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Media Videogame Thread
- Thread starter Bummer
- Start date
Love this series. It's nearly perfect and I wish there were more jrpgs like this. Based on you just starting Cold Steel, does that mean you have not played Trails in the Sky chapters? I recommend those too if you wanted more of this formula. Cold Steel 2 is hinted to be released in Sept. in English.
Has anyone played No Man's Sky yet? Can't get it at the moment (no money) but I've been watching gameplay and have enjoyed what I've seen so far.
I've played a bit of Trails in the Sky, and I plan on returning to it eventually, but man, Trails of Cold Steel is legendary. My body is ready for the second game.
It's hard to go back to past iterations when you've been spoiled by the greatness that is Cold Steel. Sort of wish I started with Trails in the Sky. I am currently playing through Legend of Heroes Ao no Kiseki and Cold Steel 2. You can guess which one is getting the majority of my time lol.
I like the Trails series but I wouldn't put any of the ones released in English so far anywhere near Persona 4. I'm actually kinda split on Sky vs Coldsteel though. Without going into spoilers, Sky's story is really "anime" in some silly ways (despite that Coldsteel is the one taking place in high school) and has a couple lame plot devices, whereas Coldsteel's is something that's a lot easier to form a coherent, believable, and generally engaging story around. On the other hand, I do prefer Sky gameplay-wise, the way that you have to pick and arrange your quartz while considering both the elemental properties for spells and the actual bonuses from the quartz itself was a neat system, which is nice because the gameplay is otherwise functional but pretty bland.
Regardless, I'm looking forward to Coldsteel 2, though I'm probably going to import 3rd Evolution and then do Zero/Ao first. I imported Coldsteel which was kind of a mistake since the Japanese in it is much harder than in any other video game I've imported like Tales or Atelier and it's mostly unvoiced, so I'll probably have to stick to the Evolution re-releases in the future if I do get the JP versions.
Regardless, I'm looking forward to Coldsteel 2, though I'm probably going to import 3rd Evolution and then do Zero/Ao first. I imported Coldsteel which was kind of a mistake since the Japanese in it is much harder than in any other video game I've imported like Tales or Atelier and it's mostly unvoiced, so I'll probably have to stick to the Evolution re-releases in the future if I do get the JP versions.
Persona 4 Golden is straight up my favorite game of all time, but Cold Steel absolutely blows P4 out of the water in terms of characterization (it's significantly more consistent), gameplay, story and world building. It's actually kind of scary how much better Cold Steel is at handling its characters. I haven't beaten the game, so this is a tentative opinion but I seriously doubt it will change.
I want to say I disagree but it's been more than 7 years since I played Persona 4 so it's a bit difficult to fairly judge, especially considering that Coldsteel's story is far from complete. It does have some really great characterization though so no arguments there.
they're nothing special but reasonably enjoyable. The actual RPG stuff in them is fairly basic but the alchemy is pretty fun once you get going and makes a nice central mechanic that everything else in the game builds around. I only got like 1/3 of the way into Rorona Plus because the way that it gives you a hard time limit for the entire game and then forces you to either throw time out the window repeatedly or do really menial grinding got on my nerves. Totori and Meruru are both good, Meruru improves on the formula gameplay-wise but I think I liked Totori's characters better. Eschalogy I haven't finished yet, it kind of has the same problem as Rorona but not as bad.
they're nothing special but reasonably enjoyable. The actual RPG stuff in them is fairly basic but the alchemy is pretty fun once you get going and makes a nice central mechanic that everything else in the game builds around. I only got like 1/3 of the way into Rorona Plus because the way that it gives you a hard time limit for the entire game and then forces you to either throw time out the window repeatedly or do really menial grinding got on my nerves. Totori and Meruru are both good, Meruru improves on the formula gameplay-wise but I think I liked Totori's characters better. Eschalogy I haven't finished yet, it kind of has the same problem as Rorona but not as bad.
So no one here likes Halo?
I was just thinking about the Legend of Heroes games today. Pardon the bump.
I played Trails in the Sky's first chapter around two years ago because it came highly recommended to me. The art and animation gave off this lazy, old 3D engine vibe, and while the RPG system has some cool elements to it (like manipulating turn order and how attacks are affected by your position on the map), what sold me on the game was the amount of effort that went into the script and the world building. The story was fresh enough and avoided a lot of pit-falls so it was easy to get sucked into it, and there were a lot of tiny touches that they nailed, and that ended up mattering the most. It's a really charming game and I'm glad I played it.
Then Second Chapter came out a year ago and I stopped after the first chapter. The story turned super generic and I lost the drive to play the series, especially since Second Chapter is supposed to be, like, 70 hours long.
You guys are saying stuff about the later games though! I kinda assumed they sucked compared to the originals but now I'm going to check them out.
EDIT: It sounds like I didn't like First Chapter that much but actually uh I liked it a lot. It dropped off towards the end because it needed to have a sequel-bait but the first and second chapters of the game (of... "first chapter") were soooo great. Case in point (spoilers for part 2).
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Mass Effect is the GOAT
2 and 3 are
idk. I always liked the first one. 2 I never played but I played 3 with the original ending. I still don't get why people got so upset with that ending. I thought it was fine. What say you?
I think ME3 is easily the best game in the series and the final 5 minutes being bad doesn't change that. With the Extended Cut DLC it's pretty much fine even though the premise is flawed. I would have preferred a single ending to the "choice" we got. Just gimme a button to kill the Reapers damn it, no need for all the other crap imo.
KILL KILL KILL. so fun
1) There is a fan translation for AAI2. Go get it. Or watch let's plays on YouTube.
2) Man when you started your post I thought for sure you were gonna talk about SPIRITS OF JUSTICE, oh god
both FC and SC have their own different plot issues. More specifically:
the whole "mind control powder that makes people forget about it when it wears off" is a really cheap feeling plot device. Joshua being a professional killer at age 11 was pretty cheesy too but w/e
it's really hard to feel much of a sense of threat from Ouroboros when they seem to be more powerful than the entire country and the only reason they haven't just taken over is because they can't really be bothered. That and it's completely formulaic to start with, with the kinda exception of Chapter 3, which was great
And yeah, I finished SC in 62 hours but I didn't do most of the sidequests so 70+ isn't out of the question. Coldsteel might be even longer (howlongtobeat puts it at 62.5, but I find their averages are usually on the short side).
also something I forgot to mention is that the music gets better and better the further into the series you get. Sky has some nice tracks but Coldsteel gets some amazing stuff like
I think Ao no Kiseki is generally considered the best one as far as the JP fanbase goes but that's also probably the farthest one away since XSEED hasn't even made any official announcements about the Zero/Ao duology, though I expect it'll happen eventually.
I do not think Ao/Zero will ever be localized. XSeed will not release anymore PSP games and PC versions are owned by a Chinese company that went out of business. The Evolution ports are owned by another Japanese company and XSeed does not have an agreement with them. I suppose something can happen if the demand is high enough to justify the hassle for working out an agreement, but I am pessimistic.
Edit: I'll drop in one of my fav OSTs
Edit: I'll drop in one of my fav OSTs
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It's hard to say without knowing more about the internal situation but there was a Japanese PC port of Zero and I would expect that it'd be really easy to port Ao using the same engine. Though there's also the fact that I think a guy is close to done fan translating Zero so that may be a reason for them not to do it.
Evolution sadly would be kind of difficult even if they worked out the licensing since they've gone dub-only for the series so far and doing the same amount of voice acting would probably be more than they want to commit to, especially when the audience is limited to Vita which isn't amazingly popular in the West.
Evolution sadly would be kind of difficult even if they worked out the licensing since they've gone dub-only for the series so far and doing the same amount of voice acting would probably be more than they want to commit to, especially when the audience is limited to Vita which isn't amazingly popular in the West.
