When does it get good?

When does it get good?

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In terms of shit going down?

Chapter four, or the second game.

In terms of worldbuilding and gameplay? Immediately.

>jrpg
>good
never

Is this a Jojo reference?

It doesn't.

>gameplay
>immediately
jesus christ...

The gameplay is bland, safe, and slow as balls. Even for a jrpg.

Not in the first 5 hours that's for sure. So disappointed when my refund for this didn't go through.

ITT attention deficit disorder

Yeah totally dude, if you can't play a game for over 5 hours of boring gameplay and story to get to the "good stuff" you must have ADD.

It's good from the first minute. Don't blame the game for your ADHD.

Im glad you didnt get refunded

It's always been really good, it's just a really laid back JRPG.

ironically the best part of the game is the first 40 hours where everything's slow relaxed and comfy. the ending and the sequel derail into fast-paced typical JRPG nonsense and stops feeling like two siblings bumbling around and adventuring in the country side.

These

If you're not already enjoying it, you probably don't have the patience for the genre and shouldn't play JRPGs at all
That or you went in with false expectations, because this is a series notorious for having really slow buildup to exciting major events

They DO happen, but the games expect you to spend tens of hours getting to know the cast and world first
The idea behind that likely being that you feel the impact so much more when you're attached to the setting
That's the main thing Trails is known for doing

Also Calvard when?

OP, Trails in the Sky is not for faggots with ADHD. If you can't enjoy a charming, well-written, story-driven JRPG, then the game is not for you.

As much as I loved SC, everything you said is correct.

The Ruan chapter of FC is the pinnacle of video game comfy

>comfy
there it is, the codeword for "the game is actually a snoozefest"

>If you're not already enjoying it, you probably don't have the patience for the genre and shouldn't play JRPGs at all

Or maybe it's just not a very good JRPG. I've finished over a dozen JRPGs over the years but got bored of this one after a few hours.

I played it roughly for 9 hours and decided I didn't like it so I stopped playing. Half a year later I picked it back up and loved it for some reason. No idea what made me start enjoying it, but by the end I could not get enough.

Mild ending spoilers: That snap of the fingers that cut off the music at the end.

>Also Calvard when?
I'm still hoping after the 3rd releases. Xseed is not exactly a company with enough resources to localize all these games at once.

I liked it from the start. Reminds me a lot of Grandia. Shame the combat isn't quite as good.

Trails is one of my favorite games, but ruan in FC is the worst.

The whole game is the "good stuff". If you think talking to npcs, learning about their lives, and strategizing in battle is "Boring" then perhaps JRPGs are not for you. Perhaps you'd have more fun with Call of Duty?

Do you hate qt Princesses, trap Joshua, and making orphans happy too?

I need a recap of everything that happens in FC, before I jump into SC.
I don't remember shit.

the first sky and the first cold steel game in general really are better than the sequels

people praise the sequels for being crazy and ACTION but they miss the laid back, off-focus, SoL-esque storytelling that made the first two games so memorable

>walking into Ruan in FC for the first time
youtube.com/watch?v=fr1uU9iKRZk

>walking into Nord highlands in Cold Steel for the first time
youtube.com/watch?v=9QS2gI5W2Xw

trails is for JRPG fans who take in everything JRPGs have to offer

I don't think its going to get good.

So far has been extremely slow paced with uninteresting events and easy combat.

If you don't like the MC, you won't like this game.

>talking to NPCs is the best part about JRPGs

I hate estelle's characterization in the anime. She's not an incompetent bimbo. Sure, she's a greenhorn in the beginning, but she rapidly grows into an A-rank bracer. In the anime she's just comic relief while the Men do all the work. Dumb inaccurate shit.

>he avoids talking to NPCs and just rushes to the next story event when playing through JRPGs
You're missing the point of the entire genre

>reading is hard

>its autistic to play the game

>I hate estelle's characterization in the anime. She's not an incompetent bimbo
This.

She's cute in the anime, but still way too incompetent. I hate how she has to be saved over and over again by Joshua.

Estelle was a smart and competent bracer by the time SC even started, and that development didn't come at the cost of her charming and funny personality. They didn't have to ruin her for the anime.

If you have to ask that, you don't have the right mindset for it. It's just a chill game where you can have fun doing Bracer stuff while the plot is dangled in front of your face. And then get sucked into it when shit really starts going down in chapter 4 and 5. FC and SC was originally intended to be one game, so FC is really just an extended opening. I think it's very rewarding, chapter 5 is great, there's some stuff I didn't see coming, and SC is even more exciting. I could understand if you can't stick with it that long though.

Mostly unrelated, but some of the feels in this game, man.

youtube.com/watch?v=s3K-jn42Xsc&index=23&list=PLzFTGYa_evXgy_taoUv9a_8VD2yR6WihK

youtube.com/watch?v=eCwgaK7dRz8&list=PLzFTGYa_evXgy_taoUv9a_8VD2yR6WihK&index=20

I would have said Legram instead of Nord, but otherwise I agree.

CS1 > FC > SC > The good parts of CS2 >>>> The bad parts of CS2.

CS2 was so all over the place. Its so simultaneously great and so fucking disappointing.

I think we all can agree that it is a good game with shit gameplay.

I just finished nord highlands in cold steel II, 25 hours in cold steel 2 and on one hand I feel that CS II's plot is entertaining and crazy so far, but i also miss the less urgent, almost episodice-esque story telling of the first game

I wouldn't call it shit, but it's nothing special. It's one of the very few series I'm playing more for the characters story and music than for the gameplay.

Trails music is great in general.
>tfw this track
youtube.com/watch?v=Iz5IXNG850c

Haven't played Cold Steel yet, I need to play through The 3rd, and then I'll probably play through the Crossbell games since everyone hypes them up and because people say it's nicer to play the series in release order if you can.

one of the few times I sat the game down for 20 minutes just to listen to the music desu.

The combat itself sucks balls in terms of everything
Trying out different Quartz combinations is fun but that's about it, actual battles are too fucking slow, effects generally look ugly (with the exception of some Crafts), and there is literally no balance, especially in FC. SC fixes the balance issues a bit so White Gehenna no longer wins every battle forever but it's still not balanced properly

This is coming from someone who loved both FC and SC, by the way, just not for the piss poor combat system

Ruan was my favourite chapter from FC.

I've heard people say that playing The 3rd, then Cold Steel, and then Crossbell in that order makes the Crossbell games more enjoyable, since Cold Steel and Crossbell effectively take place in the same timespan just in different locations.

Trails games are generally start pretty low key and stay that way for a while, and I personally found that pretty refreshing.

CSII starts strong, and ends strong, but the middle 30-50 hours are all over the place.

At its worst its generic battle shounen trash.
Adnt he only real plot line that gets resolved is about Crow, and its terrible. The only good thing to come from it was the fujo Emma is friends with making jokes about writing fanfic about Rean x Crow.

...

The meat of Trails is the NPC dialogue. Enjoying the game means talking the same NPCs several times along the story. You can argue the setting is nothing out of the ordinary, it's all very cliche. But you really feel attached to it and its people.

I also enjoy more down to earth stories about people warring with each other over larger than life, melodramatic, god-battling, power-levelling schlock. I think I really liked FC more than SC.

Hey, what's the title of that song that plays, I believe, at the end of SC and on Estelle's dream with her mom? That one really managed to hit me.

I get the feeling CSII is just going to devolve into the same thing SC devolved into for a good fourth of the game and just turn into running around fighting ouroboros.

Threads like these make me worry for the future
When EOPs finally get their hands on Zero, there's going to be a ton of backlash

Not because it's not good, but because the prologue and first chapter are ridiculously slow even for Trails standards
I guess the best to hope for is that the ADDfags don't even bother with it so they don't shit up threads by complaining about how they quit in the first hour, but that's reaching

I mean, there is that one mafia scene that assures you it's going to be hype, but holy fuck the Geofront is a boring place to be
Except for the forced not!Puyo match in Ao

There are a few minor parts of Cold Steel that don't make sense without the Crossbell context, though
It's not major enough to harm enjoyment or anything but it's cool to go "oh, I know what's happening here"
Plus without Crossbell you probably wouldn't realize the pre-prologue part in CS1 serves an actual in-universe purpose
just minor stuff like that

Can't remember the name of that one unfortunately, but yeah, it was also a good one.

TC WHEN

>SoL-esque storytelling that made the first two games so memorable
Holy shit, no. That wasn't even close to the best part of FC and it was one of the worst things about Cold Steel 1. What made FC great is how the events of each chapter connected and led to its finale. Laid-back SoL gameplay can be done well but while it is part of the charm in FC, it's really not what makes it memorable. It might set it apart from its contemporaries from the get-go, sure, but it's not even close to the best or most memorable thing about the game.

As for Cold Steel 1 I completely disagree. While FC's laid-back and cozy atmosphere works well, Cold Steel doesn't do exploration or small-scale storytelling well at all. Not to mention the writing is absolutely obnoxious at times. Machias' feud with Jusis, for example, makes sense and is completely sound, in concept. In execution it's a total fucking joke as Machias does nothing but scream REEEEE NOBLES every time Jusis walks on-screen.

Not done yet with CS1 but aside from the Nord Highlands the game has been very much lacking. Really hope CS2 is at least a little more interesting than Generic LN Protagonist's Erebonian Adventures.

For whats its worth, it was the chapter after the Nord one that got me hooked.

Also I never found the dialog cringey or obnoxious in CS1 that often.
Is was CS2 that had me rolling my eyes every 30 minutes though

>Threads like these make me worry for the future

People who don't like slow beginning have been around forever. Annoying as it is, it's nothing at all new.

About 30 hours in

I think I was really hooked some 4 hours in. Too bad SC is shit and I still haven't finished it

when you trick yourself into thinking JRPGS are fun or well written

the worst part of FC was its finale, what made FC so great for 80% of the game is that for the most part it was about two siblings just adventuring and doing tasks around the country side and their interactions with the interesting characters

FC completely lost me when the plot started picking up and going off the rails towards the end, the most memorable parts of FC literally were mundane tasks like going to the farm near rolent to deal with the pests, the goofy high-school shenanigans in ruan, getting fucked by cave penguins andtesting random gadgets and relaxing at the springs in zeiss. the worldbuilding and side missions are what made the trails games so great.

>Too bad SC is shit and I still haven't finished it

Don't know how you could like FC but not SC.

>I tried to play on Nightmare and got stuck on the prologue: the post

I liked FC's laid back pace and story about Joshua and Estelle having adventures, but I really got sucked in when the plot actually showed up.

It was alright until I got to the final two or three chapters, somewhere around the part where you sneak into the Ouroboros lab by boat. I just want my bracer shenanigans

>TC
No such game exists.

Really? The Lakeside Lab?
But user, that's arguably the hypest part of SC

That said you should probably skip 3rd then, because it's all stuff like that
Literally the opposite of Bracer shenanigans

>hypest part of SC
that's the entire problem of the trails sequels
SC has a completely different tone than FC
Ao has a completely different tone than Zero
CSI has a completely different tone than CSII

the hypest parts of FC and SC combined are way less enjoyable or memorable than the laid back, mundane and relaxed parts of FC

Except it didn't go off the rails. My point is that the way the siblings' travels led into the finale was very well-done. While I enjoyed everything you mentioned it would've felt lacking without something tying the story together.
Sure, I'd like a game that's actually just episodic travels across a region, but FC is not that and it doesn't even set itself up like that. It's clear from the start that while it's going to be a slow burner, there will be a large overarching plot.

CS2 romance event pissed me off

Why does he only kiss Alisa? I wanted to tongue fuck Fie's mouth since CS1 but all she gets is a hug

and the slow-burning was more enjoyable than the end result where the first game suddenly tosses you into a fucking ancient underground ruin where you fight an ancient robot and suddenly you have mystical secret societies and towers with other dimensions and flying cities
it's a complete change of tone from most of the build-up

>localize
You can't localize what doesn't exist.
There are no Republic of Calvard games, and there won't be until at least years after Sen III.
You're thinking of Crossbell.

If this is truly the best timeline, then the translator has moved on from the 100% translated Trails the 3rd to an official Falcom PC port of Zero. But what are the odds of that?

thanks for the spoilers asshole

If you don't like it in the first chapter you're not gonna, period. Move on.

He also tells her he loves her

youtube.com/watch?v=FltXoN9CNl8

>That part at the end of CS1 where the teachers and Sharon shit stomp the army

Please tell me that CS2 is fun.

I do like those things, just not in this game since the writing is so poor.

>the hypest parts of FC and SC combined are way less enjoyable or memorable than the laid back, mundane and relaxed parts of FC
That's some fucking bullshit and you know it, user. I can appreciate a comfy game but fuck if you aren't reaching here. It's been about a year since I played SC and FC back to back but off the top of my head, you're saying that the relaxed, SoL-type parts of FC are better than

>the finale of either game
>the beach scene in SC
>Estelle on Ouroboros' airship

Sharon is a party member so yeah

I found the beginning good then got quickly bored once I maxed the battle system.
Too much story, not enough combat systems.

I'll give you the ancient robot being completely out of the blue but by the time everything else is revealed the tone has shifted gradually enough for it to not be an actual fucking surprise unless you're literally retarded.

I agree with most of this, but
>the hypest parts of FC and SC combined are way less enjoyable or memorable than the laid back, mundane and relaxed parts of FC
This not so much

Don't get me wrong, the chillness of this series is a high point for sure
And I definitely remember how comfy it was to be in Crossbell, just in general
As far as JRPG cities go I'd compare it to Radiata and the like, which is saying something

But parts like, say, Estelle breaking out of the Glorious in chapter 6 of SC or the entire Auction + escape sequence in chapter 3 of Zero make me pop a boner just remembering them
So I wouldn't say that the comfy parts are MORE memorable, but they're good
Oh right, the school hostage quest near the end of SC, that one can come too

>that's some fucking bullshit and you know it, user
no it isn't

the tone shift from FC to SC was so fucking dramatic you have to be retarded to think otherwise

the coup d'etat was at the end of FC was completely fine believable with everything the game's given with you, but suddenly you're just tossed into ancient ruins, with ancient robots, and 30 minutes later you find out joshua was unknowingly a spy for an evil organization that never had any mention up until that point and then suddenly the entire next game just carries on with the same tone that the last 2-3 hours of the first game.

>what's the title of that song that plays, I believe, at the end of SC
It's The Dream Continues.
youtube.com/watch?v=YHCLsd0wsMU
Try not to cry.

Except all of that is foreshadowed significantly enough for most people not to feel thrown off by a "sudden" shift in tone.

>you probably don't have the patience for the genre and shouldn't play JRPGs at all
I enjoy the DQ games, Lunar games, Grandia, SMT, older Final Fantasy and a bunch of other JRPGs.

Trails in the Sky is just really, really slow with its gameplay and nothing of really much importance happens until pretty much the very end of the first. I liked the second well enough for its story and world stuff, but the first is one of the slowest and most boring JRPGs I've ever played, and I wouldn't say it's a good representation of the genre as a whole.

None of those are particularly slow user

>FC is one of the slowest and most boring JRPGs I've ever played
I thought you said you'd played DQ, Lunar, and FF?

i did everything FC had to offer and the entire last 3 hours of the game isn't foreshadowed at all, it's sudden and in your face

i was completely fine with richard being the villain, i was completely fine with the coup d'etat, all of that was built up quite well for most of the game's plot

but everything during the last 3-5 hours of the game just went downhill

>b-but they foreshadowed the ending
no they didn't, nothing really implied that alba was bad and there was no mention of ouroboros to begin with. they didn't even foreshadow joshua's past, they literally just drop it on you in the last 30 minutes of the game.

I did. Generic battles in FC and SC take forever even compared to other series, and the first game pretty much has nothing happen in it.

It basically feels like you make very little progress at all in the grand scheme of the game, and I get that's suppose to make the build up to the second better, but it really didn't do anything for me. The entirety of the first felt like you were just fucking about for 35 hours and the coup happened. Not that it wasn't building up throughout the game, but the buildup was so slow I just didn't really give a fuck by the time it did happen.

It's unique and ambitious for sure

Falcom had made a bunch of JRPGs before, and they wanted to try something new in a massive, consistent setting
I'd argue it does a really good job at that, and wouldn't even put it in the same category as the entry-level titles you mentioned

Not to say it isn't slow, because it is, but definitely not "boring"
It's also nice that most of the major events/conflicts in the series are self-contained, making it a departure from the JRPG standard of "you play as world-saving heroes who travel the entire globe"

Ironic that it belongs to a series with "Heroes" in the title in that sense, but then again, so did Legend of Galactic Heroes

>they didn't even foreshadow joshua's past

You suggest replaying FC if you missed THAT, of all things.

>ask when does it get good
>people spoil the shit out of me

>nothing really implied that alba was bad
This is correct.

>no mention of Ouroboros
It's very clear during the coup that someone else is behind Richard's actions and the entire events of the game. That Ouroboros wasn't specifically mentioned is actually a point for internal consistency because no one who was even aware of said secret society's existence would have any reason to mention them to Estelle and Joshua.

>they didn't even foreshadow joshua's past
The first fucking scene in the game has Cassius taking him in and there are multiple instances throughout the game that do, in fact, suggest he had a dark past. Again nothing is mentioned specifically because that's not how foreshadowing fucking works.

I will give you that the cliffhanger ending sort of comes out of nowhere.

I'd like to see what you consider "good writing" then.

After you leave the first town.

Despite FC having very basic combat system and very limited content. I think it's clearly better than SC. It's just a traditional JRPG done cleanly. The issue of having a consistent world is when you expand on it excessively everything becomes a clusterfuck. As is shown by the fact that every subsequent game after SC gets objectively worse and worse.

>objectively
If you want to be taken seriously stop using words you don't understand.

>The first fucking scene in the game has Cassius taking him in and there are multiple instances throughout the game that do, in fact, suggest he had a dark past. Again nothing is mentioned specifically because that's not how foreshadowing fucking works.
you know that he just had a rocky past, but there was literally zero context about what Joshua actually did, they just info-dump his past on you in the last 30 minutes
properly foreshadowing it would have been giving slight bits of context as to who joshua really is throughout the story rather than reminding you he had a dark past and leaving it at that, the sudden plot twist that came out of no where at the end would have been way better if they actually foreshadowed it by showing joshua obliviously giving info to ouroboros or the jaegers instead of telling you in the epilogue that "lul joshua was a spy".

You seriously need to replay FC, man.

I'm pretty sure there're a few bits of dialogue showing that Joshua feels no remorse killing things, which is meant to set off alarms

And doesn't Cassius flat-out mention he was almost killed?

>properly foreshadowing it would have been giving slight bits of context as to who joshua really is

Estelle: well we found the monster causing the farmers trouble, what should we do with them?
Joshua: better kill them

to be fair none of the other characters react to killing things either