• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Kiseki / Trails (of the Sky/Zero/Ao/Sen/Etc) Community Thread: SPOILERTAGS OR DIE

jb1234

Member
Okay, will do. What were your issues, if you don't mind saying?

It was mostly just a matter of misplaced expectations. The game's ending was more interested in bringing Estelle and Joshua's story to a close, whereas I wanted to see moments for everyone else, like FC's very leisurely and satisfying ending. The 3rd remedies some of this by including several flashbacks which take place in between the start of that game and the end of SC.
 

Thud

Member
It was mostly just a matter of misplaced expectations. The game's ending was more interested in bringing Estelle and Joshua's story to a close, whereas I wanted to see moments for everyone else, like FC's very leisurely and satisfying ending. The 3rd remedies some of this by including several flashbacks which take place in between the start of that game and the end of SC.

Everyone still gets their moments. Some larger ones than others.

I take every nugget I get from certain characters. I'm quite pleased with how they handled Richard so far. (3rd)
Seeing how they ended in 3rd, wouldn't surprise me to see Zin and Richard back in the Calvard.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Jesus christ, 3rd is obscenely good.

Every time I clear a chapter, I have to brace myself for the impending feels bomb. Kevin and Ries are just too goddamn compelling as characters. Hell, everyone's compelling... each character somehow manages to stand out in such a huge cast.

Oh and 3rd straight up has the best difficulty curve in the series. Bosses are pretty challenging too!
 

Nyoro SF

Member
Jesus christ, 3rd is obscenely good.

Every time I clear a chapter, I have to brace myself for the impending feels bomb. Kevin and Ries are just too goddamn compelling as characters. Hell, everyone's compelling... each character somehow manages to stand out in such a huge cast.

Oh and 3rd straight up has the best difficulty curve in the series. Bosses are pretty challenging too!

Do you want Sen the 4th as badly as I do now? :p
 

jb1234

Member
Just beat 3rd.
Richard is such a beast, good LORD. I'm convinced he could beat the final boss by himself.

The ending took me down, tears everywhere. Beautifully written all around.
 

Jiraiza

Member
Just beat 3rd.
Richard is such a beast, good LORD. I'm convinced he could beat the final boss by himself.

The ending took me down, tears everywhere. Beautifully written all around.
Kevin and Ries holding the bow gun together was fabulous. Loved it.

Zero, Chapter 3 End:
Can't say I'm a big fan of the "only MC can hear/see the voice/flashback of whatever special thing" they have going on with these games. Only Lloyd can hear KeA's voice and only Rean can see those flashbacks at the ruins, etc. What exactly makes the MC so special that the others don't experience the same thing? Needless fellating of the MC, I feel. Interestingly enough, Lloyd taking up Guy's name reminded me of Joshua taking up his sister's name as a fake name. Their formal outfits were fun to see, though I gotta say, Elie is on another level of attractiveness (Alisa could learn a thing or two from her).

It was nice to see Kilika help out the gang in their escape, you can always count on her. Her giving advice to Lloyd and company was also a nice callback to her position back as a Bracer receptionist. Still honestly have no idea what the deal with her is now, what with this whole Rocksmith organization and the discussion with Lechter, but I suppose we'll see soon. As for Lechter, i really want to take this guy off his high horse one day, seriously.

The coolest part of the entire auction arc, however, was definitely hands-down the Randolf reveal; Randy's past as a badass mercenary was cool as hell. I was super hype to see him get serious... only for him to get blueballed again--this is the second time now--by Zeit. I guess it's not time for him to get serious yet. But soon!

That said, KeA is just a huge lump of cuteness. Goodness gracious, I want to take her home! On top of that, she's voiced by Rie Kugimiya, one of my favorite VAs! God she's adorable.
I'm a little put off that she's attached to Lloyd the most for whatever reason (MC privilege), but I guess we'll see.

Regarding the bonding system, playing Zero further reinforces my opinion that it is terrible and only serves to limit the writing more than it helps. Obviously it's not as offensive as the Persona-lite bonding system in Cold Steel, but being forced to choose a character with the MC for whatever event is kind of infuriating, and I certainly didn't like it in the Sky games, either; though in the latter case, it was a choice between Agate and Schera for a good portion of SC, and choosing between party members for dialogue changes depending on the enemies you face. Another thing that bothers me is how the optional characters typically just have variations of a template script. On top of that, the whole optional character decision adds some weird inconsistency to the timeline because the story branches over several arcs, so who am I supposed to consider as the canon choice in all these events where it had to be only MC and the optional character? Absolutely unnecessary. If these events that forced you to choose a character were all turned into mandatory party sections instead, I'd feel the writing would be a lot stronger, both for the characters and the story.

Anyway, rant over, onto the intermission chapter!
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
HOLY SHIT

Chapter 1 Zero

ESTELLE AND JOSHUA! And this happens concurrently to Sen/Cold Steel... this is what they were doing!! AHHHHHHHH
 

Fou-Lu

Member
Which in game books should I have read by now if I have played FC, SC and the 3rd? I never really bothered reading them, had no idea they were important to the plot.
 

Squire

Banned
Which in game books should I have read by now if I have played FC, SC and the 3rd? I never really bothered reading them, had no idea they were important to the plot.

"Carnelia" is the one Cold Steel references, and it seems like CS3 references "Red Moon Rose" from the series itself.
 

Mivey

Member
"Carnelia" is the one Cold Steel references, and it seems like CS3 references "Red Moon Rose" from the series itself.
I ignored that one in FC, since you almost need to play with a walkthrough to really catch all the books. However, in SC in Chapter 3 you can easily read all of them in
the Erobonian Embassy.
Not really a spoiler, but I didn't want to risk death, so
 

Ascheroth

Member
Which in game books should I have read by now if I have played FC, SC and the 3rd? I never really bothered reading them, had no idea they were important to the plot.
Carnelia has relevancy for 3rd and CS1.
But of them are great, so read all of them.
 

vkrili

Member
Which in game books should I have read by now if I have played FC, SC and the 3rd? I never really bothered reading them, had no idea they were important to the plot.

All of them contain information that references or is relevant to future concepts in Trails. This includes The Doll Knight, though that one is probably the least "relevant".
 
Interesting theory I've read is that lechter
is the 4th Anguis. Someone pointed out that they have the same manner of speaking in the jap version and 4th is described as smooth talker from erobonia
 

Squire

Banned
Interesting theory I've read is that lechter
is the 4th Anguis. Someone pointed out that they have the same manner of speaking in the jap version and 4th is described as smooth talker from erobonia

I read this a few days ago, myself. I could see it, honestly.
 

Thud

Member
Which in game books should I have read by now if I have played FC, SC and the 3rd? I never really bothered reading them, had no idea they were important to the plot.

Gambler Jack and Carnelia.

Gambler Jack also has a sequel named Gambler Jack II in Cold Steel II. Hoping for Gambler Jack III in Sen 3 :p.
 

Gu4n

Member
Gambler Jack and Carnelia.

Gambler Jack also has a sequel named Gambler Jack II in Cold Steel II. Hoping for Gambler Jack III in Sen 3 :p.
I personally found neither Gambler Jack nor its sequel compelling like Carnelia and Red Moon Rose. The Hundred Days War book is an insightful book as well.
 
Speaking of books, I was looking earlier at dumping the PC text files and converting them to an ebook format so that I could read them on the kindle.
That's easily doable but this is going to need a lot of manual formatting.
 

Capndrake

Member
So how does Estelle , Joshua and Renne's story wrap up? Specific spoilers for Renne moreso i'm just dying to know
You should really just play the game yourself but if you really wanna know:

Renne finds and observes her real parents from a distance and has a run-in with her little brother, realizes they never meant her any harm but eventually decides that she doesn't want to live with them anyway. She never runs into Estelle and Joshua until the very end of the game when the final boss is about to kill everybody, Renne comes in and rescues everyone, then Estelle takes the opportunity to tell her they want her to live with them one more time and she accepts this time.
 

Gu4n

Member
Speaking of books, I was looking earlier at dumping the PC text files and converting them to an ebook format so that I could read them on the kindle.
That's easily doable but this is going to need a lot of manual formatting.
Just copy them from the Kiseki Wiki and do some bulk replacing ('== ' -> '<h2>', etc.)
 
Browsing the timeline page on the kiseki wiki, I wonder if I spoiled myself an event from the very end of Ao or if this is something from an extraneous source (like current CS3 media spoil events that take place between CS2 and 3)

(Potential Ao spoilers and definitely CS2 spoilers)
There's a 1207 entry that says the phantasmal blaze plan is ultimately successful and Crossbell is liberated.
Without spoiling Ao too much, does it come from some kind of epilogue, the same way CS2 shows an annexed Crossbell?


Just copy them from the Kiseki Wiki and do some bulk replacing ('== ' -> '<h2>', etc.)
Thanks!
Of course I had to notice you guys had done all the heavy-lifting after I was done with Carnelia!
Oh well, that still made things simpler for the other series.

Copy/pasting the web contents into word and sending the docx to my kindle worked surprisingly well.
 

Gu4n

Member
Browsing the timeline page on the kiseki wiki, I wonder if I spoiled myself an event from the very end of Ao or if this is something from an extraneous source (like current CS3 media spoil events that take place between CS2 and 3)

(Potential Ao spoilers and definitely CS2 spoilers)
There's a 1207 entry that says the phantasmal blaze plan is ultimately successful and Crossbell is liberated.
Without spoiling Ao too much, does it come from some kind of epilogue, the same way CS2 shows an annexed Crossbell?



Thanks!
Of course I had to notice you guys had done all the heavy-lifting after I was done with Carnelia!
Oh well, that still made things simpler for the other series.

Copy/pasting the web contents into word and sending the docx to my kindle worked surprisingly well.
(Ao and CS2 spoiler).
At the very, very end of Ao, it is said that the Imperial occupation of Crossbell lasted two years. In Cold Steel II we learn it was occupied mid-January S.1205.
That other tidbit comes from Yotaka who read it somewhere. I've been bugging him senseless because I haven't been able to find it in any of my books, meaning it might come from an interview with Kondo.

And yes, Kindle's great for that. I read the whole of Xenogear's Perfect Works on it back when. :)
 

Neoweee

Member
Finished FC. Very strong ending, but I wish the quality was a bit more consistent for everything up to the middle of Zeiss.

Starting SC, a few things stand out:
- The script seems much more verbose.
- The writing generally seems a bit sharper?
- It feels like a lot of the world building about the continent wasn't really set in stone through FC. Already, in the first fifteen minutes, characters are talking more about groups, countries, and organizations.
- Nice, new, snazzy interface.
 

Erheller

Member
Finished FC. Very strong ending, but I wish the quality was a bit more consistent for everything up to the middle of Zeiss.

Starting SC, a few things stand out:
- The script seems much more verbose.
- The writing generally seems a bit sharper?
- It feels like a lot of the world building about the continent wasn't really set in stone through FC. Already, in the first fifteen minutes, characters are talking more about groups, countries, and organizations.
- Nice, new, snazzy interface.

Are you talking about the prose and dialogue in this point? If you are, I agree. It's a small difference, but I definitely prefer SC's over FC's (both are great and miles ahead of almost all other localizations).
 

Squire

Banned
I think the writing in SC really rises to the occasion of matching up with the stakes of the plot at that point. A little less snark, a little more drama. It's a very natural progression.

And 3rd keeps it going.
 

jb1234

Member
Played the first four hours of Cold Steel. It's okay. Characters seem kind of bland. It's really hard to go from Kevin in 3rd to this black hole of personality known as Rean.
 

flowsnake

Member
I beat it on ppsspp on win 10 so yea it should be fine
Also unrelated, but on final chapter of Ao
Sometime tomorrow I'll FINALLY be caught up with this series

Huh? I'm talking about the PC version.

I've thought about playing it in PPSSPP but it looked pretty bad when upscaled.
 

SolVanderlyn

Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Also about halfway through Chapter 1 of Zero.

I like Tio a lot more than I thought I would. It's actually Elie who's the least interesting so far, although she's not a bad character by any means, just very vanilla compared to the others (I guess Lloyd is too, but he's not as... mundane?) I see a lot of room for all four to grow, though. Randy is hilarious. I love the character designer they got for the Crossbell games.

I just wish my Japanese was good enough to 100% understand NPC dialogue. I get the gist of it, but that's not really good enough for a game like Trails, where NPC dialogue is one of the main appeals. Maybe someday I'll be able to read it... in whatever language.
 
Though Tio and Randy are the best, in my opinion if Zero/Ao does something incredible well is how they develop the SSS throught these games.
By the end of Zero I couldn't really judge a character alone on its own, because each of then have become an integral part of the SSS.

And even if Ao is known to be a crazy rollercoaster, the minor details in that game are what really sold these characters for me.
 

Jolkien

Member
Zero no Kiseki chapter 1, while on my way to the mining town.
I just met Renne, obviously my party had no idea who she was.
 

Mivey

Member
Does Zero run well on Windows 10?
Seeing how the only way to get the PC version is probably by importing it from here, not many people will have ever played it.
An issue for me is also that my current PC doesn't have a DVD reader. Never thought I would need one in 2017. But goddammit, a good Trails game is probably still worth all that hassle. *sigh*

EDIT:
Forget what I said: This store (http://n.shop.vector.co.jp/service/servlet/Catalogue.Detail.Top?ITEM_NO=SR378422) has a digital version, and they allow Paypal, and its way cheaper. (2700 yen, so around 25&#8364;)
 

flowsnake

Member
Seeing how the only way to get the PC version is probably by importing it from here, not many people will have ever played it.
An issue for me is also that my current PC doesn't have a DVD reader. Never thought I would need one in 2017. But goddammit, a good Trails game is probably still worth all that hassle. *sigh*

You can pick up a cheap USB external one, it's handy to have one.

It's also a lot more to buy the PC version than just buying a used PSP copy, so I'm trying to see if it's worth it. Also not sure what the situation is with Ao on PC so if I'd have to switch I may as well do it all on PSP.
 

Mivey

Member
You can pick up a cheap USB external one, it's handy to have one.

It's also a lot more to buy the PC version than just buying a used PSP copy, so I'm trying to see if it's worth it. Also not sure what the situation is with Ao on PC so if I'd have to switch I may as well do it all on PSP.
Soo, to go back to your original question.

I have bought and downloaded a digital PC version through that Vector place (getting an account set up was a bit of a hassle, but my friend Google Translator carried me trough). It's 22&#8364; and I'm assuming some of that money actually goes to Falcom, so even if a used PSP copy is cheaper, you are supporting the Japanese devs. Also, it's DRM free.

You have to set your "Non-unicode language" to Japanese (This shouldn't affect anything and really the only people writing non-unicode programs these days are pure and utter evil) Also, native fullscreen is broken, you have to set it to Windowed mode and then use something like Borderless Gaming to make it cover the screen.

The actual port is pretty much a straight up PSP port. Not as high quality as the Sky games, but those were actual Windows games before being ported to PSP/PS3. You can force AA and better texture filtering, and use your mouse to do everything for you, but there is no actual ingame mouse, so you always see your Windows cursor. There are a few functions, like switching companions that might need keyboard keys, but if you have a mouse with additional buttons (like mine), you can also easily map those to the mouse.
The framerate is certainly not 60, either it lags on my i7 3770/ GTX 970 or it is locked to 30. Maybe something this "hacker" from the translation project can look into.
 
On a related note and for those interested in Kiseki stuff, I was able to get these two artbooks for 20€ each one for a total of 47€ including shippment from Japan in amazon. Granted, they are second handed (first-hand cost around 50€ each) but they are in a perfect condition from what I can see.

vsvs5Ld.jpg


The left one are for characters art and the right one are illustrations, for both Sky/Crosbell arcs. Pretty good stuff, though there are spoilers for the series.

I haven't seen one similar for Erebonia arc, I suppose after Sen III they will make one.
They are still second handed left from what I can see, so for people interested, they can get them at a cheap price.
 

Ascheroth

Member
I like how doing a full AP New Game+ run on CS1 takes around 10 hours, including watching all the bonding events and (last chapter spoilers)
I watched all of the festival afterparty events as well.
Bless Turbo Mode.
So I'm basically done now, with the exception of a couple achievements, but those sound like a pain, so why bother.

Ready for CS2.
 

Gu4n

Member
Oh, thanks for letting me know about that digital version, that's a good price if I can figure out the site. I might pick that up closer to the fan translation release.
DLsite has frequent Falcom sales (another one just ended) during which all their games are half off. The PC version runs fine on Windows 10 and is definitely the best-looking version of the game. Sure, Evolution has the voice acting but the font is garbled and low-res compared to the PC version.

I haven't seen one similar for Erebonia arc, I suppose after Sen III they will make one.
They are still second handed left from what I can see, so for people interested, they can get them at a cheap price.
Well, there's this. No real surprises there, just a complete collection of artwork.
 

fuzaco

Member
On a related note and for those interested in Kiseki stuff, I was able to get these two artbooks for 20€ each one for a total of 47€ including shippment from Japan in amazon. Granted, they are second handed (first-hand cost around 50€ each) but they are in a perfect condition from what I can see.

http://i.imgur.com/vsvs5Ld.jpg

The left one are for characters art and the right one are illustrations, for both Sky/Crosbell arcs. Pretty good stuff, though there are spoilers for the series.

I haven't seen one similar for Erebonia arc, I suppose after Sen III they will make one.
They are still second handed left from what I can see, so for people interested, they can get them at a cheap price.

I haven't played Zero/Ao yet, and I like the art, but man, Estelle and Joshua look like completely different people compared to Sky.
 
Top Bottom