Trails in the Sky FC is Dragon Quest VII but without the fun class system (i’m not particularly fond of Trails so this is a spicy statement, sorry)
I was being a little facetious with statement haha. Without the setup and investment you get from FC, SC loses, imo, most of its impact. I loved the more relaxed pace in FC, the smaller scope of events and the things that happen along the way.
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I am quite enjoying the slow pace so far, it’s an interesting game. I did almost give up very early on though because I misread a sign and thought I was meant to go right when I was actually meant to go left. :') getting my ass kicked by every encounter and couldn’t figure out why. help
Trails is interesting to me because I love an overly ambitious life’s work. The idea that this dude has been telling this one story for decades and there are still decades left to go is really compelling to me.
That said, I booted up Cold Steel on my Vita once and it instantly dropped me into combat where I had to control several party members each with several skills and I just force-quit straightaway. It was probably the harshest first moments I’ve ever experienced in a game.
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I have not played a Trails game but I always remember how my friend who does play Trails made this shitpost one time
Transcription
Literally every scene in a Trails of Cold Steel game:
Rean: (panting) T-This monster is too powerful! We can’t beat it!
(cue the monster getting struck down from behind)
Rean: …! Such overwhelming power! Who in the world?!
Guy with a sword that is also a weed whacker: Bwahaha! This monster is nothing to my trusty blade Scorpiontail!
Rean: By the Goddess! That’s him! It’s the Scarlet Spear, Alphonse Leonhardt, 37th Blade of the Golden Aegis! One of the only S-rank bracers on the continent and the youngest to ever master the Arseid school of swordsmanship!
Alphonse Leonhardt, 37th Blade of the Golden Aegis: The very same! And you must be this Class VII I have heard so much about from the Razor Typhoon himself. That means you are the one and only Ashen Chevalier!
Rean: What business do you have here?
Alphonse Leonhardt, 37th Blade of the Golden Aegis: I have my reasons for being here. They are related to a certain incident that occurred in my hometown 27 years ago. Perhaps I’ll share them with you, if you can beat me, that is!
(20 minutes of boss fight in which the party completely kicks Alphonse Leonhardt’s ass later)
Alphonse Leonhardt, 37th Blade of the Golden Aegis: Heh… not bad, kids. But I can tell you’re holding back, Ashen Chevalier! That will be the last mistake you ever make!
(Alphonse charges up a big attack, but gets shot at from off-screen)
Alphonse Leonhardt, 37th Blade of the Golden Aegis: Gah! Who goes there!
Some guy you last saw in chapter 3 of the game before the game before this one: Not so fast, Scarlet Spear! These people are under my protection!
Alphonse Leonhardt, 37th Blade of the Golden Aegis: Oh my, if it isn’t the Frozen Thunderstorm! Well, I’d love to stay and play, but I have better things to do. Toodles! (teleports away)
Some guy you last saw in chapter 3 of the game before the game before this one: That wretch… I’m sure we’ll see him again! (teleports away)
Rean: Phew, that was close… But with so many powerful people in the world, I need to get stronger…
(transition to a dumb fanservice hot springs scene)
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jesus fucking christ this would be funny if it wasn’t literally a description of the entire series post-Sky. that’s literally it. you don’t even need to play it your friend just told you the entire game
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It absolutely is, there’s multiple reasons I gave up on the series entirely after Cold Steel 2.
That game’s last dungeon has 3 back to back fake out bossfights where you “defeat” them, they tell you they were holding back and you’re saved by an NPC. Absurd.
Rean is also much worse of a protagonist than Estelle (its like if Joshua was the protag, I guess?)
I also started Lufia 2 and it’s wild how instantly I clicked with it versus the first one that I instantly bounced off of
Also trying to put some time into Alliance Alive again and I always forget how long some games take to really get cookin’. I’m actually only about two-ish hours in, but it felt much longer for some reason. We movin’ now, though.
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12 posts were split to a new topic: The Xenoblade Topic
Trails of the Sky crashed for like the third or fourth time, but this time I lost an hour of progress. gave up and started playing Dredge instead. sorry to any Trails fans out there I can only take so much :'|
Yikes i assume that’s a PC thing??
Also I’m about to finish MSQ of Nioh 2 again. Normally I’d take a break but I’ve come to realize that if I do this I get rusty and can’t do the DLC. Gonna power through so I stay sharp and start build crafting for real so I can take on the fucking demon that hardstopped me last time, The Lightning God of Yomi.
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I was doing super not okay for the past couple days so I played A LOT of Old School Runescape lmao
Got like 90-100 levels, did my first slayer task in the wilderness, unlocked fairy rings, did like seven quests, unlocked high alchemy, etc. My next goal is to get goldsmithing gloves and convert the 2k+ gold ore I got from motherlode mine into bars.
My first and only character is a group ironman with a couple friends, so I can’t trade with players others than them. This was a conscious choice, because player economies are my least favourite part of any multiplayer experience (it’s the same with Path of Exile or Guild Wars 2). It’s just, any time they exist, the “best” method to achieve anything is to play the market for 200 hours and then just have everything forever; and barring that, the best solution to most problem is “find a decent money-making strategy and buy your way past the problem”.
But with group ironman we just have our shared group stash where we communism all the important and useful things we get. I even made spares of all items needed for a quest (In Search of the Myreque) for my friends one time. I can be useful to veterans even as a relative nooblet lmao.
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I also played some Group Ironman earlier this year! first time I’ve ever enjoyed Runescape, tbh (I’ve tried to play it a few times before). I had a list which told me the optimal order to do quests to avoid grinding as much as possible and was just following it day by day. it was a lot of fun!
eta:
I have no idea! I just don’t have the energy or desire to figure out what’s causing it honestly. :S
I’m kind of doing the exact opposite–avoiding knowing anything correct to do and kind of just do things in front of me. At one point I did a quest and my friends went “but… why would you do that one” and I said “well I was walking past the guy and I fulfilled the requirements, so” and one of them said she admired that way of thinking lmao
but I do totally understand–I also spent like a full work week (with a multi-month break in the middle) in the motherlode mine just mining, and that kinda stuff is not for everyone :')
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yeah that is of course a totally valid way to do things too, grinding just kills my brain so I appreciated the guide basically letting me experience as many of the quests as possible without getting bored LOL
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I have hip pain and cant sit at my desk like usual, so im thinking of getting back into my ps3 backlog or playing Nioh on my PC through the TV.
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man, it is easy to forget how like… needlessly punishing so many of the games you grew up with were. we finished watching SIGN and I successfully suckered Robin into .hack, so we started playing the first of the PS2 games, Infection. now listen .hack//Infection is not a good game by any metric. it’s an interesting game, for sure, but it’s also totally unashamed of just handing your ass to you and making you lose half an hour of progress for absolutely no reason. instead of becoming assmad about it I’m trying the approach of ‘turning the game off’ when this happens, which means that a. we’re only playing it in very short bursts but b. I don’t completely hate it and me and everything yet, so a tentative success?
anyway .hack is so neat. deconstructing tropes that didn’t even exist yet. love that.
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I love how you just have people in the city bendorimg their old shit or whatever. If you’ve got extra cash you may stumble into a significant upgrade.
It’s been ages since I played Infection though, and I didn’t like the… One that got remastered a few years ago.
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I was able to play infection in college and it was a great game. I wanted to play the rest of the series, but I didn’t know about softmodding then and the .hack prices were crazy.
I personally enjoyed the hell out of infection. Its age showed (i played it in like 2014-15), but it’s gameplay loop of game / real world was engrossing. Also the action combat grew on me also.
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I love Infection, it requires a lot of patience with equipment upgrading, virus core draining RNG, clunky menuing in battles and lots of health sponge encounters, but there’s just something so special about the vibes. The aesthetic, the character designs, the graphics, the early 2000s anime dub voice acting. The delightfully weird designs, like that spinning floating fortress shaped like a cross that’ll sometimes show up in clear sky field maps, which is a bonus dungeon. The slight horror feeling of “something is really wrong I’m not supposed to be here” as environment textures get muddier and glitchier. Mistral!!! The multitasking gamer mom who puts smileys in every one of her messages and keeps abruptly going afk because she realized she left dinner going on the stove.
I never played past Mutation back in the day, even with a modded PS2, the virus core grind just got too much. I did an Infection replay myself near the end of last year, and I would’ve kept going with the other games if I could’ve figured out how to get action replay codes working in pcsx2 to just give myself 9999 virus cores and not have to bother with that. When I got to the end of Infection and saw the Cubia cutscene I was completely slammed with nostalgia of how hype I thought that cutscene was when I was a teen.
I’ve mainly played EverQuest-influenced MMORPGs in my time, so I don’t think .hack captures the design and game feel of MMORPGs that accurately, but it absolutely nails the feeling of wonder and “I found something weird in this video game” message board threads of the early 2000s, which is really special.
I don’t dislike the .hack//G.U. games, but they’re definitely more standard JRPGs. They play better, but have none of the sense of mystery and vibes that IMOQ have.
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