The Last To Post Wins!

[Lightcosmo]

One thing I never understood about Xenoblade 2, why did it remove equipment from the game? Not that I mind, but the other two had it and it was fun for different options/setups. Is there a reason stated or were they just trying to make it feel more impacted by which blade you currently have out? Equipment meaning armors and such, mostly.

Edited April 19, 2020 by lightcosmo

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

10 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

There is good stuff in Cold Steel 3, too. It's buried a little bit, but it's definitely there. I wouldn't have finished the game if there wasn't.

Then again, maybe the stuff I liked is stuff others will hate.

After playing Crossbell I can easily say that the Erebonia games are my least favorites, considering I really like Cold Steel II.

Rean is the least interesting main protagonist and the gameplay didn't really improve compared to Crossbell.

Azure introduced the masterquartz system and cool features like duo s-craft or team attack turns.

Also Cold Steel features more of these mech fights, I really don't like.

The Valimar fights were the worst thing in Cold Steel 2.

 

My personal highlight of Cold Steel III will be

Spoiler

Playable Lechter

 

[Robert Stewart]

Finished Ao tonight.

Spoiler

Final team was the required peeps + Noel and Dudley, because they were my highest level characters for...reasons.

This part was really unexpected. This should also indirectly indicate whose bonding event I went with.

 

Ending was a bit bittersweet, what with then basically outright stating that Crossbell gets invaded right after.

Also not sure how I feel about everyone being so eager to absolve all the antagonists of any wrongdoing in the end...though having played CS1+2 beforehand, I guess I can't say it's much of a surprise.

Also, did I mention that the Ao translation is a little rough?

Edited March 9, 2021 by Robert Stewart

[Acacia Sgt]

It is done. I've beaten Psaro! Though phew, a final boss with seven phases, that was a handful.

So, Chapter 5 is done. Of course, there is still Chapter 6, the post-game, to go through... though that will be for another day. I'm still not going to bother farming the Liquid Metal Helms.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Managed to beat the hardest boss in the Trails series so far.

Spoiler

Sigmund

To be fair I made it myself harder for not knowing the conditions.

There was 3-minutes-timer the boss must have been defeated.

Though I didn't know it's not a Game Over once the time is up.

The boss oneshotted everyone with their s-craft, considering I'm playing on lowest difficulty.

If Tio isn't deployed for this fight, then RIP, since her gaurd craft is a must have.

[Codename Shrimp]

@Robert Stewart were you using Guren or Flame Edit?

 

[DragonFlames]

13 hours ago, Strullemia said:

Nepgear is precious.

7 hours ago, Falcom Knight said:

After playing Crossbell I can easily say that the Erebonia games are my least favorites, considering I really like Cold Steel II.

Rean is the least interesting main protagonist and the gameplay didn't really improve compared to Crossbell.

Azure introduced the masterquartz system and cool features like duo s-craft or team attack turns.

Also Cold Steel features more of these mech fights, I really don't like.

The Valimar fights were the worst thing in Cold Steel 2.

• Cold Steel 3 improved on the mech fights a little, I think. They're still not what I would call very good (as I find the very concept of Divine Knights kinda dumb, to be honest), but it's serviceable enough to the point where I didn't groan in frustration whenever one popped up (there were plenty of other things to take care of that).
• One thing I really liked was the new Order system. Sure, it's another gamebreaker (as in, it can take the difficulty out of fights if you know how to use it (and you must know how to use it to even stand a chance in certain ones, which I don't like)), but I found it an interesting new mechanic.
• I also liked the idea of equipping a second master quartz and reaping the benefits from that. This made for some fun combinations and builds, believe it or not.
• Some environments are really pretty to look at, too.
• And I love the new Class VII. I just wish the game focused even more on them instead of you-know-who. Although you-know-who is at his very best in this game, I will say that.
• I mustn't forget about the appearance of characters from the older games, either. Tio, Randy, Agate, and Tita are great, as are some of the new characters introduced (of which I came to really like one in particular).
• Some moments in the story were genuinely touching, too.
• They also finally have the decency to show you every available quest on the minimap, making finding secret quests that much easier than it was in past games. What you need to do to fulfill hidden AP requirements is also a little better telegraphed (it outright tells you what to do for certain boss fights with these).

... And that covers my list of positives for Cold Steel 3.
It's not a whole lot, now that I look at it again. Though it's more than I thought there'd be left after I had time to reflect on my time with the game a little more.

[Codename Shrimp]

>Falcom chat
>fight going on
>nep comes up
>''i like nep'' -everyone
>Chat peace

23 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

you-know-who

Rean, the destroyer of games.

[DragonFlames]

Just now, Shrimperor said:

>Falcom chat
>fight going on
>nep comes up
>''i like nep'' -everyone
>Chat peace

Neptune is the ultimate peacemaker, both in-universe and out.

1 minute ago, Shrimperor said:

Rean, the destroyer of games.

He who shall not be named.

[Robert Stewart]

3 hours ago, Shrimperor said:

@Robert Stewart were you using Guren or Flame Edit?

 

Flame edit.

[Armagon]

10 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

One thing I never understood about Xenoblade 2, why did it remove equipment from the game? Not that I mind, but the other two had it and it was fun for different options/setups. Is there a reason stated or were they just trying to make it feel more impacted by which blade you currently have out? Equipment meaning armors and such, mostly.

It's cause there was an actual character designer for those games. Monolith Soft doesn't have an in-house character designer and for Xenoblade 1, the "official character art" is actually just the renders painted over. Meanwhile, X and DE are straight-up using the actual character renders as the "official character art".

10 hours ago, Falcom Knight said:

Rean is the least interesting main protagonist and the gameplay didn't really improve compared to Crossbell.

I'll be honest, Crossbell and Cold Steel gameplay are mostly identical to me. Yeah, they have some key differences but those differences aren't really big enough for me to go "oh yeah, this one is better". I mean, i guess if you held a gun to my head, i'd say i like Cold Steel's gameplay more because i'm one of the five people who prefers those games' quartz system but other than that, i'm fine with saying Crossbell and Cold Steel are tied for best gameplay in the series imo.

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Cold Steel 3 improved on the mech fights a little, I think. They're still not what I would call very good (as I find the very concept of Divine Knights kinda dumb, to be honest), but it's serviceable enough to the point where I didn't groan in frustration whenever one popped up (there were plenty of other things to take care of that).

Divine Knights probably would've annoyed me on paper but i appreciate the execution. Having them exclusively be specific fights that don't show up as much and the fights themselves not lasting very long. I mean, the fights themselves are basically a 1-2-3 and you're done. If you were going through entire areas in the Divine Knights and having to fight normal enemies in them, with the way the fights work, then i think Divine Knight fights would get very tiring real quick. But because they are kept as exclusive fights that only happen like twice at most per chapter, they are kept from becoming stale. 

At least that's what i think.

Edited April 19, 2020 by Armagon

[Codename Shrimp]

19 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I'll be honest, Crossbell and Cold Steel gameplay are mostly identical to me. Yeah, they have some key differences but those differences aren't really big enough for me to go "oh yeah, this one is better". I mean, i guess if you held a gun to my head, i'd say i like Cold Steel's gameplay more because i'm one of the five people who prefers those games' quartz system but other than that, i'm fine with saying Crossbell and Cold Steel are tied for best gameplay in the series imo.

My main problem with CS gameplay is how zzzz ez it is. On Nightmare. Every boss fights get's finished in 3 minutes. Story moments get ruined because battles that are suppossed to be tense and hard are finished without me taking damage (and then in cutscene we are tired?????)

I know gameplay is not Trails' main thing, but i freaking enjoy the gameplay of FC to Ao. Maybe cs 3 with fanpatch will be fun

Edited April 19, 2020 by Shrimperor

[Armagon]

8 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

My main problem with CS gameplay is how zzzz ez it is. On Nightmare. Every boss fights get's finished in 3 minutes. Story moments get ruined because battles that are suppossed to be tense and hard are finished without me taking damage (and then in cutscene we are tired?????)

I don't play on Nightmare (in general, I don't like the super hard difficulties when it comes to turn-based RPGs) but you always mention how Cold Steel is super easy and I feel like I'm doing something wrong, because even on Normal, the games still give me quite a bit of challenge. Even when I do try the more broken stuff (Sledgehammer), I don't feel it's as broken as it's made out to be. Trying to replicate some of the stuff I've seen (Divine Song+low AT Arts) doesn't seem to work as well for me.

In previous games (not just Cold Steel), I always relied on the Weaken Enemies feature for fights I struggled a lot with. Cold Steel 3 just lets you change the difficulty whenever so whenever I get into a tough boss fight, I just say fuck it and switch the difficulty to Very Easy. But I do make attempts to beat it on Normal first.

[Codename Shrimp]

23 minutes ago, Armagon said:

you always mention how Cold Steel is super easy and I feel like I'm doing something wrong, because even on Normal, the games still give me quite a bit of challenge.

I don't mind it if people find current difficulty ok on normal, especially those only in it for the story. But Nightmare should not be the breeze it is.

Every Boss battle in CS1/2 was basically like this (yes, that's me playing). That should not be possible on Nightmare, period. Most Boss fights end even faster without me using some of the tools in the video (like i never used Chrono Burst while i was playing, only in the video to serve as an example).

Infact, every battle aftee mid game in Both CS games can be summed up as: Noble command x 2 + 3 Emma 0 delay Arts + Fie Attacking 5 times before enemy can + S-crafts = gg

I never used retry offset mself (except the ravens door in sky3rd) and always found higher difficulties super fun. It's ok if that isn't for everyone, but Falcom shouldn't do a nightmare difficulty if they are gonna be a breeze

Edited April 19, 2020 by Shrimperor

[Lightcosmo]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

It's cause there was an actual character designer for those games. Monolith Soft doesn't have an in-house character designer and for Xenoblade 1, the "official character art" is actually just the renders painted over. Meanwhile, X and DE are straight-up using the actual character renders as the "official character art".

Oh, I see. But still, it really adds to character customization, not that 2's is bad by any means, either. I didn't know that, though!

[DragonFlames]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Divine Knights probably would've annoyed me on paper but i appreciate the execution. Having them exclusively be specific fights that don't show up as much and the fights themselves not lasting very long. I mean, the fights themselves are basically a 1-2-3 and you're done. If you were going through entire areas in the Divine Knights and having to fight normal enemies in them, with the way the fights work, then i think Divine Knight fights would get very tiring real quick. But because they are kept as exclusive fights that only happen like twice at most per chapter, they are kept from becoming stale. 

At least that's what i think.

That makes sense. From a gameplay perspective, I'm glad they kept their involvement to a minimum, too.
As I outlined before, in CS3 I found they were not groan-inducingly annoying and not as mind-numbingly boring as they were in CS2 (neat battle theme notwithstanding). But I will 100% agree: had they had entire areas dedicated to nothing but Divine Knight fights, that would have sucked.
Still, I personally think the things feel very out of place in Trails' world. But that may be just me, who is not much of a fan of the mecha subgenre of anime in the first place.

Yet I love Digimon, where there exist designs quite similar to Divine Knights, to the point where the first thing that popped into my mind when I first saw Valimar was this.
You may feel free to call me whatever you deem appropriate in this situation.

1 hour ago, Shrimperor said:

My main problem with CS gameplay is how zzzz ez it is. On Nightmare. Every boss fights get's finished in 3 minutes. Story moments get ruined because battles that are suppossed to be tense and hard are finished without me taking damage (and then in cutscene we are tired?????)

Agreed. Stuff like this can really take you out of a moment or story in a worst case scenario.

If I have one problem with the difficulty in the Cold Steel games (having only played on Normal at the highest), it's this: either you utterly destroy your opponent or they will utterly destroy you. There is no middle ground, especially not in boss battles, where you are only one enemy S-Craft away from getting introduced to and forming an intimate relationship with the Game Over screen.

Edited April 19, 2020 by DragonFlames

[Armagon]

26 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Still, I personally think the things feel very out of place in Trails' world. But that may be just me, who is not much of a fan of the mecha subgenre of anime in the first place.

Mechs have actually been a thing in the series since the beginning. But it wasn't until the Cold Steel games when they became prominent.

Granted, it wasn't until Ao that the series started having more Gundam-like mechs. You know what I mean.

[Acacia Sgt]

Trails has mechas? Should've find out much earlier, now I'm definitely trying Sky FC after I'm done with DQ...!

[DragonFlames]

8 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Mechs have actually been a thing in the series since the beginning. But it wasn't until the Cold Steel games when they became prominent.

You're talking about these supposedly ancient machines that can move on their own that Ouroboros uses, right?
Now that you mention it, I didn't have any problems with those. I kinda just accepted them because they made sense; why not have robots in a world where the industrial and digital revolutions happened over the course of like 50 years?
It's those Gundam-like mechs that stretch it a bit for me.

8 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Granted, it wasn't until Ao that the series started having more Gundam-like mechs. You know what I mean.

Did a Divine Knight appear in Ao, too, or were they first introduced in Cold Steel?

Edited April 19, 2020 by DragonFlames

[Codename Shrimp]

40 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

either you utterly destroy your opponent or they will utterly destroy you. There is no middle ground, especially not in boss battles, where you are only one enemy S-Craft away from getting introduced to and forming an intimate relationship with the Game Over screen.

Not much different from Nightmare lmao. S-crafts, ally and enemy alike, are absolutely busted in CS.

But 99% of the time it's me destroying them haha

4 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Did a Divine Knight appear in Ao, too, or were they first introduced in Cold Steel?

CS

Edited April 19, 2020 by Shrimperor

[DragonFlames]

1 minute ago, Shrimperor said:

Not much different from Nightmare lmao. S-crafts, ally and enemy alike, are absolutely busted in CS.

But 99% of the time it's me destroying them haha

It was usually the same for me, but there were some boss fights where the opposite happened (hello, CS2 McBurn).

2 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

CS

So it was at the very end of CS that we saw any of the Divine Knights or those Panzersoldats (god, that hurts to write. It's PanzersoldatEN, you nincompoops!). I see, I see.
Them appearing in Ao would have made sense if it depicted how Crossbell got Empire'd, though (which I think it doesn't, but I'm not sure).

[Armagon]

4 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

You're talking about these supposedly ancient machines that can move on their own that Ouroboros uses, right?

No, I just see those as normal robots. But there are actual mechs. I should have specified that it wasn't until Cold Steel that they were pilotable. 

Sky spoilers

Spoiler

Although Renne did control one through telepathy

9 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Did a Divine Knight appear in Ao, too, or were they first introduced in Cold Steel?

I was referring to the Aions.

[DragonFlames]

5 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I was referring to the Aions.

Ah, yes, those things. I remember. So they appeared in Ao first?
Actually, I should have known, since CS3 directly mentions this.

6 minutes ago, Armagon said:

No, I just see those as normal robots. But there are actual mechs. I should have specified that it wasn't until Cold Steel that they were pilotable. 

Sky spoilers

  Reveal hidden contents

Although Renne did control one through telepathy

 

I see!

Edited April 19, 2020 by DragonFlames

[Armagon]

Now this is epic

[Codename Shrimp]

1 hour ago, DragonFlames said:

It was usually the same for me, but there were some boss fights where the opposite happened (hello, CS2 McBurn).

 

For Humburger you just needed the MQ that let's you revive after death and that all revive art

Or you can just delay indefinetly lul

But yeah, all cancel is a dumb way to make battles ''hard''