I really wanna play this series but don't wanna do it on vita. I'm hoping the PS4 version gets localized.
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LTTP: Trails of Cold Steel
- Thread starter MikeProtagonist
- Start date
Oh yeah, FC is better than Second Chapter and makes it a better title simply by association. Actually, the latter's emphasis on trying to develop more characters than it can properly "chew" is one of Second Chapter's biggest problems. Thankfully, it makes it out well in spite of that.
While being mostly serious, yes, there are notable mini-chapters in Third Chapter (especially including a certain character's Moon Door involving a certain troublemaker).
At large, the character-specific segments flailed all over the place. It was sloppy and dropped intrigue much earlier than the sixth plane with an ending I'd convict as strongly, if it didn't feel so good. The protagonist, while with his charms, shared a weaker story (and person-of-interest) than the previous focus as well. I'd probably forgive this more if their atmosphere didn't feel so similar.
It's easily the worst title in the series so far (including Cold Steel 1) while I haven't played Cold Steel 3 yet. If it's any consolation, I do see why it was likely structured the way it was (while unfortunate).
If one wants to close their eyes to the truth then Bring on the Ban Hammer!
While being mostly serious, yes, there are notable mini-chapters in Third Chapter (especially including a certain character's Moon Door involving a certain troublemaker).
At large, the character-specific segments flailed all over the place. It was sloppy and dropped intrigue much earlier than the sixth plane with an ending I'd convict as strongly, if it didn't feel so good. The protagonist, while with his charms, shared a weaker story (and person-of-interest) than the previous focus as well. I'd probably forgive this more if their atmosphere didn't feel so similar.
It's easily the worst title in the series so far (including Cold Steel 1) while I haven't played Cold Steel 3 yet. If it's any consolation, I do see why it was likely structured the way it was (while unfortunate).
If one wants to close their eyes to the truth then Bring on the Ban Hammer!
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I tell myself it's two main stories told over three games.
The shift in naming convention prevents me from fully accepting it as a trilogy. But's also not a duology. I prefer using Sky games or Liberl arc instead. :P
I say duology since FC+SC are two halves of an entire story arc, while TC kinda goes off and does its own thing.
Anyways, I feel I veered off-topic (Sorry OP). Flaws aside, Cold Steel has more world depth than your standard JRPG. It seems this is your first entry in the series and there is much to enjoy if that's the case.
You'll meet some characters that you'll really enjoy each time they're on screen and some you'll dread (like other games I suppose). Just try to make of it what you will and be honest about what doesn't work.
As far as combat is concerned, I think Kiseki has a great balance of systems that isn't needlessly convoluted or overly basic when all is done for many of the games. It's easily exploitable, but I find many of the best RPG systems are.
You'll meet some characters that you'll really enjoy each time they're on screen and some you'll dread (like other games I suppose). Just try to make of it what you will and be honest about what doesn't work.
As far as combat is concerned, I think Kiseki has a great balance of systems that isn't needlessly convoluted or overly basic when all is done for many of the games. It's easily exploitable, but I find many of the best RPG systems are.
I need to finish this game, put it on Hard Difficulty and got stuck on I think Chapter 5, it then became a need to grind which I just didn't have the time to invest towards doing. Think I got stuck on some ice boss that was ridiculously tough.
This has to be the only game to not only have a female be the perv of the game but a lesbian perv no less. Angelica Rogner. She hits on every single female in the game and even tells the younger ones like Fie how sexy and great they will look when they get a little older. Such a creep but such a funny creep if that makes sense, she's good humor and can ride a mean motorcycle/vehicle too. Most male characters CANNOT get away with the dialogue that Angelica gets away with, but she gives zero fucks.
Oh and Tie A Link of Arcus is THE best song in this game, I LOVE that song. Get so hyped everytime I play it, it is my mission to NOT let my health/team drop low enough to lose that song. That violin is so good.
This has to be the only game to not only have a female be the perv of the game but a lesbian perv no less. Angelica Rogner. She hits on every single female in the game and even tells the younger ones like Fie how sexy and great they will look when they get a little older. Such a creep but such a funny creep if that makes sense, she's good humor and can ride a mean motorcycle/vehicle too. Most male characters CANNOT get away with the dialogue that Angelica gets away with, but she gives zero fucks.
Oh and Tie A Link of Arcus is THE best song in this game, I LOVE that song. Get so hyped everytime I play it, it is my mission to NOT let my health/team drop low enough to lose that song. That violin is so good.
Cold Steel discourages you from listening to the battle themes in general. If you haven't won before the enemy gets a turn you're doing it wrong.
Sky games are better story and character-wise. Cold Steel is too sanitized and tropey in comparison. I think I like the gameplay/combat/QoL improvements in Cold Steel better though. But play on Hard, because it's a cakewalk on easy, and the combat system shines a lot more on Hard. I played CS1 on Normal and regretted it, and CS2 on Hard and it was a lot better.
). :\
Eh. All the LGBT characters in the Kiseki games are pervy. They're all still "cool" and likeable, I mean Olivier is one of my favourites still, but yeah, it's not great how the gay or bi characters are all pretty predatory, including towards underage characters. And of course, it's all played for laughs (including when it's
Alisa's grandpa, it's super creepy but played as just "dirty old man" gags
Reviving a dead thread I guess? But I recently picked up the game after letting it sit in my steam library for 6 months (bought it during Christmas sale because I'm a big lover of Falcom titles) and ive been really digging it so far (Currently at Chapter 3). I rarely enjoy turned based games but this one really hooked me in, and all the cute boys are definitely helping.
I'm highly considering picking up CS2 on sale before the summer sale ends so I can jump in after finishing 1 but I've heard a lot of negativity towards it and was wondering if anybody could sell me on it? I enjoyed Tokyo Xanadu ex+ and a lot of people didn't like that either so I don't think it'll be a big issue for me but I guess I just want to have some reassurance.
I also have Trails in the Sky collecting dust and was considering giving it another whirl after finishing CS.
I'm highly considering picking up CS2 on sale before the summer sale ends so I can jump in after finishing 1 but I've heard a lot of negativity towards it and was wondering if anybody could sell me on it? I enjoyed Tokyo Xanadu ex+ and a lot of people didn't like that either so I don't think it'll be a big issue for me but I guess I just want to have some reassurance.
I also have Trails in the Sky collecting dust and was considering giving it another whirl after finishing CS.
If you get to the end of CS1 you'll definitely want to play CS2. No Trails fan will tell you to skip CS2 even if they have some complaints about the game.
Its fine on vita i wouldnt wait for the ps4 copy xseed doesnt care the ps4 anymore they are a pc publisher now
What? XSEED is releasing 4 PS4 titles (and 3 Switch titles) later this year. Just because they're localizing more PC exclusives and porting older titles to PC doesn't mean they don't care about console. PC is just a profitable market for them.
Yeah I heard the last chapter in CS1 and 2 were both really good, with 2 having a fair share of issues overall, However I've noticed a ton of people praising CS3. So I'll most likely pick up 2. (and 3 if it gets localization + PC port)
Ok that was a lie. I just want to play sen 3 but it fells like its never going to come in english
Allow me to jump in on this. I recently completed CS1 and am now about to wrap up act 2 in CS2. I completely fell into the falcom rabbit hole and I cant wait to jump into trails SC and 3rd (already played FC, it didnt click with me that time but im pretty sure we goos now) and then YS8.
I do wanna share some critism though. The big problem I have with the series is the writing. I find it incredibly uneven (mostly on the negative side) and some time flat out contradictory, a character can say one thing one second and then they say the exact opposite the next. Characters who have a solid rooted reason for believing a certain way can get persuaded to do a 180 after a quick rean speech. Speaking of Rean, he is a trash MC who has no personality other than being the perfect goody two shoes. Everytime he says he's learned something and matured he regress right back to his same old problem (caring too much about other people, so cute i wan.. bluueeerggghh). Also translation is too literal. Remove stupid names like War God, purple lightning etc its so fucking cringe. I also once counted how many text boxes in a scene started with some type of form of 'heh or haha' and it was some crazy shit like 18 out of 54 or something. They laugh all the time despite noone is saying anything funny. Translators should just take the liberty and remove that shit we all know its whack.
Ah well, had to get some fustration out regarding the writing. I really do love everything else and I hope people pick this up now that its on sale.
I do wanna share some critism though. The big problem I have with the series is the writing. I find it incredibly uneven (mostly on the negative side) and some time flat out contradictory, a character can say one thing one second and then they say the exact opposite the next. Characters who have a solid rooted reason for believing a certain way can get persuaded to do a 180 after a quick rean speech. Speaking of Rean, he is a trash MC who has no personality other than being the perfect goody two shoes. Everytime he says he's learned something and matured he regress right back to his same old problem (caring too much about other people, so cute i wan.. bluueeerggghh). Also translation is too literal. Remove stupid names like War God, purple lightning etc its so fucking cringe. I also once counted how many text boxes in a scene started with some type of form of 'heh or haha' and it was some crazy shit like 18 out of 54 or something. They laugh all the time despite noone is saying anything funny. Translators should just take the liberty and remove that shit we all know its whack.
Ah well, had to get some fustration out regarding the writing. I really do love everything else and I hope people pick this up now that its on sale.
Cold Steel 3 is by far the biggest Trails game script wise. Even if XSEED started translating it the day it came out in Japan, It wouldn't be out until at least 2020.
Yeah, I'm almost done the first game, but Sky is pretty boring so far. The combat is terrible (thank god for turbo mode on PC), there's way too much needless chatter and padding, and each chapter feels exactly the same.
For what it's worth, it is my first Legend of Heroes game, so I don't have the Cold Steel or previous games to judge it by and am judging it on its own. It's just boring and generic.
You won't have your final judgement until you finish the first game, but honestly if you feel that there's too much needless chatter and padding for Sky, then this series may not be for you. The extensive amount of dialogue and world building "fluff" is generally what people point to when they say they really like the series. It'll also result in the chapters having that samey feeling if you aren't as invested in the setting. While in FC every chapter does have the same general plot of "go to the region and do jobs for the townsfolk and big wigs until you uncover the plot", the variance lies with how the different regions fit in to the puzzle of what makes Liberl the country it is, from the commercial Bose region to the industrial Zeiss region. I also do think that the stakes in the chapters do slowly rise as you move forward until it reaches the conclusion of FC, although I don't know just how close you are to the end of that game.
But yeah, while I love this series up and down, I know it's definitely not for everyone. If you want a game that will "get on with it" in terms of the plot and what it wants to say about its characters, you probably will grow impatient with Trails. In some ways it's like living a slice of life story out while the plot and major character moments slowly start to reveal themselves. It personally leaves me more invested when the pay off finally does come.
Yeah I liked Cold Steel 2 better than Cold Steel 1 actually. So if you finish 1 and liked it to even some degree, you should get around to 2.
Buy CS2 while it's still in sale.
CS1 and TitS FC are pretty much the worst games in the whole series.
Thankfully, he's much better in CS3. Even if he does have the same dumb tendency of repeating mistakes.
It's not much consolation, but the original Japanese script is even worse with melodramatic titles and laughs (onomatopoeia in droves, really). XSEED already takes a rather liberal approach to localizing these games, and they figured out the best current balance between translation integrity and fitting the script to Western players' expectations. It's somewhat less of an issue in the Sky games due to less adulterated writing, I think.
The main series translation XSEED works with has probably beaten the game already, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's at work on it now.
You can't be serious. The game has been rigorously edited from the ground up to be as un-literal as possible in the localized version.
Nick said:I look at Trails of Cold Steel – a game I'm very proud of and the best I've yet seen the school setting done in an RPG – and then Estelle and Joshua's ragtag bracer adventures in FC and SC come to mind and I ponder, "Are all the same people who liked that going to be on board for this?" It's the same world, and those who have played FC and SC will enjoy the many small references to people and places they know the full scoop on, but if someone just straight-up doesn't like anime-style games, this isn't going to be the game that changes their mind and wins them over. Even with the nuance we've kneaded into the text, it's a Japanese game, written by writers coming from a different cultural perspective, and in our commitment to bring you the game they made, we can't just say, "Well, this stereotype is more tired than me after pulling an all-nighter, so I'm just going to leave it entirely on the cutting room floor." The timeworn tropes that codify the Japanese high school experience in popular media aren't overbearing here, but they ARE baked into the game at a base level that would be disingenuous (and almost impossible, really) to paper over. If high school stories turn your crank, welcome aboard – you're in for a wild and fantastic ride. But even if you're not, I still encourage you to consider Trails of Cold Steel because the core of its plot is very much about national politics, and that was the element that finally captured my interest. Characters like the imposing Chancellor Osborne or the calculating Rufus Albarea proved fascinating individuals, and underscored the extent to which the story touched on issues like class divide and colonial ambition. Beneath the veneer of cheery after-school clubs and "Hmph"-ing tsunderes, there's most definitely a beast of a story – and plenty of digging to do if, like me, you're a bit of a lore hound in games.
The kind of questioning and consideration I've talked about here isn't strange or abnormal: it's the core of localization's balancing act. We want you to have the same fun experience Japanese players enjoyed, but to deliver that, we often must be willing to depart from direct translation to get something that would capture for you the same feeling that the Japanese dialogue had for its home audience. That's a bit more challenging here than in a typical fantasy adventure not only because of the school setting, but also due to the modernity of the game's world. Because we as players have a greater frame of reference for these things, we're more sensitive to when situations depicted in the game feel awkward or don't match up to our own experiences or expectations. A good example of this is the Student Council, which is a Big Deal at Thors and at high schools across Japan, and basically in almost every anime set in school. But does the Student Council being a pillar of an academy's operation match the experience most of us have had attending high school in the Americas? I would suggest that it doesn't. Of course, Rean runs errands on behalf of the Student Council fairly frequently, so it's there to be seen, even if it leaves you wondering, "What instructors would leave so many important tasks in the hands of a bunch of teenagers?"
Our goal, then, was to sand the most arbitrarily Japanese edges off of Thors (since Erebonia is pretty decidedly not Japanese) – the senpais and the kohais; the constant ganbattes – and coax forth the universality of the experience of school. There's still bowing at the end of homeroom, and there might be a mysterious transfer student somewhere in there, but to make it feel natural was our goal, and one that I think we've executed quite well. But, again, you'll be able to decide for yourselves soon enough.
Entire characters were rewritten as well
For example, let's look at our protagonist, Rean Schwarzer. He's a pretty cool guy, overall, and in his best scenes, he exhibits no shortage of personality and character development. But in a day-to-day school setting, he kind of struggled a bit with keeping the clear characterization that was on display in the main scenario. We really didn't want Rean to come off as some sort of faceless visual novel protagonist, so in writing his more mundane interactions, we localized with an eye toward having him be a bit more expressive – basically, keeping the best of the personality Falcom had given him more consistent throughout all of his scenes. The end result of this is something subtle enough that you won't notice it unless you're pretty familiar with the Japanese script, but the aggregate effect will be that Rean feels more multifaceted as a character, and hopefully will end up being someone you'll enjoy spending time with (and this is a Trails game – you'll be spending a LOT of time with Rean and friends).
Another example along those lines is Laura, swordswoman extraordinaire and heir to the Arseid school. In the Japanese version of the game, Laura talks in what's supposed to be a "knightly" manner to represent her upbringing steeped in knightly tradition and lore. However, trying to render that directly in English ended up sounding incredibly stilted – sort of like someone had decided they were going to forego the use of all contractions and occasionally slip words like "shan't" into their daily conversation. I had a discussion about it with our translator, Dan, where I basically said, "She's a 17-year-old girl going to high school. It's going to sound unnatural and call attention to itself every time if she talks in this oddly archaic manner when this is a modern country and literally no one else does this. But at the same time, I want to preserve that particular air of dignity she carries about her, because that's one of her defining character points. What can we do?" In the end, we came up with what I think is a good, balanced sound for her. She speaks normally enough to fit in at school, but formally enough to also feel set apart and distinct. I think the main change was taking the "formality" component of her dialogue and infusing it into how Laura phrases things, rather than learning on archaic words and starch-stiff delivery. That freed us up to use more casual wording for casual conversations, but still leverage an antiquated term here and there when it fit the situation.
Also, miss me with that "characters do a 180 after a Rean speech." Say what you want about Rean (he's flawed) or how everyone is overly polite, but you can't write off the game's writing with "oh everyone is convinced with dumb anime speeches" when the first game takes its time to have characters mostly solve conflicts on their own, and the 2nd is filled with characters who can't just be convinced with words.
Thanks for the info! Just picked it up. Now I just need to finish CS1.
That's the thing though. I understand what the game is going for, but I do not think it's characters and chapters are good enough or well written enough for Falcom to pull it off. The slice of life thing does not really work, where as it has worked in several other games. Each character is a generic stereotype (including the two leads), and the stories for each chapter are lame as hell and basically just a variation of the same thing. The overarching storyline (for the first game anyways) sucks as well, as do the "villains." I am currently halfway through the final chapter, and I don't really give a shit about anything or anyone. Everything about the game just feels like JRPG 101. And so much of the writing, which most people pass off as "development," is really just pointless fluff, and much of it is repetitive as hell. The writing and dialog gets reeaaaalllly boring because of it. Falcom just doesn't know when to shut the hell up and move on and they rarely ever introduce an interesting scenario for the characters to interact in.
I also feel the "world building" aspect that everyone hypes up is pretty lame as well. I get no feeling of the culture of each region (outside of Zeiss, which honestly takes the whole tech city cliche and makes it feel lame). They are just generic lifeless towns connected by lame lifeless corridors that are supposed to pass off as an overworld.
I've been wanting to try the Trails in the Sky/Trails of Cold Steel games for a long time.I almost bought a vita copy of the game, even though I've never owned a Vita and never opened my Vita TV (and at this point, I sadly will hardly ever touch the thing though I still think I'll play Persona 4 Golden...eventually). I've almost caved and bought Trails in the Sky games on Steam, but I really don't like to play on the PC. If the PS4 ports of the first two games comes West, I am so in Day 1.
So far, Ys VIII is my only Falcom experience which I've played a fair amount of and only found a so-so experience. However, turn based is definitely far more my speed (rather than ARPGs), and everything I've read about the Trails of...games indicates that I'll really enjoy them. I also bought Tokyo Xanadu, but have yet to get around to it.
So far, Ys VIII is my only Falcom experience which I've played a fair amount of and only found a so-so experience. However, turn based is definitely far more my speed (rather than ARPGs), and everything I've read about the Trails of...games indicates that I'll really enjoy them. I also bought Tokyo Xanadu, but have yet to get around to it.
I stand corrected if the translation went through some major editing, as someone who's not researched it properly it does come off as literal so I don't even wanna know what the Japanese script looks like at this point Also I think you're putting words in my mouth here, in no way did I say everyone gets convinced, but some really do. It's a fact that Rean's speeches are very frequent and work a little too well.
They are with some quirks with ways to break it shamelessly. Though it has a bit more edge when you don't break the game because of superbosses and status being a bigger thing.
I just finished my marathon of 1&2 the other night. really enjoyed them, 1 in particular might now be my favorite modern JRPG. the school life setting really helps fix the pacing issues that the early parts of Sky had, and is a perfect match for Falcom's world building style of fleshing out all the minor NPCs. The combat is also more fun and better balanced than Sky - moving power from arts to crafts makes the characters feel much more distinct. Estelle was a better MC than Rean for sure but I like the Cold Steel supporting cast better.
It's the same core system with a couple new mechanics but the real difference is that crafts are a lot stronger now relative to arts which means the characters feel more distinct from each other.
Yeah I have a love/hate relationship with Trails in the Sky FC/SC for the same reason, and I didn't even have Turbo mode LOL. I love the characters and the story is interesting for the most part, but the pacing is absolutely atrocious. I've been playing JRPGs since the OG Dragon Warrior and I can say with confidence this is one of the worst-paced set of games I've ever played. Everything takes longer than it should, conversations are too long to the point of being very redundant, and conversations will outright stop to watch a character slowly enter or slowly exit a scene before it resumes. Like, I don't need to watch every last step a character takes as they exit the stage before resuming the story at hand, right? It just causes the game to drag.
Which sucks because there are things I LOVE about Trails in the Sky! I LOOOOOOVE the characters and they're very memorable (for e.g. it took me about 6 months to complete both games because I would take long breaks between play-sessions after getting bored, and a character who I had not seen in literal months randomly shows up again (a butler dude) and I instantly remembered who he was and what his deal was, so yeah, VERY memorable), Estelle is a great protagonist, and I even like the music despite it not being Falcom's best work overall (like my feelings on the rest of the game, it's love or hate. Some music is amazing, others are just kinda there I guess?). There's a LOT to love, but the pacing just killed it for me. I kept waiting for it to pick up because my online buddies assured me it does pick up, but it never actually did. Sure, the stakes of the story got bigger, but the pacing did not ever actually pick up.
I'll play 3rd and Cold Steel eventually, but man did FC/SC just completely burn me out. Despite still listening to the OST and loving fanart of Estelle and Joshua.
Somebody didn't wait for SC, lol.
But I find CS3 easy to wait for since I didn't particularly care for CS1+2. Looking forward to the finished Zero patch much more than CS3.
I have never jived with these games compared to the Sky trilogy, having played only the English games. So many things about the Cold Steel ones just seem so cynical on a story front.
Cold Steel 2's gameplay is pretty great though, outside of the dreary dungeon/field design.
I really think the interlocking series and scope of the whole thing is absolutely, incredibly impressive, but Cold Steel games are easily the weakest of the 5 I've played.
Cold Steel 2's gameplay is pretty great though, outside of the dreary dungeon/field design.
I really think the interlocking series and scope of the whole thing is absolutely, incredibly impressive, but Cold Steel games are easily the weakest of the 5 I've played.
This thread popping up reminded me that they announced these coming to PS4 at some point. Have they mentioned any form of release or update on that?
Fun RPGs with great combat, but the repetitive structure that ignored what the player achieves in boss fights soured me on it by the end of the second one. Despite trouncing the npcs in actual combat time and again, they stand up, start glowing, and everyone drops to their knees and goes 'oh we're doomed now, they were only using part of their power!' Fortunately even more powerful npcs arrive to save you time and again and show off how powerful they are too. It's such a bloated cast of people with endless magical martial arts abilities, whose capabilities makes the background of armoured divisions in a civil war seem irrelevant when Johnny edgelord with his sword is pretty much immune to company-strength tank bombardment. On top of that, you've got urban combat where a single death is a ridiculously huge deal while the cast beat each other around the head with giant lumps of metal every five minutes, and half the npc cast's superpowers include being so skilled that they are bulletproof, as they threaten a large party equipped with guns from twenty metres away.
The whole tone seems conflicted, it doesn't know whether it wants to be a Saturday morning cartoon with zero stakes that resets every episode as the villains escape, or a war film with gravitas and consequences for engaging in combat, as the former describes the friendly and enemy npcs but the latter the bulk of the plot. Any stakes or achievements are wildly ignored by the endless cast of npcs ready to rob you of your victories in each chapter.
I'll play CS3 and see where it goes next, but after enjoying CS1, CS2 just felt frustratingly badly written to me. Stuck in a holding pattern because no battle with an npc can ever been resolved to a satisfying conclusion, and every enemy jumps away laughing because being a master of yet another fantasy martial art apparently makes you immune to all conventional weapons up to and including artillery.
It would have been nice if they'd have lampshaded it at one point by having a character equipped with ranges weapons stopping an enemy escaping, but CS2 takes the 'melee weapons are better than guns' to a whole new level by telling a story with companies of tanks moving around where there are 40+ people who are effectively just immune to everything including the player party.
The whole tone seems conflicted, it doesn't know whether it wants to be a Saturday morning cartoon with zero stakes that resets every episode as the villains escape, or a war film with gravitas and consequences for engaging in combat, as the former describes the friendly and enemy npcs but the latter the bulk of the plot. Any stakes or achievements are wildly ignored by the endless cast of npcs ready to rob you of your victories in each chapter.
I'll play CS3 and see where it goes next, but after enjoying CS1, CS2 just felt frustratingly badly written to me. Stuck in a holding pattern because no battle with an npc can ever been resolved to a satisfying conclusion, and every enemy jumps away laughing because being a master of yet another fantasy martial art apparently makes you immune to all conventional weapons up to and including artillery.
It would have been nice if they'd have lampshaded it at one point by having a character equipped with ranges weapons stopping an enemy escaping, but CS2 takes the 'melee weapons are better than guns' to a whole new level by telling a story with companies of tanks moving around where there are 40+ people who are effectively just immune to everything including the player party.
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They are out of PS4 in Japan and Sony brought them to China and Korea afaik. Nothing's been announced as for localizing them.
This frustrates me too. I'm not sure how many hands you'd need to count how often this occurs. My friends kinda joke and call them "Not So Fast!" moments when an NPC or former party member is reintroduced to save the day. The idea is not a bad one necessarily, but it's so mind-numbingly, frustratingly common and reused. It's like they want to have the drama be set to 11 all of the time but at the same time have such mild stakes because you just know someone's going to step in at the last moment.
Thanks for the response. I wasn't aware they were already out in Japan so that is good to hear. Hope they announce a localization at some point.
I didn't really. I remember the thread I posted in on the other forum. "This looks like a generic anime JRPG. Why should I bother with this?" And a user corrected me and intrigued me enough to give it a shot. I ended up falling in love with what these games are about right after renting and playing through Trails of Cold Steel enough to buy the Lionheart Edition back when I was super broke even though I had already beat it. I felt that deep need to give the developers the support they deserved.
The PS4 ports are Japan only for now, doubt xseed will bring them over here until they get the license for 3&4.
Popping in to say that Cold Steel 1 is a perfect game for the era of social distancing. It's warm and colorful, has great music and fun characters and slow burning but intriguing plot and super cool world building. Really looking forward to working through the series in the weeks to come!