introduced in CS2 where you stop time and deal absurd damage. I got owned once before thinking up on ways to abuse this feature, then I managed to lower their HP to half at least (which triggers the extra points).

It's Overdrive and it was actually introduced in Ao (although in that game, you could only use it in certain parts of the story and the effects also lasted longer too).

Overdrive is really good but unless you're finding enough of those blue chests (which i didn't), you're pretty limited in how you can use it since otherwise, the only people who can do it are Rean and whoever he's paired up with. This wasn't the case in Ao though, everyone could use Overdrive there.

Spoiler

Though once i gained the ability to make Rean enter his edgy phase at will, that combined with Overdrive was super devestating and i didn't need anyone else tbh.

 

[Thane]

On 2019-01-06 at 1:27 AM, Rapier said:

It's the fight that tests if you know how to use that what's-its-name mechanic introduced in CS2 where you stop time and deal absurd damage. I got owned once before thinking up on ways to abuse this feature, then I managed to lower their HP to half at least (which triggers the extra points).

Yeah, it was an easy fight if you didn't get screwed by their pattern. Right now I'm getting demolished by Blueblanc and Altina, and I believe you're supposed to actually beat these guys? I'm not sure, they deal less damage, but the bullshit they pull is ridiculous. I don't understand the balance of having everything before boss battles offer no resistance and then have the boss battles themselves wreck you. I realize I'm most likely losing because of my own incompetence, but this is just on normal difficulty and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, and it's not like I'm not used to JRPG's or strategy games. Sometimes they pull debuffing AoE's that take about a third of my team's HP and then bam, it's over.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Thane

[Armagon]

6 hours ago, Thane said:

Right now I'm getting demolished by Blueblanc and Altina, and I believe you're supposed to actually beat these guys? I'm not sure, they deal less damage, but the bullshit they pull is ridiculous. I don't understand the balance of having everything before boss battles offer no resistance and then have the boss battles themselves wreck you. I realize I'm most likely losing because of my own incompetence, but this is just on normal difficulty and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, and it's not like I'm not used to JRPG's or strategy games. Sometimes they pull debuffing AoE's that take about a third of my team's HP and then bam, it's over.

You're not alone there and it's honestly the reason i switched to Easy Difficulty in the Cold Steel games. Nearly every game has some bullshit fights but they're at their peak in Cold Steel and after the bullshit bosses of Cold Steel 1, i had enough and switched to Easy when it came to Cold Steel II and Ao.

Like yeah, i should be prepared but how was i supposed to know that *insert boss here* could inflict *insert status effect here* with a snap of their fingers?

My favorite part is when the boss is charging up a really powerful Art or Craft and you use a Craft with Impede to stop it only for nothing to happen except make you accept your fate.

The whole "fight gets easier with each loss" mechanic is such a huge blessing.

 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Armagon

[Thane]

5 minutes ago, Armagon said:

The whole "fight gets easier with each loss" mechanic is such a huge blessing.

I'm too proud to use it, though I did have to grind an additional level or two, which helped even the odds a little bit. Blueblanc used his crazy AoE twice in a row at one point and there was nothing I could do about it, which was very odd. He seemed to cap at calling for reinforcements twice at least. 

Does this make Blueblanc the most fought against boss so far in the series? At some point you'd think they'd shoot him while he's down rather than keep letting him teleport away.

[Armagon]

39 minutes ago, Thane said:

Does this make Blueblanc the most fought against boss so far in the series? 

I think he is. Not just that, he's the one character who has the most appearances in the whole series, being in every game (whether he actually shows up as Blueblanc is a different story but he's always there). The only other character to rival him in terms of appearance is Olivier, being in every game except Zero.

[Rapier]

Cold Steel gets easier if you learn to abuse buffs and debuffs. In any case, I didn't play the rest of CS2 (I want to play Crossbell first), so I can't really help you here.

[Jedi]

Cold Steel is much easier than Sky or Crossbell gameplay wise because they just give you so much broken stuff, in fact in the community itself it’s recommended to play hard if you even mildly want a challenge for some folks.

Gotta abuse the AT delays, abuse all the hyper powerful bs you get. Evasion tanking etc.

Easy of course always exists for those who need an easier time at least, but I never had any issues going through CS1 or 2 on Hard casually.

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Jedi said:

Cold Steel is much easier than Sky or Crossbell gameplay wise because they just give you so much broken stuff, in fact in the community itself it’s recommended to play hard if you even mildly want a challenge for some folks.

Gotta abuse the AT delays, abuse all the hyper powerful bs you get. Evasion tanking etc.

Easy of course always exists for those who need an easier time at least, but I never had any issues going through CS1 or 2 on Hard casually.

I'll admit that i never abused any of the broken stuff since i tend to avoid that during my first playthrough of any game. But still, while the Cold Steel games are overall easier, i just felt that it had most of the "cheap" hard bosses in the series. 

Spoiler

Like, the finale of Cold Steel 1 wanted my party of humans to fight a giant mech that is super resistant to physical attacks and can easily wipe out everyone without thinking.

 

Again though, i fully admit that at least 50% of this is just me now knowing how to break the game.

[Rapier]

I just wish CS bosses didn't have such enormous health. It makes some battles more boring and repetitive than hard.

[Anomalocaris]

I'm going to be moving from First Chapter to Second Chapter soon, and I have a sorta-complex question.

I want to do two playthroughs of SC, one totally blind and one with a guide for 100% completion (including all Steam achievements). However, are there any mutually-exclusive things preventing me leaving everything to the second playthrough?

FC had a few of those; the weapon choice after turning in the Carnelia collection meant you needed to collect the full set of books in both playthroughs if you wanted both weapons, the Steam achievements for taking two male or two female party members into the final dungeon were obviously exclusive, and registering the Fort Leiston soldiers and Duke Dunan in the enemy notebook was incompatible with getting full BP. I'd like to know if there's anything like that in SC.

I know Trails the 3rd has the mutually-exclusive Quartz and Steam acheivements regarding whether you run from 300 battles or never run at all.

[Thane]

18 hours ago, Rapier said:

I just wish CS bosses didn't have such enormous health. It makes some battles more boring and repetitive than hard.

I'm having a blast with this game so far; just returned from Bareahard and I'm enjoying most aspects of the game...besides boss fights. Both from a gameplay perspective and a story perspective. In terms of gameplay, if you go in blind at any rate, they seem far too unpredictable or overwhelming (and it doesn't help that you're not allowed to retry the boss fight after the race), or they just crush you with overwhelming stats, like the monkey goat in the forest of Legram. 

From a story perspective, it's kind of always the same. Two humans show up and gloat, you get saved, then you fight with Valimar, which is the least challenging aspect of the entire game.

Edit: Ooh, time to choose who left the "strongest impression" on me, huh? And I just happen to be in the baths? Gaius, get in here, you.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Thane

[Rapier]

23 minutes ago, Anomalocaris said:

I'm going to be moving from First Chapter to Second Chapter soon, and I have a sorta-complex question.

I want to do two playthroughs of SC, one totally blind and one with a guide for 100% completion (including all Steam achievements). However, are there any mutually-exclusive things preventing me leaving everything to the second playthrough?

FC had a few of those; the weapon choice after turning in the Carnelia collection meant you needed to collect the full set of books in both playthroughs if you wanted both weapons, the Steam achievements for taking two male or two female party members into the final dungeon were obviously exclusive, and registering the Fort Leiston soldiers and Duke Dunan in the enemy notebook was incompatible with getting full BP. I'd like to know if there's anything like that in SC.

I know Trails the 3rd has the mutually-exclusive Quartz and Steam acheivements regarding whether you run from 300 battles or never run at all.

As far as achievements do, I don't know.

But in SC, there are a few choices. Namely, you get to choose between which characters to journey with for some time during the game, and this alters dialogue and character interactions. There's also a similar case to the Carnelia one you mentioned.

[Anomalocaris]

1 minute ago, Rapier said:

As far as achievements do, I don't know.

But in SC, there are a few choices. Namely, you get to choose between which characters to journey with for some time during the game, and this alters dialogue and character interactions. There's also a similar case to the Carnelia one you mentioned.

I'm not too worried about character choices and dialogue, I'm mainly talking about collecting things and stuff like that.

Is Carnelia 2.0 another binary choice like the staff for Estelle or the daggers for Joshua?