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AS THE CROSSBELL GAMES ARE NOT OFFICIALLY AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH, PLEASE PUT DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THOSE IN SPOILERTAGS FOR NOW. SKY AND CS1+2 SPOILERS ARE FREE REIN. IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE THE NG+ SIDEQUEST IN CS2, WATCH THESE VIDEOS.  Trails of Cold Steel 3 is the third game in the Trails of Cold Steel series, and the eight game in the encompassing Trails series, following the Trails in the Sky arc and the Crossbell arc. Although you *could* start the series here, I would strongly recommend playing both Cold Steel 1 and 2 first (available on PS3, Vita, PC and PS4). Additionally, knowledge of the two previous arcs (Sky, available on PC, and Zero/Azure, currently fan translations only) is strongly recommended. As this is the third Cold Steel game, I won't fill the OP with series terminology, standard battle mechanics and ~lore~. If you want to get into the series or are curious enough to want to know more about that stuff, please use the main Falcom games thread (usually no spoiler tags for the three Sky games and Cold Steel 1+2), or read the OP of this thread for the PC release of Cold Steel 1. Story  A year and a half has passed since the resolution of the Civil War in Erebonia in the winter of year 1204, and about a year since the dissolution of Class VII in 1205. Chancellor Osborne, who somehow managed to cheat death following Crow's attempt on his life, has tightened his grip on the nation, and following the annexation of Crossbell in January of 1205 he launched the Northern War into North Ambria in October 1205, annexing the nation into the Empire as well. It is now Spring 1206 and Rean Schwarzer, the Ashen Chevalier, has finally graduated from Thors and immediately takes up position as instructor in the newly built Thors Branch Campus in the city of Leeves, west of Heimdallr. Rean is put in charge of Class VII: Special Operations, a task force for completing missions across Erebonia. Rean, alongside Juna Crawford, Kurt Vander, and Altina Orion, will travel through Erebonia with the rest of the Branch Campus in order to complete missions on behalf of Erebonia's government, uncover the mysteries and secrets hiding in the shadows of the Empire, and do battle against Ouroboros who have stayed silent ever since Osborne interrupted their plans. Combat https://i.imgur.com/9Tj2ssI.gifv Combat is mostly the same as before. Quartz, S-Breaks, Arts&Crafts. Wow, Persona 5 UI tho!! There are three main new mechanics added to normal combat. A new bar has been added below enemy HP, called a break gauge. Attacks now deal additional Break damage to this bar (some Crafts etc. do more Break damage), and once broken, the enemy will drop their item, be delayed, have their next turn interrupted, and all physical attacks will automatically unbalance the enemy (leading to link attacks and adding BP). Enhanced is a new state bosses can enter into, usually (but not always) at 50% HP. This state will automatically restore their break gauge to full, recover from all status ailments, buff their attack and defenses, and add additional effects depending on the boss. Additionally, the next attack the enemy will perform after enhancing will almost always be an S-Craft, so if you time yourself correctly you can avoid the brunt of the damage.  The final noteworthy addition to fights is Brave Orders. By hitting up on the D-pad, you can spend BP to issue commands to your party (new commands are unlocked as part of the story, and which ones are available to you depend on who's in your party). Rean, for example, can spend 1 BP to buff everyone's damage dealt by 20% and give 10 CP to the party. Altina, on the other hand, can spend 3 BP to give Absolute Reflect to your entire party for 4 turns. These buffs last a set amount of the player's turns. So if you have a bunch of turns for your party members first, it's best to save something like Altina's Order until just before the enemy's turn, so as to not waste turns of the buff when you're not taking damage anyway. You can only have one Order active at a time, but you can activate any Order or anyone's turn - it doesn't need to be Rean's turn for you to activate any of his Orders. Q&A So what's this I hear about having to play those two games that aren't officially available in English yet? Trails of Cold Steel 3 is not only the sequel to Cold Steel 2, but in many ways a sequel to the Sky arc and the Crossbell arc. Events, stories and important macguffins brought up in those two arcs such as Hamel, the Zero Child, and Pleroma are brought up and expanded upon. I'm not going to tell you you can't play this game without having played (or know what happens in) those games, but I will say you will get a more complete emotional experience if you do. How would I go about playing the two Crossbell games? Are the fan translations good? This requires  , although if you want to take the moral high ground you can buy them here (don't bother applying the patches to these though, just find a pre-applied version). A very high-quality version of Trails from Zero is in the final stages of work, and should be available in the coming months. The currently available patch is a pre-edited early leak of that patch and is of very substandard quality, but it's workable. The patch for Trails to Azure is of higher quality, though still pretty lacking. It's the best you're going to get for quite a while, though. If neither sound enticing and you just want to get the necessary info, either find a Let's Play/walkthrough on youtube, or watch Lady Virgilia's story recaps for the games.How is the game structured? Like CS1. You have a main base, the school, that you return to at the start of every chapter. You do some sidequests and chat with NPCs, you go through a dungeon (Einhell Keep), and you're then sent out to a new region and run around with your students until you run into some bad guys, at which point you run around with your old classmates and fight the bad guys. Rinse and repeat. How do I break the combat/avoid breaking the combat? Brave Orders. If you want to break poo poo, go hog wild. If you don't, stick to mainly using Rean's stuff. Will there be a PC release? How do I transfer over my save data? No confirmed PC release, but I imagine it will happen some day. There is no data transfer from CS2 to 3, so the game kinda glosses over who you danced with/who you went to the dorm with. Gomen. Is the game good? I played it in Japanese, and yeah, it's really good. It was my Game of the Yay 2018 and it threatens to do the same in '19. 
Terper fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Oct 18, 2019 |
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Oct 18, 2019 20:36
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i am extremely hype for this, but i can't help but enjoy the fact that the demo contains an 'actually, we weren't trying very hard' boss fight
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Oct 18, 2019 22:24
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Oh right, something I forgot to mention. In Cold Steel 2, there is a NG+ sidequest that contains information that CS3 will expect you to have seen. If you haven't done or seen this quest, please watch the two videos in this playlist.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:37
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Ugh, navigating a shopping site in Japanese is kind of a pain.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:40
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Oh man, Cold Steel 3 was a blast, and even though I only played it in japanese with a english script for the main story, it's still a really freaking good game. Prepare to Sledgehammer your way to victory.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:44
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Terper posted:Oh right, something I forgot to mention. In Cold Steel 2, there is a NG+ sidequest that contains information that CS3 will expect you to have seen. 
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Oct 18, 2019 22:56
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I played both Cold Steel games in NG+ because PC so I had no issue with that and had acess to all events and didn't had to choose because doing that is hard. Gonna be a bother actually having to choose on who hang out now, oh no!
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Oct 18, 2019 23:17
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I have this on my queue with Atelier Ryza and the Age of Empires II DE release on November.
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Oct 18, 2019 23:45
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All I really want to know before I play is if the hidden quests are still around and if so roughly how many per chapter, also if any of them are relatively esoteric or require going way off the beaten path to find. Otherwise I'm really excited, Ive heard nothing but good things about ToCS3 and that its pretty much an across the board improvement of the first two games.
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Oct 18, 2019 23:47
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jesus christ this release completely snuck up on me this one's gonna be on the backburner for awhile while I wait for my wife to catch up. I got her hooked on the first two CS games and now she's partway through Sky SC. in the meantime I look forward to my youtube recommendations spamming me with spoiler thumbnails
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Oct 19, 2019 00:28
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Sweetgrass posted:All I really want to know before I play is if the hidden quests are still around and if so roughly how many per chapter, also if any of them are relatively esoteric or require going way off the beaten path to find. hidden quests are marked on the map
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Oct 19, 2019 00:52
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i can not wait for this video game, which will completely ruin my strict daily routine for the 2 months it will take me to finish it, to come out
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Oct 19, 2019 01:07
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One small benefit of this series not being overly popular in the US is that I've stayed pretty spoiler-free - I've got no real clue what's going to happen next. Probably some uncomfortable sibling love, but otherwise I'm in the dark.
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Oct 19, 2019 01:14
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lets hang out posted:hidden quests are marked on the map Consider this sentence
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Oct 19, 2019 02:19
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take it up with them not me
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Oct 19, 2019 02:24
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I live in Canada and pre-ordered the special edition and had it shipped to a friend in America's place so I wouldn't have to pay NISA's insane forced priority shipping fees. Which of course means I have to wait for it to get to my friend's house and then for it to ship to my place before I can start... I'll see you guys a few weeks after launch day. 
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Oct 19, 2019 03:14
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Veryslightlymad posted:Consider this sentence Hidden quests are fine, as long as you talk to every chest twice.
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Oct 19, 2019 05:24
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I've preordered my copy. Playing it is going to take longer, since I don't have a PS4 yet.
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Oct 19, 2019 16:13
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pCPHBWn4Jg
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Oct 19, 2019 23:36
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I can't wait to play another anime highschool simulator!
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Oct 20, 2019 01:41
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From what I can tell we even play as the plucky less well off school in town. Hopefully we get to have a mock war game against those preppy rich kids at the Thors main campus.
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Oct 20, 2019 02:17
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Ethiser posted:From what I can tell we even play as the plucky less well off school in town. Hopefully we get to have a mock war game against those preppy rich kids at the Thors main campus. After the intro with the Principal Im 100% expecting something like this
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Oct 20, 2019 02:45
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Playing the demo, destructibles in the field giving CP is a really nice change
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Oct 20, 2019 04:28
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Should I prepare for my party to have to be bailed out all the time once again or will they be allowed to finish fights this time around.
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Oct 20, 2019 05:09
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There's an episode 4 for a reason
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Oct 20, 2019 05:21
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Sigh. I know I'll enjoy the game anyway but gently caress.
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Oct 20, 2019 05:27
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Oh Snapple! posted:Should I prepare for my party to have to be bailed out all the time once again or will they be allowed to finish fights this time around. They handle it better.
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Oct 20, 2019 07:51
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I'm looking forward to playing this, I only got into the series with the Cold Steel PS4 releases earlier this year so I've not had long to wait for this game.
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Oct 20, 2019 10:45
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Terper posted:No confirmed PC release 
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Oct 20, 2019 12:57
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Terper, I’m slightly offended that you didn’t link the “My name is Rean Swarzer, and I’m here to give another anime speech, because I’m compelled to [have an opinion]” tweet in your OP. Unless CS3 dials that back? 
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Oct 20, 2019 12:58
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https://twitter.com/XSEEDGames/status/933472008389533696
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Oct 20, 2019 13:15
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Game is preloading now. Super excited now that we know the localization is good but now I wish I could take time off on Tuesday.
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Oct 21, 2019 05:08
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Aus has to wait until the 29th for some reason
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Oct 21, 2019 05:19
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Ohtsam posted:Game is preloading now. Super excited now that we know the localization is good but now I wish I could take time off on Tuesday. Do we know the localization is good?
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Oct 21, 2019 05:19
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Shinjobi posted:Do we know the localization is good? This review that focuses primarily on the translation in general assuaged my fears. https://youtu.be/Gc1wtYSslms
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Oct 21, 2019 05:22
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Ohtsam posted:Game is preloading now. Super excited now that we know the localization is good but now I wish I could take time off on Tuesday. I did this, and it said the game is 40 gigs, but then when I downloaded it (not the demo) it was only about 12-13. Do I have to wait until Tuesday to do the rest? Also, I have the entire week off.  .....I just won't be near a PS4 for most of it EDIT: Ohtsam posted:This review that focuses primarily on the translation in general assuaged my fears. https://youtu.be/Gc1wtYSslms If you go into the comments for the review, you'll learn that Not only is Becky still inexplicably Scottish, she has a VA now Spoilers for the presence of presumably an extremely minor fan-favorite NPC
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Oct 21, 2019 05:37
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So glad to finally be able to play this. And it seems like NISA didn't do their usual botch job and came out with a proper release this time, which is doubly nice. Can't wait to continue Rean's Rampage of Headpats 
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Oct 21, 2019 05:49
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 Living the good life. (I'm gonna wait with playing until someone has uploaded a clear data savefile so I can access all the Bonding Events)
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Oct 21, 2019 13:56
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Ohtsam posted:This review that focuses primarily on the translation in general assuaged my fears. https://youtu.be/Gc1wtYSslms This sounds pretty good, but I also feel the need to highlight this comment:  Perhaps not unsurprising and not the biggest deal, but still a bit of a bummer. Terper posted:(I'm gonna wait with playing until someone has uploaded a clear data savefile so I can access all the Bonding Events) Can you do that on PS4?
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Oct 21, 2019 20:33
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I had assumed you could, but a quick googling reveals that you cannot. Alas! The programmers at Sony are jerks!
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Oct 21, 2019 20:53
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