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I'm about to finish Trails from Zero and this lategame boss description is maybe the best thing that's happened so far in the entire game:
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Jul 18, 2023 03:25
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 00:08 |
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About to finish Azure and I slooooooooowly scrolled down the entire page for the final dungeon in this guide I'm following. Yeah, I'm not doing this tonight. I have pretty major problems with Trails storytelling at the best of times, but there's still a lot I like. That said, having already played all the Cold Steel games, I think I legitimately just despise Ouroboros and hate whenever they show up.
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Aug 1, 2023 05:18
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Last Celebration posted:hosed up take imho, Blueblanc is rad. He's not even in this game!
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Aug 1, 2023 10:29
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Oh I was, I'm just saying that's cold comfort for Azure lol
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Aug 1, 2023 10:43
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SyntheticPolygon posted:Azure has the only good main antagonist in the series though! Look, if we're talking about the same "main antagonist" in Azure he's only been revealed as such for about fifteen minutes so far for me, lmao
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Aug 1, 2023 15:45
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I thought Dieter was decent but I dunno about calling him the "main antagonist" given how the game rips the wind out of his sails after you fight him and he is immediately betrayed by the real villains
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Aug 1, 2023 15:56
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I did that quest, you know what I mean. The riddles are alright but I'm not counting it as an appearance unless I get full Bleublanc action, and he doesn't even appear in disguise in that one.
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Aug 1, 2023 22:26
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I mean, I definitely also find Ouroboros incoherent, but maybe not in the way that poster meant
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Aug 2, 2023 01:40
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I'd be fine with Ouroboros if it was all, like, Bleublanc/McBurn/Campanella (but only when he's turning people into peppers). My problem is more that they suck all the air out of the room. They're basically omnipresent in a lot of the games, and I get it, you want to have a villain faction with more "out-there" power sets for later boss fights. But they have basically nothing to do with anything in the plot, very rarely have any personal connection to or investment in anything the heroes are doing (Bell and Sharon are I guess two notable counterexamples), and don't usually even seem to care that much about achieving their goals and mainly show up to act smug and convince the game I lost a boss fight I just won. It's like anti-drama. If they were just a weird boss faction who showed up for a fight or two each game to test the heroes or whatever with no major connection to the story, that'd be weird but I'd prefer it to them being all over the place and nothing seeming to matter. Though the bigger problem for me is probably just that I don't really care for eternally unflappable schemer type-characters and Ouroboros is like 90% those by weight. TL;DR: I believe Ouroboros are like dogs and just kind of do things arbitrarily
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Aug 2, 2023 02:18
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Junpei posted:"no personal connection" he says as if the Bleublanc/Olivier, Luciola/Scherezard, Renne/Estelle and Tita, Walter/Zin, and Loewe/Joshua set-ups/pairings didn't exist. Lol that's what I get for not playing Sky yet
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Aug 2, 2023 02:25
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Junpei posted:Walter and Zin show up in the Kuro games. I'm not sure the games I have no way of legally playing yet are a great counterexample, here
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Aug 2, 2023 02:28
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Cyouni posted:I'm honestly amazed everyone seems to have forgotten about Vita's entire existence. That's fair
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Aug 2, 2023 02:39
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Ytlaya posted:Their willingness to kill Altina in the first place, however, is still inexplicable. This is still utterly baffling to me, especially Millium's involvement in it. I just cannot make it make sense on any level.
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Aug 3, 2023 00:44
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Tesseraction posted:(CS3 endgame) Millium is literally working "with" them to spoiler the plan... hence her diving in when Rean fails to stop it. The others? Just shitheads. I'm partially talking about why none of the heroes seem at all confused or upset by Millium going along with it
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Aug 3, 2023 01:19
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See, now we're kind of getting into something a little more fundamental, which is that the whole Millium situation at the end of CS3 felt very cheap and poorly motivated, personally. Millium has no real reason to stay with the Ironbloods there, but she does so she can stop Altina's death. Okay, that's fine, not a huge issue. But that kind of hamstrings the narrative, especially if the protagonists suspect she's got her own agenda in going along with it, because it's essentially a fake conflict. It's just an excuse for a boss fight, basically. I think I'm getting stuck on "why are the main characters not reacting to this" because the alternative, that they trust her and just aren't talking about it at all, makes the entire thrust of that scene fall flat for me. As weird as it would be for Millium to legitimately stay loyal to the Ironbloods given that the game doesn't even try to give any real motivation she'd ever do that, the scene isn't really grounded in any kind of motivation at all. From what I remember the characters aren't even very conflicted, they're just "Welp, gotta fight Millium." They might as well be sparring. I'm not even sure why they used Millium in that way given how things play out and how little she gets to do between her "betrayal" and her sacrifice, you could legitimately replace her with like a clone or even a big monster and it wouldn't really change much at all. I dunno, I just feel like if the game's gonna make me fight one of my own party members it should carry literally any significance whatsoever. I mostly liked the end of that game, that bit just didn't work for me at all. (Apropos of nothing, I remember finding that fight to be probably the hardest one in the game and I only got through it by having Juna and Machias spam their "everyone in this circle except me gets their next turn immediately" crafts on each other over and over) Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Yeah, just going along with that lost them any sympathy from me. (CS 3 end/CS 4 Act 1) Oh, what's that, Ironbloods, now you're sorry because it was someone you were friends with? You didn't have a problem with it when it was a different child, did you? I will also say that it's funny playing the Crossbell games after the end of CS3 because I find I have basically no patience for Lechter at all, like, gently caress off dude
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Aug 3, 2023 02:04
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I finished Azure last night. Some of those ending scenes were pretty good! I thought the motivation behind KeA helping the villains being that she had already inadvertantly changed causality to prevent the SSS' deaths in Zero was really interesting! Cannot imagine how infuriated I would be as a Japanese player having the series not follow up on Crossbell at all until Cold Steel 3 six years later though, lmao
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Aug 3, 2023 15:57
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Remember, in the very beginning of Zero when the SSS storm the Sun Fort to confront Joachim they didn't have Estelle or Joshua with them like they do at the end of the game, before Lloyd wakes up on the train to Crossbell. I suppose it does raise some questions about how the SSS even met KeA in the original timeline if they didn't help Renne and didn't receive an invite to the Schwarze Auction via her though. I did remember that detail during that scene in Azure, but also I'm not sure I can really ascribe any deeper intent to it because CS3 does the exact same thing with its in media res opening where it cuts out Angelica's presence in that scene. e: Actually, I forgot that they explicitly call attention to the Lloyd dream in Zero when they're explaining it in Azure, so I guess it probably was intentional Arist fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 17:05
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Tesseraction posted:CS1 does the same, and in both cases it's just them lazily cashing in on that twist without it actually being true. The opening of CS1 is so dumb in hindsight. I'm not really one for in media res openings in general, but they cut off right before the reveal that the cannon was firing a blank, which is honestly hilarious given the dozens of hours of buildup.
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Aug 3, 2023 17:08
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Her appearance in CS4, if nothing else, is kind of indisputably softer than it was in Azure, if only by virtue that she spends most of that game with Cedric who spends pretty much the entire game overcompensating by leaning into being a complete shitheel. Because of this she ends up, weirdly enough, being often the more rational of the pair, whereas in Azure she maims civilians for fun.
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Aug 3, 2023 20:47
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GateOfD posted:hot take on end of CS4 I don't find this to be a particularly hot take, the end of that game seems to really hate the idea of there being any kind of consequence for anything. I don't have anything against Crow or Millium, I'm not like rooting for them to be dead or unhappy or whatever, but I wish something had stuck, y'know?
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Aug 6, 2023 02:35
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Super Jay Mann posted:I swear some of you legitimately believe that CS4 would have been better if the bad ending were the "real" ending. It's like this Gundam meme but in reverse. this is a ridiculous thing to assert
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Aug 6, 2023 06:55
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People wanting the story to have some follow-through and not walk back every slightly dark or sad thing that happens in it is not the same thing as wanting the story to be dour or depressing and have a "bad ending". My opinion is that if they don't want to alter the tone by killing a main character, they should stop threatening to do that, because not only does it show that they want to have their cake and eat it too, the threat eventually loses all credibility. And personally, I prefer when things aren't wrapped up in a neat little bow. I don't need the characters to wallow in sadness, but I appreciate a sense of change and permanence.
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Aug 6, 2023 07:07
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I generally believe in the power of forgiveness and I'm not advocating for harsh punishment for these characters or anything, but I feel like the way Trails doles out that forgiveness is too easy and flattens all the actual conflict, all the interesting drama, into nothing by making it so simple to forgive basically anything. There's very rarely any real reckoning with the actual misdeed. Forgiveness being that easy cheapens it and makes it kind of meaningless. I get that this is, at best, an outright overbearingly optimistic series, but I do think it's possible to do both in this case, to take the misdeeds into account while endeavoring to move forward.
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Aug 6, 2023 17:43
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Legitimately, one of the better things about this series is Becky and Pablo being inexplicably Scottish
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Aug 9, 2023 18:05
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The end of CS2 rules for the simple reason that it's the only game in the series I've played so far that has falling action
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Aug 14, 2023 01:13
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And so, my long journey of not knowing what "Kuro" translates to is over
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Sep 21, 2023 17:05
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I have fairly major criticisms of most of the Trails games I've played but I can't really think of any ways I was disappointed by CS4 in specific. Like, yes, the first third should be much longer, it's by far the most interesting part, but my biggest criticism outside of that is just how boring the curse is as a tool to incite conflict in the story. Anytime something bad happens it's the curse. We need Laura's dad to turn evil for five minutes for no reason, curse. And as I've mentioned before, while I didn't necessarily want Millium or Crow or Rean to die (not that those were ever serious possibilities in this series, especially the last one), as a finale it kind of lacks a sense of permanence. But yeah, outside of that stuff I was pretty fine with it overall. I'm sure if I knew more specifically what people like less about it I might agree, but I haven't read any specific complaints.
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Sep 29, 2023 00:48
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On that note, is it weird that I like CS3 better than CS1? I just kinda vibed with it a lot more. I feel like I hear people say that the pinnacle of Cold Steel is either 1 or 2 a lot.
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Sep 29, 2023 00:57
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Everything in a fictional world has to be created by a writer, and it should serve a purpose. Readers/viewers expect it to serve a purpose. It's loving fair to note that when half a game is spent on a setting and characters and then the second half of the story does essentially nothing with them, that feels like the writers did a poor job utilizing what they set up. Okay, but you're falling into a different trap here, which is judging 3 purely as setup for 4. It has to be engaging on its own, because 3 is like sixty hours long by itself, and it and 4 were released a whole year apart. You can't only judge them holistically in this case. I was engaged by it, and so were a lot of other people. Like, sure, 3 writing checks that 4 can't cash is definitely a problem, but that's a series-wide problem. Cold Steel 1 does that with 2 a ton.
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Sep 29, 2023 22:43
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what if campanella turned someone into a pepper and then someone ate it, that would be really hosed up right
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Sep 30, 2023 19:38
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Years later, I am still amazed that CS4 doesn't have an arrangement of The Decisive Collision. Baffling misfire, there
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Oct 19, 2023 15:31
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Completely forgot that, but also that's not even a new version. Feels weird, that's a really important track.
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Oct 21, 2023 16:51
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I feel like CS4's inability to follow up is more of a problem with CS4
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Oct 23, 2023 13:46
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The quartz rewards scale up and the game is gonna gently caress with your party pretty often. You'll have enough for everyone by the end. That said, unlock the slots of whoever you think you're likely to use, and generally only when you actually need to. That'll get you through the early goings.
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Jan 10, 2024 20:41
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Trails into Marketability
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Jan 28, 2024 04:19
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Einander posted:Remember that opinion of a game is reflected as much in the sales of its subsequent entries as the sales of the game itself. Remember the famous example of Mega Man Battle Network 4, 5 and 6. If Daybreak sold poorly, then you should expect that it's because Cold Steel 4 or Reverie were received poorly, which I can totally believe. This is nonsense, you're basically reverse-engineering an explanation for poor sales from a thing you already believed. Poor sales for Daybreak could very easily be a result of oversaturation of the franchise and not poor reception to an individual entry. Besides, if you're gonna blame a game for Daybreak's poor sales, why would you pick CSIV instead of just Reverie? And why would they keep shoving Class VII into games if the reception to CSIV and Reverie is as dire as you're assuming it is? I'm not saying this to defend CSIV, it's just a bad explanation.
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Jan 29, 2024 06:46
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poe meater posted:Just finished CS4 and I have a few questions. But I'm sure they'll be answered or have been already answered in the upcoming games. Lol yes
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Feb 16, 2024 22:15
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 00:08 |
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Dark Souls absolutely qualifies
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Mar 5, 2024 21:00
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