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Trails in the Sky -- Legend of the Heroes VI
CygnusZ
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Registered User regular
Story:
The story of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky opens in the quaint and serene town of Rolent in the Liberl Kingdom, a land that, while outmatched by surrounding countries in terms of size and military might, manages to maintain its global presence through world-class engineering, ample septium resources and able diplomacy. Still recovering from a fierce war with the powerful Erebonian Empire just ten years prior, players take the reins as Estelle Bright, a young martial arts expert with an effervescent personality and tenacious spirit, as well as her close friend Joshua, as they take their first steps in joining the legendary Bracer’s Guild. Charged with upholding the peace and safety of the citizens, Bracers must first seek qualification in all the regions of the kingdom, and to that end Estelle and Joshua begin their journey.
As players delve further into the story of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, they will traverse an entire kingdom steeped in detail, navigating everything from ancient towers and deep mines to quaint villages and seaside resorts, and become entangled in the geopolitical landscape as they meet new characters along the way. Sprawling landscapes, perilous encounters and mysterious happenings punctuate every moment of the game’s 50-plus hours of gameplay. Through the course of their journey, Estelle and Joshua will begin to uncover a mutinous conspiracy that threatens to overthrow the Liberlian queen and compromise the kingdom’s peaceful landscape: a sinister plot that they must unravel on their quest to become fully-fledged Bracers.
So what makes this game so great?
1) The Kingdom Of Liberl. Each of the five cities in the kingdom of Liberl has its own history, economy and a full cast of unique NPCs living in it. There are no extra or filler people without names wandering around the streets, even if a character isn't particularly important they have a name and a realized personality. No world-trotting-super-natural-save-the-universe plots here, everything is relatively sane and well explained.
2) Strategic battle system. This is a bit hard to explain, but basically the battle system is a marriage of a typical tactics games and the FFX battle system. On some turns there'll be a bonus (like Str +50 or Critical Hit), so much of the game is trying to manipulate turn orders so that you can get those bonuses. There is a magic system and a skill system. To use skill you need special CP points which are earned by getting hit or hitting an enemy in battle, so sometimes it may make sense to let the enemies smack up one of your characters to build up their CP. If you get 100 CP you can basically use a limit break any time you feel like (this is one way of manipulating turn order).
3) The music. This is from the same people that made the Ys soundtrack.
Oh god, the music.
Check out http://www.trailsinthesky.com/ for a detailed introduction to the game.
TL;dr
A $30, 50 hour long balls to the walls awesome JRPG is coming to PSP on March 29th.
CygnusZ on
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First of all, the game is extremely plot heavy. You may be reading for 15 or so minutes during the major plot scenes. Much of the game revolves around working for the Bracer guild. Some of your jobs revolve around going to a dungeon and killing monsters, but other jobs revolve around tasks like conducting an investigation into a theft or helping a chef locate a new ingredient for his cooking. Doing work for the Bracers guild is purely optional, but it's probably the easiest way to make money. If you wish that RPGs were just straight dungeon crawling, TitS probably isn't for you.
The game is easy. If you hate seeing the game over screen this might make you happy, but I was kind of disappointed that the enemies basically never managed to kill me until the end. There is a reason for this however, this is the first game in a trilogy. I'm currently playing the second game, and the difficulty curb picks up exactly where the first game left off. The second game is really difficult, and I'm just barely managing to get past the boss battles by the skin of my teeth. I'm playing the PC version so there's no option, but for the PSP version I think you can select your difficulty level.
The game looks really good. As far as sprite art goes, this Falcom really did a bang up job here. Each of the little sprites has all sorts of tiny little details, and they look absolutely amazing when they're jumping around fighting. What really struck me is how each town has its own distinct look. The costal city of Ruan is designed with architecture that looks completely distinct from the industrial town of Zeiss.
Finally, the game sounds great as well. I'm always hesitant to move on to new areas when playing because I'm going to miss listening to X locations soundtrack.
Trails in The Sky is a gem that is going to be overlooked because it's being released on PSP. Falcom should have let Xseed release it on Steam where it may have become a cult classic. One cute thing to note is that you can actually export your character at the end of this game and then import them into the sequel. If you're a fan of other Falcom games, enjoy RPGs like Dragon Quest and the old FF games, you'll probably like TiTS.
I've said it before and I'll repeat it here: had XSEED not announced their loc project, Sora no Kiseki would've been at the very top of Carpe Fulgur's list of licenses to pursue if Recettear proved successful and allowed us to continue as a going Thing. I almost literally did this IRL when XSEED announced the license, in the middle of our Recettear work.
I do agree with the assessment that the PC versions should be on Steam (and hope they will be, as XSEED has expressed interest in making it happen) but even on the PSP I think they'll do okay. Lord knows Steam is starving for this kind of content, though, especially the quality this game provides.
In a lot of ways, I think of these games as basically the Mass Effect of Japan: there's lots of non-combat stuff to do, there's tons of plot, lots of twists, tons of background info available for perusal (some of which becomes extremely relevant as time goes on), and engaging characters who players really bond with. Had the games actually come out here in rough tandem with their Japanese releases, I wouldn't have been surprised to see ME and SnK stacked up against one another. Even with the late arrival, though, they're still so, so worth it and I can't wait for this Tuesday.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Hmmmmm. Ys vs. Trails is something I'm not so sure on. It's really a question of how well Trails does, I think; the Ys games, particularly Oath (and a lot of Oath characters are in YvsSnK) have apparently done well, and if Trails does well too, I could see them perhaps bringing it over, but it really was a fanservice thing for Japan and I dunno if there are enough big fans in America (yet) to justify it.
Plus, they need to bring Trails SC out at a minimum before considering it. YvsSnK pretty much assumes you're totally familiar with the plots to both primary Trails games, and even the Japanese promotional website is kind of huge spoilers if you haven't played SC yet. So it'll be a while, either way.
EDIT: Also is it sad that I keep using the website to listen to that track from the game? It might be, but somehow I find myself not caring.
IMPORTANT EDIT: Oh, a little something that needs to be said -
BEWARE OF SPOILERS FOR THIS GAME AND ITS IMMEDIATE SUCCESSOR. THEY HAVE BEEN OUT FOR OVER HALF A DECADE IN JAPAN AND MANY SPOILERS FOR CRUCIAL MAIN PLOT EVENTS EXIST ON PLACES LIKE WIKIPEDIA. PART OF THE ENJOYMENT OF THE GAME IS THE PLOT TWISTS AND YOU DO NOT WANT THEM RUINED FOR YOU.
AVOID WIKIPEDIA, THE HARDCORE GAMING 101 ARTICLE, GAMEFAQS AND THE LIKE UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE SPOILED FOR MAJOR PLOT POINTS IN THIS GAME AND SECOND CHAPTER.
Really, I think that might need to be in the OP, because like ME or similar plot-heavy RPGs, a large part of the enjoyment is the twists and it's really easy to have those ruined for you. I've actually got a line out to Kurt Kalata over at HG101 about their Trails article and getting it trimmed up a bit to avoid spoilers, but Wikipedia and GameFAQs are probably a lost cause at this point. Avoid them if you can, you'll run into spoilers otherwise.
I will say however that XSeed is completely random. They brought out a Wizard of Oz RPG right after saying no to RGC2 because nobody bought the first one, as if they expected WoO to break the bank. So I'm not sure what they want in sales. I think if they did a low print run of Alternative Saga it might work out.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Incorrect. The Gagharv Trilogy of games was just fine. It was Bandai's localization that was teribad.
This is the start of a completely different trilogy.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Also, yay for gun wielding characters and the existence of technology.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
So what's the gameplay like? I heard it was no different then super simplistic turn based stuff but if that was true I can't see how it would get to 6 games.
Thanks for pointing out a game I most definitely would have overlooked otherwise.
Does anyone know if they plan on bringing the sequels over too?
That is good enough for me.
Ten, actually. Five "Legend of Heroes" games... and now four Trails games with a fifth coming.
Combat-wise, here's a decent spoiler-free video from the first game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVovdu1psW0
Combat takes place on a pseudo-tactical map, with your party versus the enemy party. Positioning does actually matter; in the video above, the boss' fire-based AoE attack could have been avoided to some degree had the player bothered to spread out a little (and yes, there's a separate "move" command). You've got special attacks as well as a magic system a bit similar to FFVII; it's a really complete, fun battle system. It's worth noting that First Chapter (the game we're getting on Tuesday) isn't that hard combatwise; the games don't really start putting your balls in a vice until Second Chapter. Both games feature interestingly-designed fights that can punish you for bad positioning, require a damage race (or not), enemies big enough to literally punt you across the entire field with their basic melee, etc. (EDIT: Oh, I should mention: random encounters work almost exactly like Earthbound. You can see them on the map, you can potentially ambush them, they can potentially ambush you, works pretty much like it did in EB.)
However, it's really comparable to Bioware RPGs, in a way, in that combat takes up perhaps a minority of the experience. There's lots of (actually pretty interesting) plot with tons of optional background material to explore (ala the codex in Mass Effect), lots of sidequests that involve little to no combat at all, fishing, you get the idea. It doesn't have quite the illusion of choice that, say, Mass Effect does, although there are some choices and they carry over between games through saves.
When I call it the Mass Effect of Japan, I'm really not being all that facetious. There are design similarities and they're both really good.
(For the record, the LoH games we've gotten so far were fairly rancid ports that messed with the combat engine and had really uninspired translations. The Trails games were ported by Falcom directly and the PSP versions play 1:1 with the PC versions. And unless something goes catastrophically wrong, the XSEED script in Trails should be really solid.)
Unless FC absolutely fucking flops (and there's indications already that won't happen based on pre-orders alone), they want to bring SC over at a minimum to finish out the "first" story arc. The other games will be dependent on continued sales. The real question is speed; they can, at best, do one game a year which would take them into 2015 by the time they get to Ao no Kiseki. Needless to say the PSP will be long-dead by then, so how exactly the last few games will be released is kind of an open question right now.
We're pretty much certain to get the primary duology that made the series famous in Japan, though.
One thing about combat is that there's no real way to grind. As you level up, you gain less and less exp from the enemies, so you can usually get away without fighting too compulsively. You'll probably fight a bit to get Sepith, little crystals that can be used to make Quartz that boost your stats. If you're careful about how you move, you can get through most random battles without even getting hit. SC is much more unforgiving with the battles than FC.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Yes and yes. In fact, Estelle, the aforementioned bo-staff user and protagonist of the game, is pretty much one of the biggest no-nonsense female action heroes of video gaming. She has her cute moments, but she's wholly capable of ruining people.
And Tita's (the machinist girl) weapons start at the mini-gatling level... and get bigger from there. Sometimes it's a wonder the recoil doesn't send her flying off the combat map.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
(Hilariously, Zero no Kiseki avoids this question by only HAVING four core party members, not counting the occasional guest star.)
So glad I have tuesday off; I can hardly wait.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
This is difficult.
Well, remember that the more money XSEED makes on this, the quicker the other games can come over. I'll admit to feeling a little bad about pushing that idea when there isn't a playable demo for people to kick around so they can judge whether or not they like the game, though.
The normal is only $30 bucks, though, just sayin'.
100% guaranteed to work.
But more than that there's mecha, and satellite laser beam attacks, and.. and.. god damn I want this game.
Is there a spoiler-light rundown of the characters and their weapons and moves/ability types?
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Oh god you might've spoiled the fuck out of yourself without even realizing it. :x That's why picking videos for this game is hard, because the best videos can also ruin the shit out of SC in particular (which is sad, 'cause that's where a lot of the really spectacular stuff is; there's one video, which I suspect you watched, that is an absolutely perfect demonstration of the combat engine at its best, why it's so cool and what the bosses and characters can do... but it's full of spoilers people wouldn't even realize at first
There's not really a useful, FAQ-like listing of the various special moves (called "Crafts" and "S-Crafts") in English, I'm afraid.
There's like no videos on these games.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Feel free to GET HYPE, just be aware that videos of SC or Third are likely to have really monster spoilers.
The Orbment system looks like materia on crack. Active abilities + passive abilities + totaling points unlocking more abilities. On top of having what looks like character specific abilities.
So... monters don't drop any money, only monster-parts. Is money grindable, or only finite from quests?
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Is there seriously a full-length novel in this game?
The script for TiTS itself is 487 pages long.
The way it works is that when you beat a monster they leave behind tiny crystals called Seriph. You can either sell the crystals for money or you can fuse the crystals together into a stat enhancing quartz which you can place in your orbment. Monster parts are better used in cooking than for selling.
http://www.justin.tv/sanctuarycrew/b/282327416
And some of the more pertinent videos are here:
Combat: http://www.justin.tv/omgfloofy/b/282396651?
Bracers and Orbment: http://www.justin.tv/omgfloofy/b/282395610
Fundamentals: http://www.justin.tv/omgfloofy/b/282395203
The game-text shown is still the Japanese version, but all of the mechanics get explained well enough and with basically no spoilers (since everything shown here is in, like, the first hour of the game).
FFFFFFFF. XSeed, translate and localize faster so I can give you my monies.
Also, pure random sample screenshot from this game that makes me laugh:
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
And yous say I can put it on my PC? Where would I buy the PC version from?
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
There are a couple PC versions of the game (I own the Chinese version personally), but no English PC version. If you want to play this game in English, it looks PSP is your only option.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Yes indeed. The music is goddamn divine.
There's no English PC version yet. (I really lament this, personally.) XSEED has said they want to investigate making it happen, but for now, your only option is the PSP.