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Last Celebration posted:Azure: does the timed Siegmund fight make a difference between them going “heh, that wasn’t half bad but you’re out of time” and actually getting them down to 0 HP? yes, you have to defeat them for full DPs 
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Sep 12, 2023 06:00
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| # ? Jun 5, 2024 12:16 |
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Last Celebration posted:Azure: does the timed Siegmund fight make a difference between them going “heh, that wasn’t half bad but you’re out of time” and actually getting them down to 0 HP? DP
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Sep 12, 2023 06:02
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Thought so, I’ll just take the partial L, I was mostly curious because that’s what, three dialogue variants if there’s a difference between what I actually got, what I got before when I barely made a dent in them, and getting the win. Goddamn that was a hard fight. Chapter 3’s opening kinda went hard. All signs point to Erebonia/Osborne hiring out the Constellation for the war crimes…to the point where it feels like a red herring. And it probably wasn’t Calvard since they’ve worked with Heiyue in the past. Almost like the goal was to make people think one of them did the war crimes to further a political agenda, while even making sure to target their own property to avoid seeming guilty…
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Sep 12, 2023 07:00
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Last Celebration posted:The Duvalie portrait stands out because like Curtiss mentions, it’s from the Kai PS4 rerelease, which also adds in Juna as an NPC, so why don’t the other two Stahritter have portraits to be consistent is what I’m getting at, since CS3 gives them names and all. Because the former is in CS2 as well, which is set in the same time period. The other two aren't as major, given (CS4) Juna and Duvalie are playable, custom equipable, characters.
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Sep 12, 2023 11:45
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Last Celebration posted:Thought so, I’ll just take the partial L, I was mostly curious because that’s what, three dialogue variants if there’s a difference between what I actually got, what I got before when I barely made a dent in them, and getting the win. Goddamn that was a hard fight. The opening of Azure Chapter 4 is interesting if you think back to Star Door 8 from Sky the 3rd. In that door, a certain person points out a curious pattern which he has noted: Olivier: It's amazing how similar the annexation process is every single time it happens. It starts with a small nation or independent state with an array of problems beyond repair. Those problems start to worsen, after which jaegers and other dangerous elements enter, plunging public order to an all-time low... Desperate for a solution, the local government requests the help of the Imperial Army. Before they know it, they're part of the Empire. Osborne: Well, it's not as though I can deny what you're saying. Each instance does share certain commonalities. Still, it's to be expected--an inevitable consequence of the age of unchecked growth and progress in which we live. The Imperial Army is simply acting in the Empire's best interests, helping to stabilize our neighbors for the good of the Empire. Olivier: And it's understandable that they would. I do find myself rather curious why Intelligence Division members are going to such nations with such peculiar frequency... Well before the problems I described worsen, no less. Doesn't that sound eerily similar to what happened in Zero and Azure so far? Right down to the visits from Lechter, a member of the Intelligence division. It's practically straight out of the Empire's standard playbook at this point.
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Sep 12, 2023 12:27
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If it really is Erebonia doing the whole annexation sabotage thing I have to say, Osborne is probably kinda stupid. Maybe the following chapters are gonna somehow gonna justify it as a galaxy brained move, but afaik Osborne had to brute force his way into Crossbell and forcibly annex it anyway using the already superior military advantage and reverse engineered gundams his haters had made, so what’s the point over, you know, just cutting out the middleman and using the army of hired black market super solders and superior military might, since Crossbell is assuming it’s his doing anyway and wants nothing to do with Erebonia?
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Sep 12, 2023 14:58
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Question about Risette in Kuro - (as of the Interlude chapter) Is Risette a human with a bunch of mechanical parts (so a cyborg, I guess) or an android? I want to say that it's been implied that she's the former, since the game discussed reattaching her limbs as being equivalent to reattaching prosthetics (and I think there was also some line with a character wondering "how much of her was mechanical"). Also, lmao at the "Mishy in Boots" movie. Poor Feri, I shouldn't have taken her to see that movie - I thought it'd be good for the kids!
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Sep 12, 2023 18:25
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Ytlaya posted:Question about Risette in Kuro - (as of the Interlude chapter) Is Risette a human with a bunch of mechanical parts (so a cyborg, I guess) or an android? I want to say that it's been implied that she's the former, since the game discussed reattaching her limbs as being equivalent to reattaching prosthetics (and I think there was also some line with a character wondering "how much of her was mechanical"). For Risette everything but her brain and spine is mechanical. Having said that... I am expecting Kuro 3 to pull a twist on her being fully mechanical and she has false memories implanted or something. But I'm also pretty convinced MTSC is one of the thirteen factories too so, hey.
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Sep 12, 2023 19:23
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Playing through the Prologue for Zero again, this time playing on Normal (played through it on Hard a year back, before I decided I would rather not deal with that). I know it is probably a side effect of "Being originally developed for the PSP" (Those huge flat polygons), I do like those big sprites. Dumb question: Trails into Reverie is the game with the crossover between the Crossbell and Cold Steel casts, right? Unlucky7 fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 21:23
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Unlucky7 posted:Dumb question: Trails into Reverie is the game with the crossover between the Crossbell and Cold Steel casts, right? The game, no, Crossbell characters show up multiple times in the Cold Steel games. Reverie is the game in which both casts are fully playable and have independent but interconnected stories.
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Sep 12, 2023 22:00
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CS2's ending onwards starts getting the Crossbell cast more involved with Reverie being the most it shares the stage between Erebonia and Crossbell.
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Sep 12, 2023 22:46
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Tesseraction posted:CS2's ending onwards starts getting the Crossbell cast more involved with Reverie being the most it shares the stage between Erebonia and Crossbell. Yeah, CS2 is the moment that the Cold Steel arcs becomes Cold Steel And Crossbell arc basically.
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Sep 12, 2023 22:51
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Arc 4(CS3 and CS4) features Crossbellan and Liberlian characters, BUT it actively and constantly tries to relegate them to backseat cameos in a misguided attempt to keep the focus on Cold Steel. Don't expect your favorites to do anything more than be guest playable, and those are the lucky ones tbh. By far my biggest issue. Reverie is still Arc 4, but like TC its a weird fanservice game that breaks all the rules and becomes extremely good because of it.
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Sep 12, 2023 23:08
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Most of the previous cast should have been in the game less not more.
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Sep 12, 2023 23:14
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Azure, Chapter 4, holy wow kinda big spoilers: this poo poo really went from 0 to 100 huh, as I thought, the fact that the IBC had been totaled but was able to just move shop to the fancy new tower the new president had finished recently was too good to be true. Kinda wish I could play video games all day since everything is pointing to the president having some sort of super trump card to stave off the two continental super powers he baited into invading him by sealing off their assets, and also I just wanna know if Dieter was evil the entire time or he’s just become horribly misguided by the actual bullshit Calvard/Erebonia have subjected Crossbell to.
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Sep 13, 2023 02:16
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Last Celebration posted:Azure, Chapter 4, holy wow kinda big spoilers: this poo poo really went from 0 to 100 huh, as I thought, the fact that the IBC had been totaled but was able to just move shop to the fancy new tower the new president had finished recently was too good to be true. Kinda wish I could play video games all day since everything is pointing to the president having some sort of super trump card to stave off the two continental super powers he baited into invading him by sealing off their assets, and also I just wanna know if Dieter was evil the entire time or he’s just become horribly misguided by the actual bullshit Calvard/Erebonia have subjected Crossbell to. It's pretty rare for someone in Zemuria to be "evil for evil's sake," so you should probably define what you mean by "evil." One man's 'terrorist' is another man's 'freedom fighter', and all that jazz. Do you remember the big speech Dieter gave about "justice" when you first met him in Zero? Aina, in the prologue of Trails in the Sky FC said: "...there are as many forms of justice as there are stars in the heavens."
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Sep 13, 2023 04:02
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everyone is innocent until proven to be holding back
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Sep 13, 2023 04:09
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:It's pretty rare for someone in Zemuria to be "evil for evil's sake," so you should probably define what you mean by "evil." One man's 'terrorist' is another man's 'freedom fighter', and all that jazz. Do you remember the big speech Dieter gave about "justice" when you first met him in Zero? I mean, the end of Zero has a guy who ran literal child torture centers to make their cult’s super drug work, and approved one of them as use for child rape/molestation to blackmail political figures, that’s pretty unambiguously evil. Same with Weissman just being a mustache twirling “god I love being evil” bad guy whose was specifically murdered by the church because he was just The Worst. I guess I’m this context what I mean is, is President Croix just going to insane extremes to annex itself from Calvard/Erebonia because he’s thinking long-term, or has him being the richest man in Crossbell led to an ego trip where he sees the tragic sacrifices as completely inconsequential and not a necessary evil?
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Sep 13, 2023 04:50
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I still think he's cool.
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Sep 13, 2023 04:54
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after many pages, i'm finally about to start Trails to Reverie finally. took a massive detour on FF16 and the Xenoblade 3 DLC
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Sep 13, 2023 20:39
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Azure, end of Chapter 4: well gently caress. That’s one way to stave off two military superpowers. I guess the JP players/very new fans to the series who can actually play in order were far, far less surprised by the gundams at the end of CS1. And lol at Maribell’s super extra bad guy outfit, just as 0 to 100 as everything that’s happened since the Mainz Mountain occupation. The probably bigger surprise is that I was not expecting Wald to go “huh, drat, that poo poo I did on drugs was hosed” without having the classic shonen shout down post-boss battle. Also the title of Trails from Zero makes more sense now, but given that Zero ends up being about azure colored plants that get turned into drugs and Azure is the reveal of Seph-Terrion Zero I feel like maybe Trails From Azure to Zero would have made more sense if you introduced the magic weed in some capacity in the first game. Gameplay question: is Arios connected to a BP reward for doing “well”? Like, usually I’d assume do but even a buffed Lloyd was doing literally 1 damage, and they’re level 110 to my level 78 party so idk.
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Sep 14, 2023 01:43
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Last Celebration posted:Gameplay question: is Arios connected to a BP reward for doing “well”? Like, usually I’d assume do but even a buffed Lloyd was doing literally 1 damage, and they’re level 110 to my level 78 party so idk. 4 DPs for beating him
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Sep 14, 2023 01:46
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After 135 hours, I have finished Trails into Reverie/Hajimari no Kiseki on Abyss difficulty. Reverie was a mixed bag. As usual, the high points is the character building and turn based combat. Abyss helps make the game more fun since the game is challenging for a longer period of time, but it still follows the pattern of the first one or two chapters being ridiculously difficult, the middle game being fun, and the endgame being too easy. The postgame and true final boss was laughable. Story wise, Reverie still suffers from the writing problems that plagued the last two games (obnoxious Crossbell wanking, selective morality, lack of accountability, incoherent power levels, intrusive franchise fanservice, character assassinations, etc), but this game's storyline didn't have hundreds of hours of build up so it isn't as disappointing as CS4. Like Pokemon Myster Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, I felt that the postgame storyline was a let down compared to the main story ending. Felt like it should have just ended at the main story final dungeon, leaving the game off on the highest note possible. The doors/daydreams in Reverie are lackluster compared to the doors from 3rd. In 3rd, you got several really meaty, fleshed out doors like Kloe's time at Jenis Academy, or Schera and Aina in Grancel, or Mary wandering around the Ruan region, or the celebration party atop Grancel castle, etc. Doors where you got to talk to a lot of NPCs. But in Reverie, aside from Ash's door at the Branch Campus, you don't get any such thing. It's either just running through corridor dungeons, or just watching a movie. This is supposed to be a video game. There is supposed to be interactivity here. If I wanted to watch a movie then I would be doing that instead of playing a game. Another issue with the doors/daydreams in Reverie is that - aside from the 3 novellas that you unlocked after beating the true final boss which tease Kuro no Kiseki - none of the doors/daydreams really expand upon the world or set up future plotlines like 3rd's did. A lot of them felt like padding. Music was good. Port quality was great. No crashes. The localization is an impediment to gameplay as several craft and item descriptions were mistranslated and provide inaccurate information. Story wise, the localization has some egregious hiccups here and there. The voice acting quality was inconsistent. Some people sound out of character. There are a few standout performances such as Dr. Novartis or the Emperor, but there are also stinkers like Grace and Jingo. There was inconsistent mixing of the audio levels. Sometimes some characters' voices were too low to be heard, while in the same scene another character's voice would be too loud. Overall had fun. I'm going to go ahead and play the fan translation of Kuro no Kiseki. I've heard unflattering things about the writing, but I enjoy the combat and aesthetics and music of this franchise, and the characters are usually likeable.
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Sep 14, 2023 02:10
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Hwurmp posted:4 DPs for beating him lol of course. this poo poo really wasn’t meant for a first playthrough, especially on Hard with what, 25% extra HP/stats? Edit: I really wish they just gave the option to either Retry/Continue/Load Save on those fights, I’m pretty sure the Siegmund fight has that if you wipe before the clock runs out, it’s half of why I assumed there wasn’t a DP reward this time. Last Celebration fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Sep 14, 2023 |
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Sep 14, 2023 02:14
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Trails only started getting hard mode right once they got to Cold Steel tbh.
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Sep 14, 2023 02:16
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SyntheticPolygon posted:Trails only started getting hard mode right once they got to Cold Steel tbh. Eh, I’ve actually been largely satisfied with Hard in Azure for making the battles less rote and perfunctory “well it’s an RPG so there’s supposed to be fights i guess” affairs, it’s just that in this specific instance jacking up the stats of a boss over thirty levels higher than the party makes them exponentially stronger and they should have maybe tweaked bosses like that specifically.
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Sep 14, 2023 02:23
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Crossbell we do know was balanced for actual difficulty settings.
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Sep 14, 2023 02:29
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There's another fight like that, and even on easy you only deal 1 damage and can get a full party wipe. Your only recourse is arts and immunity spamming. Hope you bought some still blues! On one side I appreciated the variety, but for one of the coolest characters in the franchise I would have preferred something more exciting.
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Sep 14, 2023 02:55
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Last Celebration posted:Azure, end of Chapter 4: well gently caress. That’s one way to stave off two military superpowers. I guess the JP players/very new fans to the series who can actually play in order were far, far less surprised by the gundams at the end of CS1. And lol at Maribell’s super extra bad guy outfit, just as 0 to 100 as everything that’s happened since the Mainz Mountain occupation. Aside from the DP reward, there's also the fact that beating this boss gives your underlevelled party 9999 xp, which translates into 999 xp for your Master Quartz. Unlike Cold Steel, where MQ had its own experience curve that gets scaled to enemy levels, in Azure MQ simply gets 10% of the xp the character it's equipped on gets, which in practice means you won't have enough xp to max out every MQ since eventually your MQ will stop earning more than 1 xp per battle no matter how low its level is. This boss, together with a future one, pretty much give you a free MQ level. As for the boss, did you apply a double defensive debuff on him? I recall he's vulnerable to stat-downs, including Analyze to make him more hittable and Calamity Claw/Chrono Down to make him take less turns.
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Sep 14, 2023 06:25
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If you want to get all* the DP rewards in endgame Azure, then you should kit one person out for evasion tanking so they can play distraction. The damage they do is basically irrelevant, they're just there to tie up the boss while the others move to the opposite corner and kill the boss with Arts. (*Except the real-time time-limit boss fight. Evasion's only going to help so much there. Or just don't bother with that one, it's not worth it.)
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Sep 14, 2023 06:41
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Actually, evasion tank does a lot of work in that boss fight too.
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Sep 14, 2023 07:36
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Erpy posted:Aside from the DP reward, there's also the fact that beating this boss gives your underlevelled party 9999 xp, which translates into 999 xp for your Master Quartz. Unlike Cold Steel, where MQ had its own experience curve that gets scaled to enemy levels, in Azure MQ simply gets 10% of the xp the character it's equipped on gets, which in practice means you won't have enough xp to max out every MQ since eventually your MQ will stop earning more than 1 xp per battle no matter how low its level is. This boss, together with a future one, pretty much give you a free MQ level. ima be honestly my spirit was broken by the combo of getting slammed with Arcane Gale for a huge chunk of everyone’s health, realizing the boss was thirty levels over me, and then realizing that if I wanted to retry, it meant booting out of the game, booting it back up, and fast forwarding/turboing through the preceding, decently long cutscene multiple times until I found a winning strat, since it’s an “unwinnable” fight that doesn’t give the option to retry. I guess they are vulnerable to stat downs+delay, yeah. Einander posted:If you want to get all* the DP rewards in endgame Azure, then you should kit one person out for evasion tanking so they can play distraction. The damage they do is basically irrelevant, they're just there to tie up the boss while the others move to the opposite corner and kill the boss with Arts. I remember hearing dodgetanking was a pro strat so I’ve been abusing it with Lloyd pretty heavily, I think he got attacked like a dozen times in that fight and only three hits connected, which only goes so far when you get killed in two but hey!
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Sep 14, 2023 09:53
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Moofia Boss Val posted:I'm going to go ahead and play the fan translation of Kuro no Kiseki. I've heard unflattering things about the writing, but I enjoy the combat and aesthetics and music of this franchise, and the characters are usually likeable. I've been enjoying it hugely and find that it fixes almost every problem I had with the Cold Steel writing. Unless it just completely goes to poo poo in the last chapter or so, it's probably my favorite game in the series and has generally made me very optimistic for future Trails games.
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Sep 14, 2023 10:11
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Yeah Kuro is a massive breath of fresh air, it definitely feels more swish than prior games, although the dancing in particular is still hilariously animated. Not quite as bad as Ilya in Reverie's prologue, but up there.
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Sep 14, 2023 11:52
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Level 78 is fine for Chapter 4's end. I was level 79 on Hard at that point, still won. The same strategy works for most "unwinnable" boss fights: Make Lloyd an evasion tank, giving him the Chapter 3 weapons for the extra 10%, since it doesn't matter if he deals 1 damage to the boss - and in fact, he probably should never be attacking at all to avoid the chance of taking a hit from a miss-then-autocounter. Lloyd should pull the boss far away, and having your other three party members on support, casting spells to deal the actual damage, having Gladiator Belt Tio there to Zero Field occasionally. I've heard that Kuro goes to poo poo towards the ending of Kuro 2. I don't know how, exactly, but Cold Steel and Reverie are the reason why I'm going to wait until ALL the Kuro games are out and translated before even considering them.
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Sep 14, 2023 13:00
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Preordered my copy of Ys X. I hope the ps5 version (which is actually cheaper than the other versions, thanks Amazon JP) doesn't suffer downgrades because a Switch version exists.
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Sep 14, 2023 13:42
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even though i don't like him, i ordered a Crow figurine because he was on sale and was on the cheap side, just to add to my Legend of Heroes collection. gonna place him on the otherside of the shelf though. you jerk.
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Sep 14, 2023 17:14
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Tried again on one of my backup saves, got ”No…we were so close…!” “You’ve grown…perhaps you will be able to surpass us…someday” and frankly, you know what, we take those W’s (and the partial BP reward). Also there was another dialogue for just going a decent chunk of their life, which honestly just impressed me even more
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Sep 14, 2023 18:52
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Tesseraction posted:Yeah Kuro is a massive breath of fresh air, it definitely feels more swish than prior games, although the dancing in particular is still hilariously animated. Not quite as bad as Ilya in Reverie's prologue, but up there. I like the part in CS4 where Sully is just spinning in circles and the party is like "such beautiful dancing..." Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I've heard that Kuro goes to poo poo towards the ending of Kuro 2. I don't know how, exactly, but Cold Steel and Reverie are the reason why I'm going to wait until ALL the Kuro games are out and translated before even considering them. Because of the way the plot is, Kuro 1 can't really be retroactively hurt by future entries in the series (in the same way CS3 is hurt by some elements of CS4, for example). edit: From what I'm read, it sounds like the issues with Kuro 2 are very different from the issues with, say, the later Cold Steel games. It sounds like the main issue is a lack of new content and lack of progress with the "overarching trails narrative," as opposed to the "major story/character beats that kinda suck" issues that Cold Steel had. So it's more "the absence of good" than "the presence of bad," if that makes sense. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Sep 14, 2023 |
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Sep 14, 2023 19:04
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Kuro 2's problems stem from a mechanic it introduces that isn't in Kuro 1, which gets old fast. That and it is definitely more of a filler game than it does advance the plot proper. It does have its moments though. Also yes, both Kuro games are like Zero, in that they tell a standalone story with a clear beginning and end, there's no FC or Cold Steel 1 and 3 style cliffhangers.
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Sep 14, 2023 21:37
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