Trails Series (軌跡)

TL;DR 10/10 series, go play it

Current ranking from favorite to least favorite:

Azure >>>> Zero (Hard carried by Azure) = Sky 1,2 > CS1 > CS3 > Sky 3 > CS2

If you’ve never played a Trails Game

A “why you should you play the game” video that I mostly agree with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf73zMsw5PU

I’m mostly going to use this section to list what I personally enjoy about the series, and what makes it worth your time

The Trails Series I’ve heard described as the MCU, but anime. Where a lot of the (in this case) games are part of the same universe, and influence each other, culminating eventually with an “Avengers: Infinity War” style game at the end of the series - Liberl Arc (Sky FC, SC, 3rd) - Crossbell Arc (Zero, Azure) - Erebonia Arc (Cold Steel 1,2,3,4), with 3 and 4 being “Avengers” style - Summary/Epilogue game (Reverie)

First off, the series is inheritently niche, each game is a story-focused turn-based JRPG, that takes its time to build the characters and world.

To take a real-ish world parallel using the Russo-Ukrainian War: This isn’t a story about a Ukrainian soldier who fights against Russia. This is a story about a Ukranian citizen 1 year before Russia invades; it’s about their favorite hobbies, their neighbors and friends, their favorite restaurant. As time passes, tensions slowly rise with Russia, but the story is not about the war, it’s about the person who is dragged into defending their homeland.

Simultaneously (or rather, in a different game), It will show you the perspective of a Russian citizen 1 year before the war, their friends and aspirations as well. The story isn’t about the war, but about the person who is conscripted into the army, whose country’s goals might not align with their own

What I find as pros might instead turn you off the series. That’s fine, but I do hope that if you find any of the above or below points appealing, that you try out the series

  • Top quality and well-rounded characters, banter, and world-building. This includes the antagonists, and also everyday NPCs
    • The important part about this is the attention to detail. There aren’t just mundane NPCs that direct the main protagonist towards their objective, but have their own lives and worries.
    • Another point is that the main protagonist and other characters are very grounded. You don’t play the “chosen one” who has to save the world, but instead you play a character who’s trying to live their own life, in a town of people who are also living their own lives.
      • What this amounts to, is that there’s no distinction between what’s “important” information, and what is just banter, because the level of detail is the same for both
        • You can have full on conversations with the local bakery owner for example
      • I’ve heard there a similar difference in the storytelling between WoW classic and WoW retail, and I greatly prefer a story with more grounded characters
    • The world-building and developing relationships are shown naturally as you visit the various areas throughout the game.
      • This also takes a really long time, usually a large portion of an entire first game in an arc. This is not everyone’s cup of tea, and turns away a lot of players.
        • However as a consequence, relationships develop very naturally and you really understanding the motivations for character’s actions, and you feel the same pain as you go through tribulations
      • The first games of arcs are usually filled with a lot of low-stakes objectives, for example: Finding a girl’s lost cat
        • These can feel mundane, but I consider them a vital portion of the world-building. It depends on if you like slice-of-life stuff
    • In terms of antagonists, I really like where their viewpoint makes sense and you can say they “have a point”, or at least a reason to do what they do, and I dislike pure evil characters
      • This boils down to having well-rounded characters in general
  • Top quality overarching story and plot, that is unique, complex and unpredictable. This includes political struggles and interpersonal struggles, often intermingling
    • There are games with good characters and banter, but pretty average stories, such as the Tales series, so I’m making a distinction here between characters and story
    • I consider a predictable plot to be very generic, and as a huge negative. The Trails stories always contains subtle hints towards the direction of the plot, but still always suprise me, and I consider that a huge plus
      • I can’t really elaborate without spoiling stories, but I will say that I don’t think I’ve seen a person who has beat the first game in a series, then not want to immediately play the next game in the series.
        • If you get past the hurdle of playing one of the games fully, then you’re probably already hooked and will play all the other games
    • There is a general intermingledness between the 3 arcs (Cold Steel, Sky, Zero/Azure), but imo the crossover is overblown and it’s fine to start playing any of the first games of each arc first
      • That said, from a purist mindset, you “should” play them in Japanese release order (Sky fc,sc,3rd, zero, azure, cs1 to 4),
        • Mostly because the later games spoil a few parts of the earlier games, as they happen later in the in-game timeline
        • When a historical event happens offscreen, it has a lot more weight if you’ve experienced it firsthand
        • When characters appears from an older game and it says, “it seems that they have a lot of history together”, you really feel that
        • That said, even if you didn’t play the earlier games, you can just assume the character is a minor character, but some scenes might not evoke the same emotions
          • All you really miss is “Oh I remember that guy” from previous game moments
          • But I mean you can just replay the game later, after beating the previous games if you really want to
  • Good traditional JRPG combat
    • If you like turn based JRPG combat, then you’ll like it. If you don’t like turn based JRPG combat, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Turbo Button Exists
  • Banger music from Falcom (WARNING: Looking up music on Youtube is EXTREMELY spoiler-prone through thumbnails and comments, beware)

Maybe, Probably spoilerinos ahead

Trails to Azure

TL;DR My favorite game so far. Go play it

TLDR for myself, (cause im too lazy to write a full thing, but I want to remind myself later of the plot, cryptic maybe spoilers ahead)

Master Quartz is fun, lets you have more customization

The political talk was really well written

Are you negligent/responsible if you are a doctor, you could cure cancer, but you choose not to

Trolley problem

Randy is a cool character

Parts where you go wtf is going on (in a good way). Good stuff

Beating up the people who wronged you was fun

Antagonists have good motives

Doggy

KeA

Ilya

Guy

shizuku portrait is cursed

y’know, that thing that happens in the last chapter, that was good

y’know, that thing that happens in the final dungeon in the last chapter, that was good

y’know, that happens in the last fight in the final dungeon in the last chapter, that was good

Feels they held back on Zero to let it all out on Azure

Trails of Cold Steel 3

Chapter 1 impressions:

So far, the story sucks, but the gameplay is fun. It might just be the stark jump between Azure and CS3 though in terms of style and all.

In general, if you like the gameplay of JRPGs, you’ll be having fun

Story

  • New chars that I don’t care about yet that you have to babysit
  • The recurring cast are all like, “Remember the good ol’ days”, instead of actual new content
  • Theres so many chars that there isn’t enough time given to really flesh out any single group of chars
  • These chars are very anime tropey at the moment (I think all of cold steel is more anime trope-y compared to the older games, by design probably)
  • bathing bonding moments is a bit weirdchamp

Gameplay (Nightmare difficulty)

  • Brave Orders are op, but fun.
    • Especially the defensive ones, I feel like as long as shields are up, you can’t really die except through insta kills
  • The game is still challenging while making you feel op, which I feel like would be hard to do, but they accomplish that somehow
  • Even more customizability from 2 master quartz
  • GUNNER! STRIKER!
  • Hearthstone is pretty fun, better than blade

Chapter 2:

  • girls go cooking/guys go to computer class, hmmm
  • The “reveals” are just plot dumped after boss fights, it feels a bit forced
  • I do like the gameplay loop of getting your old party members a lot better than in CSII
  • Randy’s personality feels a lot more beta compared to his Ao/Zero counterpart, which is kinda sad
  • New class people I kinda, I think they’re just alright still. Nothing special. A bit too flat for now
  • I miss the sassiness of Tio, it really makes Randy more alive as a character, and it really highlights the difference between the Ao/Zero cast and the new CS3 cast
  • I like the new outfits for the recurring cast
  • They keep on blatantly hinting on characters being more than they appear, like Musse. It’s a bit obnoxious

So far… I feel pretty whelmed. Game’s not boring per se, but it is not blowing me away either. Currently it’s very formulaic in terms of gameplay formula, with a lot of my fun just being able to play characters from older, (better, for now anyway) games and reminisce.

Chapter 3:

  • I like Ash, he cool
  • I like how Musse and Ash get their backstory fleshed out before Kurt does
  • Added a difficulty mod at this point, which makes game go from a cakewalk even on hardest difficulty, to taking an hour per boss fight. I prefer it this way
  • Fun tactics, hoping burn happens when you S-craft (bossfight spoilerino): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWPvHqCUtQ
  • Prologue dungeon is fun
  • Aurelia op
  • Wow something finally happens in the story

Chapter 4:

  • sky 3 Tita is back baby
  • man this chapter is long
  • Warming up to the story for this chapter, I’m not sure if it’s broken the formulaic mold yet, but the story at least seems to carry some weight to it
  • That said, it’s still more buildup all the way even in chapter 4
  • Gameplay after mod update is fun
  • OH BOI I love gearing 18 characters very funnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
  • Under the ground bug: https://streamable.com/g0nbib
  • ez boss only took 5 hours (fk that boss fight)
  • They lay on the Tita x Agate relationship a little too thick imo
  • Unironically talking to 30 people twice better than Tales of Arise talking to 6 people once
  • le plot dump time

Chapter 5:

Overall thoughts: I feel like this game is very fun from a gameplay perspective (after the difficulty mod at least), but the story itself is just… whelming. Most of what I enjoyed from the story was just callbacks to previous games, and most of what’s new felt very cryptic and confusing, or just plot dumpy. Since theres so many characters now, the story is also spread a bit thin as well. The twists and heavy moments don’t feel that impactful, due to how many times the ressurection no jutsu plot point was used already, and the villain’s don’t feel like they have a clear motive either. A lot of “motives” are explained as “magic” or “the curse” or “advance a mysterious nefarious plot”, but theres nothing personal or concrete that maked the antagonists feel so interesting in Ao. This is in contrast to Ao which felt much better in all fronts in terms of story. Gameplay wise, having so many characters, and having split paths lead to a lot of fun in different team compositions and strategies needed. Plus, there’s a ton of boss fights. Cool things about the difficulty mod:

  • Actually having to use your full kit, instead of having to self-ban most of your moves even on nightmare difficulty because otherwise it would be too easy
  • Actually using items for once
  • Brave Orders aren’t completely overpowered, and you have to use more than just the best ones

Not so cool things:

  • BS rng when the bosses one shot your team before you can move
  • Break is so omega nerfed that it makes Juna pretty useless as a char
  • Forced to abuse stealth sometimes

CS4:

Prologue

  • Look at Sully all grown up
  • Jona benefited from being older too
  • Imelda did not benefit well from the change to 3d graphics oof
  • HELL YEA GIMME DA GOOD CHARS NO MORE REAN WOO
  • +1 Bright +1 Bannings
  • this music slapsss

Ch1

  • Fun time over, back to main story
  • standard fare of getting your party members back. It feels a lot better than CS2 though
  • Anton’s back, Giliath is back. EVERYBODY IS HERE.mp4
  • Why is the No-Name Jaeger fight before the Named Jaeger fight so much harder lol
  • TURN LIMIT REQUIREMENT FIGHTS are soooo…. funnnn and in no way obnoxious
  • Enemy Brave Orders are quite obnoxious too
  • Musse joining you feels so forced, especially compared to Ash. Might just be trying to fit the entire character backstory in like one section though
  • I’ve grown to like Sully as a character, used to not (kind of the point I guess)
  • Crossbell is a humongous city, didnt really feel like that in Zero/Azure games but it takes quite a while to go through in CS3/4
  • I love turn limit fights…..
  • Kinda sus that only the loli characters join the party
  • We must have a boss fight, then a mech fight, then we can TP, cause plot reasons, yup

Ch2

  • Rean saves his friends (by fighting them obviously)
  • Really changed my team comps by this point, made alisa into a dps
  • Ending twist was pretty obvious, just with how the story was forming

CH3

  • So many sidequests
  • Gilbert hardest boss unironically
  • George one of the few still well written chars
  • Pretty formulaic story, but at least the fights are hard/fun
  • resurrection no jutsu strikes again
  • Don’t really like how they use “the curse”/magic grass to explain basically everything
  • obligatory fanservice time

CH3.5 Fanservice Harem Simulator (why am I a completionist, I have to view like 30 character scenes)

  • Juna, cute
  • Musse, sweet
  • Altina, heartwarming
  • Alisa, Laura, Emma, Towa, Sara, standard
  • Fie, I love feeling like a creeper
  • Alfin, meh
  • Elise, It’s okay to date your sister cause they aren’t blood related hell yea anime logic
  • No one, the true ending

CH4

  • Much sidequests
  • Man they put in a lot of effort to make a lot of side characters playable
  • Ending is kinda whatever
  • Political stuff afterwards is cool though

Mod thoughts:

  • Chars felt much more balanced
  • Defense was pretty op
  • Only had to stealth cheese like 1 fight I think
  • Critical was a little too easy to stack
  • The fact that you can stack as many secondary master quartz of the same type really trivializes fights (Boss is debuff heavy, just make everyone debuff immune, etc)

Trails to Reverie

Prologue

  • No difficulty mod sadge
  • The Crossbell B Team is back, forgotten for 2 games but they’re back finally
  • RIP Sergei’s VA
  • Looks like we beat the game, pack it up bois

Ch 1 - lloyd

  • I forgot about Scarlet wow
  • Oh, Juna learned her gunbreaker skills from Noel, something I was wondering from cs3
  • Geofront music is great
  • Why are they doing the same plot point againnnnnn whyyyy I loveee magic curse bs such good writing….

Ch 1 - Rean

  • I actually liked a Rean part for once, what the

Ch 1 - C

  • I like the new chars

Ch 2 - Lloyd

  • The “twist” was pretty obvious but is kinda weird
    • sorta explained in a daydream (VN thing in reverie)

Ch 2 - Rean / C

  • Lapis food scene was funny
  • Going back and forth in the fights is pretty cool
  • Huh they did the reveal earlier than I thought

Ch 3 - Lloyd / C

  • Good music
  • Going back and forth between RF/Workshop was pretty cool
  • Totally necessary bike scene

Ch 3 - C

  • Why is Jingo here 🤔
  • Best Char is back
  • Going back and forth between RF/Workshop was pretty cool
  • Dolls are scary
  • I hate turn limit fights

Ch 3 - Rean

  • Break out with best char
  • What is this magic story

Ch 4 - C

  • Intro scene made me laugh
  • Lapis and C are funny together
  • Arios playable for once poggers
  • The plot is off the walls with the elysium shit but it at least explains stuff

Ch 4 - Lloyd

  • Standard fare, rescue our police friends in the ruins through the power of friendship

Ch 4 - Rean

  • Why are we fighting Robo Mishy lol

Final Chapter

  • Anti brainwash power, shoulda just done this from the beginning lol
  • Fight actually hard enough to need to cheese with infinite invincible turns
  • Ah yes, the classic: everyone in the entire city has a new dialogue option. The best and worst part of this series: reading
  • Man so many largely pointless sidequests before the final dungeon
  • EVERYBODY IS HERE: the cutscene

Final Fight and Scenes

  • Ending fight takes 3 hours lol….
  • I feel like the Ishmelga Rean stuff was very much a completely new plot device that they just added and resolved in like just the ending. Probably needs to be fleshed out more
  • The power of TP
  • Olivier still great

Overall thoughts

  • Liked C and Crew
  • Liked the way the story was segmented into parts, helps with the large cast
  • Gameplay was same-y (no difficulty mod so I just cheesed most of the fights)
  • The new story stuff was wild but at least it isn’t like brainwash “the curse”… oh wait it is sometimes
  • Music was great
  • TRC is like just fanservice / grindy stuff but it is completely optional at least
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