I want to be up on CS3 and ready for CS4, but I'm still waiting for either official word on Zero and Ao or for the fan translation of Ao to finish, whichever comes first.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
Full trailer of Hajimari up showing the three-story track format. Contains spoilers for Ao/Zero and Cold Steel in addition to Hajimari.
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited June 2020
Yeah I actually have a hard time finishing CS3.
The plot didn't grab me, wasn't a fan of the new cast and the predictable loop for each chapter was meh. And the gameplay felt one step forward and two steps back.
The plot didn't grab me, wasn't a fan of the new cast and the predictable loop for each chapter was meh. And the gameplay felt one step forward and two steps back.
I thought the gameplay was definitely better. Brave Orders were very potent and felt like a real reason to be working with BP. Overdrive felt more gimicky.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Decided to finally start CS3 since 4 is coming soon. After nearly finishing chapter 1 it really seems intent on making you feel like you're playing CS1 Groundhog Day. Lots of 'remember this?' going on. I've watched someone play most of the Sky games, so I caught the cameos from that series right away. I assume anyone that has lines that go both 'I'm from Crossbell' and 'Sorry about that one thing', I assume they are from the Crossbell arc and will be important later.
I like it, but I think it might be relying too much on the previous games. But I guess that is what happens when you have them all link together. Even CS3's opening theme song is a remix with lyrics of Tie a Link of ARCUS, basically the midboss battle theme of both CS1 and 2.
Decided to finally start CS3 since 4 is coming soon. After nearly finishing chapter 1 it really seems intent on making you feel like you're playing CS1 Groundhog Day. Lots of 'remember this?' going on. I've watched someone play most of the Sky games, so I caught the cameos from that series right away. I assume anyone that has lines that go both 'I'm from Crossbell' and 'Sorry about that one thing', I assume they are from the Crossbell arc and will be important later.
I like it, but I think it might be relying too much on the previous games. But I guess that is what happens when you have them all link together. Even CS3's opening theme song is a remix with lyrics of Tie a Link of ARCUS, basically the midboss battle theme of both CS1 and 2.
Yea. It starts that way for sure. It definitely feels like it's trying to relive CS1 in a lot of ways, which kinda makes sense, and now we have the teacher perspective. It works ok I think.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Also a likely consequence of platform shift and the attempt to sell it as relatively independent from its immediate predecessors.
Yea. I hear a big marketing push was to say you could start here and be fine (which is not really true), and therefore the routine of the game was to make people feel a bit more comfortable with it.
I dunno.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Also a likely consequence of platform shift and the attempt to sell it as relatively independent from its immediate predecessors.
Yea. I hear a big marketing push was to say you could start here and be fine (which is not really true), and therefore the routine of the game was to make people feel a bit more comfortable with it.
I dunno.
It's also true to say that within its fiction and within the scope of Japanese fictional traditions, the exploration of spiritual rebirth and the highly repetitive iterative refinement of your narrative craft means that the nature of ToCS' transparent structural regurgitation is both thematic and normalized.
Honestly I loved Cold Steel 3 for the most part. Watching Class 7 be huge badasses was amazing, and there was some solid comedy too.
Also the unintentional comedy of
the ANCIENT EVIL CURSE that acknowledges and respects a country's borders.
Do not remind me of the worst part of the game.
THEY HAD TO JUST GET ONE THING RIGHT AND THE ENTIRE GAME WAS GOOD.
Osborne's motivation, and the reason people followed him. That was the only thing they had to nail. He had to come across as someone doing the right thing for the country, and he just comes across as a god damned loon. I was so MAD.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Cold Steel IV was finished last night. I loved the game. Cried multiple times while playing it. I have way too much emotional attachment to these characters after four games and hundreds of hours. For people who had issues with the new cast in ToCS3, the characters were much better during this game, and showed a real sense of growth between 3 and 4. I'm going to have to play through a second time at some point to see all of the bond events that I missed the first time.
I'm still in the middle of 3. It's good to hear that the new cast continues to get developed. I didn't doubt that they'd get attention, but these games are so long and it just takes time.
More news that english-speakers shouldn't get excited about: Zero and Ao are getting Asia releases on Switch in 2021. There will be no English translation on these versions.
I'm choosing to take this as good news, as it gets over one barrier (hah), but until there is an announcement from NISA, I'm not getting my hopes up.
I wasn't able to find out who is actually handling the ports.
Cold Steel 1 and 2 are also getting Switch versions in Asia as well as Japan.
Honestly I loved Cold Steel 3 for the most part. Watching Class 7 be huge badasses was amazing, and there was some solid comedy too.
Also the unintentional comedy of
the ANCIENT EVIL CURSE that acknowledges and respects a country's borders.
Do not remind me of the worst part of the game.
THEY HAD TO JUST GET ONE THING RIGHT AND THE ENTIRE GAME WAS GOOD.
Osborne's motivation, and the reason people followed him. That was the only thing they had to nail. He had to come across as someone doing the right thing for the country, and he just comes across as a god damned loon. I was so MAD.
Did he?
There's a lot of CS4 spoiler talk that could be related to this so I was just wanting what your take on this was specifically and what you think his aim was.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Honestly I loved Cold Steel 3 for the most part. Watching Class 7 be huge badasses was amazing, and there was some solid comedy too.
Also the unintentional comedy of
the ANCIENT EVIL CURSE that acknowledges and respects a country's borders.
Do not remind me of the worst part of the game.
THEY HAD TO JUST GET ONE THING RIGHT AND THE ENTIRE GAME WAS GOOD.
Osborne's motivation, and the reason people followed him. That was the only thing they had to nail. He had to come across as someone doing the right thing for the country, and he just comes across as a god damned loon. I was so MAD.
Did he?
There's a lot of CS4 spoiler talk that could be related to this so I was just wanting what your take on this was specifically and what you think his aim was.
In CS3? Yea he does, imo.
CS4 changes stuff, so I'm not as mad at this point, but I'm only in Act2.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Can anyone give me some tips to enjoy boss battles in CS3? I'll paste what I wrote to some friends behind a spoiler tag.
I think I hate one of the major changes they made to the combat system in CS3.
They added a stagger bar to each enemy. That's not the really bad part. If you played FF13, it's kind of similar. Do damage, including stagger damage, to empty the stagger bar on an enemy and put them in a staggered state where you deal extra damage and auto-crits. As long as the stagger bar is up, you do less damage. Enemies will miss turns when they're staggered, but will eventually snap out of it and their stagger bar refills.
The problem comes with bosses. No bosses will miss turns, and in fact, when their turn comes up and they're staggered, they refill their stagger bar, go into a rage for the rest of the fight, get more powerful, and do extra turns. And bosses have way more HP than you can possibly deplete in even 4 maxed S-Crafts. It means you can no longer bank a bunch of CP and totally or mostly wipe out a boss in a few turns. And as bosses are in a rage state, they do increasingly more damage as time goes on. And take even less damage than before, including when the stagger bar is full.
If you try to blast boss fights like before, boss fights become messy dragged out affairs until you die or squeak out a victory. Instead you need to play conservatively and scratch down the stagger bar and make sure you have CP to burn as soon as the boss is staggered. It's not complex, so it feels like churn for no good reason.
I also just don't like the stagger thing in general. It adds complexity where I don't want it. I liked it when combat in these games was simpler.
Maybe you guys will like it, but it's the first gameplay addition in this series that I haven't liked.
There's also a hidden spot on the boss' stagger bar where, even if they're not staggered, they'll rage out on their next turn and refill their stagger bar. THAT is the biggest fuckup if you ask me.
my memory of cs3 was on the difficulty i played on (possibly nightmare, possibly 1 step down from nightmare) most of the hard boss fights came down to instantly killing the boss before they could act, dumping damage, making use of break etc. to push their turn back, or get one shot when they act. i can't remember if absolute reflect worked against bosses or not, but maybe cheese with absolute reflect as well
The change to the combat system was not my favorite part of CS3.
Their fix for the previous games' cheese method of crushing bosses via delay and s-crafts was to... force us to insta-kill bosses in order to avoid a long drawn out slug fest with bosses.
Instead of breaking bosses in order to delay their turn (delay as a mechanic is nerfed), the idea is to break bosses to increase damage taken, then dump CP to increase damage dealt and increase party action speed in order to accumulate more CP in order to continue with increased damage and action speed, then insta-kill with s-crafts just as the bosses hit their rage HP margin.
If I didn't succeed in achieving the virtuous cycle of CP generation, then combat took a very torturous turn.
When bosses go into that enhanced state they actually take more stagger damage than usual so that’s when you need to try to stagger them to knock them out if it.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Yeah. Basically you just want to kill the bosses before they get into that enhanced state and if you can't abuse orders that pump up your damage resistance.
But yeah they still haven't really managed to make boss fights compelling its still pretty much kill them before they unleash their big insta-wipe attack.
In 4 most bosses auto recover from stagger 1 time at 50% health. Where they have a little “now to get serious” cutscene.
They don’t go into an enhanced state until their next turn after that and then the turn after that they will always use their s craft. Except for one who will use hers whenever with no warning.
They take more stagger damage in this enhanced state and it only lasts two or three turns.
They increased the amount of stagger damage they take in this mode so much that a good break setup with a character with an S damage break attack can almost knock them out of it in one hit.
I had a fight where the boss did the thing and was all “bwahaha now I’ve got you!” and Laura was like “Nope” and staggered them again in one hit.
I just bumped difficulty down to Very Easy because I'm here for the story, not to spend 45 minutes on trash boss fights that I have to restart 3 times.
I played The 3rd on Easy because I heard it was really difficult, and I'm glad I did. But I've played all the other games (haven't played Crossbell) on Normal. Oh well. Maybe I'll go back to Normal for CS4. It sounds like they balanced things a bit better there.
I've cast Saintly Force more times in Cold Steel 4 than I have in the other three games combined. I've never had to use all the arts at my disposal before or really pay attention to elemental efficacy.
EDIT: Also Brave Orders are so broken in 3 that I'm really curious what bosses you've had trouble with and why. Rean's half-damage and instant cast orders by their selves let you build lots of momentum.
I've cast Saintly Force more times in Cold Steel 4 than I have in the other three games combined. I've never had to use all the arts at my disposal before or really pay attention to elemental efficacy.
They made it that you can't remove stat downs by using stat ups. You have to cleanse them with items/saintly force/heat up.
I've enjoyed the balance in 4 the most so far. 3 was kinda annoying but completely cheesable. 4 has required a bit more gearing up, but on Hard it's still been pretty trivial.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I'm in the final act of my maximal blind Nightmare run. Things were very challenging up through Act 1 + Fragments, but a lot of that was adjusting to the new Break behaviors and not being able to immediately abuse Evade builds. Not to mention that the Max AP requirements in Act 1 often demanded very extreme builds to achieve, due to how every opponent in Nightmare has crazy speed stats.
So if I'm a lifelong jRPG fan/victim and have a Switch, should I get this? Should I get III first? Will it matter if I haven't played 1 and 2 or know anything about the series at all?
I'm still working through Trials of Mana, but my Switch is rapidly becoming my Covid quarantine jRPG wayback machine, and y'all seem to love this particular series, so I'm pretty temped.
So if I'm a lifelong jRPG fan/victim and have a Switch, should I get this? Should I get III first? Will it matter if I haven't played 1 and 2 or know anything about the series at all?
I'm still working through Trials of Mana, but my Switch is rapidly becoming my Covid quarantine jRPG wayback machine, and y'all seem to love this particular series, so I'm pretty temped.
At the very least you'll want to play III and IV together; these games are not perfect, but they do represent a very satisfying throwback idea of what JRPG can be, and the stories are grandiose anime drama.
And now that I think about, IV isn't even out on Switch right now, is it? But if it were, starting at IV would be bewildering, as it tries to tie together all the characters and plot threads of the entire 20 year Trails series, and things get messy as a result.
ToCS4 is really not a good drop in place, as its pretty much the ultimate cumulation to three different series: Trails in the Sky, Trails of Azure/Zero, and Trails of Cold Steel. The more you know about these series and the more investment you have in their casts, the bigger the impact of Trails of Cold Steel 4's story will have. It pulls characters and references situations and events drifting all the way back to Trails in the Sky.
At a minimum I would recommend starting at Cold Steel 3 as that will at least give you the background of the story and part of the core cast for Cold Steel 4, along with light introductions to the Cold Steel 1 & 2 cast. Cold Steel 3 was designed specifically to be a jumping on point as it marked the shift from the PS3 (which was the original release of CS1 & CS2) to the PS4 (which is CS3 and CS4). Personally, if you have the time I feel that its probably better to start at Cold Steel 1 since starting there will give you the background for the entire core cast of the Cold Steel series.
And if you really want the full experience, you need to start with Trails in the Sky. But going from Trails in the Sky through Cold Steel 4 is probably a 6 month+ long project all on its own, so...
So if I'm a lifelong jRPG fan/victim and have a Switch, should I get this? Should I get III first? Will it matter if I haven't played 1 and 2 or know anything about the series at all?
I'm still working through Trials of Mana, but my Switch is rapidly becoming my Covid quarantine jRPG wayback machine, and y'all seem to love this particular series, so I'm pretty temped.
At the very least you'll want to play III and IV together; these games are not perfect, but they do represent a very satisfying throwback idea of what JRPG can be, and the stories are grandiose anime drama.
And now that I think about, IV isn't even out on Switch right now, is it? But if it were, starting at IV would be bewildering, as it tries to tie together all the characters and plot threads of the entire 20 year Trails series, and things get messy as a result.
The final battle of of Cold Steel 4 wants you to make 3 teams of 8 people, and you have a pool of 39 characters to create these teams from.
i cannot imagine enjoying cold steel 3 as a starting place without the emotional investment / sunk cost fallacy that comes from having played up to 7 previous games in the series
(but also, i cannot imagine enjoying cold steel 3)
Thanks all. Maybe I'll try and check out some of the earlier games in other ports before diving into III on Switch. I'm not a big fan of playing older stuff in front of a PC, but I'm sure there's some way to get a primer on the series.
Thanks all. Maybe I'll try and check out some of the earlier games in other ports before diving into III on Switch. I'm not a big fan of playing older stuff in front of a PC, but I'm sure there's some way to get a primer on the series.
emotional investment / sunk cost fallacy that comes from having played up to 7 previous games in the series
.
FWIW, I only went through Trails in the Sky, and Trails of Cold Steel. There were (many) parts of CS3 that I plowed through due to simply wanting to see how 7 games worth of content all came to a head.
ToCS4 is really not a good drop in place, as its pretty much the ultimate cumulation to three different series: Trails in the Sky, Trails of Azure/Zero, and Trails of Cold Steel. The more you know about these series and the more investment you have in their casts, the bigger the impact of Trails of Cold Steel 4's story will have. It pulls characters and references situations and events drifting all the way back to Trails in the Sky.
At a minimum I would recommend starting at Cold Steel 3 as that will at least give you the background of the story and part of the core cast for Cold Steel 4, along with light introductions to the Cold Steel 1 & 2 cast. Cold Steel 3 was designed specifically to be a jumping on point as it marked the shift from the PS3 (which was the original release of CS1 & CS2) to the PS4 (which is CS3 and CS4). Personally, if you have the time I feel that its probably better to start at Cold Steel 1 since starting there will give you the background for the entire core cast of the Cold Steel series.
And if you really want the full experience, you need to start with Trails in the Sky. But going from Trails in the Sky through Cold Steel 4 is probably a 6 month+ long project all on its own, so...
IMO, Cold Steel 1 is the best of the 4 (well I'm only like halfway through 4). It doesn't play the best (4 plays the best), but it is the most tightly plotted and the most interesting.
I think games 2-4 suffer from bloat and anime bullshit in ways that 1 doesn't.
Tcheldor on
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I've cast Saintly Force more times in Cold Steel 4 than I have in the other three games combined. I've never had to use all the arts at my disposal before or really pay attention to elemental efficacy.
EDIT: Also Brave Orders are so broken in 3 that I'm really curious what bosses you've had trouble with and why. Rean's half-damage and instant cast orders by their selves let you build lots of momentum.
All but the first 1 or 2, I think. The most recent to give me trouble, and the reason I wrote the post, is
the first cryptid along the shore near Crossbell in Chapter 2.
I've used the half-damage Brave Order, but I don't see what's so good about the instant cast order when the spells I have aren't interesting. They're just damage, healing, and normal buffs and debuffs.
It feels like my damage output is lacking. I think I'm keeping up with gear. I must be missing something or just misunderstanding something about the battle system.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited November 2020
Spells don't become super interesting until you get the stuff that let's them crit and do more damage then they become pretty cheap.
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The plot didn't grab me, wasn't a fan of the new cast and the predictable loop for each chapter was meh. And the gameplay felt one step forward and two steps back.
I thought the gameplay was definitely better. Brave Orders were very potent and felt like a real reason to be working with BP. Overdrive felt more gimicky.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I like it, but I think it might be relying too much on the previous games. But I guess that is what happens when you have them all link together. Even CS3's opening theme song is a remix with lyrics of Tie a Link of ARCUS, basically the midboss battle theme of both CS1 and 2.
Yea. It starts that way for sure. It definitely feels like it's trying to relive CS1 in a lot of ways, which kinda makes sense, and now we have the teacher perspective. It works ok I think.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Yea. I hear a big marketing push was to say you could start here and be fine (which is not really true), and therefore the routine of the game was to make people feel a bit more comfortable with it.
I dunno.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Also the unintentional comedy of
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
It's also true to say that within its fiction and within the scope of Japanese fictional traditions, the exploration of spiritual rebirth and the highly repetitive iterative refinement of your narrative craft means that the nature of ToCS' transparent structural regurgitation is both thematic and normalized.
Do not remind me of the worst part of the game.
THEY HAD TO JUST GET ONE THING RIGHT AND THE ENTIRE GAME WAS GOOD.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I mentioned this because I took the time to read the epigraph on [redacted]'s grave:
I just can't.
More news that english-speakers shouldn't get excited about: Zero and Ao are getting Asia releases on Switch in 2021. There will be no English translation on these versions.
I'm choosing to take this as good news, as it gets over one barrier (hah), but until there is an announcement from NISA, I'm not getting my hopes up.
I wasn't able to find out who is actually handling the ports.
Cold Steel 1 and 2 are also getting Switch versions in Asia as well as Japan.
https://www.gematsu.com/2020/10/the-legend-of-heroes-zero-no-kiseki-and-ao-no-kiseki-coming-to-switch-on-february-18-2021-and-april-22-in-asia
Did he?
There's a lot of CS4 spoiler talk that could be related to this so I was just wanting what your take on this was specifically and what you think his aim was.
Not a spoiler, but just how it feels most of the heart events are
Rean pats person head.
Girl: "Oh my god, I think I love him."
His headpat should be censored due to lewedness and indecency!
In CS3? Yea he does, imo.
CS4 changes stuff, so I'm not as mad at this point, but I'm only in Act2.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
They added a stagger bar to each enemy. That's not the really bad part. If you played FF13, it's kind of similar. Do damage, including stagger damage, to empty the stagger bar on an enemy and put them in a staggered state where you deal extra damage and auto-crits. As long as the stagger bar is up, you do less damage. Enemies will miss turns when they're staggered, but will eventually snap out of it and their stagger bar refills.
The problem comes with bosses. No bosses will miss turns, and in fact, when their turn comes up and they're staggered, they refill their stagger bar, go into a rage for the rest of the fight, get more powerful, and do extra turns. And bosses have way more HP than you can possibly deplete in even 4 maxed S-Crafts. It means you can no longer bank a bunch of CP and totally or mostly wipe out a boss in a few turns. And as bosses are in a rage state, they do increasingly more damage as time goes on. And take even less damage than before, including when the stagger bar is full.
If you try to blast boss fights like before, boss fights become messy dragged out affairs until you die or squeak out a victory. Instead you need to play conservatively and scratch down the stagger bar and make sure you have CP to burn as soon as the boss is staggered. It's not complex, so it feels like churn for no good reason.
I also just don't like the stagger thing in general. It adds complexity where I don't want it. I liked it when combat in these games was simpler.
Maybe you guys will like it, but it's the first gameplay addition in this series that I haven't liked.
There's also a hidden spot on the boss' stagger bar where, even if they're not staggered, they'll rage out on their next turn and refill their stagger bar. THAT is the biggest fuckup if you ask me.
Their fix for the previous games' cheese method of crushing bosses via delay and s-crafts was to... force us to insta-kill bosses in order to avoid a long drawn out slug fest with bosses.
Instead of breaking bosses in order to delay their turn (delay as a mechanic is nerfed), the idea is to break bosses to increase damage taken, then dump CP to increase damage dealt and increase party action speed in order to accumulate more CP in order to continue with increased damage and action speed, then insta-kill with s-crafts just as the bosses hit their rage HP margin.
If I didn't succeed in achieving the virtuous cycle of CP generation, then combat took a very torturous turn.
But yeah they still haven't really managed to make boss fights compelling its still pretty much kill them before they unleash their big insta-wipe attack.
They don’t go into an enhanced state until their next turn after that and then the turn after that they will always use their s craft. Except for one who will use hers whenever with no warning.
They take more stagger damage in this enhanced state and it only lasts two or three turns.
They increased the amount of stagger damage they take in this mode so much that a good break setup with a character with an S damage break attack can almost knock them out of it in one hit.
I had a fight where the boss did the thing and was all “bwahaha now I’ve got you!” and Laura was like “Nope” and staggered them again in one hit.
I played The 3rd on Easy because I heard it was really difficult, and I'm glad I did. But I've played all the other games (haven't played Crossbell) on Normal. Oh well. Maybe I'll go back to Normal for CS4. It sounds like they balanced things a bit better there.
I've cast Saintly Force more times in Cold Steel 4 than I have in the other three games combined. I've never had to use all the arts at my disposal before or really pay attention to elemental efficacy.
EDIT: Also Brave Orders are so broken in 3 that I'm really curious what bosses you've had trouble with and why. Rean's half-damage and instant cast orders by their selves let you build lots of momentum.
They made it that you can't remove stat downs by using stat ups. You have to cleanse them with items/saintly force/heat up.
I've enjoyed the balance in 4 the most so far. 3 was kinda annoying but completely cheesable. 4 has required a bit more gearing up, but on Hard it's still been pretty trivial.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I'm still working through Trials of Mana, but my Switch is rapidly becoming my Covid quarantine jRPG wayback machine, and y'all seem to love this particular series, so I'm pretty temped.
At the very least you'll want to play III and IV together; these games are not perfect, but they do represent a very satisfying throwback idea of what JRPG can be, and the stories are grandiose anime drama.
And now that I think about, IV isn't even out on Switch right now, is it? But if it were, starting at IV would be bewildering, as it tries to tie together all the characters and plot threads of the entire 20 year Trails series, and things get messy as a result.
At a minimum I would recommend starting at Cold Steel 3 as that will at least give you the background of the story and part of the core cast for Cold Steel 4, along with light introductions to the Cold Steel 1 & 2 cast. Cold Steel 3 was designed specifically to be a jumping on point as it marked the shift from the PS3 (which was the original release of CS1 & CS2) to the PS4 (which is CS3 and CS4). Personally, if you have the time I feel that its probably better to start at Cold Steel 1 since starting there will give you the background for the entire core cast of the Cold Steel series.
And if you really want the full experience, you need to start with Trails in the Sky. But going from Trails in the Sky through Cold Steel 4 is probably a 6 month+ long project all on its own, so...
The final battle of of Cold Steel 4 wants you to make 3 teams of 8 people, and you have a pool of 39 characters to create these teams from.
(but also, i cannot imagine enjoying cold steel 3)
A primer won't get you the: .
FWIW, I only went through Trails in the Sky, and Trails of Cold Steel. There were (many) parts of CS3 that I plowed through due to simply wanting to see how 7 games worth of content all came to a head.
IMO, Cold Steel 1 is the best of the 4 (well I'm only like halfway through 4). It doesn't play the best (4 plays the best), but it is the most tightly plotted and the most interesting.
I think games 2-4 suffer from bloat and anime bullshit in ways that 1 doesn't.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
All but the first 1 or 2, I think. The most recent to give me trouble, and the reason I wrote the post, is
I've used the half-damage Brave Order, but I don't see what's so good about the instant cast order when the spells I have aren't interesting. They're just damage, healing, and normal buffs and debuffs.
It feels like my damage output is lacking. I think I'm keeping up with gear. I must be missing something or just misunderstanding something about the battle system.