Board 8 > Just beat Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel *All the spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

First of all, god damn what an ending. I knew it was going to end on a cliff hanger, but I was not expecting to actually be EXCITED for the ending. When I was going through the last dungeon I was kinda lamenting how typical JRPG this game was and how I couldn't care less about Rean's secret anime power. Then the festival happened and I thought "wow this is a perfect ending" it was cool to see they brought in a lot of NPCs so we could get closer on the entire in game world.

Then the actual ending happened and cut right as I started to care what was happening again. Well played, Trails.

I went through a lot of work to make Towa my go to squeeze. She was definitely the best girl in the Harem, Laura was my backup though.

My own personal ranking of the playable guys

Laura>Fie>Jusis>Gaius>Elliot>Crow>Machias>Emma>Alisa>Millium

but they were all pretty good, it's been a while since I played a game where I liked the whole cast.

So it looks like now I have to beat Trails in the Sky before the end of the month, and then beat the rest of the trilogy before I move on, which could take a long long time, which is a shame because I wanna see what Rean and everyone is up to nowww.

What kind of things get transferred with the complete save data?
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one of my favorite cliffhangers of any video game

ALSO OH YA TOWA CLUB BOOP BOOP BOOP
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What carries over
- Who you danced with
- Sepith depending of how high level you were
- An accessory depending on whether or not you got rank A1 or A0
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FWIW, I hold the opinion you could play CS2 without Sky. Sky might be the ideal start point if you're in for the long haul, but if you don't want to kill the momentum from the hype freight train (and man is it a hype train) that is the CS1 ending I honestly think CS2 is fine. There are differing opinions on that though. It's CS3 you 100% want the Sky (and optimally Crossbell but lol localizations) knowledge.

But if you want to play Sky first by no means let me stop you!

SantaRPidgey posted...

What kind of things get transferred with the complete save data?

Based on Rean's level you get some extra goodies to start with. A bit more sepith and a quartz or two, no big deal really.

If your school rank was A1 or A0 you also get an accessory too. (Different accessory for each. Off the top of my head I forget if A0 gets both but it probably does, the A0 one is a better one at any rate)

The game keeps track of who you had available to pick for the festival dance event and alters some scenes for those characters (though bizarrely it takes a stance more akin to "If you could have picked them, we'll assume you did" which can create a weird moment or two..) It also starts those characters with additional Link EXP.

And various characters will remember if you did sidequests involving them.
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SantaRPidgey posted...

I went through a lot of work to make Towa my go to squeeze. She was definitely the best girl in the Harem

good man
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A few thoughts about NPCs

I really liked learning about Annabelle's subplot of running from her arranged marriage only to find out she's engaged to Kenneth's brother and then having some sparks fly with kenneth at the end of the game.

I'm a big fan of Patrick's arc and Patrick in general. I hope he gets with Elise. Also I hope REAN doesn't get with Elise but thats japan for you.

Mint's entire family was great. I loved how they introduced her mom, Vanilla, as if she was a normal housewife with a controlling husband only to later reveal it's just a husband who's trying to keep Mint's mom's disasters under control.

The final scene with all the instructors was great. I would totally play a game with all of them as the playable cast. Instructor Thomas is me.

The whole concept of having these dynamic NPCS is such a great concept, it makes all these boring fetch quests actually fun to do, because I'm excited to hear about random npc no 198's backstory.
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you'll really love Sky then because it's NPC city over there.
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The thing that really made this game great was:

A: Rush Mode

B: Weaken Enemies and retry

Rush mode is great, and I intentionally tried not to use it in the beginning of the game so that the ending of the game could breeze by so much faster. There's nothing worse than the slog at the end of Video games when you feel you're near the end.

And the ability to weaken enemies meant I never had to grind, which meant I was free to go into battles semi-blindly without saving and never worry about getting soft locked. It made for some super interesting battles and just the freedom to use the feature led me to play more fast and lose than if I had spent and extra hour per dungeon grinding before the boss.
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xp1337 posted...

But if you want to play Sky first by no means let me stop you! CS2 will casually drop some Sky spoilers but I also feel some of them rely on how good an eye for detail or recall you have, because they won't all mean anything to you without being familiar with Sky.

The curse of these games is they make details flow so naturally the entire continent becomes real and you remember every historical detail and character and event and thing that was said in passing.

Also man when I heard "Crow had to see the chancellor's speech in person" I felt so dumb. But that's the best kind of spoiler, one where you can go back in time and see how all the details lined up and were right in front of your face the entire time.
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SantaRPidgey posted...

The curse of these games is they make details flow so naturally the entire continent becomes real and you remember every historical detail and character and event and thing that was said in passing.

Ah, yeah, then you probably want to go to Sky because the danger of playing CS2 first would be then going back to Sky and remembering some details from CS2 while playing it and immediately realizing the connections. Even CS1 isn't immune to this simply by virtue of being set a few years after Sky, but CS2 goes right to the heart of some major reveals.

SantaRPidgey posted...

Also man when I heard "Crow had to see the chancellor's speech in person" I felt so dumb. But that's the best kind of spoiler, one where you can go back in time and see how all the details lined up and were right in front of your face the entire time.

The Crow reveal is very well done, yeah. The "investigation" at the end when Rean tries to track him down is good, especially when you realize that Millium has mostly put it together as they go around and realizes they've been beat and is mostly reduced to a out-of-character-for-her subdued reaction with "..." while Rean is still oblivious.
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I've yet to see a single person on B8 correctly guess Crow by the time of the reveal
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oh shit another Patrick fan. There are two of us!

And yeah CS2 should make sense without playing Sky, though if you plan on going back and playing Sky regardless then CS2 does spoil things about that as xp points out.
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Definitely did not see the Crow reveal coming. Ugh, I need to play again.

Also, Towa club forever. Complete agreement about Annabelle, the Mint family, and all the NPCs. It's amazing how strongly Cold Steel gets you attached to everyone. I played Tales of Berseria much more recently, and I can't even name half the main characters despite really liking that game, yet Cold Steel, I feel like I remember too many people (even if names still escape me, ugh).

From memory:

Fie>Emma>Laura>Rean>Machias>Jusis>Crow>Gaius>Alisa>Elliot>Millium

Shoutouts to Towa, Angelica, Sara, Mint, the twins, Becky, Kenneth, Olivert, Patrick... and so many more

Also, one thing of note I wasn't satisfied with:

- After the first big exam where you had to study and learn in-game lore to pass the test, I spent far too much time and far too many notebook pages jotting down history and book notes to prepare for more exams that never came to pass. Why have a section in the library for 'Important Books' if you never use them later? I mean, the world building was so good, and reading lore from like the floor models in Reinford was awesome, but darn you for tricking me into taking notes game! =P
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Towa best girl you have good taste sir

Also Trails world building ruined most other RPGs for me.

oh ps this was the best song in the game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OBpsUK5PU" data-time="

it's named like it's published :-)
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My man! Very good choice
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exceed isnt even top five
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ninkendo posted...

I've yet to see a single person on B8 correctly guess Crow by the time of the reveal

In my playthrough topic I twigged on that it was Crow but I was hoping I was wrong. I think the tipping point was where he conveniently leaves your party directly before you fight C and then I realized that everywhere you went, Crow just happened to be chilling in the area too. All the little things just started to add up.

The whole mech thing came completely out of left field though. That I didn't remotely see coming

ShatteredElysium posted...

The whole mech thing came completely out of left field though. That I didn't remotely see coming

There've been mechs in the series before so it wasn't a super surprise for me but that scale of mass production had some big implications for Erebonia's power level now compared to the other countries so that in itself was a pretty big surprise.

tcaz2 posted...

ShatteredElysium posted...

The whole mech thing came completely out of left field though. That I didn't remotely see coming

There've been mechs in the series before so it wasn't a super surprise for me but that scale of mass production had some big implications for Erebonia's power level now compared to the other countries so that in itself was a pretty big surprise.

Yeah I should have said Cold Steel was my first trails game and I went in blind

Yeah I figured

Was just saying it worked another way for people that did Sky beforehand because the mechs have always been super-special Gundam types or smaller anti-personnel things like the archaisms before hand. So it was an effective reveal either way.

ShatteredElysium posted...

In my playthrough topic I twigged on that it was Crow but I was hoping I was wrong. I think the tipping point was where he conveniently leaves your party directly before you fight C and then I realized that everywhere you went, Crow just happened to be chilling in the area too. All the little things just started to add up.

Just came in to post this. Remembered I did at one time suspect Crow in the tunnels when he conveniently left the group to escort people back, and then showed up right after the fight. Plus, C. But I think I forgot about it not too long after.

Same thing happened with Misty. I suspected the first or second time I saw her, but she was too awesome, and she already had the reveal of being the opera lady.
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I remember guessing Vita's role in everything just because it was the only reason they'd give the full portrait and namecard introduction for this random-ass character that appears for 2 seconds 75% through the game.
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Also speaking of Vita--fun fact Kondo recently confirmed (minor TitS 3rd spoilers) that Vita was the "married lady" you see on the airship in the prologue for TitS 3. Everyone already assumed that anyways I think but it's nice to have confirmation.
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I figured something was up with Misty/Vita. It was obviously tied to Emma because of the Lavender scene.

As for Crow. I had no idea until like the end of chapter 6 then it was kind of suspicious when he has a "cave in" on the way back then shows up like nothing happened or anyone saying they helped him out of that but it went back to happy school festival so it fell to the back of the mind. Definitely was done very well.

Soldats were the biggest surprise for me by far. Also it ending on a cliffhanger like it did. Last 10-ish minutes of the game was a real ride.
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I'm about 7 hours into TitS and kind of considering giving up on the TitS line and just moving forward with cold steel.
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Don't. ToCS 3 won't make any sense if you do that and TitS is better anyway. It's just slow at the beginning; every chapter is better than the last
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SythaWarrior posted...

it was kind of suspicious when he has a "cave in" on the way back then shows up like nothing happened or anyone saying they helped him out of that

The cave-in was legit! If you try to follow Crow/backtrack through the mines after the cave-in report, you run into it blocking your path and you can examine it. Though I wouldn't be surprised if it was staged/set-up to some extent though that would also require some thorough level of planning to be prepared for that.

SantaRPidgey posted...

I'm about 7 hours into TitS and kind of considering giving up on the TitS line and just moving forward with cold steel.

FC has the slowest start in the series yeah. It's definitely worth it in the end IMO, but that's just my opinion.
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TitS has a slow start but has a huuuuge payoff.

FC is my least favorite game in the series but SC and 3rd are both my #3 and #2 (was 1 and 2 before I played Azure)

EDIT: And even FC has a great payoff toward the end, I should add. Just because its my least favorite overall doesn't mean its not good in its own right.

I mean it's not the plot or anything about the pacing that's killing my vibe, it's that the battle system is extremely slow and unrewarding.

The way it sometimes puts NPCs in your party so they can move around randomly and waste time in battle is great. if I could control the NPCs and get even a mild amount of battle use or control out of them I'd love it, but as it is it's just sooo dull. It's weird that I'm playing a game where finding a ladies cat is an exciting respite from the monster battles.
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is this the PC version

they did patch in all the fast forward stuff later on
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SantaRPidgey posted...

The way it sometimes puts NPCs in your party so they can move around randomly and waste time in battle is great

If this specifically is the issue then I feel like this doesn't happen that often as the game continues?

The combat is somewhat slow in general compared to Cold Steel regardless, however.
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nah this is the PSP version. I think the vita sequels have fast forward, but I still have to struggle through this one.
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hey you're wrong

Emma's the best
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haha oh weaku you're too much
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Oh. Yeah, PSP doesn't have turbo mode. The PC versions do and those would have been the version I'd recommend, if for no other reason that 3rd is PC only in terms of localization.
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yeah there's only like three escort areas in the series

and sometimes nial will get a clutch blind in so he's not completely useless
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