Board 8 > Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter demo is out.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Poor Ellie & Armand. Aria & Arium is ick.

RIP Radford, Euridice, Freemony, Claire, Lita, Skip, and Paddington.

Finally getting to this.

I don't understand the complaints about Estelle's VA, sounds good to me. Maybe it's specifically a character problem? Totally in line with how she acts in Cold Steel at least.

Finished the demo. Was not expecting this to be a goty candidate but honestly there's a lot to like here. I love how the game looks and sounds. Again, not super sold on the battle system but it's definitely a lot better than Daybreak 1's.

The only thing that's stopping me from saying it's better than the original is the loss of the Estelle character portraits - you just can't convey the same level of humor with the in-engine graphics.

The way it's meant to be played.

https://youtu.be/5xwDZ-Jr5Nw?si=QP92U2m_EPOixCjS

going through it now and I really like how they point out missables on the map because I'm neurotic about that

do I care about the books? no. is it gonna piss me off when I have all of them but volume 7? yes.

Hmmmmmmm

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5d7a2087.jpg

How's the new localization vs. the original version?

less quirky, some names are different, but I haven't noticed it being either good or bad. it's not taking liberties nor does it sound dry

I saw all the messages about chest messages and I misread it as chest massages

Right now the only issues I"m have are

A) not being able to steal bonuses with S-Crafts...is wierd. Not sure if Sky was always like that, can't remember.

B) every button in the overworld is wrong. Can't get over this. Why is O attack and Square engage battle

Edit: oh you can remap that, NM.

You could steal AT Bonuses with S-Crafts in OG Sky - in fact it was explicitly encouraged in the tutorial!

I think that stopped being possible in Daybreak though (but was possible in the previous 10 games) and since the battle system appears to be built on Daybreak's...

UshiromiyaEva posted...

A) not being able to steal bonuses with S-Crafts...is wierd. Not sure if Sky was always like that, can't remember.

You can do that in the original

yeah that's yet another daybreak thing that doesn't make any sense. like I'm burning my s-crafts trying to get criticals but it doesn't work? Like what the hell. Okay, maybe that was braindead/too broken or something but it was fun

there are way too many actually broken things in modern Trails for stealing turn bonuses to be a problem. (And in Kai/Horizon, it's trivially easy to get infinite turn bonuses for yourself anyways.)

dowolf posted...

there are way too many actually broken things in modern Trails for stealing turn bonuses to be a problem. (And in Kai/Horizon, it's trivially easy to get infinite turn bonuses for yourself anyways.)

kind of off topic, but regarding kai/horizon... how? a lot of people online say that the game is criminally easy and I'm not finding it that way. maybe I'm just not understanding some basic thing about it, but enemies seem really damage spongey. like it's not hard but I don't think I'm doing good amounts of damage with either skills or arts even though I'm trying to min-max characters that way

I dont know how it is in Daybreak, but stealing criticals with s-breaks seems pretty tame since there now seem to be sustems in place to steal and stack bonuses.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/dc604cd6.jpg

colliding posted...

kind of off topic, but regarding kai/horizon... how? a lot of people online say that the game is criminally easy and I'm not finding it that way. maybe I'm just not understanding some basic thing about it, but enemies seem really damage spongey. like it's not hard but I don't think I'm doing good amounts of damage with either skills or arts even though I'm trying to min-max characters that way

kai/horizon: They absolutely are damage sponges, but basically the easiest way to cheese is to give someone the Moby Dick dual art, all the cast reduction and speed quartz, plus Arc Feather Kai, Auto-Forte Guard (as in the defense line one), Auto-Quick, Cataract Gain, Heavenly whatchamacalit on Extra, and then all the bonus arts damage quartz. You take (almost) infinite turns, hit the entire field, get EP back with Cataract Gain, and get infinite boost with Heavenly. As for the defensive side, since enemies like to sbreak, Pater Mater says hi. (You can do some powerful stuff on physical too, but you can't quite take infinite turns. You can also use other dual arts -- just, mirage+water dovetails with Arc Feather and Cataract Gain on the Drive line.)

Odd that in this walk around and talk section at the top of the Tower, everyone but Estelle is voiced. Bug?

Looking at the cooking finally. Wierd you have to actually eat food to learn the recipie now, but this permenant party buff from cooking eache recipie for the first time is cool.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Odd that in this walk around and talk section at the top of the Tower, everyone but Estelle is voiced. Bug?

that's almost certainly them just saving money on Voice Acting. It's something they've been doing for a while

Finished, boot 8 hours of kring idle time.

Love this. I have tried and failed to play Sky 3 times now, I always quit because I just hate the combat in that game soooooo much that I can't force myself to keep going. Obviously not an issue here at all, the change to turn order stuff will take some getting used to but I'll manage.

Obviously the "active vs turn based combat modes" didn't work out at all like I thought, where I figured these were two distinct ways to play the game, not the hybrid that it is, but it works fine.

The voice acting is great, it s the best Trails has ever looked, can't wait for the full release.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Odd that in this walk around and talk section at the top of the Tower, everyone but Estelle is voiced. Bug?

Visual Novels will sometimes not voice the main character to help you self-insert into them. I kinda doubt that's what they're going with here though.

Lol yeah, it stood out, it was the only time in the demo where one character spoke and the other didn't.

OrangeCrush980 posted...

Visual Novels will sometimes not voice the main character to help you self-insert into them. I kinda doubt that's what they're going with here though.

Cold Steel did the same thing. Daybreak does too

checked again and saw that the demo is on switch now so i guess i'm downloading it

Falcom President confirms of course they're doing Sky 2nd Chapter

I always figured that would be the case

The real question was will they do 3rd

I doubt they'll do third unless the sales numbers for the first two are really high

3rd is already perfect so why change it?

NFUN posted...

3rd is already perfect so why change it?

Was it perfect before all the patches it got?

yes

Guess the current version we have is broken then...

https://www.polygon.com/trails-in-the-sky-remake-long-series-jrpg/

The issue with 3rd is it's kind of a black sheep/standalone among modern Trails games. There's a little bit of foreshadowing about what's to come, but much of what it adds to the character stories from FC and SC is from the past. Someone who doesn't know early Trails might not even know the game exists.

That's not to say it's a bad game, but with how far the lore of the series has gone past it, I feel like they would consider remaking it to be needless.

Everything you just said applies to recent Trails games like Daybreak 2 and Reverie as well.

how dare you

reverie was absolutely vital because it was the moment that lloyd bannings arrested... my heart.

Reverie's story is so extraordinarily dumb it cancels out how fun it actually is. Or maybe trudging through Daybreak is just making me nostalgic for the Cold Steel engine/battle system.

Not to mention how the fanservice didn't just cross a line, it sailed over it at mach speed with those beach dates

Anyway, I think they could do Trails the 3rd remake if 1c and 2c actually do well (which honestly, they should if it maintains the quality of the demo throughout). It's got the production value and quality of life stuff that Trails hasn't had up to now. It's also got a relatively straightforward story with good characters. If not for Clair Obscur I'd say it had a shot at rpg of the year.

Reverie is my favorite game in the series. Games like it are absolutely necessary imo.

also I just skipped the beach dates lol

The biggest reason they'll do a 3rd remake is that it has almost no new assets. I would expect that SC and 3rd combined cost less to remake than FC.

Oh, maybe if they keep going and do Crossbell they'll fix Azure's epilogue. That'd be nice.

MacArrowny posted...

Oh, maybe if they keep going and do Crossbell they'll fix Azure's epilogue. That'd be nice.

do you mean how it explains the CS games? or something else

Yeah, and it doesn't make much sense even in the context of Azure.

MacArrowny posted...

Everything you just said applies to recent Trails games like Daybreak 2 and Reverie as well.

"Oh"

I have played neither.

Not sure I should!

I just beat reverie and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Depends on what you're looking for I guess. It doesn't hit the same story heights of the crossbell games but it definitely has reached the height of gameplay aspect of the series so far (havent played daybreak yet though)

I really liked Reverie. =(

Playing Daybreak 2 right now so I reserve opinions on that though it's been fun so far and an improvement on Daybreak 1 (I'm in Act II)