fun fact about those chest messages: They were actually only added in the english localization. In the original release of Sky, every single chest just says 'this chest is empty' when you check it a second time, but for some esoteric programming reason, each chest links back to a unique line in the dialogue registry, so there's just 'This chest is empty' written like 300+ times per game. When XSeed was doing the localization they asked Falcom if they could change it, and Falcom was like 'yeah, sure, why not?'. Those chest messages were not what made me want to play the game originally, but they were one of the earliest factors in keeping me playing throughout the slower setup parts of the plot.
I got into this serie via Cold Steel 1, thanks to my significant other, when I and II re-released on PS4. CSIII was on the horizon and when I heard it took plot points and characters from the 5 previous games thats when I challenged myself to play the serie and I did not regret it. I've enjoyed every moments of it. After 3rd I took a small pause then shortly after realized Geofront had fan translated Zero and Ao was maybe 3 or so months away, so I didn't wait too long compared to some fans (until Reverie). But yeah its one of my favorite serie, I love everything about it and no other JRPG even come close to the enjoyment I get from Trails.
I actually got introduced to the Trails series from the advertisement in Tokyo Xanadu. I went into Cold Steel after beating TX. After playing through the entire Cold Steel arc and Reverie, I got super invested in the SSS, so I am currently working on the Crossbell games. Looking forward to Kuro!
Stuff I missed in the video: -The music in the Trails franchise is phenomenal and I suggest you check out the soundtracks for yourself. I made a video analysing my favorite songs in each of the games. Check it out! th-cam.com/video/qjFoS4jbdpI/w-d-xo.html -It's worth noting that Falcom uploads every single one of their soundtracks to youtube and streaming services themselves which is amazing. (More developers should do this)! -Sharing/Liking this video will help this series grow! Trails/Kiseki content doesn't do very well with the youtube algorithm in my experience so everything helps. -I value your feedback so feel free to leave a comment or two and let me know if you decide to start Trails!
The Trails series is the best RPG series in the market; My favorite game of all time, until now, is Trails in the Sky SC, which topped my top 3 of all time: Persona 5, The Witcher 3 and Ys 8 Lacrimosa of Dana (another FALCOM masterpiece). If you love RPGs, you should play the Trails games... they are wonderful, and they are the beacon of light of an RPG industry that has been abandoned by one of its main creators... SQUARE ENIX... but you won't even miss SQUARE once you play th Trails games.
Trails of series is one of my favorite JRPGs, and you won't find that much good lore and world that feels alive anywhere else. Whaf I love about these games is that you feel other characters live their life and do stuff outside spending time with main character. The only gripe I have is pretty avarage audio localization. I play with Japanese audio, but I see many people playing with English and some emotional scenes take some magic from it. Great video btw.
Best analogy I've heard about this series is that it's the One Piece of gaming: Large overarching narrative, ensemble of characters, and both series spanning over a decade and closing in on being finished, with One Piece projected to be finished within 4-5 years, and Kiseki being stated as being about 70% finished as of Kuro 2
I'm a big One Piece fan and I look forward to the world building, especially every arc ends where the Straw Hats get new bounties and every previous companion from every countries in the world reacting to it. Every previous companion also have their own life which not revolving around the Straw Hats like the Germa and Big Mom Pirates in recent chapter covers. When I start the Trails series, (Cold Steel) it surprises me whenever a big event happened, the world seems reacting to it. But, they also have their own life which aren't revolving around Class VII. As a lifelong One Piece fans, I highly recommend Trails series. 👍
I started with Cold Steel, watching the stories of the first 5 Trails games on TH-cam beforehand. I played all 4 Cold Steel games, but now that the series has become my favorite modern series, I've gone back to the beginning (and I mean the very beginning). I just finished playing all 5 of the pre-Trails Legend of Heroes games (the games that came before Trails in the Sky). I plan to actually play the 3 Trails in the Sky games this year, spread out, while I wait for Zero and Azure to be released.
@@Revealingstorm. Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes 1, Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes 2, Legend of Heroes 3: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch, Legend of Heroes 4: A Tear of Vermillion, Legend of Heroes 5: Cagesong of the Ocean.
Update: You *can* start with Trails from Zero if you really want to. There will be a major plothole/payoff in Zero from the Trails in the Sky trilogy and there will be spoilers of the developments in those games but you should be fine otherwise. Don't let that scare you from getting into this series!
Hey just wanted to tell you I got into Trails thanks to this video. I'm still in Sky FC, 40 hours in (I take it veeery slow, and I talk to every NPC every time) just getting to Grancel. Having a blast and I'm hyped for the future. It will probably take me a few years to catch up but apparently there's still games coming out and there will be for a while.
As a person currently nearly at the end of hajimari and soon to be caught up man... I'm kinda glad I got into this series through my friends. Wasted over nearly 4-5 months and was completely worth it. Same game series that GOT me back into games too which I'm really thankful for, due to it's uniqueness. I'm kinda glad someone wants the games to grow. The series is so much fun to discuss with friends and much more too so. Nice video 👍
Fyi, nightmare difficulty in sky 1-2 is brutally difficult because the games weren’t balanced for it. Nightmare in the crossbell duology and the cold steel games is much, much more manageable
Trails newcomer here! I played through the prologue of Cold Steel and really dug it. I then watched a few vids on the series and thought.. hold fire ..actually.. let's start at the beginning! A few Steam purchases later and I'm 10 hours into Trails in the Sky and loving it. Yes it's a throwback graphically but in a way it still feels like it could be released today. Especially when you compare it to games like Octopath Traveller (which was a game I just couldn't get into). Even with my limited exposure the writing/story/characters are amazing and make me want to keep playing. I have busy year ahead of me, with my aim to complete the Sky Series, Zero & Azure, and then CS 1-4 by the end of the year. 🙂
Mind blowing jrpg series ! It's like playing in a really good overarching anime series. You always want to know more about the world and figure out wtf is going on behind the scene. I play all of them including Reverie and Kuro and it is still going strong ! long live Nihon Falcom ! (Van from Kuro might be my new fav protag)
@@BLACKDISC you still have time , the overlay translation from Zerofield is not yet ready but it's close to. It's a great way to play it before the official release that won't be out for years ( probably 2024-2025)
If you want to truly know what the narrative of the series is, everything in trails goes back to one, gigantic event: when the Sky Goddess Aidios gave 7 divine treasures to mankind. Every conflict, every war, every plot point flows directly from that ancient decision, which we as fans know absolutely nothing about. We have no context for how or why it happened, we just know that it did. That's one of the biggest Chekov's guns I've ever seen.
This is a great video to introduce new people in Trails series without bombarding them with information. It's short and sweet. Also, what's the song you used in the part of the video? Haven't heard it in the Sky OST playlist. P.S. I also love Towa sooo much! She's one of the most adorable and cute character in the whole series! She was actually very close to be the waifu for Rean in CS4, but Emma surprised me in CS3 and CS4, and became my choice for Rean in the end.
Started with CS this month, because my friend was streaming FC/SC for me and I want to play a Kiseki game without replaying what I was watching so he recommended CS. Anyways now I'm mid CS so desperate to go back and watch/play the rest of SC/TC and the crossbell arc because I just want all the juicy knowledge in my brain dude I can't get enough Kiseki's nuts man. Everytime a character mentions a location I get so interested I wanna know. The only other franchise to suck me in like this has been the Yakuza games, but I'm on break from those. Still on Yakuza 5 for now. Sorry if this comment is really long winded. I just bought some new switches/keycaps for this keyboard, and am really enjoying the feeling of typing on them.
Damn after playing up to TOCS 4 and still waiting for the english localization release of Hajimari no Kiseki which is converted to Trails into Reverie, I've been playing other JRPGs and I haven't finished all of them because the focused emotional roller coaster in depth of their stories are not good as the Trails Series. For me it looks like the trails series robbed all of me of my CHILDHOOD appreciation of fantasy interpreting.
I just beat cold steel 1 and I'm instantly gonna go and play cold steel 2 and after that I'm just gonna go play the sky trilogy and by then zero should be out and I'll play that and then play cold steel 3 and 4 with azure next and finally reverie
Glad you're getting into the series and thanks for watching! Hopefully Azure is out by the time you finish Zero. That's arguably the most important game in the franchise story-wise.
This is definitely the way to do it. I am currently in cs3 after starting with sky fc, and I cannot imagine how much emotional weight and impact would be lost on someone who doesn't recognize the returning characters (the very end of cs2 is kind of the same way, just on a much smaller scale) Anyone who says 'just play the cold steel games then go back' clearly didn't play the series from the start and doesn't know what they're really missing. I actually got misty-eyed in cs3 just from hearing a new arrangement of a song that hasn't been played since the sky trilogy.
I understand why people preferred Japanese dubs 20 years ago, when English dubs were laughable. But, today? I don't get it. English dubs are mostly good, and you can, you know, understand what they're saying...
I agree, the English dub for this game is pretty good! I'm a usually a purist with most media so I prefer to use the original dub when I can just because it was the original/intended vision.
My problem with the English dub is that it just sounds too cheesy for me in those cheesy moments. I'm looking at you rean. Other than that eng dub is fine for the most part
Personally, I love the combat too much to use the turbo feature. To me, that's only for grinding, which I never do in this series (except for one specific time I need some item, and was trying to get it to drop).
Yeah the combat is fast/fun enough that you don't need to ever use the turbo (+you can skip longer animations by default). I definitely keep it on for 95% of my playthrough though it's too good.
There's also an English dub mod that's being worked on called Trails in the Dub. The prologue and chapter one are done in FC, but we're working on dubbing the entire first three games! (FC-The Third) In case you're looking for an another reason to do another playthrough. ;)
I personally follow a guide the whole way through since I 100% these games. There's quite a few side story beats and lore items such as the books that you can miss along the way if you don't use a guide so it's recomended you use one but not necessary (Most Trails guides are spoiler free).
Easiest way to know if you can be friends with someone: They're a Trails evangelist
fun fact about those chest messages: They were actually only added in the english localization. In the original release of Sky, every single chest just says 'this chest is empty' when you check it a second time, but for some esoteric programming reason, each chest links back to a unique line in the dialogue registry, so there's just 'This chest is empty' written like 300+ times per game. When XSeed was doing the localization they asked Falcom if they could change it, and Falcom was like 'yeah, sure, why not?'.
Those chest messages were not what made me want to play the game originally, but they were one of the earliest factors in keeping me playing throughout the slower setup parts of the plot.
I got into this serie via Cold Steel 1, thanks to my significant other, when I and II re-released on PS4. CSIII was on the horizon and when I heard it took plot points and characters from the 5 previous games thats when I challenged myself to play the serie and I did not regret it. I've enjoyed every moments of it. After 3rd I took a small pause then shortly after realized Geofront had fan translated Zero and Ao was maybe 3 or so months away, so I didn't wait too long compared to some fans (until Reverie). But yeah its one of my favorite serie, I love everything about it and no other JRPG even come close to the enjoyment I get from Trails.
I actually got introduced to the Trails series from the advertisement in Tokyo Xanadu. I went into Cold Steel after beating TX. After playing through the entire Cold Steel arc and Reverie, I got super invested in the SSS, so I am currently working on the Crossbell games. Looking forward to Kuro!
Stuff I missed in the video:
-The music in the Trails franchise is phenomenal and I suggest you check out the soundtracks for yourself. I made a video analysing my favorite songs in each of the games. Check it out! th-cam.com/video/qjFoS4jbdpI/w-d-xo.html
-It's worth noting that Falcom uploads every single one of their soundtracks to youtube and streaming services themselves which is amazing. (More developers should do this)!
-Sharing/Liking this video will help this series grow! Trails/Kiseki content doesn't do very well with the youtube algorithm in my experience so everything helps.
-I value your feedback so feel free to leave a comment or two and let me know if you decide to start Trails!
The Trails series is the best RPG series in the market; My favorite game of all time, until now, is Trails in the Sky SC, which topped my top 3 of all time: Persona 5, The Witcher 3 and Ys 8 Lacrimosa of Dana (another FALCOM masterpiece).
If you love RPGs, you should play the Trails games... they are wonderful, and they are the beacon of light of an RPG industry that has been abandoned by one of its main creators... SQUARE ENIX... but you won't even miss SQUARE once you play th Trails games.
I absolutely agree, trails is the best JRPG of all time period, not final fantasy or chrono trigger or persona
Trails of series is one of my favorite JRPGs, and you won't find that much good lore and world that feels alive anywhere else. Whaf I love about these games is that you feel other characters live their life and do stuff outside spending time with main character. The only gripe I have is pretty avarage audio localization. I play with Japanese audio, but I see many people playing with English and some emotional scenes take some magic from it. Great video btw.
Anton is the Grandmaster
Pretty good video I’m thinking about getting into the trails series I’ve heard a lot of good things about it and might give it a shot soon
Best analogy I've heard about this series is that it's the One Piece of gaming: Large overarching narrative, ensemble of characters, and both series spanning over a decade and closing in on being finished, with One Piece projected to be finished within 4-5 years, and Kiseki being stated as being about 70% finished as of Kuro 2
I'm a big One Piece fan and I look forward to the world building, especially every arc ends where the Straw Hats get new bounties and every previous companion from every countries in the world reacting to it. Every previous companion also have their own life which not revolving around the Straw Hats like the Germa and Big Mom Pirates in recent chapter covers.
When I start the Trails series, (Cold Steel) it surprises me whenever a big event happened, the world seems reacting to it. But, they also have their own life which aren't revolving around Class VII.
As a lifelong One Piece fans, I highly recommend Trails series. 👍
I started with Cold Steel, watching the stories of the first 5 Trails games on TH-cam beforehand. I played all 4 Cold Steel games, but now that the series has become my favorite modern series, I've gone back to the beginning (and I mean the very beginning). I just finished playing all 5 of the pre-Trails Legend of Heroes games (the games that came before Trails in the Sky). I plan to actually play the 3 Trails in the Sky games this year, spread out, while I wait for Zero and Azure to be released.
The Trails in the Sky games are still my favorites overall after finishing CS3 (Especially 3rd). You're in for a good time!
what are the pre trails games called?
@@Revealingstorm.
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes 1,
Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes 2,
Legend of Heroes 3: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch,
Legend of Heroes 4: A Tear of Vermillion,
Legend of Heroes 5: Cagesong of the Ocean.
@@guruthosamarthruin4459 thank you
Update: You *can* start with Trails from Zero if you really want to. There will be a major plothole/payoff in Zero from the Trails in the Sky trilogy and there will be spoilers of the developments in those games but you should be fine otherwise. Don't let that scare you from getting into this series!
Hey just wanted to tell you I got into Trails thanks to this video. I'm still in Sky FC, 40 hours in (I take it veeery slow, and I talk to every NPC every time) just getting to Grancel.
Having a blast and I'm hyped for the future. It will probably take me a few years to catch up but apparently there's still games coming out and there will be for a while.
That means a lot to hear! Thanks for coming back to let me know (and enjoy the series)! :)
Anton the true trails protagonist.
Great video. So nice to see a short one that accurately explains how deep the world is with its npcs.
As a person currently nearly at the end of hajimari and soon to be caught up man... I'm kinda glad I got into this series through my friends. Wasted over nearly 4-5 months and was completely worth it.
Same game series that GOT me back into games too which I'm really thankful for, due to it's uniqueness. I'm kinda glad someone wants the games to grow. The series is so much fun to discuss with friends and much more too so.
Nice video 👍
Glad you watched despite being caught up, haha. Thanks for coming through and sharing your experience with the series! 🤝🏾
My favourite series along with Xeno metaseries and Ace Attorney
Fyi, nightmare difficulty in sky 1-2 is brutally difficult because the games weren’t balanced for it. Nightmare in the crossbell duology and the cold steel games is much, much more manageable
Trails newcomer here! I played through the prologue of Cold Steel and really dug it. I then watched a few vids on the series and thought.. hold fire ..actually.. let's start at the beginning! A few Steam purchases later and I'm 10 hours into Trails in the Sky and loving it. Yes it's a throwback graphically but in a way it still feels like it could be released today. Especially when you compare it to games like Octopath Traveller (which was a game I just couldn't get into).
Even with my limited exposure the writing/story/characters are amazing and make me want to keep playing.
I have busy year ahead of me, with my aim to complete the Sky Series, Zero & Azure, and then CS 1-4 by the end of the year. 🙂
I think your vid might be the one to finally convince me to pick up and start Trails In The Sky
that means a lot, hope you enjoy it if you decide to pick it up!
Mind blowing jrpg series ! It's like playing in a really good overarching anime series. You always want to know more about the world and figure out wtf is going on behind the scene. I play all of them including Reverie and Kuro and it is still going strong ! long live Nihon Falcom !
(Van from Kuro might be my new fav protag)
I'm excited to get into Kuro! (I'm about to finish CS3 as of writing this haha)
@@BLACKDISC you still have time , the overlay translation from Zerofield is not yet ready but it's close to. It's a great way to play it before the official release that won't be out for years ( probably 2024-2025)
If you want to truly know what the narrative of the series is, everything in trails goes back to one, gigantic event: when the Sky Goddess Aidios gave 7 divine treasures to mankind. Every conflict, every war, every plot point flows directly from that ancient decision, which we as fans know absolutely nothing about. We have no context for how or why it happened, we just know that it did. That's one of the biggest Chekov's guns I've ever seen.
Yea, the game even have cult (ihope not a spoiler) questioning the existence of adios as well. pretty cool stuff.
Estelle is also my favourite character of the entire franchise.
she's such an amazing character personality and development wise
She's great, man. She's the best.
Hope you reach 10k subs. Keep it up, bro!!
This is a great video to introduce new people in Trails series without bombarding them with information. It's short and sweet.
Also, what's the song you used in the part of the video? Haven't heard it in the Sky OST playlist.
P.S. I also love Towa sooo much! She's one of the most adorable and cute character in the whole series! She was actually very close to be the waifu for Rean in CS4, but Emma surprised me in CS3 and CS4, and became my choice for Rean in the end.
Another Towa fan 🤝🏾 The outro is 'Hoshi no Arika beat' ( th-cam.com/video/GiS1_9BdJlc/w-d-xo.html )
Great video and always happy to see people talking about my favorite JRPG series!
Me when I heard Matt Mercer as Oliver in cold steel: FUCKING MERCER
The English voice acting on Cold Steel arc is fantastic!
That's a good point I didn't even think to mention! Lots of familiar voice actors to people who play Atlus games or watch dubbed anime.
You made Trails content. You got a new sub.
thanks for coming through!
Great video and I 100% agree, its my favorite JRPG series! You got a new sub :)
I appreciate it!
This series cured me for being kinda burned out for gaming.
Started with CS this month, because my friend was streaming FC/SC for me and I want to play a Kiseki game without replaying what I was watching so he recommended CS. Anyways now I'm mid CS so desperate to go back and watch/play the rest of SC/TC and the crossbell arc because I just want all the juicy knowledge in my brain dude I can't get enough Kiseki's nuts man. Everytime a character mentions a location I get so interested I wanna know.
The only other franchise to suck me in like this has been the Yakuza games, but I'm on break from those. Still on Yakuza 5 for now.
Sorry if this comment is really long winded. I just bought some new switches/keycaps for this keyboard, and am really enjoying the feeling of typing on them.
Glad you're enjoying Cold Steel! You watching your friend play the earlier games while you play yhrough CS sounds like a lot of fun :)
GOING TO PLAY TRAILS RIGHT NOW...
nah forreal go do that 🚶🏿♂️
Damn after playing up to TOCS 4 and still waiting for the english localization release of Hajimari no Kiseki which is converted to Trails into Reverie, I've been playing other JRPGs and I haven't finished all of them because the focused emotional roller coaster in depth of their stories are not good as the Trails Series. For me it looks like the trails series robbed all of me of my CHILDHOOD appreciation of fantasy interpreting.
8:57 I see what u did there😂
Before starting Trails in the Sky FC: “There’s TEN games in games in this series!?”
After finishing Trails in the Sky FC: “ten games is not enough…”
This is so real 😭
I just beat cold steel 1 and I'm instantly gonna go and play cold steel 2 and after that I'm just gonna go play the sky trilogy and by then zero should be out and I'll play that and then play cold steel 3 and 4 with azure next and finally reverie
Glad you're getting into the series and thanks for watching! Hopefully Azure is out by the time you finish Zero. That's arguably the most important game in the franchise story-wise.
This is definitely the way to do it. I am currently in cs3 after starting with sky fc, and I cannot imagine how much emotional weight and impact would be lost on someone who doesn't recognize the returning characters (the very end of cs2 is kind of the same way, just on a much smaller scale)
Anyone who says 'just play the cold steel games then go back' clearly didn't play the series from the start and doesn't know what they're really missing. I actually got misty-eyed in cs3 just from hearing a new arrangement of a song that hasn't been played since the sky trilogy.
ive been tryna get thru the first game on steam but idek if i can xd
I understand why people preferred Japanese dubs 20 years ago, when English dubs were laughable. But, today? I don't get it. English dubs are mostly good, and you can, you know, understand what they're saying...
I agree, the English dub for this game is pretty good! I'm a usually a purist with most media so I prefer to use the original dub when I can just because it was the original/intended vision.
My problem with the English dub is that it just sounds too cheesy for me in those cheesy moments. I'm looking at you rean. Other than that eng dub is fine for the most part
Japanese voice actors are just better even today. The English dubs remain cringe
7:34 a man of culture.
you get it 🤝
Personally, I love the combat too much to use the turbo feature. To me, that's only for grinding, which I never do in this series (except for one specific time I need some item, and was trying to get it to drop).
Yeah the combat is fast/fun enough that you don't need to ever use the turbo (+you can skip longer animations by default). I definitely keep it on for 95% of my playthrough though it's too good.
There's also an English dub mod that's being worked on called Trails in the Dub. The prologue and chapter one are done in FC, but we're working on dubbing the entire first three games! (FC-The Third) In case you're looking for an another reason to do another playthrough. ;)
I've been watching the progress on that! I appreciate y'alls hard work!
I miss the character portraits from sky/crossbell. Josette in particular lost a lot of character without one.
Do you use a guide? That's something I've seen brought up whenever this series comes up.
I personally follow a guide the whole way through since I 100% these games.
There's quite a few side story beats and lore items such as the books that you can miss along the way if you don't use a guide so it's recomended you use one but not necessary (Most Trails guides are spoiler free).
best character ever written is olivert reise arnor
Why my present is a boy?
Sky and cross bell rule but cold steel story was just so garbage