PLEASE READ: Thanks everyone for all the support on the series so far. We're finally into the big arc, Trails of Cold Steel. I do want to make a few addons to some points and I will try and address these when I get to Cold Steel 2: -I think the big drawback to the sub is that Rean in particular has significantly less voiced lines for whatever reason. But it's something you can get used to. I do want to give props to XSeed for all the additional VA (though there's one goofy spot they missed in this game.) -While I played on Nightmare, I may actually recommend you play on Hard. I'm a crazy person that knows Trails super well, but I do think Normal and below are way too easy for veterans. You're better off playing Hard imo. Also my mistake for mispronouncing Alisa. It's a carry over from years of pronouncing her name that way (I played subbed originally) and I've met Alyssas but never met an Alisa. So my mistake I'll see if I can fix that in my combined vid 😂💀(I don't have much of an excuse, I played Dub, old habits die hard.) That said, I am actually already in the process of recording Cold Steel 2 now that I'm out of college. Wrapping up Act 1 right now, and having a blast. Looking forward to making the CS2 video, and I think it may be the most different video yet. Look forward to it. You're all the best, and hope you have a great day!
The reason behind Rean having significantly less voiced lines in the sub is most likely the fact that in Japan, voice actors are treated like rock stars and having a handful of lines spoken by a famous VA is automatically better than a more extensive coverage by a dude with no name recognition. Therefore, Falcom hired a famous VA for their main character, only to not have the budget to have him voice as many lines as the rest of the cast. ("Silent Rean" kinda feeding into the fans' notion that Rean was a self-insert) XSeed did not have this problem, so they got Sean Chiplock to fill in the gaps when their PC port finally gave them full control over the code and they could implement those new lines. (they already offered in the initial console versions, but since Falcom had to put in man hours to implement them, the idea was shot down)
I have heard that reason mentioned a lot yeah. I couldn't find any direct confirmation that was why though, so I'm not sure if I could bring that up outside of a speculative context. It could be an attempt to emulate VN main characters too I have no idea. It is absolutely strange though lol. But how it is I guess. @@Erpy80
Weirdly, I started with CS1 and it actually gave me a different kind of love for the Sky games since when I played Sky and Crossbell for the first time, it was like "OH! That's where it/that comes from!"
Started with FC I have no idea how you CS1 guys could fall in love with the series with them referencing crossbell every five seconds without elaboration...I would have been driven nuts
Each Trails game is a reflection of what anime was popular at the time, so I'm definitely not surprised about the school setting and the harem protagonist. If anything, the school is an excellent setting for the theme of multiple perspectives, identities, and classes sharing the same space
One fun detail I like about this series in general is how the age of the central protagonist of each arc tends to be the same age the prior protagonist would be in that game's year. As a result there tends to be moments where the past protagonist would show up the current one in some fashion. My favorite example of this is when Joshua and Estelle kill the monsters that gave Lloyd and the SSS a hard time despite her being the same age as him. The kind of broke this in kuro, but Van is roughly the same age Rean, Lloyd, and Estelle would be, leading to a more "been there done that" kind of perspective.
With Cold Steel 1 its a bit like Sky FC, first time you play there are tons of details you miss and the pacing is very slow because they are building everything, then you have that great cliffhanger at the end, and the following games build upon what these first games lay the foundation. Then when you revisit them years later when the arc is done and you know everything and the character development of protagonists and the world,the nostalgia pervades everything and you start to understand what these first games actually wanted and managed. I liked a lot CS1 in my first playthrough on the Vita, but it was when I replayed it in the PS4 port after playing CSIV that the game actually made me realize how it was.
Yo! I just found your channel and listened to this video while I was doing my walk routine. Great work on this! Love the entire Trails series and happy see that we share many of our thoughts on Cold Steel 1! Subscribed! 👍
Honestly when I play the first cold steel and it ended with a cliff hanger. I’m like no way I got to know what happen next and from there I enter the Trail rabbit hole
I know how i started with CS3 because my best friend has it and didnt know how to play it..and there was me letting me play it and there started it my love to the CS series.. still need to play CS1/2 someday i buy them.
I never knew about the Trails series until i bought ToCS I and II on STEAM because they were really cheap on sale and when i started to play it, man, i love it, great characters and a huge lore and world building, right now i'm already playing ToCS IV but i feel i'm missing a lot because i haven't played the Liberl and Crossbell's sagas.
Yeah the last bits of CS2 onwards definitely feel written for people who played the whole series. I know of someone that enjoyed the CS games in spite of that but yeah. Great games though, excited to talk about those sequels.
i had low expectations going into this game and actually really loved it the combat felt really fast and satisfying and the limited magic system only amplified that for me, it was my favorite combat in the series up to that point i liked the slower pace of the story and the field studdies made it feel like going through a journey with these characters, which i really appreciate espacially after the insanity that was azure, it reminded me a lot of the sky games
Really enjoyed the video! Cold Steel is where I started the series and I agree, while it's a reasonable spot to start and get new players interested, it's best to begin with Sky. What was interesting for me playing that way was, especially in Zero/Azure, I got a lot of those "Ohhhh!" moments in earlier games instead of Cold Steel. Suikoden and Persona are some of my other favorite games, so the large cast and daily life sections of the arc have always felt like a perfect combination to me. I look forward to your Cold Steel 2 video, which is my favorite of the arc!
The fact that you like Suikoden makes a lot of sense why it's your favorite lol. Looking forward to talking about it. I'm over halfway through Act 2 on my replay lol
Chest messages in sky to azure was possible because Falcom coded individual dialogue boxes to each chest in the game. A normal jrpg will just have made 1 dedicated "empty chest" dialogue applied to all chest thus no localizers was able pull the same stunt in other jrpg or be able to think about personalizing such chest dialogues in the first place.
So uh, that's actually a creative choice I don't like but it is definitely not a spoiler by definition technically lol. But I can understand that perspective the other way around. I think I he CS arc actually operates under a lot of dramatic irony for returning fans. You know *things* but not how they get there which adds suspense for people paying attention. I am aware this works the other way around to an extent, but I feel what CS spoils are bigger moments. But again, probably our different perspectives lol.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I don’t agree at all. It is ABSOLUTELY a spoiler. It takes all the tension and shock out of CS2’s ending. Everyone that I have seen who played Azure first immediately knew it. They weren’t surprised at all and were even expecting it the entire time. But, as someone who only played tCrossbell after CS, please enlighten me on the “bigger moments” it spoils from the Crossbell games. Because I can tell you right now, I had no idea what the barrier or the azure tree was or even meant when I played. But people who played Azure first absolutely knew what it meant.
@@sj4iy You left out the Divertissement lol. Which literally spoils: >Crossbell gets annexed (actually the ending technically does and that's a huge moment in Azure's ending.) >Rixia is Yin, which is admittedly more minor, but that sucks out a lot of the mystery from Zero chapter 2. >Dieter Crois is explicitly revealed as the mastermind. And that's one of the BIGGEST twists in the Crossbell games. A lot of Crossbell's overarching narrative is about trying to unravel a bunch of mystery threads. And the Dieter Crois thing is huge because the entire narrative tries to frame the attack on Crossbell on Osborne during early ch 4 in Azure. I have seen someone playing in release order, reach the attack on Crossbell and he just started screaming "OSBOOOOORNE." Which was funny. Also the subversion is set up because in Olivier's conversation with osborne in 3rd, he calls him out for hiring Jaegers to cause chaos in countries he is going to annex. Which draws a natural parallel to Crossbell with the Red Constellation even being there. Crois being the REAL person to hire the Red Constellation is huge. If that piece of exposition sticks, then you basically know the end-game reveal (well, one of them) going into Zero. And while yes, you can absolutely figure out these things, it definitely robs you of the chance to try and piece them together. I will admit, it is possible for you to forget the Dieter thing for example, but some people are way more observant than others. Also to add a Sky example to the pile. Olivier being the prince of Erebonia is a huge twist in those games. It doesn't get revealed until super late into SC, and was one of the cooler moments in that game. Especially for the Sky games which are very VERY character-focused. Anyway I hope we're not getting heated lol. The Enlighten me comment seemed a bit much. I know ultimately some of these things will seem like a bigger deal than others. I get the vibe from this comment that this argument boils down to "My twist is more important than your twist." Which probably isn't worth the energy on both of our ends lol. For the record, I don't actually love that Osborne is revealed to have survived in Azure. But it's how they chose to do this so lol. When I say it's not a spoiler, I mean in the sense that Azure came out first, therefore in Japan that's information that was already out there. Cold Steel 1&2 is basically an interquel, so it follows a similar standard as a prequel in that regard. Like it is able to be jumped into, but a lot of information on what happened is already out there. Think the Star Wars prequels. MOST people knew Anakin was going to become Darth Vader, so the whole thing is framed differently depending on whether you started with the OG's or Prequels. I just PERSONALLY, don't think that single twist outweighs the other stuff I listed. At least imo. You do you, you have your own friends. Recommend to them how you want lol. This is just my stance.
@@GenmaTheSamurai Both of these series are interconnected, directly to one another. I don’t think you understand what a plot twist is, either. You mentioned that my comment gave the vibe of “this plot twist is better than that plot”. I didn’t start this argument. I simply said that Crossbell spoils a major plot twist in Cold Steel, and that I was glad to play cold steel first. You were the one who felt the need to argue. Not me. So don’t attribute that to me.
@@sj4iy lol okay, I will leave it here then. I have a video to edit. I just know this went from: >You disagreed (fair) >I disagreed, with some of my reasoning. I'm pretty sure I ended that comment with "I think we have different perspectives." I did not mean that as an attack. > dropped 3 paragraphs why you thought I was wrong (The actual comment I was referring to) > I explained my stance in greater detail. Maybe me bringing up the tone of comment 3 was unnecessary I apologize. I've also had this exact discussion way too many times lately, I guess you were the lightning rod today. I did edit the comment to explain the prequel logic I am using. But I guess we can just agree to disagree. Genuinely hope you have a great day. Sorry if I got you heated. I'm just very passionate about Trails haha.
A great retrospective, as always. It would've made the already combat section of this video even longer😅, but you could've also talked about how this game revalued status ailments and also stat downs to a lesser extent. Like you said, the new orbment system favorized ailments builds, but also in the Sky and Crossbell games, the ennemies were either immuned to ailments and stat downs or they were not; and the endgame ennemies and bosses were almost always immuned to it, rendering ailments effectively useless at that point; here, they tweaked it to work on a percentage efficacy, which I find it kinda genius to be honest, now even the bosses can be inflicted with status ailments, albeit on a reduced rate, making them viable as a strategy even against late game ennemies (and can also make for some funny moments😂).
Yeah I'll probably address that in Cold Steel 2. I absolutely agree, this is a really cool system and I think more RPG's should do it honestly. Makes it so ailments are still worth going for, but don't break the bosses. Good stuff.
I came to love Cold Steel and Rean because I am rean(no, I'm not Sean chiplock) I'm rean in the way of I have his traits his flaws his reasons for what I do and how I act it felt like this was my idealized self on a journey to do good with friends and family who support me despite being kinda dense sometimes I loved it
Well the Crossbell games and Cold Steel 1 and 2 was when the "old" Falcom JDK Sound team was at its absolutely best and with all its members working full time on them.... specially the five main composers Sonoda, Momiyama, Ishibashi , Unisaga and Murayama and great arrangers as Jindo or Singa. Since then some of them left, others were less active and signed less pieces and finally by Reverie most of the work was done by Sonoda, Singa and Jindo with only 4 by Unisuga and other 4-5 songs by newcomer Koguchi. For Kuro 1 and 2 new composers have arrived, Kuro 1 seems a bit weaker than usual but Kuro 2 has again an amazing soundtrack
While not my favourite game. This was a very good and comprehensive retrospective so much so it's probably set me down the path of replaying the Cold Steel games. Oh also i am for a Persona retrospective. Another great retrospective man keep up the great work.
Ayy thanks man, I'm glad you enjoyed it 😅Yeah the game ain't perfect, but I think it's a good time. Especially if you are all in for the chill vibes. I'm definitely thinking of maybe smaller-scale vids for Persona if I do. Will have to workshop that, but yeah, just glad you enjoyed :)
It's always been an opinion of mine that there are no bad Trails games, but it is interesting to see all the opinions of people and where each game ranks for them. I'm only 6 minutes in and I can already tell you put a ton of time into this retrospective. So just wanted to say all that editing work hasn't gone unnoticed. The Misty segment was amazing btw. I'll update my comment with any additional thoughts later xD
Thank you so much! I'm glad someone finally commented about the Misty segment. I loved putting that together. Big thanks to KittyHateMachine for the performance. Really wanted to keep that a surprised from all of you guys lol. I definitely did some pretty extra things in this video for the sake of funny bits or wanting to get a certain idea across. But I'm happy with how it all worked out.
@@GenmaTheSamurai You should be happy, projects like these have a lot of passion put into them and it was palpable to me. I'm around the 40-minute mark now and it's been an immensely enjoyable time. I'm also a fairly big FE fan so the support convo comparison really resonated with me and helped me realize why I also didn't have much of an issue with the main cast in terms of the bonding events. A lot of characters (especially in older titles) have a very small presence in the story and only get to shine through their supports. Which was always one of my favorite aspects of those games, Haar, Jill, Nephenee, Brom, Gatrie, Oscar, etc. So many names that even years later I still recall (which is a miracle with my goldfish brain, lmao) and it's mainly due to their supports with other members of the cast. I do wish some characters like Elliot or Gaius had a bit more focus in terms of the story, but I still love them. Elliot and Gaius were Rean's first friends and I just wish they kept up that connection throughout the entire game instead of just specific scenes. I also agree with the Persona comments, when you break it down the two series are vastly different and only share a few key aspects. But I still make the comparison myself when talking to other people about the series because it's just an easy comparison to make. And yes I will also always recommend starting at the Sky games too, it's just the best way to experience this series. There's really nothing else out there like it right now and why possibly dilute your enjoyment by jumping in at a random point? I understand if it's a hardware issue but even then laptops are fairly cheap, plenty of Let's Plays out there, and the Sky games can even run on your phone. With Falcom recently stating that they're exploring ways to get the Sky games to modern platforms there soon won't be an excuse anymore to not start at the beginning xD
Ayy A fellow Path of Radiance enjoyer. Based, my fav FE game. As for Elliot and Gaius, I am mostly fine with what they get. Especially Elliot. He's basically the every man of the group, and Gaius and Elliot's roles are more or less to be Rean's first friends. And Gaius gets plenty of good stuff in chapter 3, just half of his motivations are somewhat disconnected from the main plot. Like obviously what happens in Erebonia will affect his country, but he's still quite literally the outsider looking in. They also do some cool stuff with Gaius later as we both know but I won't go into that haha.
@@GenmaTheSamurai Yeah the Tellius arc is still my favorite to this day, it was just so good. Awakening came close for me and if you asked me when Three Houses first came out I might've contemplated that one too but not anymore. Always cool to meet another based FE fan who's a normal person, lol. True, I guess I was just being selfish in wanting them to be more upfront. What we got with them was good, especially Elliot (his dad is amazing xD) and I was mainly speaking in regards to CS1 but yes, Gaius does get some kino moments later 😎
I Took a couple months off after azure to let the first half of the series settle in my mind after rushing it down late last year, finally beat cold steel the other night so I can watch this finally. I really rather liked it, it's a toss up for my 3rd or 4th favorite so far (keeping in mind I don't think I'd drop any game below an 8). Basically I can't decide if this or zero are my favorite first games in an arc, with azure and sc being in the top 2.
Regarding the hypothetical scenario of having a PC that can't run the sky games… while that can happen, said PC should be ancient (or a RISC based laptop, that just isn't powerful enough). I'd say one is more likely to just not have a PC. Ironically enough, the pre-rendered cinematics are the most demanding part of the games right now.
Bro you have liquid snake as a teacher in the English dub. Why deny yourself such a treat? Oh and I think comparing Zero to CS1 is more accurate as both give you the full main cast right of the bat
I mainly compared FC and CS1 moreso because yeah...CS1 doesn't touch Zero quality-wise imo. That and FC and CS1 are the commonly accepted slower games. The difference is FC has a slower plot and (imo) the worst gameplay of the series. While CS1 is slow but has a lot of really great mechanical depth. What I am doing would probably be clearer if you saw me doing a tier list or something 😂
Personally my plan is to learn/watch what I can of the Sky games and Cold Steel 1 and 2. From their, I'll start with the Crossbell games. Reason being is that while I don't have a reliable way to play the Sky games, Cold Steel 1 and 2 are not on Switch, which I own. Though if the Sky games where ever to get a port (or remake) on Switch, then that would change things (which I wouldn't mind happening)
Great video as always, the formulaic nature of the school sections does bog the game down, but after awhile and perhaps on a second playthrough you do come to appreciate those chill moments. I mean the soundtrack is amazing for this. The bonding system can be a bit overwhelming at times and especially for certain characters if you don't do their bonding events you don't get as attached to said character. Especially when it comes to a certain bandana classmate, those bonding events should have been a bit more mandatory imo to make their impact in the story hit harder. I did those events for them and really liked their character arc by CS2 but I can see people missing that because it was optional and not understanding why they were such a good character. There's good standout character moments in with Machias X Jusis, Fie X Laura and with Rean X Alisa. Sara is just so badass in CS1 she's probably the best imo in this game and she makes you hawt for teacher.. Also can we just say how my guy Gideon carried mostly of the villanry on his shoulders his flute was pretty damn op. The point about status' in combat though that's one thing that was quite surprising, they really did amp up the physical/crafts in this game so much so, that arts is no longer mandatory. At least for the 'normal' difficulty. They definitely tried to bring more balance to the physical vs magical aspects to this game but likely went a bit overboard. Azure gameplay was like peak balance for me at that point but Cold Steel just never stops evolving and eventually beats out that game. I think CS1 like Sky FC just has the unfortunate issue of having to do a bulk of the world building, therefore its not rated as highly as the stakes aren't really apparent or that high yet. So by default it usually ends up lower. But for sure these were necessary especially as a starting point. I do agree that Sky trilogy is the no brainer can't make any mistakes starting point, other than I guess the graphics and gameplay for people. But I guess its also the fact its not on modern platforms which does hurt it as a place to recommend. By CS2 playing out of order... will miss context but I'm sure you'll hit upon that in your next video.
I find that playing Azure spoiled the assination attempt of chancellor Osborne. Also in cold steel if you play it first, Guerilla fortress blowing up is quite surprise. You'll find it's a damned if you play it first damned if you don't because technically they spoil each other.
@@logiclunacy606 *sigh* I had a whole Convo with someone in these comments before about this. They got a bit heated LOL. So just making it clear I definitely have the opposite perspective here. Just how it is lol, but I definitely know what you mean. Anyway while true, they did release CS afterwards, so CS I think is meant to have a dramatic irony component for returning players. It didn't hurt the story much for me. Now that said, I don't technically have much issue with CS1 as an arc starter. Most of my problems are CS2. I go into this in WAY more detail in my CS2 video but I feel what CS2 spoils about Crossbell is a little more damaging to the experience of those games but that's my opinion lol. (Not to mention that one sequence from CS2 that would be nothing but confusing to CS only players.) And CS1 's cliffhanger is very likely to have a player dive right into 2 afterwards. An observant player of CS2 knows going into XBell one of the biggest twists in the game if they retained a piece of info. Back to CS1 the fortress moment is shocking in both games I suppose, but I can only really speak from the XBell side of that coin. It was a crazy moment either way. Also I don't think XBell written with the dramatic irony component like CS was. BIG tldr; I'm aware lol. I get there's some perks to playing CS1 first, but I just personally disagree. Again, I go into it in more detail in my CS2 vid.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I did play CS1 & 2 First and I do think these events were very out of nowhere and shocking... Especially with added twist of crow being C. I think Guerrilla especially, it's like you experience from an erobonian perspective where this part of story comes out of nowhere and it's not explained but it kind of cements Reans perspective. You see I did go back and play all of sky, zero and then Azure. I didn't know that Zero and Azure were on a similar timeline going into them, I assumed it was in order. So when Guerrilla Fortress got destroyed, it panned out as a really cool moment for me. Same with Lector spilling that the chancellor had been shot because Id seen the direct impact of those first hand. I personally think it doesn't matter which you play 1st because either side gives you something different out of it.
@@logiclunacy606 And that's totally fair! I mean at the end of the day lol this is more of a discussion of how we'd recommend the experience. I just mainly look at the ending of CS2 and the Divertissement and begin sweating bullets sometimes 😂 As long as it gets people into the series is all the matters honestly.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I do like 2 trails games a year, I'm on cold steel 4 right now. There's flaws in this series for sure but I can't say I've played a series like it and certainly has charm. The way I see these twist is that if you played zero and Azure 1st you'd know Guerrilla gets destroyed and given its around in CS1 you kinda guess that it takes place at the same time. If you play CS 1st you experience the direct confusing attack on Guerrilla that sends people into panic and when you go back to azure, them talking about Guerrilla is normal because it should be there, there's no way to guess its at the same time until stuff gets given away. Honestly I kind of like that, it's unique to the series that you can possibly play them in a different order resulting in a similar feeling. Also to add yeah that section in cold steel 2 admittedly didn't make much sense to me at the time, so yeah I suppose there is that.
Once again Genma your videos are super detailed and amazing love your stuff dude💗💗💗 if I had to add in regards to Cold steel is people seem to think Rean is Mary Sue which actually VERY untrue Cold steel introduce a lot more Powerful characters who are AWAY above Rean in I can't wait for your Cold steel II video where you talk about how many onscreen defeats Rean and class VII go through 🤣 if I counted how many times Rean was Kneeling I would have no fingers lol
Ok so Ive only played up to CSII, but is there a reason why multiple Trails Videos have censored the 4th Upper Classman? If there is a reason and its related to CSIII or CSIV, please dont spoil, but they're not really a bad character nor are they absolutely vital to the plot or have any crazy twists in the two games Ive played? The only thing I can think of is they represent a harmful stereotype, but unlike other popular RPGs I've never heard anyone mention that being an issue.
So, personally I like the character actually in the CS2 anyway (and she had a great moment in the CS1 drama CD.) But yeah on Trails twitter and other spaces she's a loaded topic so be careful with that. To give a very very minor spoiler for CS3 she does come back but since her arc was finished most of what she does is the flirty stuff, and it gets very aggressive. I will still champion she's great in CS2 tho. I mostly did it for the meme. I had no idea others did it.
For me my entrypoing in the franchise, then got back to Sky and then followed with CS 2,34, then Crossbell and then Riverie. Great games, I dont understand why some fans are against them, well in fact I understand theres the few vocal "purists" out there that think that because they played X game prior they are some kind of authority and everything should follow the same steps as that X game they played in the beginning. Fun thing is Cold Steel is a faithful evolution of what we saw in the previous games. It builds upon its history, combat system, dialogue and whatever, has anime troops but so did the first ones etc. THe only thing regrettable by now in the franchise is that they cant keep some characters dead (Angelica, Toval, Millium, Crow) and that there should be a bit more of darkness and loss to show the super dramatic events that have taken place. I hope they are keeping all that for the final games of the franchise.
Oh yeah also, I will probably talk about this in Cold Steel 2 as well LOL. But I did use sen-patcher for this. Mostly just to have a more consistent turbo with the other Trails games. You can see it on the title screen. :)
SPOILERS IF ANYONE HASN'T PLAYED CS1 There's mostly one scene with Vita if you bring Emma on your bike ride. With an extra bit that others said was ng+. Hers is the most different at default but Grianos lands on her arm and she comments on Emma growing up and stuff. Most of the scenes in question are in the final chapter and there aren't that many. I can probably upload it to my side channel later since I did that with Azure. It's not super important though. It's pretty small stuff and I only know of two different scenes for sure. It's been a while since I played CS1 fresh to know for sure outside those two.
So you could say that there isn't much voice acting in this game so it doesn't matter much if you play with English dub. But I hard disagree. Not only does the dub have 5k more lines voiced which by the way is have the amount of lines the jp voice acting got. It brings the voiced lines from 9450 lines to 14065 wich is a lot more. Cs2 does the same so combine together the additional voice acting is an entire trails game worth of voice acting that isn't nothing! It doesn't only effect Rean but generally makes the voice acting more consistent. It gets rit of a lot of scenes where there are random voice lines and then randomly there isn't. Instead now either a scene is entirely voiced or it isn't voiced at all which I think it's a way better way to do it. I found this extra noticeable while jumping from cs2 to cs3 wich I started a day after finishing cs2. It's extremely jarring.
Okay so, 2 things...I did mess up a little. 1) I plan to probably address that either in the combined CS1+2 vid or in CS2. But yeah I'll admit I kinda exaggerated the claim. And if you compare scenes side by side then yeah (though there's one scene in CS1 where a single character is not voiced in the dub which is odd.) 2) Speaking as someone who played the other games with the EVO voices as well as without the EVO voices, and played the sub originally. A massive chunk of the game was still text based and the Sky EVO's still run circles around CS in terms of amount of VA (basically everything was voiced including sidequests.) But that's irrelevant to the actual argument being made I'll admit. Rean being voiced less in particular is the real awkward spot. But it is something I did get used to eventually. So I actually do agree. But I think the main point of my argument is that sub is still mostly fine. I think there are a handful of perks to the sub actually (like returning seiyuu from older games, XBell in particular which I prefer the JP cast from what I have heard.) So yeah, my mistake there. But I think the only place it really matters TO ME is probably Rean. It's very bizarre.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I completely agree that this dub can't be compared to the evo voice acting. I just checked and azure has 23542 voice files compared to the 14065 from cs1(english dub) . Yes that is a lot les. But still a lot more than the original Japanse had in this game. I completely agree that the game is still playable in jp voices. But you do have to deal with really inconsistent voice acting. That is the biggest problem for me. I rather have completely voiced or completely unvoiced scenes. It's so jarring otherwise! I do have to confess that I am also just a very big dub fan due to multiple reasons. (1) I don't really tend to like the Jp voices of characters Girls especially can be very squiky and high pitched and I really don't like that. This is obviously a personally tast and I will never say that the jp voices are bad! (2) I have a visual impairment that makes reading text very tyering. This means that every line of text I don't have to read is a blessing. I never played sky and only completed zero. This took me from september 28th 2022 to march 5th 2023. I could only play the game for a hour or maybe 1,5 before getting so tired(physically not of the game) that I had to stop playing. For azure I am currently in chapter 2. I unfortunately had to give up on trying to complete it before reverie (which I completed August 24th 2023) released. I still plan om playing sky and completing azure. But to do that I need either a fan dub for sky/azure, a very nice person that wants to help me read al the text and maybe do voices together with me for the characters. Or a month in wich I have nothing to do and play the game in 1 hour sessions with 2 hour brakes in between and a lot of wil power the push through. Which I don't see happen any time soon. Just to give a idea how fast I can complete the games with dub: I started cs 1 februari 17th 2021 and completed cs4 may 25th 2021. I ofcourse played cs2 and 3 in between. (3) As you mentioned the after battle dialog doesn't have subtitles. It really annoyed me in Zero an Azure that I couldn't understand those lines even if they aren't really important. It always hyped me up to hear that I did good or hear the banter between the characters. And playing with Japanse voices just doesn't give you the option to understand it at all
Which is valid, yeah I can definitely understand in your case. In my situation I also like to get a closer approximate to what the Japanese direction was, for better or worse, and wanted that consistency. (Plus what you said about JP anime girls usually doesn't bother me but I know that one really varies person to person lol) BUT what you said is valid, especially about the battle quotes. Absolutely power to ya.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I can completely see how you would want to hear what the direction intend was and keep that consistent. And I can also completely see wanting to have consistant voices. Unfortunatly due to varying reasons in the English dub a fiew character voices had to be switched inbetween games. That can really put me off. Milium got changed in cs3 becouse her va from cs1 and 2 didn't want to come back for some reason, Osborn got a diferent va in cs4 due to his va not being available to reprise his roll at the time. The same happend for lora. There are more exaples in Reverie which I don't want to go into due to spoilers for that game and cs4 but my point is clear. This is my personall biggest problem with the dub. Even if voice actors can't come back for undertandable reasons its still unfortunat to see it happen. Though a surten green haired girl did get a voice change in Reverie that I did really like.
@@GenmaTheSamurai NISA simply did not go above and beyond the way XSEED did. It isn't just VAs recording the extra bits... the segment has to be programmed. It's a lot of work. XSEED also retimed entire sections of dialog for the English release, whereas NISA simply had the EN VAs match the JP timing.
I disagree with cold steel spoilering the first games, as my history with this series, i played trails in the sky on release in my psp, but droped it due to playing other legend of heroes games and being burned out, i thought it was previsible and nothing really great would happen. I obsviously was very wrong, and Cold Steel 1 made me realize that 6 years later, as i was reading the books of the library that summons up the events of some of the sky trilogy. What i played from cold steel 1 made me go back to sky 1 that i dropped as i was finnishing the tita arc, I finished the game and player sky 2 right away and since that became a trails certified maniac, one of the few that exist in brazil. My point is, players can choose the arc they want, but that depends on the personal definition of what a "spoiler" is. As an exemple, you can say final fantasy 7 is a spoiler for crisis core, but we all know that crisis core came later, so for some people ff7 cant be considered a spoiler, but for some, it is. People can play cold steel firts, and play the older games as prequels, like what happened with ff7 and crisis core. And some times, playing cold steel first makes people more determined to play the other games, since one of the hooks of the series is to explore the lore and its mysteries... Thats what a had to say, thanks for the great video, and waiting for the next ones, take the time you need to make a great quality video for cold steel 2 like you did with the others, you are a great trais bro.
I was referring more to SC and Azure. Spoilers for both: Olivier being the prince of Erebonia is a big example. The biggest thing is the Garellia Fortress incident. Granted you are missing a lot of context but it's a moment that hits the hardest not knowing it's coming. But yeah I get what you are saying. I think circumstances are kinda different with this, but yeah. I appreciate the perspective, glad that worked out for you :) Thanks for the kind words. I'm taking my time surviving college for now. Hope you'll all enjoy it when I finally get to CS2. 🙇♂️
I hated how all the other characters were basically Rean-sexual. It really took away from all the potential relationships class VII could've had with each other. Imagine if Sky had the same thing and you couldn't get all those complex relationships characters had with each other because they were basically on standby to get with Estelle.
In each and every Persona for example the protagonist can select his love interest, so effectively they are all protagonist-sexual. I wonder why this normal game design thing exploded with Cold Steel but isnt mentioned in pretty much all the other games it happens...most of them btw.
My least favorite CS game was 3 so far, i am currently play 4. 3 is just a big filler mid arc, while it have it's moments, i overall didn't like it that much.
PLEASE READ:
Thanks everyone for all the support on the series so far. We're finally into the big arc, Trails of Cold Steel.
I do want to make a few addons to some points and I will try and address these when I get to Cold Steel 2:
-I think the big drawback to the sub is that Rean in particular has significantly less voiced lines for whatever reason. But it's something you can get used to. I do want to give props to XSeed for all the additional VA (though there's one goofy spot they missed in this game.)
-While I played on Nightmare, I may actually recommend you play on Hard. I'm a crazy person that knows Trails super well, but I do think Normal and below are way too easy for veterans. You're better off playing Hard imo.
Also my mistake for mispronouncing Alisa. It's a carry over from years of pronouncing her name that way (I played subbed originally) and I've met Alyssas but never met an Alisa. So my mistake I'll see if I can fix that in my combined vid 😂💀(I don't have much of an excuse, I played Dub, old habits die hard.)
That said, I am actually already in the process of recording Cold Steel 2 now that I'm out of college. Wrapping up Act 1 right now, and having a blast. Looking forward to making the CS2 video, and I think it may be the most different video yet. Look forward to it.
You're all the best, and hope you have a great day!
The reason behind Rean having significantly less voiced lines in the sub is most likely the fact that in Japan, voice actors are treated like rock stars and having a handful of lines spoken by a famous VA is automatically better than a more extensive coverage by a dude with no name recognition. Therefore, Falcom hired a famous VA for their main character, only to not have the budget to have him voice as many lines as the rest of the cast. ("Silent Rean" kinda feeding into the fans' notion that Rean was a self-insert)
XSeed did not have this problem, so they got Sean Chiplock to fill in the gaps when their PC port finally gave them full control over the code and they could implement those new lines. (they already offered in the initial console versions, but since Falcom had to put in man hours to implement them, the idea was shot down)
I have heard that reason mentioned a lot yeah. I couldn't find any direct confirmation that was why though, so I'm not sure if I could bring that up outside of a speculative context. It could be an attempt to emulate VN main characters too I have no idea.
It is absolutely strange though lol. But how it is I guess. @@Erpy80
Weirdly, I started with CS1 and it actually gave me a different kind of love for the Sky games since when I played Sky and Crossbell for the first time, it was like "OH! That's where it/that comes from!"
Agree I think if u stop after cs3 and go back it's perfect because u already love it enough to play the chibi graphics and not care
Started with FC I have no idea how you CS1 guys could fall in love with the series with them referencing crossbell every five seconds without elaboration...I would have been driven nuts
Each Trails game is a reflection of what anime was popular at the time, so I'm definitely not surprised about the school setting and the harem protagonist. If anything, the school is an excellent setting for the theme of multiple perspectives, identities, and classes sharing the same space
Why there was also Harem protagonists then in all the Persona games of different decades?
Honestly I would not be surprised if the next protagonist after van is from another world or reality
One thing about the bonding events you didn't mention, in follow up playthroughs you can activate an option to remove the Bonding Events limit
One fun detail I like about this series in general is how the age of the central protagonist of each arc tends to be the same age the prior protagonist would be in that game's year.
As a result there tends to be moments where the past protagonist would show up the current one in some fashion. My favorite example of this is when Joshua and Estelle kill the monsters that gave Lloyd and the SSS a hard time despite her being the same age as him.
The kind of broke this in kuro, but Van is roughly the same age Rean, Lloyd, and Estelle would be, leading to a more "been there done that" kind of perspective.
SUPER happy to see it finally out! I'm only a few minutes in but I'm already loving it! Thanks for releasing another banger!
Thanks man, this one in particular was a lot of work 😅💀
Hope you enjoy it!
One thing added in Cold Steel that really I really miss in the older games is Sepith Mass
With Cold Steel 1 its a bit like Sky FC, first time you play there are tons of details you miss and the pacing is very slow because they are building everything, then you have that great cliffhanger at the end, and the following games build upon what these first games lay the foundation. Then when you revisit them years later when the arc is done and you know everything and the character development of protagonists and the world,the nostalgia pervades everything and you start to understand what these first games actually wanted and managed. I liked a lot CS1 in my first playthrough on the Vita, but it was when I replayed it in the PS4 port after playing CSIV that the game actually made me realize how it was.
The biggest reason to go with the English dub is because there is MUCH more voiced dialogue, especially for Rean
For me, the Cold Steel soundtracks will always be the best in the series.
Thank you for the video! It’s really nice to see how much you love these games! And the attention to details are pretty good!
Yo! I just found your channel and listened to this video while I was doing my walk routine. Great work on this! Love the entire Trails series and happy see that we share many of our thoughts on Cold Steel 1!
Subscribed! 👍
Thank you! I'm glad you liked the video. Also saw your video on getting into the series. Good stuff :)
Honestly when I play the first cold steel and it ended with a cliff hanger. I’m like no way I got to know what happen next and from there I enter the Trail rabbit hole
Cold steel is my gateway to trails Love it
I know how i started with CS3 because my best friend has it and didnt know how to play it..and there was me letting me play it and there started it my love to the CS series.. still need to play CS1/2 someday i buy them.
I never knew about the Trails series until i bought ToCS I and II on STEAM because they were really cheap on sale and when i started to play it, man, i love it, great characters and a huge lore and world building, right now i'm already playing ToCS IV but i feel i'm missing a lot because i haven't played the Liberl and Crossbell's sagas.
Yeah the last bits of CS2 onwards definitely feel written for people who played the whole series. I know of someone that enjoyed the CS games in spite of that but yeah.
Great games though, excited to talk about those sequels.
i had low expectations going into this game and actually really loved it
the combat felt really fast and satisfying and the limited magic system only amplified that for me, it was my favorite combat in the series up to that point
i liked the slower pace of the story and the field studdies made it feel like going through a journey with these characters, which i really appreciate espacially after the insanity that was azure, it reminded me a lot of the sky games
Really enjoyed the video! Cold Steel is where I started the series and I agree, while it's a reasonable spot to start and get new players interested, it's best to begin with Sky.
What was interesting for me playing that way was, especially in Zero/Azure, I got a lot of those "Ohhhh!" moments in earlier games instead of Cold Steel.
Suikoden and Persona are some of my other favorite games, so the large cast and daily life sections of the arc have always felt like a perfect combination to me.
I look forward to your Cold Steel 2 video, which is my favorite of the arc!
The fact that you like Suikoden makes a lot of sense why it's your favorite lol. Looking forward to talking about it. I'm over halfway through Act 2 on my replay lol
Interesting! That's a pretty long review I will watch it later. Also hi I am from Twitter we just spoke recently nice channel.
Chest messages in sky to azure was possible because Falcom coded individual dialogue boxes to each chest in the game.
A normal jrpg will just have made 1 dedicated "empty chest" dialogue applied to all chest thus no localizers was able pull the same stunt in other jrpg or be able to think about personalizing such chest dialogues in the first place.
54:32
Azure drops a major spoiler about Osborne at the end. Made me glad I played Cold Steel first, because it was actually shocking.
So uh, that's actually a creative choice I don't like but it is definitely not a spoiler by definition technically lol.
But I can understand that perspective the other way around. I think I he CS arc actually operates under a lot of dramatic irony for returning fans. You know *things* but not how they get there which adds suspense for people paying attention. I am aware this works the other way around to an extent, but I feel what CS spoils are bigger moments.
But again, probably our different perspectives lol.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I don’t agree at all. It is ABSOLUTELY a spoiler. It takes all the tension and shock out of CS2’s ending.
Everyone that I have seen who played Azure first immediately knew it. They weren’t surprised at all and were even expecting it the entire time.
But, as someone who only played tCrossbell after CS, please enlighten me on the “bigger moments” it spoils from the Crossbell games.
Because I can tell you right now, I had no idea what the barrier or the azure tree was or even meant when I played. But people who played Azure first absolutely knew what it meant.
@@sj4iy You left out the Divertissement lol. Which literally spoils:
>Crossbell gets annexed (actually the ending technically does and that's a huge moment in Azure's ending.)
>Rixia is Yin, which is admittedly more minor, but that sucks out a lot of the mystery from Zero chapter 2.
>Dieter Crois is explicitly revealed as the mastermind. And that's one of the BIGGEST twists in the Crossbell games.
A lot of Crossbell's overarching narrative is about trying to unravel a bunch of mystery threads. And the Dieter Crois thing is huge because the entire narrative tries to frame the attack on Crossbell on Osborne during early ch 4 in Azure.
I have seen someone playing in release order, reach the attack on Crossbell and he just started screaming "OSBOOOOORNE." Which was funny.
Also the subversion is set up because in Olivier's conversation with osborne in 3rd, he calls him out for hiring Jaegers to cause chaos in countries he is going to annex. Which draws a natural parallel to Crossbell with the Red Constellation even being there.
Crois being the REAL person to hire the Red Constellation is huge. If that piece of exposition sticks, then you basically know the end-game reveal (well, one of them) going into Zero.
And while yes, you can absolutely figure out these things, it definitely robs you of the chance to try and piece them together.
I will admit, it is possible for you to forget the Dieter thing for example, but some people are way more observant than others.
Also to add a Sky example to the pile. Olivier being the prince of Erebonia is a huge twist in those games. It doesn't get revealed until super late into SC, and was one of the cooler moments in that game.
Especially for the Sky games which are very VERY character-focused.
Anyway I hope we're not getting heated lol. The Enlighten me comment seemed a bit much. I know ultimately some of these things will seem like a bigger deal than others.
I get the vibe from this comment that this argument boils down to "My twist is more important than your twist." Which probably isn't worth the energy on both of our ends lol.
For the record, I don't actually love that Osborne is revealed to have survived in Azure. But it's how they chose to do this so lol.
When I say it's not a spoiler, I mean in the sense that Azure came out first, therefore in Japan that's information that was already out there.
Cold Steel 1&2 is basically an interquel, so it follows a similar standard as a prequel in that regard. Like it is able to be jumped into, but a lot of information on what happened is already out there.
Think the Star Wars prequels. MOST people knew Anakin was going to become Darth Vader, so the whole thing is framed differently depending on whether you started with the OG's or Prequels.
I just PERSONALLY, don't think that single twist outweighs the other stuff I listed. At least imo. You do you, you have your own friends. Recommend to them how you want lol. This is just my stance.
@@GenmaTheSamurai Both of these series are interconnected, directly to one another. I don’t think you understand what a plot twist is, either.
You mentioned that my comment gave the vibe of “this plot twist is better than that plot”. I didn’t start this argument. I simply said that Crossbell spoils a major plot twist in Cold Steel, and that I was glad to play cold steel first. You were the one who felt the need to argue. Not me. So don’t attribute that to me.
@@sj4iy lol okay, I will leave it here then. I have a video to edit. I just know this went from:
>You disagreed (fair)
>I disagreed, with some of my reasoning. I'm pretty sure I ended that comment with "I think we have different perspectives." I did not mean that as an attack.
> dropped 3 paragraphs why you thought I was wrong (The actual comment I was referring to)
> I explained my stance in greater detail.
Maybe me bringing up the tone of comment 3 was unnecessary I apologize. I've also had this exact discussion way too many times lately, I guess you were the lightning rod today.
I did edit the comment to explain the prequel logic I am using. But I guess we can just agree to disagree.
Genuinely hope you have a great day. Sorry if I got you heated. I'm just very passionate about Trails haha.
you're awesome Gen!
Persona 4 Golden got me into the series.
There’s something about Japanese School in gaming that I love.
These games were my entry into the franchise, for all the flak they get, I still love them.
A great retrospective, as always.
It would've made the already combat section of this video even longer😅, but you could've also talked about how this game revalued status ailments and also stat downs to a lesser extent. Like you said, the new orbment system favorized ailments builds, but also in the Sky and Crossbell games, the ennemies were either immuned to ailments and stat downs or they were not; and the endgame ennemies and bosses were almost always immuned to it, rendering ailments effectively useless at that point; here, they tweaked it to work on a percentage efficacy, which I find it kinda genius to be honest, now even the bosses can be inflicted with status ailments, albeit on a reduced rate, making them viable as a strategy even against late game ennemies (and can also make for some funny moments😂).
Yeah I'll probably address that in Cold Steel 2. I absolutely agree, this is a really cool system and I think more RPG's should do it honestly. Makes it so ailments are still worth going for, but don't break the bosses. Good stuff.
I came to love Cold Steel and Rean because I am rean(no, I'm not Sean chiplock) I'm rean in the way of I have his traits his flaws his reasons for what I do and how I act it felt like this was my idealized self on a journey to do good with friends and family who support me despite being kinda dense sometimes I loved it
Cold steel music is the best for me
Well the Crossbell games and Cold Steel 1 and 2 was when the "old" Falcom JDK Sound team was at its absolutely best and with all its members working full time on them.... specially the five main composers Sonoda, Momiyama, Ishibashi , Unisaga and Murayama and great arrangers as Jindo or Singa. Since then some of them left, others were less active and signed less pieces and finally by Reverie most of the work was done by Sonoda, Singa and Jindo with only 4 by Unisuga and other 4-5 songs by newcomer Koguchi. For Kuro 1 and 2 new composers have arrived, Kuro 1 seems a bit weaker than usual but Kuro 2 has again an amazing soundtrack
While not my favourite game. This was a very good and comprehensive retrospective so much so it's probably set me down the path of replaying the Cold Steel games. Oh also i am for a Persona retrospective. Another great retrospective man keep up the great work.
Ayy thanks man, I'm glad you enjoyed it 😅Yeah the game ain't perfect, but I think it's a good time. Especially if you are all in for the chill vibes.
I'm definitely thinking of maybe smaller-scale vids for Persona if I do. Will have to workshop that, but yeah, just glad you enjoyed :)
It's always been an opinion of mine that there are no bad Trails games, but it is interesting to see all the opinions of people and where each game ranks for them. I'm only 6 minutes in and I can already tell you put a ton of time into this retrospective. So just wanted to say all that editing work hasn't gone unnoticed. The Misty segment was amazing btw. I'll update my comment with any additional thoughts later xD
Thank you so much!
I'm glad someone finally commented about the Misty segment. I loved putting that together. Big thanks to KittyHateMachine for the performance. Really wanted to keep that a surprised from all of you guys lol.
I definitely did some pretty extra things in this video for the sake of funny bits or wanting to get a certain idea across. But I'm happy with how it all worked out.
@@GenmaTheSamurai You should be happy, projects like these have a lot of passion put into them and it was palpable to me. I'm around the 40-minute mark now and it's been an immensely enjoyable time.
I'm also a fairly big FE fan so the support convo comparison really resonated with me and helped me realize why I also didn't have much of an issue with the main cast in terms of the bonding events. A lot of characters (especially in older titles) have a very small presence in the story and only get to shine through their supports. Which was always one of my favorite aspects of those games, Haar, Jill, Nephenee, Brom, Gatrie, Oscar, etc. So many names that even years later I still recall (which is a miracle with my goldfish brain, lmao) and it's mainly due to their supports with other members of the cast.
I do wish some characters like Elliot or Gaius had a bit more focus in terms of the story, but I still love them. Elliot and Gaius were Rean's first friends and I just wish they kept up that connection throughout the entire game instead of just specific scenes.
I also agree with the Persona comments, when you break it down the two series are vastly different and only share a few key aspects. But I still make the comparison myself when talking to other people about the series because it's just an easy comparison to make.
And yes I will also always recommend starting at the Sky games too, it's just the best way to experience this series. There's really nothing else out there like it right now and why possibly dilute your enjoyment by jumping in at a random point? I understand if it's a hardware issue but even then laptops are fairly cheap, plenty of Let's Plays out there, and the Sky games can even run on your phone. With Falcom recently stating that they're exploring ways to get the Sky games to modern platforms there soon won't be an excuse anymore to not start at the beginning xD
Ayy A fellow Path of Radiance enjoyer. Based, my fav FE game. As for Elliot and Gaius, I am mostly fine with what they get. Especially Elliot. He's basically the every man of the group, and Gaius and Elliot's roles are more or less to be Rean's first friends. And Gaius gets plenty of good stuff in chapter 3, just half of his motivations are somewhat disconnected from the main plot. Like obviously what happens in Erebonia will affect his country, but he's still quite literally the outsider looking in.
They also do some cool stuff with Gaius later as we both know but I won't go into that haha.
@@GenmaTheSamurai Yeah the Tellius arc is still my favorite to this day, it was just so good. Awakening came close for me and if you asked me when Three Houses first came out I might've contemplated that one too but not anymore. Always cool to meet another based FE fan who's a normal person, lol.
True, I guess I was just being selfish in wanting them to be more upfront. What we got with them was good, especially Elliot (his dad is amazing xD) and I was mainly speaking in regards to CS1 but yes, Gaius does get some kino moments later 😎
I Took a couple months off after azure to let the first half of the series settle in my mind after rushing it down late last year, finally beat cold steel the other night so I can watch this finally. I really rather liked it, it's a toss up for my 3rd or 4th favorite so far (keeping in mind I don't think I'd drop any game below an 8). Basically I can't decide if this or zero are my favorite first games in an arc, with azure and sc being in the top 2.
So, what exactly did Emma hear on the radio during CS1?
🤔
@29:48: I had this problem, but MUCH worse. I figured out that I could "square" my controller, using DS4Windows, and it completely fixed it.
Regarding the hypothetical scenario of having a PC that can't run the sky games… while that can happen, said PC should be ancient (or a RISC based laptop, that just isn't powerful enough). I'd say one is more likely to just not have a PC.
Ironically enough, the pre-rendered cinematics are the most demanding part of the games right now.
Bro you have liquid snake as a teacher in the English dub. Why deny yourself such a treat?
Oh and I think comparing Zero to CS1 is more accurate as both give you the full main cast right of the bat
I mainly compared FC and CS1 moreso because yeah...CS1 doesn't touch Zero quality-wise imo. That and FC and CS1 are the commonly accepted slower games. The difference is FC has a slower plot and (imo) the worst gameplay of the series.
While CS1 is slow but has a lot of really great mechanical depth.
What I am doing would probably be clearer if you saw me doing a tier list or something 😂
Personally my plan is to learn/watch what I can of the Sky games and Cold Steel 1 and 2. From their, I'll start with the Crossbell games.
Reason being is that while I don't have a reliable way to play the Sky games, Cold Steel 1 and 2 are not on Switch, which I own.
Though if the Sky games where ever to get a port (or remake) on Switch, then that would change things (which I wouldn't mind happening)
Great video as always, the formulaic nature of the school sections does bog the game down, but after awhile and perhaps on a second playthrough you do come to appreciate those chill moments. I mean the soundtrack is amazing for this.
The bonding system can be a bit overwhelming at times and especially for certain characters if you don't do their bonding events you don't get as attached to said character. Especially when it comes to a certain bandana classmate, those bonding events should have been a bit more mandatory imo to make their impact in the story hit harder. I did those events for them and really liked their character arc by CS2 but I can see people missing that because it was optional and not understanding why they were such a good character. There's good standout character moments in with Machias X Jusis, Fie X Laura and with Rean X Alisa. Sara is just so badass in CS1 she's probably the best imo in this game and she makes you hawt for teacher.. Also can we just say how my guy Gideon carried mostly of the villanry on his shoulders his flute was pretty damn op.
The point about status' in combat though that's one thing that was quite surprising, they really did amp up the physical/crafts in this game so much so, that arts is no longer mandatory. At least for the 'normal' difficulty. They definitely tried to bring more balance to the physical vs magical aspects to this game but likely went a bit overboard. Azure gameplay was like peak balance for me at that point but Cold Steel just never stops evolving and eventually beats out that game.
I think CS1 like Sky FC just has the unfortunate issue of having to do a bulk of the world building, therefore its not rated as highly as the stakes aren't really apparent or that high yet. So by default it usually ends up lower. But for sure these were necessary especially as a starting point. I do agree that Sky trilogy is the no brainer can't make any mistakes starting point, other than I guess the graphics and gameplay for people. But I guess its also the fact its not on modern platforms which does hurt it as a place to recommend. By CS2 playing out of order... will miss context but I'm sure you'll hit upon that in your next video.
I find that playing Azure spoiled the assination attempt of chancellor Osborne. Also in cold steel if you play it first, Guerilla fortress blowing up is quite surprise. You'll find it's a damned if you play it first damned if you don't because technically they spoil each other.
@@logiclunacy606 *sigh* I had a whole Convo with someone in these comments before about this. They got a bit heated LOL.
So just making it clear I definitely have the opposite perspective here. Just how it is lol, but I definitely know what you mean.
Anyway while true, they did release CS afterwards, so CS I think is meant to have a dramatic irony component for returning players. It didn't hurt the story much for me.
Now that said, I don't technically have much issue with CS1 as an arc starter. Most of my problems are CS2.
I go into this in WAY more detail in my CS2 video but I feel what CS2 spoils about Crossbell is a little more damaging to the experience of those games but that's my opinion lol. (Not to mention that one sequence from CS2 that would be nothing but confusing to CS only players.)
And CS1 's cliffhanger is very likely to have a player dive right into 2 afterwards.
An observant player of CS2 knows going into XBell one of the biggest twists in the game if they retained a piece of info.
Back to CS1 the fortress moment is shocking in both games I suppose, but I can only really speak from the XBell side of that coin. It was a crazy moment either way. Also I don't think XBell written with the dramatic irony component like CS was.
BIG tldr; I'm aware lol. I get there's some perks to playing CS1 first, but I just personally disagree. Again, I go into it in more detail in my CS2 vid.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I did play CS1 & 2 First and I do think these events were very out of nowhere and shocking... Especially with added twist of crow being C. I think Guerrilla especially, it's like you experience from an erobonian perspective where this part of story comes out of nowhere and it's not explained but it kind of cements Reans perspective.
You see I did go back and play all of sky, zero and then Azure. I didn't know that Zero and Azure were on a similar timeline going into them, I assumed it was in order. So when Guerrilla Fortress got destroyed, it panned out as a really cool moment for me. Same with Lector spilling that the chancellor had been shot because Id seen the direct impact of those first hand. I personally think it doesn't matter which you play 1st because either side gives you something different out of it.
@@logiclunacy606 And that's totally fair! I mean at the end of the day lol this is more of a discussion of how we'd recommend the experience.
I just mainly look at the ending of CS2 and the Divertissement and begin sweating bullets sometimes 😂
As long as it gets people into the series is all the matters honestly.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I do like 2 trails games a year, I'm on cold steel 4 right now. There's flaws in this series for sure but I can't say I've played a series like it and certainly has charm.
The way I see these twist is that if you played zero and Azure 1st you'd know Guerrilla gets destroyed and given its around in CS1 you kinda guess that it takes place at the same time. If you play CS 1st you experience the direct confusing attack on Guerrilla that sends people into panic and when you go back to azure, them talking about Guerrilla is normal because it should be there, there's no way to guess its at the same time until stuff gets given away. Honestly I kind of like that, it's unique to the series that you can possibly play them in a different order resulting in a similar feeling.
Also to add yeah that section in cold steel 2 admittedly didn't make much sense to me at the time, so yeah I suppose there is that.
nobles and communists, gonna inspire falcom on the next arc here!
Once again Genma your videos are super detailed and amazing love your stuff dude💗💗💗 if I had to add in regards to Cold steel is people seem to think Rean is Mary Sue which actually VERY untrue Cold steel introduce a lot more Powerful characters who are AWAY above Rean in I can't wait for your Cold steel II video where you talk about how many onscreen defeats Rean and class VII go through 🤣 if I counted how many times Rean was Kneeling I would have no fingers lol
Ok so Ive only played up to CSII, but is there a reason why multiple Trails Videos have censored the 4th Upper Classman? If there is a reason and its related to CSIII or CSIV, please dont spoil, but they're not really a bad character nor are they absolutely vital to the plot or have any crazy twists in the two games Ive played? The only thing I can think of is they represent a harmful stereotype, but unlike other popular RPGs I've never heard anyone mention that being an issue.
So, personally I like the character actually in the CS2 anyway (and she had a great moment in the CS1 drama CD.) But yeah on Trails twitter and other spaces she's a loaded topic so be careful with that.
To give a very very minor spoiler for CS3 she does come back but since her arc was finished most of what she does is the flirty stuff, and it gets very aggressive.
I will still champion she's great in CS2 tho. I mostly did it for the meme. I had no idea others did it.
For me my entrypoing in the franchise, then got back to Sky and then followed with CS 2,34, then Crossbell and then Riverie. Great games, I dont understand why some fans are against them, well in fact I understand theres the few vocal "purists" out there that think that because they played X game prior they are some kind of authority and everything should follow the same steps as that X game they played in the beginning. Fun thing is Cold Steel is a faithful evolution of what we saw in the previous games. It builds upon its history, combat system, dialogue and whatever, has anime troops but so did the first ones etc. THe only thing regrettable by now in the franchise is that they cant keep some characters dead (Angelica, Toval, Millium, Crow) and that there should be a bit more of darkness and loss to show the super dramatic events that have taken place. I hope they are keeping all that for the final games of the franchise.
Oh yeah also, I will probably talk about this in Cold Steel 2 as well LOL. But I did use sen-patcher for this. Mostly just to have a more consistent turbo with the other Trails games. You can see it on the title screen. :)
@56:05: Wait...what...? To my knowledge, there are no new scenes in NG+ in ToCS 1, only in 2. Can you be more specific?
SPOILERS IF ANYONE HASN'T PLAYED CS1
There's mostly one scene with Vita if you bring Emma on your bike ride. With an extra bit that others said was ng+. Hers is the most different at default but Grianos lands on her arm and she comments on Emma growing up and stuff. Most of the scenes in question are in the final chapter and there aren't that many. I can probably upload it to my side channel later since I did that with Azure. It's not super important though.
It's pretty small stuff and I only know of two different scenes for sure. It's been a while since I played CS1 fresh to know for sure outside those two.
@@GenmaTheSamurai Thanks for the info. I looked into it, and it seems there's also an extra dance scene.
What game on footage from 0:49 sec to 0:51?
Star Ocean 3 :)
@@GenmaTheSamurai Thanks!
So you could say that there isn't much voice acting in this game so it doesn't matter much if you play with English dub. But I hard disagree. Not only does the dub have 5k more lines voiced which by the way is have the amount of lines the jp voice acting got. It brings the voiced lines from 9450 lines to 14065 wich is a lot more. Cs2 does the same so combine together the additional voice acting is an entire trails game worth of voice acting that isn't nothing! It doesn't only effect Rean but generally makes the voice acting more consistent. It gets rit of a lot of scenes where there are random voice lines and then randomly there isn't. Instead now either a scene is entirely voiced or it isn't voiced at all which I think it's a way better way to do it. I found this extra noticeable while jumping from cs2 to cs3 wich I started a day after finishing cs2. It's extremely jarring.
Okay so, 2 things...I did mess up a little.
1) I plan to probably address that either in the combined CS1+2 vid or in CS2. But yeah I'll admit I kinda exaggerated the claim. And if you compare scenes side by side then yeah (though there's one scene in CS1 where a single character is not voiced in the dub which is odd.)
2) Speaking as someone who played the other games with the EVO voices as well as without the EVO voices, and played the sub originally. A massive chunk of the game was still text based and the Sky EVO's still run circles around CS in terms of amount of VA (basically everything was voiced including sidequests.)
But that's irrelevant to the actual argument being made I'll admit.
Rean being voiced less in particular is the real awkward spot. But it is something I did get used to eventually.
So I actually do agree. But I think the main point of my argument is that sub is still mostly fine. I think there are a handful of perks to the sub actually (like returning seiyuu from older games, XBell in particular which I prefer the JP cast from what I have heard.)
So yeah, my mistake there. But I think the only place it really matters TO ME is probably Rean. It's very bizarre.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I completely agree that this dub can't be compared to the evo voice acting. I just checked and azure has 23542 voice files compared to the 14065 from cs1(english dub) . Yes that is a lot les. But still a lot more than the original Japanse had in this game.
I completely agree that the game is still playable in jp voices. But you do have to deal with really inconsistent voice acting. That is the biggest problem for me. I rather have completely voiced or completely unvoiced scenes. It's so jarring otherwise!
I do have to confess that I am also just a very big dub fan due to multiple reasons.
(1) I don't really tend to like the Jp voices of characters Girls especially can be very squiky and high pitched and I really don't like that. This is obviously a personally tast and I will never say that the jp voices are bad!
(2) I have a visual impairment that makes reading text very tyering. This means that every line of text I don't have to read is a blessing. I never played sky and only completed zero. This took me from september 28th 2022 to march 5th 2023. I could only play the game for a hour or maybe 1,5 before getting so tired(physically not of the game) that I had to stop playing. For azure I am currently in chapter 2. I unfortunately had to give up on trying to complete it before reverie (which I completed August 24th 2023) released. I still plan om playing sky and completing azure. But to do that I need either a fan dub for sky/azure, a very nice person that wants to help me read al the text and maybe do voices together with me for the characters. Or a month in wich I have nothing to do and play the game in 1 hour sessions with 2 hour brakes in between and a lot of wil power the push through. Which I don't see happen any time soon.
Just to give a idea how fast I can complete the games with dub: I started cs 1 februari 17th 2021 and completed cs4 may 25th 2021. I ofcourse played cs2 and 3 in between.
(3) As you mentioned the after battle dialog doesn't have subtitles. It really annoyed me in Zero an Azure that I couldn't understand those lines even if they aren't really important. It always hyped me up to hear that I did good or hear the banter between the characters. And playing with Japanse voices just doesn't give you the option to understand it at all
Which is valid, yeah I can definitely understand in your case. In my situation I also like to get a closer approximate to what the Japanese direction was, for better or worse, and wanted that consistency.
(Plus what you said about JP anime girls usually doesn't bother me but I know that one really varies person to person lol)
BUT what you said is valid, especially about the battle quotes. Absolutely power to ya.
@@GenmaTheSamurai I can completely see how you would want to hear what the direction intend was and keep that consistent. And I can also completely see wanting to have consistant voices. Unfortunatly due to varying reasons in the English dub a fiew character voices had to be switched inbetween games. That can really put me off. Milium got changed in cs3 becouse her va from cs1 and 2 didn't want to come back for some reason, Osborn got a diferent va in cs4 due to his va not being available to reprise his roll at the time. The same happend for lora. There are more exaples in Reverie which I don't want to go into due to spoilers for that game and cs4 but my point is clear. This is my personall biggest problem with the dub. Even if voice actors can't come back for undertandable reasons its still unfortunat to see it happen. Though a surten green haired girl did get a voice change in Reverie that I did really like.
@@GenmaTheSamurai NISA simply did not go above and beyond the way XSEED did. It isn't just VAs recording the extra bits... the segment has to be programmed. It's a lot of work. XSEED also retimed entire sections of dialog for the English release, whereas NISA simply had the EN VAs match the JP timing.
I disagree with cold steel spoilering the first games, as my history with this series, i played trails in the sky on release in my psp, but droped it due to playing other legend of heroes games and being burned out, i thought it was previsible and nothing really great would happen. I obsviously was very wrong, and Cold Steel 1 made me realize that 6 years later, as i was reading the books of the library that summons up the events of some of the sky trilogy. What i played from cold steel 1 made me go back to sky 1 that i dropped as i was finnishing the tita arc, I finished the game and player sky 2 right away and since that became a trails certified maniac, one of the few that exist in brazil.
My point is, players can choose the arc they want, but that depends on the personal definition of what a "spoiler" is. As an exemple, you can say final fantasy 7 is a spoiler for crisis core, but we all know that crisis core came later, so for some people ff7 cant be considered a spoiler, but for some, it is. People can play cold steel firts, and play the older games as prequels, like what happened with ff7 and crisis core. And some times, playing cold steel first makes people more determined to play the other games, since one of the hooks of the series is to explore the lore and its mysteries...
Thats what a had to say, thanks for the great video, and waiting for the next ones, take the time you need to make a great quality video for cold steel 2 like you did with the others, you are a great trais bro.
I was referring more to SC and Azure.
Spoilers for both:
Olivier being the prince of Erebonia is a big example. The biggest thing is the Garellia Fortress incident. Granted you are missing a lot of context but it's a moment that hits the hardest not knowing it's coming.
But yeah I get what you are saying. I think circumstances are kinda different with this, but yeah. I appreciate the perspective, glad that worked out for you :)
Thanks for the kind words. I'm taking my time surviving college for now. Hope you'll all enjoy it when I finally get to CS2. 🙇♂️
I hated how all the other characters were basically Rean-sexual. It really took away from all the potential relationships class VII could've had with each other. Imagine if Sky had the same thing and you couldn't get all those complex relationships characters had with each other because they were basically on standby to get with Estelle.
Estelle doesnt get the harem because Joshua gets it instead lol
In each and every Persona for example the protagonist can select his love interest, so effectively they are all protagonist-sexual. I wonder why this normal game design thing exploded with Cold Steel but isnt mentioned in pretty much all the other games it happens...most of them btw.
I think because trails had actual characters with personalities and history so it feels odd when they become railroaded @@MrDiomedes1977
My least favorite CS game was 3 so far, i am currently play 4.
3 is just a big filler mid arc, while it have it's moments, i overall didn't like it that much.
rean is the weakest of the three. tbh i prefer the 2d graphics vs 3d
i could like the game was fully like the animated cut-scenes.