BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
The Falcom music festival tonight at 10:00 PM Pacific Time mentioned in the article has been hyped by NISA's twitter so I wouldn't be surprised if the article is right and we'll get more concrete details today.
Mark your calendars! In collaboration with NGPX, Nihon Falcom will have a free virtual concert June 24 at 10PM PT to celebrate 40 years of games. Tune in for performances by Falcom jdk BAND, a message from president Toshihiro Kondo, and special announcements! #Falcom40th
Hope everyone's had a good morning so far! I also don't know what y'all were excited about yesterday with that retweet. I was just excited for some good music, dood :^)
The suspicion after the tweets was for maybe Hajimari's/Reverie's localization to be announced, but four localizations is better than anyone expected. Reverie in 2023 is modestly disappointing, but I'll take what I can get.
10:00 PM PDT (June 24)
1:00 AM EDT (June 25)
7:00 AM CEST (June 25)
In collaboration with NGPX, Nihon Falcom will have a free virtual concert June 24 at 10PM PT to celebrate 40 years of games. Tune in for performances by Falcom jdk BAND, a message from president Toshihiro Kondo, and special announcements!
They started with music from officially localized titles, swapping between headbangers and beautiful sung ballads... but now they started playing Crossbell jams.
Finished Zero yesterday. Overall I quite enjoyed my time with it. Compared to Cold Steel, it was nice to return to a more focused, compact experience with overall fewer plot lines and characters to keep track of. The story and characters were definitely the high point of this game, whereas I prefered the gameplay, combat and character progression in Cold Steel. In lots of aspects (not only technical), you can definitely see that this is a game from 2010, but sometimes it felt like a game from 2000 instead.
And now, back to the magical incest adventures of Estelle and Joshua in Sky 2.
I previously played Cold Steel 1-3 (and the Sky games before that), then stopped to play Zero and Azure before I start Cold Steel 4. I know it's not the ideal order. The timing just didn't work out to play it the "right" way.
I agree with the above. It was nice to play a more focused game instead of a big sprawling epic like the Cold Steel saga. I'm still a bit in disbelief that I was even able to play Zero in English.
Can't wait to see how things explode in Azure!
With Reverie taking until late 2023, I'm already making plans to replay the whole series. I'll see how I feel after finishing up Cold Steel 4!
I went through the OP and updated a bunch of the info there.
It feels good to acknowledge that every game up to Kuro, which hasn't even released yet in Japan, is announced or out in English.
We're not exactly caught up, but we're so much better off than when we were getting the games 10 years after release. Now it's only 2-3 years removed!
Only a little bit of sarcasm in that last sentence.
Renzo on
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
My waiting for a Skies of Arcadia sequel has prepared me for this. I'll just stare into the middle distance until next fall and then get 4 Kiseki games in a year.
I bought Trails from Zero, but my ADHD(ADD) has been playing havoc with me and I just don't have the focus right now for a JRPG. I hope my brain will start playing nice with me soon.
I hope this isn't too much of a thread resurrection.
Is anyone playing Trails from Zero? I made sure to buy a copy, but I've already played it. And I'm still playing through CS4.
Also I'm hearing that, if rumors continue to hold up, we might get Reverie in June or July 2023 rather than later in the year.
I picked it up and beat it already, yes. Waiting on Azure now. (I've only played the Liberl games previously) Estelle continues to be the best protagonist, even if she's not this game's protagonist.
I’m playing on Nightmare and just got to Ch.4 last night. Having played through Cold Steel, it’s fun seeing the origin of this or that character, like Sully.
Worst part of Nightmare is all the damn Escort/Protection fights. Totally ridiculous how easy it is to instantly lose because an enemy shoots a child.
BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
Zero is on deck for me. I played both Zero and Azure using the Geofront patch previously so I can wait a bit before buying the official releases a second time.
BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
Cold Steel 1 and 2 occur chronologically at roughly the same time as Zero/Azure. You'll hear/see events happening across the border in both series, but they don't directly affect you*. There is usually ~discourse~ about what's ok to play in what order. For my take, I think there's nothing wrong with doing Cold Steel 1 and 2 before Zero/Azure. I think you'll get a little more emotionally doing Cold Steel after Crossbell, but whatever. Cold Steel 3 and 4 are a harder swing if you're worried about spoilers for Zero/Azure because it brings in a lot of people from all previous games.
*There is one short chapter in CS2 involving Crossbell stuff.
As someone who has played nothing more then maybe 15 minutes of Zero after all of the Cold Steel series, I can tell you that knowing nothing about Zero/Azure did not affect my experience until the epilogue of Cold Steel 2. Meanwhile, Cold Steel 3 and especially Cold Steel 4 really made me annoyed that Zero/Azure had not been translated yet.
Oh, Cold Steel 3 & 4 also have Trails in the Sky stuff, so if you've not played those...
Cold Steel 1 and 2 occur chronologically at roughly the same time as Zero/Azure. You'll hear/see events happening across the border in both series, but they don't directly affect you*. There is usually ~discourse~ about what's ok to play in what order. For my take, I think there's nothing wrong with doing Cold Steel 1 and 2 before Zero/Azure. I think you'll get a little more emotionally doing Cold Steel after Crossbell, but whatever. Cold Steel 3 and 4 are a harder swing if you're worried about spoilers for Zero/Azure because it brings in a lot of people from all previous games.
*There is one short chapter in CS2 involving Crossbell stuff.
Yeah, that chapter at the end of CS2 made me stop playing the Cold Steel games until I could play the Crossbell games. Really didn't like having an entire epilogue thing based on games I hadn't played (and hadn't been released in English). Deffo would've preferred if they pushed that to the start of 3 so you could have a clean break at CS2 to go back to the Crossbell stuff.
That's what I've heard, yeah. Kind of a Trails in the Sky The 3rd situation again.
Yep. It’s like a big wrap party game for the story so far before moving on to Kuro in Calvard.
Pretty much everybody from Liberl, Crossbell, and Erebonia show up somehow.
Damn that sounds rad. Do we have any idea how long the Calvard arc will be? Cold Steel being 4 games did kind of feel like a lot.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
Toshiro Kondo, Falcom's president, has mentioned in interviews he expects the Calvard arc (Kuro no Kiseki) to be more than two games. Kuro 1 released last September and Kuro 2 came out last month. A little searching hints that some a recent interview has "confirmed" a third title, but I'd guess official announcement of a third game will not come until this December during Falcom's shareholders meeting.
Unless I understood wrong, the end credits of Kuro II confirms a third and final Kuro game.
Ok, 3 doesn't sound bad. I'm just thinking of how many I have to catch up on, lol. Zero and Azure, Cold Steel 3 and 4, Reverie, and now 3 Calvard games, lol. And the Zero/Azure games are around 40-50 hours each, Cold Steel 3/4 are like 65+ hours each, Reverie is 50-60 hours, and Calvard 1 is like 55+ hours and I assume the next two are gonna be a similar length each. Hot damn that's a lot of JRPG ahead of me. 425 hours for 8 games, so equivalent to 4 Persona games, lol.
Toshiro Kondo, Falcom's president, has mentioned in interviews he expects the Calvard arc (Kuro no Kiseki) to be more than two games. Kuro 1 released last September and Kuro 2 came out last month. A little searching hints that some a recent interview has "confirmed" a third title, but I'd guess official announcement of a third game will not come until this December during Falcom's shareholders meeting.
He or someone else also mentioned that the Calvard story arc marks the "halfway point" of the overall Zemurian storyline.
So just another 18 years and we might see the ending
Kondo states that the Trails series’ story is 70% complete. The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki II: Crimson Sin revealed that there is one more installment in the Calvard saga remaining. Afterward, there are either two or three remaining regions left to explore.
Kondo says that these areas are nowhere near as sizable as Erebonia and Calvard, so there’s a fairly likely chance they’ll receive fewer games.
There's a little more in the article, but it does briefly talk about Kuro stuff, and even though it supposedly doesn't spoil anything, I avoided it.
I'm pleasantly surprised the parts are separated so that it's easy to paint them without much masking. Maybe no masking at all. Just two metal colors, one light, one dark, then some gold details, and you're like 95% there.
Got to the Intermission after Ch. 2 in Azure. Really enjoying how having played through Cold Steel informs perception of characters/events.
I'm just past that, starting up Ch. 3. It's interesting to see the other side of things, and to see people with no name when you know their name and such.
Specifically in this case it's Towa showing up at the conference.
One thing that really helps the Crossbell games is the focus - while you have the outlying regions, 90% of the action is in Crossbell City proper, so they can really build up lots of NPCs in the same location, and being able to see running story threads in the background across the two games is great. Or maybe it's that it's a lot easier to notice them when it's all one city?
Conversely, I do get kinda sick running back in forth between the literal same places each sub-chapter to dig up narrative details, which I think can additionally obscure my ability to uncover hidden quests.
Whereas I could more intuitively gauge such things in Cold Steel based on "oh, it's odd to encounter THIS PERSON in THIS TOWN, I wonder what's up with that?"
Has there been any consensus on the new Calvard games? I know they're not out in English yet, but I have to assume that'll be soon-ish since the second one just came out in Japan.
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Has there been any consensus on the new Calvard games? I know they're not out in English yet, but I have to assume that'll be soon-ish since the second one just came out in Japan.
I bought and played through the korean? version on steam right now. I thought it was pretty good.
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The suspicion after the tweets was for maybe Hajimari's/Reverie's localization to be announced, but four localizations is better than anyone expected. Reverie in 2023 is modestly disappointing, but I'll take what I can get.
10:00 PM PDT (June 24)
1:00 AM EDT (June 25)
7:00 AM CEST (June 25)
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Fuck. Yes.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Edit: Reverie as well. But the late 2023 release date makes me sad.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Also gonna buy Trails in the Sky 2 on Steam today since it's on sale. Shame those games aren't on Switch though.
And now, back to the magical incest adventures of Estelle and Joshua in Sky 2.
I previously played Cold Steel 1-3 (and the Sky games before that), then stopped to play Zero and Azure before I start Cold Steel 4. I know it's not the ideal order. The timing just didn't work out to play it the "right" way.
I agree with the above. It was nice to play a more focused game instead of a big sprawling epic like the Cold Steel saga. I'm still a bit in disbelief that I was even able to play Zero in English.
Can't wait to see how things explode in Azure!
With Reverie taking until late 2023, I'm already making plans to replay the whole series. I'll see how I feel after finishing up Cold Steel 4!
It feels good to acknowledge that every game up to Kuro, which hasn't even released yet in Japan, is announced or out in English.
We're not exactly caught up, but we're so much better off than when we were getting the games 10 years after release. Now it's only 2-3 years removed!
Only a little bit of sarcasm in that last sentence.
Is anyone playing Trails from Zero? I made sure to buy a copy, but I've already played it. And I'm still playing through CS4.
Also I'm hearing that, if rumors continue to hold up, we might get Reverie in June or July 2023 rather than later in the year.
I picked it up and beat it already, yes. Waiting on Azure now. (I've only played the Liberl games previously) Estelle continues to be the best protagonist, even if she's not this game's protagonist.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Worst part of Nightmare is all the damn Escort/Protection fights. Totally ridiculous how easy it is to instantly lose because an enemy shoots a child.
That's what I've heard, yeah. Kind of a Trails in the Sky The 3rd situation again.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
*There is one short chapter in CS2 involving Crossbell stuff.
Oh, Cold Steel 3 & 4 also have Trails in the Sky stuff, so if you've not played those...
Yeah, that chapter at the end of CS2 made me stop playing the Cold Steel games until I could play the Crossbell games. Really didn't like having an entire epilogue thing based on games I hadn't played (and hadn't been released in English). Deffo would've preferred if they pushed that to the start of 3 so you could have a clean break at CS2 to go back to the Crossbell stuff.
Yep. It’s like a big wrap party game for the story so far before moving on to Kuro in Calvard.
Pretty much everybody from Liberl, Crossbell, and Erebonia show up somehow.
Damn that sounds rad. Do we have any idea how long the Calvard arc will be? Cold Steel being 4 games did kind of feel like a lot.
Ok, 3 doesn't sound bad. I'm just thinking of how many I have to catch up on, lol. Zero and Azure, Cold Steel 3 and 4, Reverie, and now 3 Calvard games, lol. And the Zero/Azure games are around 40-50 hours each, Cold Steel 3/4 are like 65+ hours each, Reverie is 50-60 hours, and Calvard 1 is like 55+ hours and I assume the next two are gonna be a similar length each. Hot damn that's a lot of JRPG ahead of me. 425 hours for 8 games, so equivalent to 4 Persona games, lol.
He or someone else also mentioned that the Calvard story arc marks the "halfway point" of the overall Zemurian storyline.
So just another 18 years and we might see the ending
There's a little more in the article, but it does briefly talk about Kuro stuff, and even though it supposedly doesn't spoil anything, I avoided it.
Likely spoilers in the trailer. The website link has preorder listings.
Switch, PS4, PS5, Limited Edition, and LE with Plushies for an extra $90 (!)
I'm pleasantly surprised the parts are separated so that it's easy to paint them without much masking. Maybe no masking at all. Just two metal colors, one light, one dark, then some gold details, and you're like 95% there.
I'm just past that, starting up Ch. 3. It's interesting to see the other side of things, and to see people with no name when you know their name and such.
One thing that really helps the Crossbell games is the focus - while you have the outlying regions, 90% of the action is in Crossbell City proper, so they can really build up lots of NPCs in the same location, and being able to see running story threads in the background across the two games is great. Or maybe it's that it's a lot easier to notice them when it's all one city?
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Whereas I could more intuitively gauge such things in Cold Steel based on "oh, it's odd to encounter THIS PERSON in THIS TOWN, I wonder what's up with that?"
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I bought and played through the korean? version on steam right now. I thought it was pretty good.