Board 8 > VI plays through the Trails in the Sky trilogy, and maybe other JRPGs too

(+) Yeah! (+)

Earth Wall/Immunity is great and situationally OP but if you're in a position where you feel you need to spam it there's probably something else going on.
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Earth Wall is honestly a waste of time if you're playing on Normal and that generally goes for all the games. It's only needed for the higher difficulties
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Last time I played I was on Nightmare. I'm still scarred by it.
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Just started playing TitS after buying it on the recent round of sales, and here's a thread about it. I've played about 5 hours, and I'm waiting for the part where it gets as good as everyone says it is. Every line of dialogue is intended to reinforce Estelle as a ditzy tomboy, to the point that I can't even call it hyperbole any more. The combat isn't (yet) interesting. I've heard that the characterization in this game is supposed to be amazing, yet I've seen just as many random talking heads supplying worldbuilding here as any other game. Everything I've done so far in the story feels totally cliche JRPG. The game won't acknowledge my controller, but the keyboard controls are awful. I've yet to see what makes this game unique or special. Someone wanna help me out?

(In terms of progression, I just finished the three missions Estelle and Joshua do in place of Dad, as well as most of the side missions from the guild that are available.)
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Each chapter is better than the last, for the most part. I think in Chapter 2 is when I started to fall in love with it.
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No one can make you enjoy a game you aren't enjoying. Also if you're not a fan of Estelle early on, it's probably hopeless. It's fine to chalk things up to people valuing different things.
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Yeah from the sound of your negative attitude I don't think you'll come around. I mean, I'd at least recommend getting out of the prologue first before making a judgment but it's probably a lost cause anyway
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Sceptilesolar posted...

Also if you're not a fan of Estelle early on, it's probably hopeless.

To be fair, Estelle was weirdly annoying in the prologue. They chose to frame the tutorial sections as Estelle being incapable of remembering things she'd heard five minutes ago. I was worried I would hate her but then this character trait was dropped completely after the prologue and she became great.
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I think most Trails fans would agree that FC starts very slowly. I certainly wasn't sold after the prologue.

Estelle gets much better too.
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Estelle does improve, true. I was pretty sold on her no-nonsense attitude from early on, but the game does undersell her competence during the early missions.
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Yeah, it seems like it's a coming of age story so to me it makes sense that she improves

I like her already though but hey
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I'm not saying I dislike her. I just think the writing stinks. Every comment in the dialogue is either a barb at how wifty she is or it's a reminder that "hi, I'm a girl and I still do athletic things and fight and stuff."
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I'm about as big an Estelle fan as they come, but after the Prologue I'd only have said something like "has pretty high potential but is also showing warning signs of being generic/uninteresting".

Also, if you judge the quality of JRPG's by how little they align with JRPG tropes, then your odds of liking TitS are pretty much zero.
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To put that another way, TitS is not and never will be something that breaks away from the RPG standard in terms of content. It's more like a love letter to the Classic JRPG than anything imo. (Stylistically I guess it does things most JRPG'S don't, in that it puts a lot of effort into things like world and character building, but I don't think that's what you're commenting on)
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I just mean "first mission is go rescue the kid who wanders into a den of monsters" is right up there with fighting giant rats. (Granted, in this game, they're cats, and they fly, so that's something.)

I'm okay with tropes existing. But I was led to believe this game was a standout, and so I was just expecting...I dunno, something more than a copy-paste of every other game I've played.
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The game follows tropes but I think "copy-paste" is not a good way to describe it.

Of course, that's least in part a statement of my opinion of the quality, so...*shrug*
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I suspect I'll think so, too, once I get out of the opening parts of the game. What little I know of the background suggests there's some worldbuilding that sets the game apart, and I imagine the combat gets much more dynamic later. But right now, everything's kinda meh. Like, the highlight of the game so far has been having a photographer civilian to protect that decides to flash her camera at enemies to blind them.
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azuarc posted...

The game won't acknowledge my controller, but the keyboard controls are awful.

mouse controls for life
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I don't think it does anything that diverges from the genre, but I do think the execution overall is good. I guess one thing that did appeal to me differently from most RPGs was the sense of growth. The story does progress well from small regional complaints to the larger conflict, and Estelle grows along with it. I find RPGs often don't do well with pacing (which is a highly misunderstood term in these discussions, I might add).

EDIT: The escort missions suck though.
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The execution is great in all aspects bar animation... and the massive overuse of certain musical themes. Chapter 3 was a fucking nightmare.
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Tomorrow will actually be a big session
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hmmmm
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I did some fishing today, got that achievement just because I was curiously playing with different combinations
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Chapter 1 beated

The last dungeon actually felt like a dungeon in this game. Turns out the head Capua Bandit was just on a drunken rampage! We captured them, and then Schera and Olivier set off on their separate ways

...Only for Olivier to reveal to Schera he's a spy sent to look for Cassius Bright
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I just got to the next town

Agate's kind of a beast gameplay wise but man is he a dick so far story wise, though I think they kind of set him up to be kinda pompous just because he knows he's a tough guy, with is over 1K HP

haven't done much else
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bumping this for now, hate this week
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Sorry to hear that.
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Went through to the main seaside area with new friend Kloe, who we picked up at the orphanage. Her Healing is pretty nice even if she's a guest

Apparently the orphanage burned down too! When we investigated, it seems that someone outside did it. Who could do such a thing?
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Kloe best girl
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azuarc posted...

Just started playing TitS after buying it on the recent round of sales, and here's a thread about it. I've played about 5 hours, and I'm waiting for the part where it gets as good as everyone says it is. Every line of dialogue is intended to reinforce Estelle as a ditzy tomboy, to the point that I can't even call it hyperbole any more. The combat isn't (yet) interesting. I've heard that the characterization in this game is supposed to be amazing, yet I've seen just as many random talking heads supplying worldbuilding here as any other game. Everything I've done so far in the story feels totally cliche JRPG. The game won't acknowledge my controller, but the keyboard controls are awful. I've yet to see what makes this game unique or special. Someone wanna help me out?

(In terms of progression, I just finished the three missions Estelle and Joshua do in place of Dad, as well as most of the side missions from the guild that are available.)

There are several points in the game where people say the "game gets good" and I would not say the prologue is one of them. Everyone's opinion will be different.

If you love the slow pace and the worldbuilding, which is VERY important seeing as how this is an ongoing series with eight games so far (five in the states), then this game should grab you from the very beginning. If you just want to get on with it and get to the good parts, there are a few scenes in Chapters 1 and 2 that may get you hooked, otherwise you'll have to wait for Chapter 3 where the bulk of the game's central conflict is revealed.

I personally began to like the game when I got to Bose. I loved the designs of the towns in this game and Bose was a huge improvement over the Rolent chapter (although I loved the Rolent chapter more in SC). I liked Olivier and Agate so much that I wanted to keep playing just to see them more.

As for Estelle, they do go overboard with hammering down the fact that she's a ditzy tomboy, but this pays off in SC where she grows as a character.

You really should use a PC controller though, dunno why it's not reading it so you may want to mess around with the settings. But since this is a turn-based RPG I'm not sure why the keyboard controls are a big issue. The only real "timing" factor here is activating your S-Crafts in sticky situations.

The combat, unfortunately, doesn't get too interesting on Normal mode until later in the game. You're fighting small fry most of the time, and it's not until Chapter 4 where everything you learned and your Quartz setups truly begin to pay off. SC improves the combat even further and puts you face to face with large, strong bosses. Third goes even a step further. But the combat here is still more strategic than Cold Steel's spammery.

Pro Tip: The game can be slow at times and this has turned off players before. However, there is a Turbo mode that you can activate if you're playing the PC versions. Put the speed of Turbo to 6x (the highest you can go IIRC) and map it to a button like L1 or R1 or something easily accessible. That way you can hold the button down during slow parts like backtracking or watching Arts animations and skip through them. Last I played FC and SC, S-Crafts weren't skippable but I'm not sure if they fixed that.

I didn't really start getting into it until around meeting Kloe but up to that point I didn't find playing it to be unpleasant at all.

That said, I did find FC to be the weakest game in the series out of all I've played so far(though I stopped before Cold Steel since I want to wait until the last game is around the corner and I have a feeling that Cold Steel could easily take over that position from what I've heard lol)

I'm actually surprised that the GameFAQs score for FC is 4.36 and the score for SC is 4.43. Those two games feel leagues apart to me. SC was just incomparably better
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The only bit I found unpleasant was the needlessly long intro, there's slow burns and then there's that. Giving the player a bit more interaction during that period would've gone a long way, even if it was just beating up a training dummy in a mock battle.
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Haunter12O posted...

I personally began to like the game when I got to Bose. I loved the designs of the towns in this game and Bose was a huge improvement over the Rolent chapter (although I loved the Rolent chapter more in SC). I liked Olivier and Agate so much that I wanted to keep playing just to see them more.
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Pro Tip: The game can be slow at times and this has turned off players before. However, there is a Turbo mode that you can activate if you're playing the PC versions. Put the speed of Turbo to 6x (the highest you can go IIRC) and map it to a button like L1 or R1 or something easily accessible. That way you can hold the button down during slow parts like backtracking or watching Arts animations and skip through them. Last I played FC and SC, S-Crafts weren't skippable but I'm not sure if they fixed that.

Thanks, I'll try that. And also for the other suggestions. I've played as far as heading to the fishing place south of Bose. I think I'm about 10 hours in. I'm not sure if I like Olivier, but it doesn't help that the rest of the party unilaterally sides against him with his antics and makes sure the player knows it. It's kinda like the problem I had with Estelle in the prologue.
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Bump
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I'm playing this game for the first time too. Currently on Chapter 2. Have been told to go to Jenis Royal Academy but I have like half a dozen sidequests to take care of before that.

I kinda like the game, but there's definitely a "where's the beef?" feeling to the whole thing. By most accounts this gets addressed later on and in the sequel though; hopefully it'll live up to the praise.
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S-Crafts are skippable by right clicking. Dunno if there's another command that does it.
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This playthrough topic may be weekend only for a while
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How disappointing. A Bracer's work never sleeps.
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Not even on Fridays.
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