Trails of Cold Steel is awful

Somewhat masochistically, I am intrigued by this game. What system are you playing on?

As someone who's played all 9 Trails games released in the US, I don't really blame you. I love the slow burner pace and the world building, but the Cold Steel arc is by far the most bloated in the series. The game/series isn't for everyone, and I find a lot of people online prefer Ys over Trails. I'd tell you to try Trails in the Sky (one of two prequel arcs to Cold Steel's arc), as there are definitely those that like the prequels and not Cold Steel, but if you really aren't enjoying it, I would recommend just dropping the series and sticking with Ys.

quote:

---

I also hate the trend of the last 5 or so years where most JRPG's take part in some school and you have to treat NPC's like a dating sim. (persona, Fire Emblem, Cold Steel).

---

I really like Persona, but it's done very well in that series.

I was not warm on Fire Emblem's slice of life elements either though tbh.

I think that the school life stuff is not really what's so bad. It's the repetitive structure that I alluded to in my first post that makes it so tedious. Even if the game was 100 hours long, I wouldn't mind as much as long as the game felt like a journey form point A to B and not retreading the exact same thing over and over again.

quote:

---

While I do agree that the games are too bloated (as is Persona 5), but I do not think they're bad at all. I like the overall pace and I know going into it that the story they're telling is going through many years. I don't expect to get it all at once, and I was entertained enough to go to the next objective.

---

Game is like 90 hours of anime filler. 10 of actually relevant plot. If each game was like 20 hours long, I would not be so critical of the pace. Falcom can learn from Namco's .Hack franchise.

quote:

---

I do actually really like the quartz system and lining up delay attacks to skip enemies turn is very satisfying. Game isn't very hard though. I don't think I wiped more than a single time in the game (on Normal)?

---

The Quartz system itself is mostly fine. Constantly having to switch quartz in and out every time you go on a field study because they game won't let you pick a party and stick with it isn't.

Not to mention the fact that only rare quartz seem to be unequiped during field study, which means that you're blocked from using quartz assigned to a character who isn't even in your party.

Regarding the difficulty, it feels a bit like FFVIII from the standpoint of how it can be piss easy if you know how to break the mechanics because there are so many ways to do so. Without breaking the mechanics, the game is an unbalanced mess.

Don't come to me stating that all bosses and their random 1-hit kill AOE s-crafts (starting with chapter 5) aren't anything else aside from piss awful game design.

I'm at chapter 6 now, and I realize that "revive" is completely broken. Every single time the boss randomly one-hit kills almost my entire party, if I revive a KO'd party member, I've started to notice that they essentially never receive another turn for almost the entire duration of the battle.

The boss is practically immune to delay. Angelica has an ability that has a 90% likelihood of causing faint, but it seems like the boss is only actually inflicted by it 1 out of every 4 or 5 turns.

Instead of getting cute with things like "turn order," "delay," etc, movement during battle, etc, this game would be much better served with a straight up turn based system. Get this RNG bull shite out of the game.

I would also encourage the devs to allow players to equip accessories during battle or at least allow you to re-equip upon re-start. Again, the way these fights are designed is A) prevent bosses from ever takin ga turn or B) have the right accessory equip to negate whatever status effect the boss beats you over the head with.

Xenoblades chronicle Torna the Golden Country sucks

Is Xenoblades Chronicle 2 any good? Worth the money?

Yeah, I can't understate how mechanically borked Cold Steel is.

I've been trying to beat the last boss of chapter 6 for hours, and all the bad design decisions have come home to roost.

The arena you fight in is huge. Past a certain point, it's virtually impossible to give buffs without wasting turns because everyone is all over the place, your healers can't reach the character that needs to be healed/revived, etc.

I do not understand the 1-hit S-crafts whatsoever. The hit does 10K damage to my entire party. There is no warning of it coming whatsoever. There is practically no way to prevent the boss from using the attack outside of putting it to sleep which is very hit or miss.

If you took out the S-crafts (or at least made them manageable) to heal through, it wouldn't be so bad, but you're literally doing everything right and the boss hits you with a 1 hit kill out of nowhere.

On the off chance that characters survive, revive is completely borked. Revived characters seem to be placed at the bottom of the turn order (including that of all enemies) for some reason. If you're delaying enemies, your party members who you just revived literally sit there doing nothing.