Board 8 > So I finished Trails of Cold Steel *SPOILERS*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Figured it might be worth making a topic, since people seem to like discussing this series here.

First, I liked this a lot more than the previous five Trails games. I dunno what it was about it, but it felt like everything just worked better here? The battle system is very similar throughout all of the Trails games I've played, but there are always some minor improvements, and this one has the best of the lot. Being able to get triple advantages makes the lead-ups to battles interesting, and it makes random battles a breeze. Turbo mode and skippable attacks make them even better. Battles are over in seconds rather than taking a couple minutes, and there's no more waiting when characters/enemies move around the battlefield. Links are a great little upgrade as well, though I never fully figured out all the symbols <_< (the game was easy enough that it didn't really matter). It felt like every single character had useful Crafts, especially since so many of them could inflict different status ailments. The orbment system is greatly simplified, but I felt like that was okay, especially for the physical-based characters. So yeah, the changes to the gameplay made random battles less tedious and major battles less braindead. I never had a huge problem with the battle system in previous entries, but I definitely didn't care for random battles in general, so this was pretty nice.

The setting is the best fit for the series so far. Not Erebonia, but the combination of the academy as a main base of operations and visiting various towns on Field Studies. The Crossbell games switched to featuring a central location, which was good because the Trails series is so focused on conversations with NPCs and their development over the course of the game, but it lost the sense of adventure that the Sky games had. Cold Steel lets us have a ton of important NPCs that you'll see over the course of the whole game, but also fun adventurous trips to all the different areas. Every single Field Study was great. Always looked forward to doing these. They did a great job of working a personal connection into each one of them, so they always led to good character development and interesting plot developments as well. It was a bit unfortunate that they seemed to sometimes forget that Thors is a military academy, but eh.
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The characters themselves were mostly quite good. Class VII has a great dynamic between them, and by the end I liked every single one of them. Machias was a bit of a twit at first, but he actually probably got more development than anyone else, and by the end I liked him more than several other party members. Alisa was generally likable other than the odd forced tsundere scenes. Laura was cool from start to finish - didn't get as much development as the others, but I assume 2 will help out a bit with that? Her rivalry with Fie was great at least. I like how both of them realize it's stupid and they solve it between themselves rather than really needing help. Emma's mystery was all good and I like how she was generally more confident than girls of her archetype, but it felt like they left it a bit too mysterious (she said she was going to explain things after the festival, and then a week later she hasn't said anything. Also no one ever asks her about her family for some reason...). I love how Jusis seems like an asshole at first but basically everything he says is right and he's basically just a cool dude the whole game. But like Laura, he's a bit lacking in development after the Field Study focusing on him. Elliott was just right in his role. Gaius is the main weak link. At first he seems like a great guy with an interesting back story, and his family being just awesome people with no tragic backstories rather than traitors to the nation was a good change of pace, but...that's all there is to him. No conflict, no flaws, just a good guy. So not a very interesting character. Rean's a bit iffy too. They try to do interesting things with his backstory to make him more unique, and I like his general take charge attitude, but they make him too much of a blank slate. There's a lot of Persona influence here with the ability to choose romantic partners and bonding events and such, but the developers didn't give the player nearly enough choice to make that system effective. The reason blank slate protagonists work in games like Persona or Mass Effect is that you get a ton of choices to make so it feels like you're really role playing the character. Here your choices have barely any effect, so you're getting the worst of both worlds. Rather than getting an excellent developed romance like in Sky, we get one or two minor scenes. Rather than being able to develop a deep relationship with any cast member (or all cast members) like in Persona, we get a bunch of shitty 'jokes' about him being a ladies man harem protagonist (Zero and Azure had the same issue). Committing to a single love interest (probably Alisa) would've made for a much better total experience. Perhaps most importantly though, they all fit really well together. By the end of the game it feels like a big group of friends. Reminds me of Persona 4 in that respect. None of the original Class VII members feels like an extraneous cast member.
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The two Class VII members who join later in the game don't fair quite as well as the main cast, unfortunately. Millium's alright as a character, but I found her voice annoying, she didn't get as much development as the original members, and she didn't fit into the friend group quite as well. Crow is much worse. I hated him basically the whole game, and having him join Class VII just made things even worse. All of the jokes he makes about women are terrible, and the fanservice he introduces is generally shit. Felt like Oliver did in the original Sky games (I like the serious Olivert from Cold Steel a lot more than the joking version from Sky. Even his jokes turn out better here, since there's generally more hilarity to be found in someone mostly serious doing something ridiculous than someone ridiculous doing something ridiculous). The characters act like he's their dear friend, but we don't get any scenes building on his friendship with them. It makes his betrayal hit much less hard. Definitely too bad they didn't kill him off at the end, since I'd rather not see any more of him. The rest of the ILF wasn't great either, but eh. In terms of villains, I much prefer the disagreements between the reformists and the noble faction, where it feels like both sides have good points and also have bad people working for them. Made them very compelling in general, especially someone like Rufus, who's a great guy but fighting for the wrong side.

The final chapter of the game was a bit of an odd one. The school festival generally sucked, especially everything to do with the concert which was one of the worst things to be in any Trails game, and it was disappointing that we got this instead of a Field Study, since those were the highlights of the game before. However, the final expedition was pretty cool, and the Trista invasion was pure awesome. My favorite part was all the instructors banding together to destroy the terrorists, especially generally non-combat oriented instructors like Thomas and Makarov. Great note for the game to finish on.

That's about it for now. Ask me anything?
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Mac Arrowny posted...

That's about it for now. Ask me anything?

if every animal on earth got into a fight, which one would win
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Don't have time to respond now but tag for later
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man, the most dangerous animal of all
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I agree that they needed to just stick with one love interest rather than go the Persona route. Hell, maybe they could have done a fake out by having it look like Alisa is the main girl, only to have it turn out to be someone else at the end. The half ass harem just hinders character development.

It's like they thought they couldn't top Estelle/Joshua, so might as well go the VN route.
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Yeah the whole Love Interest thing reeked of Falcom wanting to have their cake and eat it too, because it clearly pushes you towards Alisa, but it's like "oh yeah but Emma, Laura and the rest of them are options too guys".

How did you feel about Sharon's reveal at the end?
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It's a shame you didn't like Crow or Millium as much. I'm a fan of both. I did think the concert was pretty bad, although the rest of the festival was fun. I agree Gaius is basically a non-character and that was a major missed opportunity.
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I don't really have a problem with Millium, and I can definitely see her getting better in 2. She had some pretty funny scenes (I liked her in the cooking club), and the mystery surrounding her at first was interesting, where I thought she might be a member of Ouroboros or something. She doesn't quite fit in as a member of the friend group yet though.

Sharon being an Ouroboros member was an awesome twist! Maybe my favorite in the game. I had all sorts of suspicions about her identity, and even thought that might be the case when she talked about her other masters, but its execution was still really good. This is probably the goodest we've seen an Ouroboros member being. There was that one guy in Crossbell too, but his exact status was a bit odd. I wonder if Alisa's mom knows the truth about Sharon? Ever since Emma said she was the opposite of being a member of the Church I was kinda wondering if she had ties to Ouroboros too, but I figure it's probably something animism related instead.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

That's about it for now. Ask me anything?

How could you write so much and still not mention the best character, Sara Valestein?

Also, I liked being able to choose a love interest (Sara forever). Forcing Rean to date Alisa of all people would've been awful.
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Oh dang, I kept meaning to talk about her but forgot.

Sara's mostly pretty good. There are a few annoying things about her though. Her VA kinda sucks (she's the main reason I switched to JP voices), her alcoholism is terrible (why does the Trails series keep treating alcoholism as a joke? This wasn't good in Sky and it's not good here), and her irresponsibility is exaggerated a bit too much. Plus it kinda feels like she's on the wrong side sometimes with her antipathy to the Chancellor, though she at least has a personal reason for that so it's more of an interesting character flaw than anything. They fit her into Class VII really well - she feels like she's just one of the gang, which is great. I kept expecting that she'd rejoin the party later in the game. When they explained her country of origin at the end, was that the country that got turned into salt? Also why is she named after Castle Valestein from Ys 3?

Robazoid posted...

Also, I liked being able to choose a love interest (Sara forever)

?

I tried picking Sara in the thing at the end, and there wasn't anything suggesting she'd be a love interest. Same with Millium. I was assuming those two didn't get romantic scenes because of the age difference.

Oh right, one other thing I forgot to mention. Patiry best random NPC. She needed some epic sidequests IMO.
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To each their own but I can't really imagine not playing CS dubbed as the English VAs did such a good job. I don't know what about Sara's could have really bothered you like that.

Edit: The only VA who I think kinda doesn't work is Claire. She just doesn't sell it well. Can't really think of any other issues.
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Cold Steel 1 is the best cliffhanger I've ever experienced in a game
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I might do one of these topics for both Cold Steel 1/2 after I finish Cold Steel 2 today

I mostly sort of agree with you about Cold Steel 1 as a whole. Except for the Crow hate, Crow is awesome as heck.

I haven't played the Crossbell games yet so I dunno how they stack up, though.

I am beyond hyped to finally play the Crossbell games in the future after CS1 and 2 though. Almost maybe even more so than CS3 which I am also super hyped for. Cold Steel teases you with plot stuff for the Crossbell games SO MUCH, especially CS2, I can't help wanting to see what exactly happens in those.

Alisa's English VA is atrocious, but other than that I didn't really have any major issues

I've found that I actually prefer a lot of the English VAs, which is something I don't think I've ever said before
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I really like all of the voices in Cold Steel personally

Millium's voice sort of annoyed me at first but it grew on me (as did her character as a whole) as it went on.

I actually played by copying the Japanese voices over the English voices, so I got Japanese most of the time with the added English voices whenever they were used. The English voice acting is mostly pretty good. Sara just has this weird tone to her.

tcaz2 posted...

Except for the Crow hate, Crow is awesome as heck.

I feel like his sexist brand of humor doesn't really have a place in games anymore.

tcaz2 posted...

I haven't played the Crossbell games yet so I dunno how they stack up, though.

I am beyond hyped to finally play the Crossbell games in the future after CS1 and 2 though. Almost maybe even more so than CS3 which I am also super hyped for. Cold Steel teases you with plot stuff for the Crossbell games SO MUCH, especially CS2, I can't help wanting to see what exactly happens in those.

Having them take place at the same time was an odd choice. There's a bunch of stuff I knew about from playing the Crossbell games (like the Chancellor's assassination attempt), and then these have a bunch of stuff from Crossbell too (like the dome, the independence declaration and the new mayor and such). This also means we didn't get any Sky characters in CS1 which kinda sucks because Joshua/Estelle/Renne were the best part of Zero. The decision mostly worked overall though. They executed it well enough.
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I've been of the belief that Cold Steel is meant to be a new entry point to the series, especially with the modern engine. It's a tough ask for newcomers to go through 3-5 40+ hour games that look dated before they can play the newer looking games.

That's why I think they kept the references to Sky/Crossbell to a minimum.

(No Zero/Ao western release is gonna be tricky once CS3 gets here though)
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Yeah, that's fair. It definitely feels like a better standalone than Zero did.
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Oh, another thing I forgot to mention. Becky's yasssss is my favorite bit of localization in the game. So good.
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I would say its more 'doesn't require knowledge of previous games to understand' and less 'doesn't reference them much' honestly.

Especially if you take CS2 into account (which yes I know this topic isn't about so I won't elaborate beyond that).

Also from what I know about CS3 and what I've seen confirmed for CS4 the 'doesn't require knowledge' thing is going out the window big time anyway.

On the subject of VAs: most of them I find passable. Only Alisa is atrocious and they improved her a bit in CS2. Standouts are Rean and Fie.

Most of the VA work improves in CS2. But hoo boy are some VAs gonna have to step their game up if they're back in CS3.
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A series of responses as they occur to me.

--I generally agree with your comments on the battle system. Ultimately I still like it more in TitS because it feels like there's more strategy to the fights and also I like the Orbment system a lot more. However the actual act of battling and especially random battles is better in Cold Steel imo. I definitely remember major battles being braindead however, though admittedly I might be remembering Cold Steel II which is absurdly easy to break with a certain setup.

--Erebonia definitely a better location than Liberl at least. I think you really get a feel for what the character of Erebonia is like and what the different cultures and ideals are. You can see that in TitS also but this game just does it a lot better. I think the choice of main cast also helps, because the Class VII members basically come from all different walks of life, and in every case their past/upbringing is integral to defining who they are as people.

--The harem approach to romance really doesn't work, yes. (or at least this version of it anyway)

--I sort of agree with you on Crow and I sort of don't. On the one hand I definitely the game doesn't do enough to invest you in his relationship with the rest of Class VII. However I did generally like his personality and thought he was a cool character at this point. I will say I think Cold Steel II really does him some favors. It's not so much that anything changes, more just that part of his character arc is executed a lot better than the part that you see in Cold Steel I. Think I had him at somewhere around my #8 favorite character or something in Cold Steel I, though he definitely moves higher than that in the second game.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Plus it kinda feels like she's on the wrong side sometimes with her antipathy to the Chancellor

I see where you're coming from but I mean the chancellor is not supposed to be a good guy. He's done some pretty underhanded shit on a number of occasions, and in particular one of those occasions has had a direct and profound impact on Sara. I can't exactly blame her for holding a grudge.
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Oh and an important question--who is your favorite minor NPC and why is it Vivi?

(Though really nearly all the Thors/Trista NPC's are great as you more or less said)
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sara is awesome
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I already said it was Patiry!

Best at the school is probably Mint? I liked her development throughout the game. Ferris was pretty cool too. And I'm glad they didn't wait to the end to unleash Friedel's badassery upon us. <3 Vivi's pretty good; I just wish there was a bit more to her, or that they did more with her sister obsession.

I assume Crow'll be better in CS2 since he'll make less dumb jokes.

Yeah, the grudge is cool with me. It's just that the game kinda frames Sara as the character who's right while everyone else is wrong, so her opinions are kinda given more weight than others.
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Oh I must have missed that.

Mint and Patiry probably my #2 and #3 favorite NPC's though, so whatever I'll allow it.
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Mint is an awesome NPC in a game with awesome NPCs like those twin girls with pink hair
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Crow has improved from what I've played in CS2. Kinda stereotypical rival mecha pilot. There's a plot beat that might have you scratching your head, but it's through no fault of Crow himself.

Think of him as C at this point. Except significantly less theatrical.
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tag
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Question: Will you be doing a Cold Steel 2 playthrough topic?
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pyresword posted...

Oh and an important question--who is your favorite minor NPC and why is it Vivi?

Mint, Mint's uncle, Beryl and the purple haired guy who was the brother of girl who doesn't like Alisa (i thought it might've been Vincent but google is telling me it isn't) the best .
aggressive lesbian biker and the insecure bitch in the dueling club the worst.

It is Vincent. Vincent Florald.

I'm pretty sure Vincent is Ferris's brother, yes. He's usually fun, if not terribly likable.

Mint's uncle Makarov was okay most of the game, but he stepped it up at the end which was great.

Beryl is awesome. I like that she uses her fortune telling powers to get high scores on tests, and that she already knew the seven mysteries she asked you to investigate had non-supernatural explanations.

Angelica was usually good but people were a bit too tolerant of her harassment. Alan (fencing club guy) was definitely a loser, but he developed throughout the game which is always a plus with NPCs for me.

greengravy294 posted...

Mint is an awesome NPC in a game with awesome NPCs like those twin girls with pink hair

These are Vivi and Linde. Linde didn't particularly impress.

Shadow Dino posted...

Question: Will you be doing a Cold Steel 2 playthrough topic?

Would people be interested in that...?
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Vivi is better (and easily the best NPC in general) than Linde but I feel like Vivi wouldn't be as good without her so they are kind of a package deal to me

Oh by the way I forgot to mention something.

In case you don't know about this, there was a drama CD that had some material which had to be cut from the game due to (I think) size/time constraints. XSEED has given a translated version at the link I provide below, and I'd recommend reading it before going on to Cold Steel 2.

http://www.trailsofcoldsteel.com/cs2/memoirs1.html
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oh yeah

Hilariously its actually the biggest bit of character development Rean gets in the entirety of CS1 as well so its kind of weird they cut it

But it is actually canon and the characters mention the events of it in CS2. So definitely read that.

Yeah, a friend mentioned that. Maybe I should see if I can find the drama CD so I can listen to it...
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Mac Arrowny posted...

I love how Jusis seems like an asshole at first but basically everything he says is right and he's basically just a cool dude the whole game.

Jusis top-tier character.

CS1 from Chapter 6 (Roer) to the end is a huge highlight, you might be able to extend that back to Garelia Fortress when the story catches up to the opening.

*Sky The 3rd Spoilers*

Mac Arrowny posted...

When they explained her country of origin at the end, was that the country that got turned into salt?

Yeah. Specifically, roughly half of North Ambria was. It did eventually stop, but obviously that ruins a country either way. Currently the Septian Church designated the salt part a restricted area and it is under their control. The North Ambria State is the remaining part where various characters like Sara and Weissmann are from.

Agreed about Erebonia being a better setting than Liberl, as well as the bond system ruining any attempt the story tries at romance involving Rean and Co. Vivi best NPC, but Patiry is also top-tier.

Definitely watch/read the Drama CD if you can. CS2 does have a summary of it you can access but it's not like it's a long read.

i feel like there was more i wanted to say but i forgot somehow
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Millium: Hey! I was trying to hug you, why did you move out of the way?
Jusis: Because you were trying to hug me.
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I was never much of a fan of Jusis or Millium on their own but their dynamic together was always great.
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