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To echo others, when in-game characters are talking, please try not to drown it out with commentary. It makes both the voice acting and the commentary hard to follow. I meant to ask this before, but from the big absence of "W00t"s from your co-LPers when Alfin and Olivert were shown on screen I take it that your buddies never played a Trails game before, right? Either that or they simply don't like Ollie, which would rank them at most one or two places above pond scum, veneral disease and U.S. congress in respectability. :P Anyway, I'm not overly fond of this particular medias res-approach. I get Falcom wanted to attract new audiences, so they went with Squenix' blitzkrieg approach of throwing you right in the middle of things, rather than forcing new players to go through a multi-hour introduction and world-building session like Trails in the Sky FC did, but since Cold Steel has a similar introduction and world-building session coming right up, which is equally taxing on the average adrenaline junkie's attention span, I kinda wonder what the point is since people who can't stand the Trails pace of doing things will still drop out, just a little later than they would have with Sky. I'm not overly fond of suddenly getting 7 characters and a whole slew of arts and crafts shoved in my face without an introduction and at least I knew what arts and crafts were and how they worked. Still, bitching aside, Atrocious Raid is still an extremely awesome piece of music.
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May 31, 2016 10:50
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Well, the commentary no longer drowns out the game's voiceover this time. Now it's kinda the other way around.  Of all the commentary in the video, I probably got around 50% of it. most of which played when no voiced lines were audible at the time. Which is a pity because I've already completed the game twice, so I don't watch LP's just to see what happens. I know that already. The reason I'm watching LP's is to get the reactions of the LP-ers on the game and what happens in it. Now, the volume of the commentary in itself is alright. If both the voiceover and the commentary are heard at the same time, one is always going to drown out the other, so if I can make a request: please ask your fellow commentators to refrain from speaking whenever voiceover is being played. We won't be able to hear what they're saying anyway, so they might as well not speak. Likewise, if one of your buddies is speaking, just let him finish his sentence before pressing X to advance to the next line of dialogue. If Statler and Waldorf don't get the hint and keep talking while you want to get on with the dialogue, a quick kick to the ankle will often do wonders.  Keeping the voiceover and the commentary separate might take some getting used to, but if you can get used to it now, it'll make the rest of the LP a better experience to watch. Erpy fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 18:25
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Istvun posted:The previous game we LP'd was one where the story and cutscene work was one where people had no displeasure at us talking over them, to put it diplomatically. Like mentioned, this game has some fairly good voicework and story parts so it's simply a more pleasant experience if they're not "interrupted" by voice-over commentary and viewers can focus on one thing at a time. MisawaMahoKodomo posted:Is all of the commentary post commentary? Apparantly the only time the units are mentioned in-game is in 3rd where there's a quiz that's kind of meta to begin with. 1 rige = 1 centimeter 1 arge = 1 meter 1 selge = 100 meters 1 torim = 1 (metric) ton The "selge" is used most often, so simply divide that one by 10 to get an idea of the distance. Unless you're accustomed to the imperial system in which case; shucks for you. 
Erpy fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Jun 4, 2016 |
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Jun 4, 2016 07:15
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It might have seen Sara's decision. She's kinda the queen of silly team names. She also rocks.
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Jun 17, 2016 13:58
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Sara wasn't in her room during the nighttime-section. She was downstairs having a drink and the fact you ended the night session without talking to her meant you get to live with the knowledge you will never see Rean's "plasted to bastard"-line in this playthrough. I have a great idea, let's start over.  Anyway, looks like I wasn't the only one who got a major Misato Katsuragi vibe from Sara. They're quite similar in that "Goofy, lazy, sloppy beer-loving christmas cake mentor figure who loves to tease yet who is a complete badass the moment they get serious about something."-sense. With some luck, Sara won't turn out to be the utter broken mess inside that Misato was, though I doubt Trails aims to top Evangelion. Also, Jusis' advice comes a bit late, seeing that Rean's already doomed to spending the rest of the school year doing the tedious parts of Sara's job for her.
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Jun 21, 2016 10:16
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RareAcumen posted:I'm only just now starting part five and good lord. Cold Steel starts out ridiculously tropey, just so it can deconstruct those tropes later on, but it does make the start kind of hard to bear.
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Jun 22, 2016 11:40
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Super Jay Mann posted:Machias was annoying at first, but I did kind of appreciate how they inverted the whole "Noble privileged rear end in a top hat" cliche by making the he-of-humble-birth-and-status guy the rear end in a top hat and the privileged guy being the one to put up with him. To be honest, Jusis is kind of an rear end in a top hat at first too, though in a different way than Machias. (the game kinda makes a point of mentioning that Jusis is usually the one to start the fights by gleefully pushing Machias' buttons whenever he has the opportunity) Machias is fairly reasonable most of the time, he just has a berserk button that's triggered by an extremely common facet of Erebonian every-day life, particularly at Thors. Jusis is more the the cold aloof guy whose softer side gradually gets exposed as the game goes on.
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Jun 23, 2016 05:56
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All battles give 3 link experience for the active links plus 1 link experience for everyone with everyone. There's no way to get more link exp out of battles. You're not really meant to grind link exp though. It's more like a supplement. The main ways your link exp goes up is through bonding events, reading books from the book store, completing field studies and completing schoolhouse floors.
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Jun 25, 2016 12:40
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Some Numbers posted:We like to make fun of Slur for being super pessimistic, but in this case I think he has a point. A PC port of Cold Steel would be a pretty huge undertaking for XSeed since there's no existing code for it. Well, there is existing code. Namely the code of the game you're LP-ing right now. Cold Steel uses an engine made by Sony called the Phyre-engine, which supports platforms such as the PS3, PS4, PS Vita and uh...Windows. So Cold Steel wouldn't need to be reprogrammed for PC, just like it wasn't reprogrammed for PS3. (or Vita, whatever the original code was) The existing code is mostly fine. "Mostly" meaning you'd still need a programming team to replace the Sony-specific system calls in the code with Windows Api calls, but you certainly wouldn't need to rewrite the code from scratch. Of course, the main issue is who that programming team would be. The Phyre-engine has been used in quite a few games, some of them having received Windows ports, so it's not like programmers with knowledge of the engine don't exist. But who would employ them? I doubt Falcom would want to invest any money into porting a game to a platform to see no domestic market for and XSeed's not exactly so large that they could just hire a couple of extra programmers. Heck, Sara's semi-hired help if I recall correctly. So yeah, it's kind of a difficult situation since it's probably JUST too much work for a single person to do all on her own.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:10
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I don't think it's just old-European feudalism in Cold Steel. They presumably also mixed in a fair amount of Japanese influences in there. (heck, even modern Japan is still a fairly vertical society by western standards) Also, if the co-commentators are gonna repeat the same gripe about "talking with their eyes closed" and "name-tag on the message window that's purely visible to the viewer shouldn't say 'female voice' because the characters already know to who the voice belongs to" every single episode, I'm gonna retaliate by griping every time they call Alisa Alicia. (Alicia's the Queen of Liberl)Also, regarding the bit at the end with the blue-haired guy in white, pay attention commentators: quote:
Erpy fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 13:00
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Oh, I beg you, do not compare me to...that.
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Isn't her name visible every time she speaks a line?
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Jul 7, 2016 14:06
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I'm guessing that the teacher will probably be a "surprise" party member showing up to save our butts when we get in over our heads with something unexpected. Although not be much of a surprise since she was fighting in the in media res dungeon. She seems to have a pistol and sword, but was only using the sword in her attacks for some reason. I could be mistaken, but I believe Sara slashes the opponent with her sword and then follows up with a quick point-blank shot for good measure. It's kinda quick but that's what it looked like. One of her crafts definitely involves shooting her gun. About S-Crafts, the way it goes in Cold Steel is that S-Crafts are gradually made available, so it takes the game quite a while before everyone on your team actually has an S-craft. Two of your team members actually start the game with their S-craft already learned. Erpy fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 08:16
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Speaking about linked attacks, is there any disadvantage in pairing a high physical damage and low physical damage together, as opposed to pairing the two high-damage and two low-damage characters? I'm not sure because even Rean and Laura linked were not enough to finish many enemies, and they're your high-damage dealers. (Laura actually had 40 more points in Strength before Rean levelled up.) The disadvantage would naturally be that you do less overall damage per link-attack. That said, the optimal way to use links (for link attack purposes) is to link your strongest physical attackers to characters who have the largest chance of unbalancing a certain foe. So if you face beasts, who are generally weak to slashes, you want to link Laura with Rean so she'll follow-up whenever Rean staggers an enemy. (he has S in slashes) If you face flying foes, you want to on-the-fly link Laura to Alisa instead, who has S in the shoot-type. (Laura has good-but-not-perfect values in slash and crush, so she has a reasonable odds of staggering enemies of two types, but her odds are below Rean and Alisa on their specilized area)
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Jul 11, 2016 23:01
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I also don't know what the unique central quartz each character does. It can apparently also level up as well. Or maybe that's something to be saved for discussion in videos. It's called Master Quartz and there's a few things worth knowing about it. - Yes, Master Quartz can level up. It levels up kind of slowly though, but if you keep it on it generally reaches its max level (level 5) by the end of the game. Maxed out Master Quartz is generally some of the most broken poo poo in the game. - All characters come with one unique one equipped and you get several additional ones over the course of the game through quests, chests or simply buying them from orbal factories. (there was one, Sceptre, which was already for sale early on, but I don't think Numbers bought it yet) - Unlike most quartz, most Master Quartz comes with a list of multiple spells. So it's responsible for part of the characters' art list. - Master Quartz can be exchanged freely (unless the character in your party is flagged as temporary), though lots of people keep the defaults on. Some of the later Master Quartz you buy is really worth equipping though. - Rean's default Quartz is fire-based and its special power is giving him 5 CP for each enemy he kills. When maxed, it gives him 25 CP for each enemy he kills, which means you get a free S-craft on large groups. If you wondered why Rean's CP was barely ever running dry, this quartz has a lot to do with it. - Alisa's default Quartz is space-based and its special power is auto-reviving her once per battle, which is great for support characters. As it gains levels, its revive ability upgrades, such as reviving you with 50% or 100% HP, EP and CP and when maxed, it full-revives you twice per battle. - Elliot's default Quartz is water-based and its special power is powering up your healing arts. At max level, your healing arts are 3x as potent as they would be without it. Little note on healing arts in this game is that they use the ATS stat now, rather than healing a set amount of HP, meaning people with low ATS are lousy emergency healers. - Laura's default Quartz is fire-based and its special power is buffing her ATK-stat by 25% for a few rounds at the start of each battle. (which is why she's hitting so hard) As it gains exp, the quartz' boost lasts longer and becomes 50%. - Gaius' default Quartz is wind-based (as people mentioned, Gaius is rather religious and his people worship both Aidios and the wind, so he says "the wind" a lot) and gives him insight status for a few rounds at the start of each battle. (insight gives you perfect hit-rate and +50% dodge rate plus an unbalance bonus) and as the quartz gains levels, the buff lasts longer. Master Quartz usually comes with additional little perks, but I can't remember most of them from the top of my head. (Gaius' quartz starts giving evade bonus as it levels up) The Sceptre Master Quartz that was already for sale is water-based and acts like an automatic sepith-up turn bonus whenever you attack. At max level, its sepith-producing rates are at 90%, but Numbers doesn't seem to be hurting for sepith right now, so I'm not seeing him use it any time soon.
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Jul 12, 2016 06:21
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:In TitS SC, it's mentioned that the Erebonian military food sucks, largely because they have such a friggin' huge army that they need to feed it as cheaply as possible, so the Academy food probably isn't the height of luxury. That's not entirely true actually. First of all, the upper class students live in a dorm building that's outfitted with maids and servants who cook for them and it's mentioned by some NPCs that the standards are quite high. The people who live in the lower class dorms have to cook for themselves, though quite a few of them eat at the Kirsche Bar in town or at the cafeteria in the student union building whenever they're feeling lazy and the food in both places is considered quite tasty.
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Jul 21, 2016 16:23
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MisawaMahoKodomo posted:I actually noticed something of sort which I completely (kind of) forgot about. Same reason you can't go past certain points on the highways on field missions or visit the eastern highlands. The plot doesn't want you straying off to other towns on foot. While you can't walk onto the highways during gameplay, there are a handful of bonding events and cutscenes that take place there.
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Jul 22, 2016 16:32
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The Bracer Guild's number one policy is ensuring the safety of civilians and while they cannot work against governments unless that rule is explicitly in play, they can work FOR governments if the peacekeeping goals overlap. In case of FC the Guild was working with the official government to thwart a rogue faction inside the military. In SC, Estelle set herself up as a neutral party to help resolve the conflict. Oh and Stabbey. It was Russell, not Randall. As punishment, you must imagine a sad Tita face now. Speaking of that incident near the end of SC (Cold Steel Chapter 3 spoiler); it's worth frequently talking to the soldiers at Zender Gate during the LP to learn how that event went down for the division you stared down at Haken Gate.
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Jul 23, 2016 11:00
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You can't remove someone's Master Quartz until they officially join the roster as a full-fledged member. Jusis and Machias were considered temporary characters in the prologue, so until they join your field-trip team, you won't be able to take their MQ. If a true guest character joins your team (like Sara in the prologue), you can't take off or exchange their MQ at all, though you'll get an opportunity to get that MQ through other means.
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Jul 30, 2016 08:11
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Alisa's less a typical archer and more a support mage who can dabble in offensive casting and setting up flying enemies for a follow-up attack by your melee bruisers, but she does get a line attack eventually. Just not as a craft. If I recall correctly, her S-craft is a line-type attack, similar to Tita's Cannon Impulse F-attack in Trails SC.
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Jul 30, 2016 11:46
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Yeah, Emma's orbment is a oneliner, not sure about her element locks, but one of them is mirage, ideal for installing Mind quartz into so you can nuke stuff 'till it glows. Which is kind of Emma's main thing. Elliot's meant to be the Kloe of your team while Emma's the Olivier. Cold Steel's orbments are much less about versility and much more about min-maxing the hell out of characters. In the Sky games, your non-bruisers usually ended up with truckloads of orbal arts due to having their longer lines filled up with high-level quartz. In Cold Steel, you're never gonna have a lot of arts since each piece of quartz gives an art directly and only a handful of rare ones give you more than one. So instead of having a long art list, you're supposed to use support crafts to compensate for some of the spells and from field trip 2 on, you'll have more than 4 party members in the party too, meaning you're supposed to cover the lack of flexibility by switching characters out at the right moment. Since each individual character now has less variety (art-wise), you might as well make them really good at the things they CAN do.
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Jul 30, 2016 19:06
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MisawaMahoKodomo posted:Preliminary Comments: If you want the game to be more challenging, refrain from using S-crafts. Even this one will be quite a bit tougher. As for the Arcus combat links-thing, it's a little bit of a story-vs-gameplay thing, kinda like how in the Sky-games, Agate, Schera and Zane are treated as seasoned veterans who are much more powerful than Joshua and Estelle, despite the fact that they're just ordinary party members once the level gap is gone.
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Aug 2, 2016 05:51
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I refrained from using S-crafts for the most part during my first Cold Steel run and the boss in this episode was fairly challenging when played that way, though not impossibly tough. Not using S-crafts mean slowly wearing him and his flunkies down, all while they're pounding you with faint-inducing attacks that cause subsequent hits to auto-crit. Or maybe I was simply still getting used to some of the mechanics that differed from the ones in Sky.
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Aug 2, 2016 08:17
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Nuramor posted:I find it interesting that the Provincial Army and the Imperial Army have such distinct equipment differences. The Provincial Soldiers look mostly like the came straight out of WWI down to the bajonets on their guns, while the Imperial Army is using what looks like current age assault rifles. Noted, although you're kinda comparing apples and oranges here. Assuming you played the Trails in the Sky games, you might remember there were several types of soldiers in the games. Most of the grunts had bajonets on their guns while their field commanders wielded sabers just like the provincial army guys here. But you eventually also ran into special ops soldiers wielding assault rifles among other things. Same thing here. Claire's squad aren't ordinary Imperial Army grunts; they're elite soldiers of a special division. The ordinary Imperial Army grunts do look more modern, but the difference is slightly less jarring. The fact that the provincial armies use more traditional get-ups is a reflection of the divide in Erebonia. The Noble Faction is more conservative and aims to keep the country's traditions (for better or for worse) alive.
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Aug 2, 2016 12:24
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Erebonia has a crapload of nobles and there's an entire hierarchy among them. There's two dukes (Jusis' dad is one of them) who rank right at the top, with two marquises right under them. (the dad of the stuck-up Class 1 student is one of them) Those four make up the Four Great Houses. Then you have all sorts of counts, viscounts and barons, who rank lower. You occasionally come across townfolk who are lower nobles who have to work ordinary jobs for a living and mainly differ from commoners in having a title or a few square selge of land to their name. Lower nobles are expected to grovel before the higher nobles just like the commoners do and they're just as uneasy around the higher aristocracy as commoners are. Rean's parents are lower nobles who reign over a smaller area which is fairly remote and don't really get involved in the aristocratic circles much. (Laura's dad is similar, though I believe he ranks higher than the Schwarzers) Some Numbers posted:
Why give the thread input at all? Just switch folks in and out whenever you feel like it. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Okay, so either Sara lied about going to see Group B, or else she must have access to some kind of faster-than-train travel. Team B left Trista at 6 AM for about a 12-hour train ride (they said they wouldn't arrive until the evening, so let's say 6 PM), Sara left Celdic to go see group B at about 6 PM yesterday, for what would have been a 13 hour trip by train (1 hour to Celdic, then 12 hours to Parma), and now she's back here at about 6 PM again. So she wants us to believe that she has traveled 26 hours by train in 24 hours, PLUS whatever time she needed to take to sort out group B. That's just flat-out impossible to do by train. While trains are the most common mode of transportation, orbal airships ARE a thing in Erebonia. They're just slightly less popular than they are in Liberl. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Why does that guy have a mask and voice alteration thing when he clearly works for the glasses guy? Answer: To hide his secret identity from the audience because we might know who that is, or will see his unmasked face in an innocent guise before his treachery is revealed. Spoilers: his secret identity is that he's really an exiled Brittanian prince with a love for chess and an inner ham dying to get out. The mask is to block his mind-control eyes.  Oh, and there is a Trails-term for "dark Bracers". They're the Jaegers, even though they're not literally an evil Bracer Guild, they ARE mercenaries who solve people's problems for cash just like the Bracers do except they're not limited by the various rules, restrictions and guidelines the Bracers place upon themselves. (meaning they're usually hired for ethically questionable stuff that the Guild would refuse to participate in) Erpy fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 5, 2016 23:31
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MisawaMahoKodomo posted:The erebonian airships probably are faster (I myself don't know how fast the trains are, but 800 selge/h seems like a fair bet or so), than the liberl airships (maybe? who knows), plus you could argue that improvements in tech means increase in speeds. Still not sure, but what can be said. I don't think they're faster...Liberl is known as airship country IIRC and they're probably the ones investing most in flight technology. That said, one of the minor plot points of Trails in the Sky SC involved the development of a new, much more powerful, orbal airship engine. That was two years before Cold Steel. Technology has marched on considerably. It's quite possible passenger ships now use the same technology. MisawaMahoKodomo posted:On a not really related note, I get the feeling I know who Erpy is...but I wouldn't be surprised. 
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Aug 6, 2016 13:06
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While Elliot accidentally slighted Patrick by saying that ranked slightly below the Albareas, Jusis got a more subtle (but very deliberate) burn in by specifically addressing Patrick as "the third son of the Hyarms family", and as such not even the official future head of the family.Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Um, yes, Rean, you WERE trying to deceive Machias. That's why you phrased it so carefully. Just say "Sorry I lied, but after your reaction the last time someone mentioned being a noble, I didn't feel like being lectured." Or maybe "Sorry I lied, but prejudging all nobles as jerks is pretty douchy of you." Rean didn't handle that one very well. Almost a minute after Rean gave his answer, Laura showed him how it was done by telling Machias: "I'm aware of your opinions. Yes, I'm a noble, but neither my family nor I have ever done something to shame us in the eyes of Aidios". In response Machias gets a little uncomfortable, drops the matter and he never brings it up with her again. Some Numbers posted:He didn't lie! What he said was technically true and carefully worded to avoid any issues with Machias. You could argue that Rean did lie. Machias didn't ask if any of them had noble blood. He specifically inquired about their social class and while Rean's genetic makeup may be unclear, his social class isn't. The fact that he answered Machias' question with "we're all on equal standing here" meant he did lie. Of course, Machias' outlook was kind of black-and-white while Rean's situation is kinda grey and he could be excused for not wanting to press Machias' obvious berserk button, but it WAS a lie, even if it was a lie by omission and a white lie by omission at that. Lord Koth posted:In all honesty Machias has zero ground to stand on himself, what with being the prime minister's son but not mentioning that and claiming they were all equal until Jusis called him on it. Sure he's still technically a commoner, but pretending there aren't different tiers of importance among commoners is just as ludicrous as claiming all nobles are of the same importance. Little nitpick: Carl Regnitz is not the prime minister, he's the imperial governor. He governs the areas that are not directly under the control of a noble house, which is essentially the capital of Heimdallr, its surrounding cities (like Trista) and the "special economic zones". While definitely a guy with lots of clout, he's by no means as influential as a prime minister since the vast majority of the country consists of territory under the direct control of one of the feudal lords. Second of all, while Machias's attitude is extremely black-and-white, he isn't being a hypocrite in this case. Despite his dad being a powerful man, (very, very minor spoilers for Chapter 4) Machias' home is a modest residence in a working class neighborhood and he lived the same life as the rest of the people there attending the same Sunday School sessions as the rest of the kids in the neighborhood. The fact he was in the top 2 highest scores on the entrance exams means that even if his dad was in a position to pull strings, there was never need to. Machias didn't achieve his near-top score because he attended a prestigious prep school, but simply because he's a gigantic overachiever who spends every free minute he has studying to improve his grades. So while Erebonia DOES have somewhat of a nouveau riche class among the commoners consisting mostly of succesful businesspeople whose wealth allows them to live like nobles to some degree, Machias himself doesn't belong to that group. On another note: Sara's remarks like "study hard because if you don't, the vice-principal is gonna get on my case" are a recurring theme in the game and the class' reaction quickly evolves from an incredulous "are you joking?" to an utterly jaded "you really are Erebonia's suckiest instructor, aren't you?" as the game goes on. Rean's version of Estelle's classic "I am SO done with your poo poo"-expression in the sky-series is in 9 out of 10 cases a reaction to stuff that Sara says or does and it never fails to be amusing. EDIT: BTW, I believe there's a little scene with Emma and Fie at this point that you will miss if you head straight to the dorms like you said you were going to do. Erpy fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 08:41
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Estelle's hair color is actually referred to as "chestnut" in the game, which I'd put more in the brown-category. Agate's a straight-up redhead.
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Aug 12, 2016 19:45
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Instructor Makarov is a pretty amusing character, especially due to all the crap he has to put up with his niece Mint. Regardless of whether a character is a full-fledged playable character or not, if you can bond with them, you can get some special scenes with them during the final chapter. And no, Sara would not approve of neglecting people in need. Beer is for every minute of free time you DO have. You can actually ace the tutoring quest without visiting the library if you paid close attention during Trails in the Sky FC. Most of the stuff that gets covered is found in the Capel Unit in Zeiss.
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Aug 16, 2016 12:49
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Reinford initially being an arms manufacturer probably isn't in the Capel, though since the first time the name is mentioned in FC is it being the brand of Olivier's starting firearm, most Trails in the Sky veterans probably would have nevertheless picked up the weapons-option.
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Aug 16, 2016 14:51
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I like how one of the co-commentators is ranting about how sucky the mechanic of missing in battle is and right around that point a monster attacks Rean, misses and gets countered. Are you gonna lecture him about the insight status and how broken the evade stat can be in this game, Numbers, or should we?  Thanks for showing the plastered-line there. And yeah, alcohol consumption is a lot more socially accepted in Japan. In fact, traditionally, it's referred to as the grease that keeps Japanese society running smoothly. Typical salarymen were kinda expected to go drinking with their boss after work, not drinking after your boss pours you another glass was considered impolite, no matter how plastered you were and working through the hangover together as a team the next morning was considered a good team building excersize. Between that and the prevalence of smoking, it's kinda weird the Japanese have such a long lifespan on average. The Trails games are kinda funny in that in random encounters, you often make it through most battles without getting hit even once, as long as you enter battle with a preemptive strike, but any time you start combat on even footing, the beasties never go down before leaving a big mark on your team. I personally don't prefer trying to clobber critters senseless from the front with Laura, since critters frequently get through your guard. It's often safer to trigger a monster, walk back until it stops following you and then shoot it in the back the moment it turns away. But whatever works for you. Erpy fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 18:34
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Yeah, the altered space was essentially another dimension with the towers existing partially in the normal dimension and partially in the other one. The schoolhouse may be the same principle, with the schoolhouse "swapping" rooms/floors between the normal dimension and the other one as it sees fit like you swap members in and out of your battle party.
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Aug 19, 2016 23:53
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Istvun posted:Yes! I hate the mechanic! Why tank when you can dodge?
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Aug 21, 2016 00:44
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MisawaMahoKodomo posted:It's true though, dodging itself seems a bit like a scrappy mechanic. Uh, did you play even Cold Steel? The Trails in the Sky games had hit and evade as normal numbers, which were hard to interpret. In Cold Steel, hit and evade are percentages. If your evade is 0%, then attacks by non-blinded enemies pretty much always hit. If your evade is 50%, you'll dodge 1 out of every 2 attacks that come your way, with the exception of orbal arts or S-crafts. If it's 100%, you're pretty much untouchable against any enemy that doesn't use arts or S-crafts. Enemies have a evade stat too, but it's hidden so it's harder to read, though your accuracy-stat is used to negate it. (a character with a bonus to hit-rate usually always hits since not a great deal of enemies have high evade to begin with) In this game, it's a perfectly viable strategy on some characters to give them weaker armor that gives an evade bonus over stronger armor that doesn't. Erpy fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Aug 21, 2016 |
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Aug 21, 2016 09:02
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She most likely wasn't JUST painting flowers. While Rean was off on his errant, she was probably focussing on the plate/vase/table the flowers were gonna be sitting on. If you follow the Trails tradition of talking to every NPC at every opportunity, you can actually get acquainted with prankster-twin quite a bit sooner. You first meet her at the boutique where she's picking up some new clothing and casually asks Rean to look up her skirt so he can give his opinion on which piece of clothing goes best with her panties. Rean predictably freaks out and Vivi goes  in response.This is probably the first time the dynamic between prankster-twin and buttmonkey-twin comes up, which is consistently amusing throughout the game even though I can't help but frequently feel Linde has like the worst life ever since she ends up as Vivi's prank-bait 9 out of 10 times. Aside from that...ummm...I don't mean to be a jerk, but I'm currently still having a hard time warming up to the commentary. Yes, I realize that I could just watch the "silent" versions, but since I've already beaten the game several times myself, I don't have much reason to. The main reason I follow LP's is curiosity about the LP-ers view on stuff in the game as well as opinions on stuff I might have missed or didn't think as much about. (Cake Attack had some really nice insights to offer in his/her LP of Trails in the Sky FC, which I enjoyed reading even though I was very familiar with the game itself already by that point) I realize it's an unfair comparison because text LP's don't have silences to fill as video LPs do. (though personally I don't mind silences in the commentary during sections when there's not much to say rather than talking for the sake of talking...quality over quantity) Anyway, I suppose what nags me a little is something that the commentators also noticed and commented on on-screen half-way through episode 25. It went something like this: quote:Co-Commentator2: "We introduced a rule where if you screw something up, the thread gets to decide a new nickname for you." When I heard that, my thought was: "Well yeah, is that surprising?" When you LP a specific game, there might be people who'll watch it because they don't have the right console to play it themselves and want to see what it's like, but those who don't fall into that category are most likely fans looking for additional perspectives to compare with their own or simply see other people react to some of the stuff that happens in the game. If there's one thing the folks in this thread have in common, it's probably a shared interest in the Trails franchise, not a shared interest in baseball or a shared interest in whatever one of the commentators had for lunch the other day. So when the commentary veers off into that territory, in between the times where Numbers goes: "LOOK! (insert notable event here)", said commentary becomes little more than background noise to me that detracts from the experience. I suppose the reason I'm bringing it up now was because the fact that one of the co-commentators was following a baseball game throughout the video (one he was seemingly way more invested in than in the LP-ed game itself) and the commentary for pretty much the entire library bonding event consisting of the commentators discussing said baseball game made the "investment gap" even more jarring than usual. I get that Trails games are slow burns and people not 100% invested in its game universe might have trouble keeping a razor focus during the more slow-paced segments, but this part was particularly bad about failing to even keeping up the pretense.  Maybe the problem are my own expectations more than anything else, but I figured it was still worth mentioning. Erpy fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Aug 27, 2016 |
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Aug 27, 2016 11:35
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Emma knows the cat? Weren't you paying attention? Didn't Emma explicitly say she did NOT know the cat and just saw it around town a few times? Yeah...Emma can probably go on record as being Erebonia's suckiest liar and her voice actress does a pretty good job at sounding like someone who's trying to tell a fib yet epically fails at convincingly pulling it off. Erpy fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Aug 27, 2016 |
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Aug 27, 2016 15:12
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Please, please, game, don't let Fie (or anyone, really) have secret cat transformation powers. I will be quite annoyed.
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Slur posted:I streamed this title from front to back with no editing and managed to keep an invested audience all the way through, so suddenly switching to a sslp seems unnecessary. The simple solution is to constantly keep invested in the moment. Point out even the small things, whether it be your thoughts on the soundtrack, your equipment, your orbment setups, past playthroughs, other games which are similar in areas, relatable subjects to the game, and embellish on those thoughts. If you do that, your cocommentators will remain as invested as you are. Cyouni posted:I do think part of the problem is due to everyone getting distracted far too easily, to the point where I feel there's less talk about the game than there is about tangential topics or completely unrelated ones. I largely agree with what Slur is saying, though the dynamic between the main commentator and the co-commentators would have to change in order to get to that point. Like Cyouni says, it seems the commentary gets distracted too easily. Numbers here is the main commentator who's played Trails in the Sky FC and SC and who has completed Cold Steel at least twice, so he's the one in the best position to provide, like, 80 to 90% of the commentary with the co-commentators occasionally jumping in to ask the questions newcomers to the franchise would be asking or pulling the occasional lampshade. (like why do folks we beat down always immediately jump up again and run off after we fed them a S-craft or two?) But they'd still need to adhere to the role of co-commentators. The dynamic I've seen so far seems to be the opposite. Numbers occasionally gives exposition, but a majority of the commentary over the course of the episodes seems to be the co-commentators hogging the spotlight, harping on minor pet peeves, verbally jabbing Numbers, poking fun at his playtime, occasionally making astute observations, but also often just amusing themselves (and probably nobody else) by saying "Trista" ten times in a row. I'm not exactly sure how much I agree with Slur's last statement about "do that and your co-commentators will remain as invested as you are" since this kinda goes back to the whole "all the people in the thread are invested in a way I'm not, this is just a JRPG to me"-thing. Note that one of the co-commentators played Trails in the Sky FC up to the mid-way point of the Zeiss chapter after which he dropped it. If someone loses interest in the game at that point (beyond the famed "play until the play"-section) I'm not sure they'll ever share the level of investment that Numbers obviously has. But maybe I'm being a grouch. Erpy fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 20:13
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Numbers actually already mentioned he'd cut grinding (and possibly travel times in the highlands) out of it. Ditto with larger dungeon crawls.
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Aug 29, 2016 22:31
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Those practical exam teams seem a bit uneven. Rean's team had 3 melee fighters including probably all three of the strongest ones, and one ranged character. The other group had two melee users with probably relatively low physical damage (although Fie probably makes up for that with lots of speed) and 3 ranged (although two of those are arts specialists). Yeah, but the other group still has a member who has a DEF-down craft and a wide variety of weapon types (Jusis and Machias cover 2 damage types and Fie covers 3 and all three of them do acceptable, though not extremely high, physical damage) and two orbal staff users, at least one of them with detector (I think), so there'd be plenty of opportunity to get in lots of link attacks. The track name of the battle against Sara is called "Belief". It's probably Cold Steel's variation of what "Fateful Confrontation" is in SC. I do love this practical exam despite the fact you can't win. It's chronologically the first time Class VII realizes that Sara isn't a bubbly drunk, but a badass bubbly drunk who completely kicks their rear end without breaking a sweat before immediately going back to her laid-back attitude and rubbing it in for good measure. Even though it's extremely obvious that you're not supposed to win this battle, a brief look at Sara's stat-section gives another major hint. This is probably the first battle where the enemy you face is COMPLETELY immune to every status-vulnerabilities in the book. Erpy fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Aug 30, 2016 |
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Aug 30, 2016 23:10
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I think this was the time when you could talk to the soldier in the Zender Gate mess hall and hear that Zechs and his men were deliberately sent to the boonies of the empire as punishment for going along with a certain someone near the end of Trails in the Sky SC. His men are still behind him even 2 years later though. The Sharl subquest is another one of those middle finger quests similar to Anton's quest in Chapter 2. Not so much because Sharl is in a location you have no reason for being, but because the quest doesn't trigger until you talk to her a second time. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:
"Open" is one way to put it. :P Stabbey_the_Clown posted:
Yeah, noticed that too. I always figured everyone used the Ah-GAYt pronounciation because it semi-rhymes with "Heavy Blade". Stabbey_the_Clown posted:
Well, that and the fact that both her mom and dad are/were bracers. Erpy fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jan 6, 2017 |
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Jan 6, 2017 16:26
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Cyouni posted:I...don't think her mom was a bracer? I believe Lena actually was either a bracer or a former bracer herself. I unfortunately forgot where in FC it was mentioned, but I'm fairly sure it was in there somewhere.
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Jan 6, 2017 19:06
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