Board 8 > Trails in the Sky FC Playthrough Topic of Sorts *Spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Shine and Arti have demanded this blood for awhile. I own Cold Steel 1 and 2 but not touching them well til I play the trails in the sky games first. I plan to do the other two Zero whatever games if they hit ps4 in the west (seemingly will next year). I'm gonna open theory and well take notes like I do when playing rpgs. I'll ask open questions about mechanics but leave my ass in the dark about spoilers/theories. Just point and laugh.

Spoilers and Theorizing in this topic, please don't ruin stuff.

=What I know going in=
Shine sent me a year or so ago the conspiracy level timeline of this game. I also knew the cold steel games were coming to ps4 and I skipped them on ps3. And I was asked to review this exact game when it hit psp but declined it. I also watched bits and pieces (really background noise) of a stream a few years ago and man that guy hated this game. I know someones named Estelle. Yeah thats kinda it

Going into this with maybe an hour at most on this per day, only really starting this cause its one of the Game Club games of the month

Session 1
-I like the Falcom sound when you load
-The animation/art style in this game is uh interesting, I guess it works never played anything that looked like this
-So Estelle Brights the focus here I guess
-The father Cassius brought this boy in near death, he knows who the father is and calls him a fool. Need to really just note this to figure out this kids past eventually
-Cassius said his raven hair is rare, reminds me of a line they say about Adol in Ys games
-Kid is Joshua and now uh fast forward hes just living here and its years later
-The anime intro though felt really off though, I guess thats a bunch of party members but I kinda forgot them all already
-Joshua plays a mean harmonica
-Note Whereabouts of Light, likely important later

Yea thats it for today, started at like 3am and I was falling asleep in text conversation. I'll do more tomorrow at a reasonable time.


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Tag.

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Cassius best character.

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Session 2
-Joshua is now like really chilled out
-Estelle is an idiot and kinda whiny...is she really my protag? *grimace*
-Overworld music between towns is bumping
-I heard this games very focused on npcs and talking to them is important. I'm a talk to every npc no matter how cringe it gets kinda gamer
-Estelle is a real idiot
-Schezard was doing stuff with fortune cards that I'm sure is relevant to the plot, but sorry Persona never really did teach me how to read this stuff well
-The battle systems fine a bit slow but its fine
-Cassius trained Schezarad and she was "the silver streak", ok
-The children of this town have some secret hangout
-Video game food always is fun to me. A maple cookie is easy to picture, but what is Wholesome Pasta?

(still playing but dont want to lose my post)

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Tag

Aw ya go my Trails. Estelle the best.

I do agree I'm not a fan of the Trails opening songs/movies though. (Other than Ao no Kiseki which is of course not this one.)
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Session 2 Continued
-This tower looks straight outta Ys, makes sense but lol
-lmao this NPC protect battle why are they just wandering around
-A letter coming in this seems like plot
-And it means Cassius is gonna leave to spy on something called the Ereborian Empire, well bye only character I like
-Joshua has some promise hes gonna do and the fact Cassius has to remind him of 5 years of family likely means hes gonna fall into the the standard Rogue trope of 75% betrayal rate
-Did a sidequest finding this kid a shiny stone which he barely knew what it even was.
-Did another sidequest to kill a kamikaze plant, that was surprising

Done for now. Next time I'm going to a farm


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in later games they give you pictures of all of the food!
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NFUN posted...

in later games they give you pictures of all of the food!

awesome, it was one of my favorite parts of Bloodstained


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estelle the best

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BTW, you absolutely need a guide if you're planning on 100%ing this the first playthrough
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yeah this game has tons of missable sidequests youll never find

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NFUN posted...

BTW, you absolutely need a guide if you're planning on 100%ing this the first playthrough

Def gonna miss stuff then, whatever I find will be what I find

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Unless there is some non spoiler missable quest guide like yakuza had

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MegamanX posted...

Unless there is some non spoiler missable quest guide like yakuza had

there are multiple! I can link the less spoilery one in a sec.
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Make sure you use Turbo Mode if you're playing on PC. Makes the battles go 4x faster.

Hold ALT on your keyboard or hold R2 if you're using a PS4 controller with Steam.

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NFUN posted...

there are multiple! I can link the less spoilery one in a sec.

yea hit me with it ill use it
plasmabeam posted...

Make sure you use Turbo Mode if you're playing on PC. Makes the battles go 4x faster.

Hold ALT on your keyboard or hold R2 if you're using a PS4 controller with Steam.

yea been using this


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Least spoilery: This is annoying to read IMO and fluffy, but it explains things pretty thoroughly and details every step, as well as being vague where it matters less so if you read ahead you won't get spoiled.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=650199768

"Most guides have unnecessary information.
This doesn't.

It just tells you what to do, in what order, to 100% the game."
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=712454203

Most spoilery: This guide is well-organized and the best for finding out what you need to have done when, but they way it's sorted by grouping together all of each collectible/quest (eg, all of the quartz you can get are in the same section, all of the weapons are together, etc) instead of chronologically when you'd get it makes it more difficult for avoiding any spoilers. It's the worst for the quest section, where it tells you plainly and all-at-once what options you need to choose for max BP.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1089109429

I'd say 2 is probably your best bet, and then 1 or 3, depending on how viciously spoiler-averse you are

I just replayed it a couple of weeks ago so i've become very well-acquainted with all of these

And some general advice:
Count how many chests you get and double-check in each area and compare it with the counts the guides give you to make sure you miss none. There is a chest in Mistwald that disappears when you get far enough in the Prologue. Probably get that one early (I do not know why this is the only disappearing chest in the game). Similarly, there is a food item that Abend Bar only sells after the Prologue ends that is easily missable. No other store changes stock like this (at least as far as I remember).

If you really want to be thorough, compare what you have to the information the third guide gives you at each of its "checkpoints" to make sure you didn't miss anything.
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How much of these quartzes matter?

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MegamanX posted...

How much of these quartzes matter?

In Sky that's a more complicated question because of how Arts work (it's worth getting a grasp how the orbment lines work in determining what arts you have available, check the Bracer Notebook for the explanation) but in general Action # quartz are always top tier. HP and Attack are also solid throughout.

The Art you want to work towards obtaining on someone eventually is White Gehenna because it is hands down the best spell in FC but I don't think you can get it until mid-game at earliest. Aerial is a solid earlier game spell and Shadow Spear and Soul Blur are also good single target ones. Generally Time is the best element in FC.

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Yeah time and water are generally the best elements in Sky. Earth and air are pretty worthwhile in terms of spells too, even if the quartz themselves aren't generally the best.

Fire for spells isn't the best but you'll still want it for weaknesses, and it has some good quartz too.

Space is a bit worthless in Sky sadly.

tcaz2 posted...

Space is a bit worthless in Sky sadly.

Excuse you, you mean Sky FC (i can accept an argument for SC but 3rd it's great)
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Bumping not gonna get back to this likely til weekend

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Just look up a recommended quartz setup because it's not worth trying to figure out

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ninkendo posted...

Just look up a recommended quartz setup because it's not worth trying to figure out

lies and slander

figuring out quartz setups was my favorite part of the gameplay
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ninkendo posted...

Just look up a recommended quartz setup because it's not worth trying to figure out

what the

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Zzz

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ninkendo posted...

Just look up a recommended quartz setup because it's not worth trying to figure out

boo this man

MegamanX posted...

-Estelle is an idiot and kinda whiny...is she really my protag? *grimace*

boo this man as well

MegamanX posted...

I'm a talk to every npc no matter how cringe it gets kinda gamer

eh okay you can stay

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I recommend not trying to 100% this

I mean this game already has a TON of text and side quests that you'll find just by fulfilling requests and talking to townspeople. If you're like me, the pace will be so slow it will almost break you, so adding stuff on to that will just make the game feel chore like

I love the game, I'm just saying the payoff might not be worth it for a lot of the hidden side quests (you absolutely should do the non-required requests in the bracer journal though)

colliding posted...

I recommend not trying to 100% this

I mean this game already has a TON of text and side quests that you'll find just by fulfilling requests and talking to townspeople. If you're like me, the pace will be so slow it will almost break you, so adding stuff on to that will just make the game feel chore like

This. The sidequests aren't worth it. My biggest regret with the game is not pushing harder through the main story. Honestly by the time I reached the final chapter, I just wanted to be over with.

Btw, make sure you're WELL STOCKED on recovery items going into the final dungeon.


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Like, don't get me wrong. The strength of Trails is absolutely the world building and the even-tempered pacing. But in FC (and to a perhaps even greater extent CS1) the build up is excruciatingly frustrating sometimes, particularly if you favor fast-paced JRPG's that don't care as much about this sort of thing.

Ultimately, the series rewards players with patience, but it also risks losing the player's attention as well. So that's why I always tell people to fill up the journal as much as possible, talk to everyone (multiple times), and occasionally revisit locations off the beaten path if you feel like it, but also feel free to just get the game moving if you want to.

bump looking to play more today

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never finishing it this month but plan is still to beat this

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save

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Up

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