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Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Levantine posted:

Trick with those worms is to only attack one at a time. If you don't attack them, they don't spam the big AoE attack on their turn. I haven't encountered an unfair fight yet, even the ones with optional win conditions.

The only bullshit fight I've seen so far is (Chapter 7 spoilers) The fight against Renne atop the tower where she opened the fight with a Crit Bonus S-Craft which insantly killed Tita and crippled everyone else, only for them to be promptly finished off by the army of loving spider jerks that followed her up. Reloaded and it turns out the crit bonus was just incredibly bad luck, go figure.

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Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Really Pants posted:

You definitely need a few Skull Pendants and Mirage Rings for that fight, ideally along with the Grail Locket and Lebensborn.

What should I make with the Zemurian Ore? I'm torn between weapons for Estelle and Joshua that would always be in use, or weapons for Agate and Zane to help them wreck faces as hard as possible.

My strategy throughout the late game, which never failed in a single fight, was to give Joshua his ultimate weapon and a gladiator belt, load him up with as much speed, attack and crit as possible, buff the hell out of him in battle and then have him go around doing 3000-6000 damage per turn with True Double Strike. I'm not aware if anyone can keep up with that level of damage.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Cake Attack posted:

guys i don't think we've told endorph enough ways to open the map yet, does anyone know more

He can alt+tab and refer to this whenever he gets lost

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Endorph posted:

yeah but they never say 'the royal villa is outside the city', so i kept opening the city map, not the world map

Now you're just being crazy, who builds a Villa in a city?

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Paperhouse posted:

I just got the slippers and for the first time I've taken him out of my party :(

On another note (ch4 spoiler) is it possible to beat Mueller as Joshua in the bandit hideout? I was doing fine until he got low on HP and did like three attacks in a row

Yeah you just gotta keep him clocked down and Joshua clocked up and grind it out, it's not that bad

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Overbite posted:

I'm not going to play part 2 until I finish Cold Steel and Xenoblade X. And Dark Souls 3 and Fire Emblem Fates.

so, multiple years

Play SC before Cold Steel dummy.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


MisawaMahoKodomo posted:

It's fun hearing the commentary of the player(s) I watch

Get this: playing the game is even more fun.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


What are the bonuses for CS I save files in II? Got to decide between importing to play 2 months earlier or waiting it out for goodies.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


I'd convinced myself it was Carl personally. I'm glad I did because my stupid nonsensical theory made what actually happened a nice surprise.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


ApplesandOranges posted:

Well drat, I was hoping not to have to spend another $40 just to understand the game I just bought.

To avoid this problem in future, try to avoid buying games with titles than end in the number 2.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


ImpAtom posted:

How dare those localizers censor the original game! (I really genuinely love XSEED's translation.)

Did they add the constant "hehe, haha, hoho, ehehe" that litters the dialogue in these games? Because that's kinda annoying but if it was in the original script then I guess I can forgive them.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Does anyone else feel like the antagonists in CS II are a total let down? I just finished up the Finale and spent the entire time thinking how much better Liber Ark was as a climax. Barring Duke Cayenne, none of the antagonists really interacted with the party in any sort of way that would make you want to rise up and kick their rear end (not that the game would allow you to do so anyway since every time you defeat one of them it turns out they were totally holding back and you need to fetch an adult to defeat them for you). Vita kidnapping Elise (who it turns out is totally fine and was never in any danger anyway) is more or less the only antagonistic thing any of the major boss characters pull on the party in the entire game(s). The way Crow was handled was so bizarre too. Dude ordered a bunch of terrorist attacks that (presumably) killed innocent people, then assassinated the Chancellor and sparked a civil war and Class VII talks about him as if he's a naughty kid that ran away from home. There's so much potential for conflict there and Rean + pals through the whole game are content to just go with "come on crow, lets be friends again ya big goof". He's the only antagonist Class VII actually manage to definitively defeat and it only occurs under the pretense of beating the power of friendship into him. It's just such a far cry from how satisfying it was to defeat Weissmann, Loewe and co.

tl;dr bad guys all suck as bad guys. too much power level bullshit and very little motivation. duvalies alright though

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


davidHalestorm posted:

While I do get your points but I really liked the fact that Trails series in general acknowledges that as kids, Class VII should be outclassed by their opponents, especially if they are experienced and have been fighting for a long time. A lot of RPGs and fiction in general that have kid main characters tends to have them solve a lot of problems that come their way all by themselves. They don't do that with Trails, for the most part. Both Estelle and Joshua and Class VII gets a lot of support from the adults.

I firmly believe that narrative has to meet the gameplay halfway. Yeah sure it makes sense that Class VII can't take out the biggest of the big cheeses, but if that's the way you want the story to go then throw the players a bone and give them some lesser antagonists to beat up on. Don't make it so that almost every major battle the player 'wins' they don't actually win after all. Don't make it so that they always need someone to save them from the ever so impossibly strong hired goons. It gets very old very fast, especially when it happens as ridiculously often as it does in this game.

Bland fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Sep 24, 2016

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Supremezero posted:

And it's dropped into the middle of the screen at a completely random point because...?

To display the amusing contrast between his valuation of his teams ability and the quality of their translation. That is the joke.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Amppelix posted:

Has anyone ever used the attack items (dangerous cooking!) to good effect in any Trails game? I found that once I could make them reliably I could already much more reliably do the exact same things with other means, and usually more effectively, and ingredients are much better spent on the healing recipes anyway.

The fact that you get to weaponize the generic anime trope of lethally horrible chefs is genius though and absolutely worth the items existing in the first place.

I used them to get the bonus Bracer Points in the 'Estelle vs Gilbert n friends' battle in SC. Other than that I'm not sure I've ever touched them.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


OddObserver posted:

This week's leaked CS3 spoilers (warning: massive, suggests some plot stuff) got translated:

https://pastebin.com/r4BkpJYq

Class armored train!? Forget airships, now that's where it is. Though I am wondering about the "field studies bit", don't tell me this game is just Western Erebonia intro for IV.

This game has way too many characters in the mix good lord

Bland fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Aug 9, 2017

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


There are a lot of common archetypes in Three Houses, however unlike in CS their characterisation doesn't begin and end with said archetypes.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Endorph posted:

three houses is almost nothing but 'everyone in the squad needlessly gets a line' lol. pretty much every scene in the golden deer route is

claude: i have a plan
hilda: okay
lorenz: gently caress you
marianne: i dont know...
ignatz: i dont know...?
raphael: im hungry
lysithea: shut up
leonie: jeralt

i still love the game but i would not accuse it of gracefully integrating the non-main characters into the story cutscenes.

At least they stick with just the people in your house to keep sizes relatively relatively sane. Some of the cutscenes in CSIV with huge mobs of people chatting about recent developments got a little absurd.

Bland fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Aug 10, 2019

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Oxxidation posted:

sounds to me like despite its much-vaunted emphasis on writing the entire trails series is burdened by stylistic and technical cliches that go from rote to regressive and that was only alleviated by exceptionally talented localizers

Yeah that's more or less the long and short of it.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Tae posted:

The silver lining is that they meandered in CS3 so much that CS4 is basically way more plot focused.

This was not my experience at all. Large portions of 4 (including basically the entirety of Act 2) could be removed without the player being any the wiser.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Ethiser posted:

I beat CS3 and there’s one thing I didn’t follow that I’m not sure if I was supposed to understand. How did Musse become some super puppetmaster who was running things behind the scenes? There was like two month gap between me beating the section at her hometown and the game so if I missed something let me know.

They go into it more in IV. It's dumb. Basically, Magical 4d mind chess powers

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Is talking about CSIV (w/ spoiler tags obviously) kosher ITT? I kind of want to add on to the Shirley discussion with stuff that happens there but the sensible part of my brain is telling me to hold my tongue on the game until the western release. I imagine most people wouldn't even want to read anything spoiler tagged anyway.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Idkbutlike2 posted:

CS4 Is it about the story trying to redeem her? Cause yeah, that was pretty stupid after how much how of an unhinged psycho she was in Ao.

Yeah, basically. It's so irritating how the game can't just let anyone be bad, you have to be friends with everyone, even the nutjob that tried to murder a civilian in Ao. When she randomly showed up to share some 40s with Rean and Fi in one of Fi's bonding events my eyes about rolled out of my head.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Idkbutlike2 posted:

CS4 Oh god, I forgot about that stupid bonding event. It was a bonding event, right? Yeah, it is weird how CS3 and CS4 tries to rehabilitate the image of the Red Constellation from psychotic war criminals to somewhat professional mercenaries who are even okay with working with Zephyr. It's like, Falcom, didn't you guys set Zephyr and the RC up to be bitter rivals with polarized ideologies whose bosses fought each other to the death on a whim? What are these two jaeger corps doing drinking booze and singing kumbaya at Rutger's grave? It's way too saccharine given their history..

It's one of my biggest gripes with the Cold Steel series (admittedly I have many); the constant undermining of tension and stakes by having almost every single villain act pally-pally with Rean (and him, by and large, reciprocating). The series has developed a bizarre aversion to conflict

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


I'm not sure where anyone is getting the argument of "kill all antagonists" from. All I want is for the game to treat it's own stakes with even a modicum of respect. Like maybe the people that are trying to advance a plan to genocide a country and bring ruin to the entire world shouldn't be treated like your drinking buddies that you have a minor difference in ideology with. God knows there's no shortage of non-antagonist characters in the cast that can be used to bring moments of levity.

Bland fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jul 11, 2020

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Shinjobi posted:

I go back and forth on it. There are days where it doesn't bother me, and there are others when I'm just scratching my head wondering why the hell would you write in a civil war in the first place.

There's definitely a dissonance between the stories Falcom want to tell and the tone they want to establish. It's not like having a team of antagonists that are jovial rascals is an inherently bad idea, but just keep things relatively light-hearted if you're going to do that. You can't have it both ways.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


It's just occurred to me that (III+IV spoilers) Cedric is actually my favourite antagonist in these games because he's just such a little loving poo poo to the party that I'm always hyped to dunk on him. It's one of the few occasions where you get to knock someone down a peg and it's acknowledged, it's genuinely refreshing.

Bland fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jul 12, 2020

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


MythosDragon posted:

I hate this post.

In my defence that's more a statement on how I feel about all the other antagonists.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


God, yeah. Imagine if the end of CS2 was unsatisfying. Scary thought.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Power levels are perfectly easy to judge, all you have to do is tally together the amount of times someone remarks that the character was "holding back" after a fight. The more times they've held back, the more powerful they are. This means Rean is by far the strongest being in existence btw.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


U-DO Burger posted:

I don't remember that part very well. What about it makes it especially tricky to translate?

I don't remember the specifics myself either but I did a little bit of searching and I think the gist is that they just made up new ranks by combining certain kanji from existing ranks.

e: Whoops, looks like I was reading an article about the Crossbell Military Police, which is is who that actually applies to.

Bland fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Sep 23, 2020

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Saoshyant posted:

Okay, I'm pissed off, for a number of reasons. I have reached the end of CS3, so don't hover the spoilers below if you haven't.

First, I'm pissed off that none of those monsters of a people got slayed by devil Rean. That loving prick Cedric who just got his brother murdered and, of course, the motherfucking Chancellor. And this being anime, they aren't going to suffer any actual consequences for their bullshit. I guess that's like real life these days anyway where no consequences happen to the truly evil, but it still boils my blood that none of those fictional assholes are gonna get cut into pieces by a giant sword.

Second, what in the actual gently caress is even going on anymore. It starts with "we are going to war with Calvard, the Chancellor and his people have been working non-stop for this to happen" and I'm like "dang, this is serious", but then it turns out all they had to do was getting their buddies together and kill some cursed holy beast to unleash their crazy plan and clashing with Calvard wasn't even necessary. But worse, their whole plan is not even to break the curse which would be reasonable and at least make them less mustache twirling maniacs, but instead it's to spread it across the entire world. Because!

Third, this is how it ends. You get the bad ending. The curse is now spread across the entire world and everyone is just punching each other in the street and mobs are out there killing minorities and so and on. How do you even fix this? It's a done deal. What is CS4 even going to be about? Is Rean going to headpat everyone in the whole world until they become good people? Of course not. It's going to be some stupid deus ex machina that will fix things somehow. I can't imagine it's going to get a satisfying resolution in the upcoming game and I need to be proven wrong. Please.


Someone please tell me CS4 is good and cool.

While some of the things you're worried about are not problems in CS4, unfortunately I am of the opinion that there are instead a bunch of other problems that make it very much not good and cool.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


ImpAtom posted:

My opinion halfway through IV is that Estelle is the best and Juna is a WAY better protagonist than Rean.

Actually all of New VII is hugely better without Rean.

Very much agreed on every point. God IV becomes such a slog once Rean is back in the driving seat

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Hwurmp posted:

please post spoilers only in Japanese until the game is out in English

リィン教官...

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Veryslightlymad posted:

So..... How much of that is the story going too far, and how much of that is NISA killing my baby?

As someone who played it in Japanese, the writing issues are 100% on Falcom, regardless of how sloppy NISA's localisation is.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


kirbysuperstar posted:

So how bad is fishing in CS4, because the CS3 version is hot rear end

It's the exact same as far as I remember

Except this time the fish are CURSED!

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Clarste posted:

If anything, the problem is that they become too cool and fun so it's even harder to believe that they'd be following along with some dumb plan that clearly makes no sense. Like, we've already reached a point where it seems like they'd all be best buds with the good guys if not for the fact that they happen to be with Ouroboros.

This is it. It's reached the point where we have a huge cast of villains that have all had a bunch of screentime each but we still don't know what, if anything, the majority of them actually stand for or believe in. But we have to fight them over and over again anyway. It's immensely unsatisfying.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Endorph posted:

i think we know why most of the ouroboros members are with ouroboros? its just that most of them are either 'because they like chaos' or 'they are close to another ouroboros member'

I guess the thing is I don't consider "because it's fun lol" to be a real motivation. Maybe if it was just the one character like that and there was more to them beyond that then it would be fine, but when it describes a significant proportion of your rogue's gallery it feels like a cop out to avoid having to write an actual character and not just a character design with an attitude.

Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

Oh by the way, now that the review embargo is apparently up... what's up with the voices? Who did they recast, and how noticeable is it?

Also, did they do dumb jokes for the trial chests?

From what I've heard, Laura, Osborne, Lechter and Mcburn. Apparently the replacements did fine but I'm just repeating what I've heard, I haven't played it in English myself.

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Bland
Aug 31, 2008


Winner Of The TRP I dont actually remember the contest im pretty high right now here's your venkys tag


Junpei posted:

So people want the removal of fantasy elements in the Trails series, a fantasy series?

Makes no sense, but ehh. Whatever.

Speaking of posts that make no sense.

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