Flame edit. I'd also guess that was a Flame "translated" line, i.e., machine translated line that slipped through without getting cleaned up but it could have been Guren.
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While playing CS3 I realized the level design, especially in dungeons, didn't evolve even a bit in like 10 years. It's empty corridors everywhere. I wonder if that's because they simply don't allocate any budget to it or if theres another reason for it.
I'm currently playing the game and was thinking the exact same thing earlier.
Probably budget/time. They are consistently getting at least 1 new game released each year and none of them are short and the company has under 100 employees. If Wikipedia is correct they only have 62.
But you would think they would at least get a teeny bit better at it over the years. The weird thing is that the early Ys and Sky games at least had dungeons that tried to resemble a believable place inside the game world.
Love it. I have no patience for complicated dungeons anymore, which is why the "best" dungeons in CS3 are my least favorite ones.
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It's easier in simple 3D levels with simple low-poygon objects, I think. Creating complex 3D levels is a much higher burden, and Falcom is just doing things as efficiently as possible to deal with it. Designing complex, believable 3D spaces is basically applied architecture, and requires a ton of time and many iterations.
If you wanna see the result of that, you could check out the Witness. They developed the map of the game, the island and its various areas, over like 8 years and even hired architects to help them answer questions like what materials you would likely use to build things, and or how you make ruins look believable, like what parts of the wall would break down first, and what not.
Anyone else add some version of Azure to their steam library? If so what did you use for a steam background and logo? I've been trying to find something via google and haven't had much luck. I only found library cover art so far.
It looks bare without the banner or logo. Thankfully Geofront provided that stuff for Zero.
Edit: Didn't find anything meant as a steam background but found some decent quality artwork I could crop. Might need to put in some work for the logo though.
Edit 2: Logo was a pain in the ass since I have no clue what I'm doing with photo editing stuff but that's done. Ripped it from the custom art from reddit and added transparency. Just really wish you can edit the game details for custom stuff so it doesn't just have the same message saying it's unavailable since it's a non-steam game.
It looks bare without the banner or logo. Thankfully Geofront provided that stuff for Zero.
Edit: Didn't find anything meant as a steam background but found some decent quality artwork I could crop. Might need to put in some work for the logo though.
Edit 2: Logo was a pain in the ass since I have no clue what I'm doing with photo editing stuff but that's done. Ripped it from the custom art from reddit and added transparency. Just really wish you can edit the game details for custom stuff so it doesn't just have the same message saying it's unavailable since it's a non-steam game.
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Trails to Azure custom Steam art assets
Trails of Azure Steam Assets - Google Drive
drive.google.com
Logo and background are there. Included a couple alternate ones I experimented with but chose not to use.
Custom Steam art for the library cover was from here.
Reddit - Dive into anything
www.reddit.com
Trails of Azure Steam Assets - Google Drive
Logo and background are there. Included a couple alternate ones I experimented with but chose not to use.
Custom Steam art for the library cover was from here.
Reddit - Dive into anything
thank you king
I caved in and bought Sky FC. I played it a few years ago for about five hours but got sidetracked with other games. The beginning is just as slow as I remembered but I am set on finishing it this time, at least this game. Just want to give the series a chance because it seems like my thing.
A new prospective Trails fan is always a great news. I promise you this much: If you make it to the end of FC you will want to play every last one of the remaining games as well.
Thanks. There's no old grid image (still used for some things) so I took care of that.Trails of Azure Steam Assets - Google Drive
Logo and background are there. Included a couple alternate ones I experimented with but chose not to use.
Custom Steam art for the library cover was from here.
Reddit - Dive into anything
https://i.imgur.com/lqkvyi0.jpg
I believe in you Yata.
If it helps, it's best to treat the Sky series like a book. Play til you're satisfied, slip in the bookmark, and get ready to play next time. Like any good book, you'll get hooked on the flow eventually.
How to you add a banner? Only option I can find is to replace the games icon even though those should be two different images. Is that it?
The only thing I know for sure that uses that image is the first game in "Recently Played." You can set it from there.
And it appears when you hover over the games in your library if there aren't any screenshots.
Man I will cherish the day when I can finally slap all these enforcers for real in a future game. They're all so aggravating with their arrogance.
Azure is certainly time consuming at the start, but it's probably for the best. You get some nifty fast travel pretty early, but still want to walk at the beginning to nab the loot and get some experience. Seems like it compresses most of the reintroduction stuff that kind of dragged out in SC into fewer chapters and less overall time. Feel like I'm about to dive head first into the meat of the game during chapter 2, day 2. So many scenes teasing things being on the precipice of going down, but they aren't quite there yet. Looking forward to playing more tomorrow.
Pomyo destroyed me at first, took me a bunch of tries to win the first game for extra DP. I have very little experience with Puyo and it's made more awkward by being vertical only. Started getting the hang of it though and now I basically have to try to lose to not win against the first two opponents. Where's Tio? I'm ready! (Okay probably not)
I feel like there is some great dialog to be had in this game, it's just not coming through with this translation. I've gotten used to it and it's (mostly) sufficiently comprehensible to understand what's going on and pick up the subtext of each line. That subtext is where things get awkward for the most part, some of it is spelled out in ways that was generally conveyed through word selection in the official releases and Geofront's localization. It's literal, and lacks the flavor and character that really made Geofront's interpretation of Crossbell pop.
There are also a lot of anime-isms? Japanese-isms? So much "do my/your/our best," "can't be helped," and so on. Noel in particular would probably benefit tremendously from an improved script. And it seems like two thirds of the lines in the game start with some sort of preface clause. It might be a simple "yes," "yeah," "uh," or a phrase like "by the way," "in that regard," etc, or some type of laugh. Stuff that got filtered out in localization. Also very strange and unnatural use of contractions. "That's where they're."
But you know, I guess it can't be helped. I hope Geofront does their best with Ao!
Pomyo destroyed me at first, took me a bunch of tries to win the first game for extra DP. I have very little experience with Puyo and it's made more awkward by being vertical only. Started getting the hang of it though and now I basically have to try to lose to not win against the first two opponents. Where's Tio? I'm ready! (Okay probably not)
I feel like there is some great dialog to be had in this game, it's just not coming through with this translation. I've gotten used to it and it's (mostly) sufficiently comprehensible to understand what's going on and pick up the subtext of each line. That subtext is where things get awkward for the most part, some of it is spelled out in ways that was generally conveyed through word selection in the official releases and Geofront's localization. It's literal, and lacks the flavor and character that really made Geofront's interpretation of Crossbell pop.
There are also a lot of anime-isms? Japanese-isms? So much "do my/your/our best," "can't be helped," and so on. Noel in particular would probably benefit tremendously from an improved script. And it seems like two thirds of the lines in the game start with some sort of preface clause. It might be a simple "yes," "yeah," "uh," or a phrase like "by the way," "in that regard," etc, or some type of laugh. Stuff that got filtered out in localization. Also very strange and unnatural use of contractions. "That's where they're."
But you know, I guess it can't be helped. I hope Geofront does their best with Ao!
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Finished chapter 1 of Cold Steel 3 yesterday and the game is definitely off to a better start than CS1 (which I thought was pretty good all in all) and CS2 (which I strongly disliked). Some repetitiveness and a climax that felt like a parody rather than a genuine shit-hits-the-fan moment aside it was a very solid chapter, with a nice amount of freedom and some really damn cozy areas - Parm and its surrounding fields in particular. Love the Parm song.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the gameplay as a whole yet. Typically I love it when JRPGs just pile on the systems and mechanics and don't care about balancing things too much and while I initially loved that about CS3 - getting through high-level fights without getting hit once by being smart with the myriad tools at your disposal was very satisfying in the beginning - it became apparent pretty quickly that it's thorougly broken from the get-go with some very easy, very effective tactics that seem to work in every battle, some of which still go on for a confusingly long time since playing on harder difficulties seems to mostly add bloat to the fights, giving enemies massive HP pools rather than making things, well, harder. It's not hard, it just takes a long time.
Granted, I'm obviously not far in yet. Whether this will change later on remains to be seen, and if not, I'll just drop the game to normal, I guess. It's still a lot of fun to look for ways to break the game even further, and as someone who typically really hates the way JRPG devs pad the hell out of their games with endless trash mobs, being able to blast through all but the strongest of them in just seconds is certainly great. Bodes well for the inevitable absurdly overlong final dungeon.
I'm not particularly invested in the main narrative so far, but that's fine, I've accepted the fact that Trails will never have a main story that'll interest me. The cast is much more important, and I definitely like most of the new cast. The new Class VII in particular is quite a lot of fun and it's incredibly refreshing when they actually interact between each other a lot too, and every single interaction doesn't revolve around Rean. And speaking of Rean, aside from the occasional moment where he's come off as annoyingly pretentious or self-righteous or know-it-all-ish, I'm liking him much more here than in CS1 and 2. Just getting less of a LN protagonist vibe from him.
There are some really fucking unfortunate misses here, though. In particular I want to say fuck the writer(s) who think Shirley is great and sexual assault is funny. Absolute trash. The NPCs are also continuing the downward trend that's started after Sky/Zero/Ao, but at least the school NPCs are, as always, fun.
But yeah, overall I'm definitely enjoying it and I'm looking forward to continuing it in a few hours when work ends.
I wish they'd chill out a bit with the ridiculous script sizes (and especially stop employing such an absurdly high number of script writers) and maybe re-allocate the budget a bit. I definitely think the games would greatly benefit from better level design and cutscene direction, in particular.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the gameplay as a whole yet. Typically I love it when JRPGs just pile on the systems and mechanics and don't care about balancing things too much and while I initially loved that about CS3 - getting through high-level fights without getting hit once by being smart with the myriad tools at your disposal was very satisfying in the beginning - it became apparent pretty quickly that it's thorougly broken from the get-go with some very easy, very effective tactics that seem to work in every battle, some of which still go on for a confusingly long time since playing on harder difficulties seems to mostly add bloat to the fights, giving enemies massive HP pools rather than making things, well, harder. It's not hard, it just takes a long time.
Granted, I'm obviously not far in yet. Whether this will change later on remains to be seen, and if not, I'll just drop the game to normal, I guess. It's still a lot of fun to look for ways to break the game even further, and as someone who typically really hates the way JRPG devs pad the hell out of their games with endless trash mobs, being able to blast through all but the strongest of them in just seconds is certainly great. Bodes well for the inevitable absurdly overlong final dungeon.
I'm not particularly invested in the main narrative so far, but that's fine, I've accepted the fact that Trails will never have a main story that'll interest me. The cast is much more important, and I definitely like most of the new cast. The new Class VII in particular is quite a lot of fun and it's incredibly refreshing when they actually interact between each other a lot too, and every single interaction doesn't revolve around Rean. And speaking of Rean, aside from the occasional moment where he's come off as annoyingly pretentious or self-righteous or know-it-all-ish, I'm liking him much more here than in CS1 and 2. Just getting less of a LN protagonist vibe from him.
There are some really fucking unfortunate misses here, though. In particular I want to say fuck the writer(s) who think Shirley is great and sexual assault is funny. Absolute trash. The NPCs are also continuing the downward trend that's started after Sky/Zero/Ao, but at least the school NPCs are, as always, fun.
But yeah, overall I'm definitely enjoying it and I'm looking forward to continuing it in a few hours when work ends.
I wish they'd chill out a bit with the ridiculous script sizes (and especially stop employing such an absurdly high number of script writers) and maybe re-allocate the budget a bit. I definitely think the games would greatly benefit from better level design and cutscene direction, in particular.
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It never occured to me that the size of the script means there is also an unusually high amount of writers involved. That certainly could explain why the series lacks in some other areas.
Also I can't agree with you that the main plot is uninteresting. Sure, it's all presented in a piecemeal basis, but I'll be damned if I'm not on the edge everytime a new detail is revealed that shines a light on the bigger picture.
I don't know if I finished the Prologue of Sky FC or just started it, but I reached the point where i originally dropped the game (the farm sidequest).
Thanks for your advice, Yunyo. I think I am going to treat this game like a book, been playing it right before bed until I feel sleepy and it's a refreshing experience. The game is so well written, I am taking my sweet time talking with all the NPCs and soaking into the atmosphere. I do hope the story picks up at some point, but I am a complete sucker for the wholesome vibe that the game starts off with. I was already a very, very slow player, so I am aware it's going to take me ages playing like this, hope I beat this shit lol
The first sidequest boss also made me realize the battle mechanics may not be as uninteresting as I first thought, definitely a fun fight.
Thanks for your advice, Yunyo. I think I am going to treat this game like a book, been playing it right before bed until I feel sleepy and it's a refreshing experience. The game is so well written, I am taking my sweet time talking with all the NPCs and soaking into the atmosphere. I do hope the story picks up at some point, but I am a complete sucker for the wholesome vibe that the game starts off with. I was already a very, very slow player, so I am aware it's going to take me ages playing like this, hope I beat this shit lol
The first sidequest boss also made me realize the battle mechanics may not be as uninteresting as I first thought, definitely a fun fight.
And I agree with the hilarious kid NPC, Cassius is cute as fuck. I hope I get him as a party member.
This first boss in the Geofront in Ao is some lame bullshit. No freeze immunity? Automatic game over.
And it doesn't look like you even have access to a shop that sells lighters, so you have to load a save to get equipment and go through a couple lengthy cutscenes and redo the entire dungeon, including monster chests.
Edit: I guess the guest character is supposed to be your ace here since they have freeze immunity. And I had one lighter, so I was able to make it work with two immune characters and s-craft spam.
And it doesn't look like you even have access to a shop that sells lighters, so you have to load a save to get equipment and go through a couple lengthy cutscenes and redo the entire dungeon, including monster chests.
Edit: I guess the guest character is supposed to be your ace here since they have freeze immunity. And I had one lighter, so I was able to make it work with two immune characters and s-craft spam.
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Facts; I want to CRUSH Campanella and McBurn!!!
And we only know like half of the members of Ouroborus too...but smugness must be a qualification.
That being said it's a little grating that you never really win a battle against any of Ouroboros outright except those you fight at the ending of SC; out side that it's always been;
Anguis/Enforcer: you've gotten pretty good! maybe next time I'll(we'll) try harder! *teleports away*
me: -_-...
CS3 went into overdrive with this...
A couple of additional thoughts I forgot to mention in the previous post:
- It's fun to see all these old characters rendered in FULL MODERN THREE-DEE, but man are there some proper travesties there. Randy in particular looks awful in CS3.
- Same goes for the voice acting for many of them, it's just not working for me. Agate is the worst one so far, his voice-acting is grating (sorry, VA!).
- The bonding events have been surprisingly really good, much more varied and involved than CS1 and 2's, where the events always seemed to comprise a single conversation or something similar. Now you get various sets of scenes (rather than single scenes), and some even have their own gameplay components, like a mini-dungeon or something.
It's nothing particularly tangible or anything like that, I just feel like the focus has been shifting for a while now and it's brought the overall level of quality down a fair bit.
With the Cold Steel games, I feel like every consecutive game has had a bigger gap between story-relevant NPCs (your school students, faculty members, their acquaintances etc.) and the rest (people of the field trip towns and cities and so on), and with every game, the latter have felt more and more like an afterthought. You still get the occasional NPC with a nice little mini story, but more of them just seem to stand around in random places, not really doing anything, with nothing interesting to say. Even the ones with the little mini stories have been fairly rote, so far. A far cry from the Sky NPCs, who more often than not felt like actual characters, living their lives in the world.
I've barely started chapter 2 and already I feel like ignoring most of the NPCs, which is pretty damning to me, since I've done the talk-to-every-NPC-all-the-time runs of Sky FC, SC, The 3rd (well, you know) and to an extent, Zero and Ao at least once for every game.
Of course there are still some fun ones. Like Charles here, the artistic noble who's very obviously blind and tragically in denial about it.
Poor Charles.
Some people will like the considerably bigger focus on story-relevant (or at least adjacent) NPCs - you actually get mini cutscenes with many of them in CS3 - and while they are indeed nice to have, I don't like the overall approach. It just makes the world feel so much less like an actual world, and when world building is the one thing I think Trails does (or at least did) incredibly well, I can't help but consider it a pretty big con.
(Apologies if this comes off as rambling, I've slept like absolute shit for the past couple of nights and I'm all out of oat milk for coffee)
Okay. There's really no need to tell me you disagree with me there since I'm very aware that I'm in the minority of Trails players with this opinion, unless you specifically need the feel to voice your disagreement for whatever reason. But FWIW, I'm certainly interested in seeing where the overall story of the world goes and I'm looking forward to getting some actual answers to many of the central mysteries some day. There are obviously some great characters, good plots etc. there too, it's not a case of top-to-bottom-don't-give-a-fuck.
You mean it's somehow worse than CS2 was, which was comically bad about this? But yeah, it's definitely one of my bigger complaints with the series. Everyone always hypes up the payoffs, THE PAYOFFS, but you never really get that cathartic payoff with these smug assholes. Or really any of the bad guys, smug or not. The only "payoff" you get here is that sooner or later all bad guys will turn good, which is about as satisfying as shitting your pants.
- It's fun to see all these old characters rendered in FULL MODERN THREE-DEE, but man are there some proper travesties there. Randy in particular looks awful in CS3.
- Same goes for the voice acting for many of them, it's just not working for me. Agate is the worst one so far, his voice-acting is grating (sorry, VA!).
- The bonding events have been surprisingly really good, much more varied and involved than CS1 and 2's, where the events always seemed to comprise a single conversation or something similar. Now you get various sets of scenes (rather than single scenes), and some even have their own gameplay components, like a mini-dungeon or something.
It's nothing particularly tangible or anything like that, I just feel like the focus has been shifting for a while now and it's brought the overall level of quality down a fair bit.
With the Cold Steel games, I feel like every consecutive game has had a bigger gap between story-relevant NPCs (your school students, faculty members, their acquaintances etc.) and the rest (people of the field trip towns and cities and so on), and with every game, the latter have felt more and more like an afterthought. You still get the occasional NPC with a nice little mini story, but more of them just seem to stand around in random places, not really doing anything, with nothing interesting to say. Even the ones with the little mini stories have been fairly rote, so far. A far cry from the Sky NPCs, who more often than not felt like actual characters, living their lives in the world.
I've barely started chapter 2 and already I feel like ignoring most of the NPCs, which is pretty damning to me, since I've done the talk-to-every-NPC-all-the-time runs of Sky FC, SC, The 3rd (well, you know) and to an extent, Zero and Ao at least once for every game.
Of course there are still some fun ones. Like Charles here, the artistic noble who's very obviously blind and tragically in denial about it.
Poor Charles.
Some people will like the considerably bigger focus on story-relevant (or at least adjacent) NPCs - you actually get mini cutscenes with many of them in CS3 - and while they are indeed nice to have, I don't like the overall approach. It just makes the world feel so much less like an actual world, and when world building is the one thing I think Trails does (or at least did) incredibly well, I can't help but consider it a pretty big con.
(Apologies if this comes off as rambling, I've slept like absolute shit for the past couple of nights and I'm all out of oat milk for coffee)
Okay. There's really no need to tell me you disagree with me there since I'm very aware that I'm in the minority of Trails players with this opinion, unless you specifically need the feel to voice your disagreement for whatever reason. But FWIW, I'm certainly interested in seeing where the overall story of the world goes and I'm looking forward to getting some actual answers to many of the central mysteries some day. There are obviously some great characters, good plots etc. there too, it's not a case of top-to-bottom-don't-give-a-fuck.
You mean it's somehow worse than CS2 was, which was comically bad about this? But yeah, it's definitely one of my bigger complaints with the series. Everyone always hypes up the payoffs, THE PAYOFFS, but you never really get that cathartic payoff with these smug assholes. Or really any of the bad guys, smug or not. The only "payoff" you get here is that sooner or later all bad guys will turn good, which is about as satisfying as shitting your pants.
yeah, this is how I feel as well
I haven't played Ao yet, but I know what it spoils from CS2
given how I see CS 1 and 2 as the weakest entries, I can't imagine my opinion would be anything but worse if so much of the plot had been known beforehand
I think the optimal playthrough in terms of my personal enjoyment is prob something like fc/sc/third chapter -> zero -> cs1/cs2 (don't read the crossbell newspapers. they spoil a big thing from Ao) -> Ao -> cs3/cs4
You can play Cold Steel 1 and 2 before TiTS but you will probably miss a lot of the bigger picture and many connections and references. But you absolutely have to play TiTS before Cold Steel 3 since it heavily references everything beforehand, including the Crossbell games but theres little that can be done about those unfortunately.
This one's a trophy guide so it'll have all the quests and stuff:
CS3 just marks hidden sidequests on the map now, so they're not really hidden anymore. Bonus BP still exists, though.
Yeah it's absolutely insufferable, the whole series has a problem with this.
This franchise would be so much better if it didn't have stupid anime clichés like these in it, it's insane really.
Got bored. Noticed Geofront's Zero patch didn't come with an old steam grid which is used for big picture and the most recent game so I made this quickly. Link here if someone else wants it.
drive.google.com
trails-from-zero-Grid.jpg
drive.google.com
The villains getting away I'm actually sort of fine with, although, yeah, it can get really obnoxious at times. What really is getting on my nerves, specially in CS3 is how (not an actual spoiler, but just in case)
. I'm not actualy sure if it's really worse than previous entries or if I just didn't remember them very well, but it feels like it. I'm loving the game otherwise, way more than CS1 and CS2, but, yeah.
every encounter ends with a victory, then some twist (usually reinforcements) that puts the protagonists at a disadvantage, and then some character makes a grand entrance to solve everything. It seems like they can't introduce characters any other way anymore.
Yeah, for some reason the writers at Falcom are sticking way too long to a chapter formula once they found one.
I've seen old suggestions of using CheatEngine to run the game at 2x speed, though that's not going to be real 60fps rendering.
Before Geofront's translation was released, a patch existed for Zero PC:
Release 20190722_zero60fps · AGraber/ZeroNoKisekiTurbo
Patches for to add 60FPS (and Turbo) support for for Zero no Kiseki, based on SoraVoice. - AGraber/ZeroNoKisekiTurbo
github.com
Since Zero and Ao use a similar engine it might be possible to alter this patch for Ao by changing pointers. Though if it were really that easy I'm sure it would have already been done by now.
You could get in contact with the programmers JoseJL and Ribose from the geofront team. Might wanna check if you can catch them on the Falcom discord.
I'm sure they could give you some pointers.
literally