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

my buddy went back to school and has been asking me to help him with his papers. Been trying to teach him a balance between formal writing and believable readability.

That's hard enough with custom native writing. Successful believability, grammar, and flow are assuredly more difficult in translation works. Shit not like professionals get it right either... *looks at NISA*
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
Another consideration about the site change is that XSEED seems to launch their sites near release, not at the announcement. See Zwei, which just got a site a few weeks ago despite being in the final stages before release.

It seems unlikely they would sit on a Zero announcement until just weeks or a couple months before release, since it's something that would build excitement and possibly push sales of the existing games.

They've also been teasing but saying they aren't teasing shit on twitter the last few weeks which just adds more fuel to the fire XD

I think it's legitimately not teasing. They recently got Jess back running the Twitter account to engage more on social media.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if she was also brought in to help with Crossbell since the last time (afaik) she worked with XSEED was finishing SC after they pulled it from Carpe Fulgur.
 
Which screens? The ones from this blog post? Even if so, XSEED won't take the Geofront script and insert that as is. They've done a lot of editing on Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection (which should be on your wishlist this fall) using the fan translation as a base. Geofront's also been selectively re-translating portions of the English script they obtained, meaning any weird shit which Zeromonkey ordered Guren and the other contributors to mangle will have been fixed.

Fan translation and Fan Edit are two different things.

The Geofront thing is just them editing a machine translation is it not? Why would they pay for that? They can just do that themselves if that's the route they want to go and they have to re-edit the whole thing to their standards anyways.
 

Mivey

Member
What if the Falcom CEO looks at all those negative stories and goes like "Wow, this NISA translated game has gotten so much attention that even Japan is talking about it. They must have done something right, let's give them Sen III!"
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
What if the Falcom CEO looks at all those negative stories and goes like "Wow, this NISA translated game has gotten so much attention that even Japan is talking about it. They must have done something right, let's give them Sen III!"

I'd like to believe Kondo isn't that dense or ignorant.
 
What if the Falcom CEO looks at all those negative stories and goes like "Wow, this NISA translated game has gotten so much attention that even Japan is talking about it. They must have done something right, let's give them Sen III!"
It's possible, but I don't think Kondo is dumb. He noted in a previous Ys VIII interview, when prompted about why Falcom chose NISA for the release, that he expected Western fans to have mixed reactions to the change in publisher. So he may not know much about what fans want from English localizations, but he's not entirely clueless about how fans would notice these things. The framing of the letter and these articles reporting on it should be more conducive than hate mail or something, let alone skipping NISA entirely to ask Falcom.
 

PK Gaming

Member
I don't believe in karma, but damn does this feel nice after Xseed had Ys8 snatched from them

And it's just good that this isn't being burried
 

Marche90

Member
I don't believe in karma, but damn does this feel nice after Xseed had Ys8 snatched from them

And it's just good that this isn't being burried

Wish I could defend NISA but seeing how the only reason I was rooting for them was the PC port, since we all know how well that worked out, yeah...
 

OrionX

Member
Hello fellow lovers of Trails! <3

Just started Cold Steel on PS3, because I only game on PC when I have to. Naturally, I made an exception for the Sky trilogy. Definitely feels like a Trails game, though I miss the anime portraits during conversations and Rean randomly becoming a mute at times is unpleasant. Love the slice of life school atmosphere. The characters seem a bit one-dimensional but I'm sure that's just because I barely know them yet. Machias is my least favorite after first impressions. Also, the greatest character that has ever existed in anything made a brief appearance, so it's going good so far.

Not sure if I should be excited or not, but I'm definitely gonna need Zero/Ao at some point. I'm hoping that by the time I finish Cold Steel II, more will be on the way over here so I can just play Trails games for the rest of my life. :D
 

PK Gaming

Member
Hello fellow lovers of Trails! <3

Just started Cold Steel on PS3, because I only game on PC when I have to. Naturally, I made an exception for the Sky trilogy. Definitely feels like a Trails game, though I miss the anime portraits during conversations and Rean randomly becoming a mute at times is unpleasant. Love the slice of life school atmosphere. The characters seem a bit one-dimensional but I'm sure that's just because I barely know them yet. Machias is my least favorite after first impressions. Also, the greatest character that has ever existed in anything made a brief appearance, so it's going good so far.

Not sure if I should be excited or not, but I'm definitely gonna need Zero/Ao at some point. I'm hoping that by the time I finish Cold Steel II, more will be on the way over here so I can just play Trails games for the rest of my life. :D

Make an exception for CS too, the PC port is amazing. 5000 new voiced lines (no mute Rean), turbo mode, 60FPS... it's the definitive version!

But I guess if you have to play on PS3, it's definitely not bad. You probably already know this, but take your time and talk to every NPC constantly (they've even better in the CS games) and follow up on their lives. That's like 1/3rd of the game's appeal right there.
 

Thud

Member
I've heard from people who've played the Japanese version that it's a legitimately top class game, and it kills me that we got such a gimped version.

It would be a 9 or even a 10, but it's a 8 at best with the shoddy translation.

Hello fellow lovers of Trails! <3

I read this in the voice of Olivert. You'll like some of his interactions in this game and its sequel. I also played Cold Steel I&II on PS3. Would buy it again on PC if I would fancy a replay tho.
 

OrionX

Member
Make an exception for CS too, the PC port is amazing. 5000 new voiced lines (no mute Rean), turbo mode, 60FPS... it's the definitive version!

But I guess if you have to play on PS3, it's definitely not bad. You probably already know this, but take your time and talk to every NPC constantly (they've even better in the CS games) and follow up on their lives. That's like 1/3rd of the game's appeal right there.

Yeah I know I probably should, but I've had the PS3 games sitting on my shelf so I just decided to go with them. I'm kinda hoping they bring the updates over to a PS4 release at some point so I can double dip there.

And yes of course I know to talk to every character at all times! My patience for listening to random Trails npc's ramble about their lives is unlimited! I just met Becky's family. lol

I read this in the voice of Olivert. You'll like some of his interactions in this game and its sequel. I also played Cold Steel I&II on PS3. Would buy it again on PC if I would fancy a replay tho.

I enjoy every second he graces my screen with his beauteous presence, so I'm quite looking forward to it. :p
 

Stuart444

Member
I want to get Ys VIII at some point.

That said... I needed some context to the first image "That's a student who studies medicine"

Saw on twitter that the line before it was "A Medical Student"

I just... wut.
 

MKIL65

Member
I want to get Ys VIII at some point.

That said... I needed some context to the first image "That's a student who studies medicine"

Saw on twitter that the line before it was "A Medical Student"

I just... wut.

People die when they are killed.

Yeah, I'm currently in Chapter 5 in Ys VIII, and a lot of the text have just felt... Flavorless.

I haven't noticed many grammatical errors, so that's good. But... That's not saying much.
 
I want to get Ys VIII at some point.

That said... I needed some context to the first image "That's a student who studies medicine"

Saw on twitter that the line before it was "A Medical Student"

I just... wut.

Well.

The woman is not deceitful and it is a sentence of which the grammar is correct.
 

Famassu

Member
So the hopes of my (delusionally) optimistic

Zero in mid 2018 (give or take ~3 months)
Cold Steel III in late 2018-early 2019
Azure in late 2019

schedule still live on~
 
Regarding NISA handling future Falcom's games, first we would need to know how well has Ys VIII sold in the west. Do we have numbers or any indications at all? I suppose that If the game didn't do well in ps4 and psvita Falcom would have to rethink their partnerships choices for the future. NISA already made a mistake committing to get a pc port day one. Not only that didn't happen, we still don't even have a placeholder for it. Not mentioning the leaks about the quality off said port or the localization effort. Those are other matters to discuss.

My take is, unless Ys VIII total sales are positive once the pc version is out, I don't see Falcom trusting NISA to handle another Ys game, much less Sen III.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
NISA seemed to market Ys VIII a lot better than XSEED does with their games. I wouldn't be surprised if the game was plenty successful.
 

Marche90

Member
NISA seemed to market Ys VIII a lot better than XSEED does with their games. I wouldn't be surprised if the game was plenty successful.

This. The public at large was actually aware when the game was going to be released and reviews mostly went up in in time, not to mention more marketing events, like when they brought Kondo to Anime Expo and allowed a lot of journalists to interview him or when they got Atlus to send emails to the Atlus faithful to know that the game was coming. As someone else put it: I wouldn't be surprised if the amout of marketing Ys VIII received was bigger than everything else XSEED has put together for their games combined (paraphrased)

Sadly, when XSEED markets a game, they're only preaching to the choir that already buys their games. Why didn't we saw a bigger push with Cold Steel PC, for example? Why didn't they send review codes to Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer and the like? Even if we saw some articles about it, it was mostly about Durante's involvement in it, nothing else.

In a better timeline, we would get the games with XSEED's translation and NISA's marketing push. Oh, well
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
I'd guess the hard thing about review codes for PC games is determining what sites are going meet all the appropriate criteria - be friendly toward the genre, get a significant amount of traffic, and not halfheartedly recommend it because "anyone who really wanted it probably played it on PS3 two years ago." IIRC RPS reviewed one of the Ys games and was pretty lukewarm on it, and that sort of response probably doesn't do much for the game.
 

Gu4n

Member
*double-checks to see if this is the Kiseki or the Ys VIII thread*

So I finished Sen no Kiseki III earlier today, clocking 100 hours trying to be as thorough as possible. I missed a handful of character notes and one book, so that's not too bad without a walkthrough.

I think it's the best possible sequel I could have wished for as a fan of the Kiseki world.

I thought each chapter was well-written and incredibly rich with content. It really contributes majorly to the world-building of the series. The new characters are great, both in Class VII as the other classes. As Dengeki indicated, the chapters are rigidly structured on paper, but in practice there's enough variation to keep things interested. It's definitely not a 1:1 repetition of the first game in the trilogy; whereas I found the Old Schoolhouse explorations in Cold Steel utterly boring, Sen III does a great job of mixing things up to keep the Einhell Fortress interesting. The excursions are also much better fleshed out; the original ones in Cold Steel felt really confined. I thought (optional) quests in particular were great and actually contributing to the main story or world-building again. Vantage Master is a great successor to Blade, and I want to make more use of it in a next playthrough.

There were some technical problems, like crashes during three different boss fights, a character locked in place during a fight so I was forced to have him/her use arts, frame drops in particular areas, and some graphical glitches. Hopefully Falcom manages to iron at least some of these out for other players.

If anyone has specific questions about the game, I'll be glad to answer them.
 

Loz246789

Member
*double-checks to see if this is the Kiseki or the Ys VIII thread*

So I finished Sen no Kiseki III earlier today, clocking 100 hours trying to be as thorough as possible. I missed a handful of character notes and one book, so that's not too bad without a walkthrough.

I think it's the best possible sequel I could have wished for as a fan of the Kiseki world.

I thought each chapter was well-written and incredibly rich with content. It really contributes majorly to the world-building of the series. The new characters are great, both in Class VII as the other classes. As Dengeki indicated, the chapters are rigidly structured on paper, but in practice there's enough variation to keep things interested. It's definitely not a 1:1 repetition of the first game in the trilogy; whereas I found the Old Schoolhouse explorations in Cold Steel utterly boring, Sen III does a great job of mixing things up to keep the Einhell Fortress interesting. The excursions are also much better fleshed out; the original ones in Cold Steel felt really confined. I thought (optional) quests in particular were great and actually contributing to the main story or world-building again. Vantage Master is a great successor to Blade, and I want to make more use of it in a next playthrough.

There were some technical problems, like crashes during three different boss fights, a character locked in place during a fight so I was forced to have him/her use arts, frame drops in particular areas, and some graphical glitches. Hopefully Falcom manages to iron at least some of these out for other players.

If anyone has specific questions about the game, I'll be glad to answer them.

This is pretty much exactly what I want to hear.

Broadly speaking, how were the bonding events? Nothing too specific, just if you liked their implementation or writing or whatever.

(I half want to ask about how much the game leans on the Crossbell duology compared to say, CS2, but at the same time I suspect I'd rather just not know. Maybe.)
 

Stuart444

Member
Vantage Master is a great successor to Blade

I haven't tried it out much outside of the tutorial but I do miss Blade I admit :(.

Curious how you find the fishing? I'm loving Fishing in this game more than in CS1/2. Got 15 fish as of the start of Chapter 3 :D Part of that is probably cause I hate having to mash buttons while switching between Triangle, Square, etc.
 

vkrili

Member
If anyone has specific questions about the game, I'll be glad to answer them.
What difficulty did you play on, and did you feel that it kept itself decently balanced throughout or did certain strats (read: Delay and S-crafts) become too powerful by the end?
 
Thanks for the impressions Gu4n. Shame about the technical issues but they're hardly surprising.
Good to know that it delivers where it matters most.
 

Gu4n

Member
This is pretty much exactly what I want to hear.

Broadly speaking, how were the bonding events? Nothing too specific, just if you liked their implementation or writing or whatever.

(I half want to ask about how much the game leans on the Crossbell duology compared to say, CS2, but at the same time I suspect I'd rather just not know. Maybe.)
I liked most of the bond events. Some were really funny, others were great as eye-openers into a character's struggles. I only did the bond events with the new students, so I still have stuff to look forward to. Falcom clearly tries to mix things up.

While not real bonding events, some of the academy quests involve bond-like scenes with the other students which were great as well. I grew attached to the students really quickly.

I haven't tried it out much outside of the tutorial but I do miss Blade I admit :(.

Curious how you find the fishing? I'm loving Fishing in this game more than in CS1/2. Got 15 fish as of the start of Chapter 3 :D Part of that is probably cause I hate having to mash buttons while switching between Triangle, Square, etc.
Haha, I wasted the first batch of bait on figuring out the controls, but once I got the hand of it I enjoyed it.

I still prefer Ys VIII's, but this was fun enough to have the fish compendium completed at the end of the game. :)

What difficulty did you play on, and did you feel that it kept itself decently balanced throughout or did certain strats (read: Delay and S-crafts) become too powerful by the end?
I played on Normal since I'm primarily in for the story.

The game is definitely harder than its two predecessors. Most boss fights offered plenty of challenge, but once I gained more access to AT manipulation crafts, arts and brave orders, it became pretty easy to break the game with proper planning: breaking the enemies' defense, and then delaying them/AT advancing yourself to do as much damage as possible before they regain their defense. During one of the fights in the final dungeon that strategy earned me a victory without getting hit.

Compared to earlier games, I made fairly little use of arts and S-Crafts; CP was mostly reserved for breaking or AT manipulation whereas EP was there to exploit Chrono Burst, haha.

Thanks for the impressions Gu4n. Shame about the technical issues but they're hardly surprising.
Good to know that it delivers where it matters most.
Oooh, they delivered. Hard.
 
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