I understand that logic but Estelle and Joshua ARE there, and I get the impression Kevin/Ries are about as important to Ao as Estelle/Joshua is in Zero. it is a zero/ao survey, not a zero only one (otherwise you woudln't see certain Oroborus members for example). Yeah they aren't super significant but neither is say. Abbas (unless he suddenly gets a huge spotlight in the next 2 chapters or something, I dunno. I just fought a scripted boss in the cop training forest area). Maybe Ries more than Kevin, she certainly has more to do than Kevin so far.
Fair enough, just comes down to personal preference/philosophy of it all. I love Kevin and Ries as well but think it's fine to leave them out for characters more specific to the arc.
Having finished Azure today and Geofront doing that game now, really looking forward to more chest messages. took me a while to break the habit of rechecking every chest and with no witty dialogue I felt empty inside.
Oh yeah same here, took a chapter or something, and then I still do it out of reflex like every 10 chests or so and it stings every time. It's like, oh no, I pressed interact again! It's going to give me the stock message! I know it's coming before it shows up on the screen... Then it shows up and even though I knew it was coming, it's like a gut punch =P.
It's weird but I remember the first time I played Trails FC, I think I bumped into shining poms like 8 times without even trying... I don't think I've bumped into them again since throughout the entire series except during my fresh ng nightmare clears in sky when I was intentionally farming them cuz...nightmare.
Bumping an old thread but the official localizations of both Crossbell and Azure have been announced, and crazy enough Geofront is now partnered with NIS America. Most notable part of the article is that the links for the fan translations have been taken down, as they want people to support the official release by NIS America. So if you didn't get them before you'll have to wait until the official release. Zero is slated fall 2022 and Azure sometime 2023
And another bump, because preorders for Zero's LE are open (PS4 and Switch), along with a standalone puzzle and a disgustingly cute Lloyd plush. The limited edition goodies are a hardcover artbook, a mini soundtrack (ten songs, no indication which ones yet), a cloth poster, an acrylic stand with SSS figures, a steelbook and a box to fit it all.
The release date is given as 'Fall 2022' for now.
Geez, can't believe we actually got here, Trails from Zero officially released in the West. How far we have come that this actually, finally happened. While I don't expect sales numbers to be remotely close to the Cold Steel games, especially 3 and 4, I am happy for however many people this allows them to experience this game finally. Been playing through this with a friend again and it is quite a fun experience.
I've been inactive on the forums as of late because kuro. I'm pretty lax about spoilers but I do actually try and avoid the lions' share of them so hence me avoiding these things.
That said now that Zero is out officially, which I haven't played. I would have day1 bought and played it if it had english dubs, but it doesn't, so I'm going to cheap mode it (I'd get it if I was wealthier though), I have to say I'm a little disappointed with the fan community ( not this forum here, just in general f rom what I can gather on youtube, and yes I know youtube. But I can actually tolerate the general youtube community, and t he league of legends community, and the dota community, you get it, I have thick skin). First off... So many are like 'meh, english dubs, who cares'... Ok I know anime weebs are always like this, but I was hoping that the trails fanbase were fans of RPGS, JRPGS, story-driven games, trails... But not a bunch of anime weebs exclusively. argh. The english voice acting in cold steel is excellent, I don't care what weebs think, and to not have that same addition in zero/azure, makes them inferior games overall IMO because that's a A+ element that is just not there that should have been. Not to mention, given they had the geofront patch to work with, the heck made it take so long if not for extra dubs? argh.
Also, part of me knew this was coming, but the number of people encouraging 'new' fans to start with zero/azure and not sky or cold steel is mind boggling to me. I personally always tell people to start with sky, but if they REALLY REALLY think they can't get over the 2d sprites and age of the games, and that it would hurt their impression, ok, try cold steel, they know best when it comes to if game age/fidelity matters that much to them.
Zero does NOT have that element of justification on its side. FURTHERMORE, while zero and cold steel both spoil sky pretty equally, and spoil the other arc pretty equally, ZERO SPOILS ITSELF if you don't play sky.
Alot of the best scenes in Zero feature Renne, and not having her backstory (and Estelle/Joshua's, but mostly Renne) would absolutely MURDER the impact and feels of ALL of Zero's heaviest scenes. I can't think of ANYTHING in Cold steel that is ruined on its own without that sky-backup. I tried to voice this but was told I was 'toxic' for gatekeeping how people pl ay the series. WTF. I just want n ew folks to experience the most wonderful game series of my life as much as I do, how the hell is that toxic. Who the hell are these idiots bashing fans trying to tell new potential fans how to best enjoy things for the first time anyway? Why would they do this? argh.
I've been inactive on the forums as of late because kuro. I'm pretty lax about spoilers but I do actually try and avoid the lions' share of them so hence me avoiding these things.
I can totally feel that, I'm in Internet Hermit Mode right now when it come to Falcom because I'm still playing through Kuro II (or really, starting because I had a week and some change of not being able to play it shortly after it came out) and this is about the only place I'm not worried about running into any inadvertent spoilers.
First off... So many are like 'meh, english dubs, who cares'... Ok I know anime weebs are always like this, but I was hoping that the trails fanbase were fans of RPGS, JRPGS, story-driven games, trails... But not a bunch of anime weebs exclusively. argh. The english voice acting in cold steel is excellent, I don't care what weebs think, and to not have that same addition in zero/azure, makes them inferior games overall IMO because that's a A+ element that is just not there that should have been. Not to mention, given they had the geofront patch to work with, the heck made it take so long if not for extra dubs? argh.
The big thing with dubbing Crossbell is that they're using the PS4 'Kai' releases as the base and that means the entire main story is dubbed. I'm pretty sure that financial concerns alone nixed the idea of dubbing that, since it would mean lots and lots of time and money on a pair of games that are probably not going to sell in sufficiently high numbers to return on the investment of a dub. It's a crying shame because it means we won't have some characters voiced at all (unless they appear in later games) and we'll have to wait for Reverie to hear some of the others dubbed (I really really want to hear their take on Wazy) but I can see why they made that call from a cost-benefit perspective.
In terms of timing, what we've gotten about NISA's release schedule suggests that they've prioritized Reverie before Nayuta and that they've gotten the license for Kuro, so they probably didn't actually devote the full amount of time to Zero and Azure that the gap between announcement and release makes it seem, and have been using a lot of it for Reverie.
Alot of the best scenes in Zero feature Renne, and not having her backstory (and Estelle/Joshua's, but mostly Renne) would absolutely MURDER the impact and feels of ALL of Zero's heaviest scenes.
Yeah, Zero makes the worst starting point of the games because of how connected a major plot thread is to Sky and it's not at all ideal to start there, but it is something you can do. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in lieu of starting with FC or CS1 but if someone's determined to use Zero as their springboard, I'm also not going to tell them they can't do it though I will say why starting with Sky would be a better idea. One imagines that at least some of these people are also not PC gamers and are playing the PS4/Switch versions which aren't options for Sky, which adds another dimension. Just because an old toaster can run Sky isn't going to overcome the reluctance of some people who can't or don't like to play games on PC. I find it kind of an odd perspective myself because I grew up playing games on the computer, but I've seen enough people take that stance to at least recognize that it exists.
Yeah I refuse to believe people can't run sky on their computer. I finally got a new pc btw, but my old one's graphics card died, and I discovered my built-in video processing unit on my i5 3400.. a 3400! Was able to run sky 3rd at 60fps except when there were lots of astral corridor particle background stuffs. All the indoor areas worked fine though, so I imagine fc/sc would work fine too, and even those parts I mention, it still ran at like 20-30fps, quite doable on a game that isn't a twitch shooter or something.
But my point is the only thing stopping them is a kind of pc-game-phobia. They're used to using a console, ok, fine, do people not try new things on occasion anymore? I can understand not wanting to try a full priced 80 dollar game that probably wont run well on a non-gamer pc. But something you can pick up for less than $10 fairly often that can run on a 12 year old pc WITH NO GRAPHICS CARD, c'mon man! It's pure stubbornness at this point. I get it, you want to convince them to play sky, and that's hard enough when you don't have to compound it with a 'convince them to try a game on their pc for the first time ever'. I can respect not wanting to get into that can of worms, but t he people who actually refuse to try a game on their pc, seriously, it's just a weird pc-game-phobia, and a phobia is an unreasonable thing by nature, seek a doctor! (I'm joking with that last part).
About financial stuff with zero and all that. I can agree to that kinda. But if we're talking finances, it kind of makes me wonder was it really worth localizing them officially at all after the geofront patch came out? Maybe. I dunno what the switch customer base is like for these games. But I feel like it probably isn't making them roll in the dough so why do it at all if you're going to skip on its major selling point (for the Japanese version at least).
I've been away from posting here about the franchise just because I needed a break from the series after being so invested since playing Sky FC for the first time in 2013 (Holy crap, almost a decade now). As for the Crossbell release, ideally it would have been great to have had a dub, but I can understand that due to costs and these games are most likely to be much more niche than Cold Steel, they had to cut costs in some way. The unfortunate reality is graphics and perceived look of a game is somehow highly important to many people. It's insane to me that there are large AAA games that look absolutely gorgeous, and people will complain about how ugly it looks. There are many places I saw people complain about games like Elden Ring or the upcoming God of War game looks bad, it's baffling. So an older game that looks fine enough but not super impressive stands no chance.
I don't know enough about finances and the cost to localize these games, though I would assume that with them localizing the game they have a solid idea that a small profit could be made. While there was the fan translation, you have to remember for a lot of people, if it isn't as simple as put in the game or download and play then many won't go further lengths to play a game. The Zero fan translation required going to a Japanese sight to buy and download the game, then use the fan patch runner to run the game file through to get the translation done. While not the most complicated, more than what most people want to do. Azure is a bigger can of worms. I bought the game through the site Geofront said to, but there was a problem, and I couldn't download the game. No customer support for people outside of China meant I was out of the money I paid for the game.
End of the day, while not the most ideal port and there was already the fan translation available, being more accessible hopefully means more people will give it a try, even if it is small compared to the numbers of Cold Steel.
One of the more interesting things to me is seeing some discussions come up about translations. This is based on some small threads on steam (I know, not a great place to look at), but there were a lot of people who feel even the Geofront translation was abysmal. The big one was people complaining that they memed the game, citing the Randy Bruh moment as killing characterization. I know there can be nuance on how to best localize and translate a game, and there are things as taking too many liberties. However, for an optional line from a quest being such a problem seems to be a reach to me.
As for starting points, while I also agree that Zero is not an ideal starting point, if it's enough to get someone in to the series than I won't stop them. Though it is weird to me that Zero would be fine enough for someone when Sky wasn't if the graphics were a concern. I think a big thing though is just having a switch port is a big deal for a lot of people. It's always crazy to me how big a deal having a switch port sways people to playing a game.
That's my two cents at least. Hope everyone here has been well, missed being part of conversations and getting different viewpoints from all you here. I'm hoping early next year to start a complete playthrough of the series in order starting from FC, as my time away has me yearning to go through them again. Despite my many complaints of Cold Steel, I find myself having fondness for it and wanting to experience again as well.
When I was discussing pc game-phobia. I was speaking in the context of playing FC/SC on pc, not the fan-translated zero/azure. Yotaka was saying that the kind of person who might dip their toes into the series with Zero/Azure are probably the kind of people who didn't start with sky BECAUSE they don't play games on pc, which is probably an accurate assessment. But...ugh. my point is while that's true, that reason itself is one I think is... It would be like saying I dont' wanna play fc because Estelle is a girl (I think I recall someone actually saying that too. I'm not sure if they were trolling or not though).
The whole official localization thing just after geofront came out and then do a partial job without dubbing just leaves a sour note to me. I know the staff at Falcom/NISA can't be aware of everything, but given Kondo himself was promoted from a fan website designer, you think they would have had t heir ears to the floor enough to maybe TELL the geofront fans 'hey you guys, we appreciate your work, but you may want to save yourself the time and cancel SINCE WE ARE DOING IT NOW AND WILL TAKE YOU DOWN... No, they wait until release and THEN drop the news? I'm sure SOMEONE would have heard of a fan translation project, and someone should at the very least should have thought about looking, it's not like it was super top secret. gah.
Not to be overly negative though. Overall I'm still grateful for Falcom/NISA/XSEED for all their solid work at making the best series ever IMO.
As for doing a mega playthru from FC onwards Persona. I do plan on doing that once the series is 100% complete... Maybe I'll do it another time before then too. After CS3 came out I kinda did it already with fc-3rd+cs1,2, and 3. Didn't do Zero/Azure yet, but I've played those since.
I remember when FC came out I was not really impressed with the OST, and even now I'm not a big fan of its battle music and boss music (intelligence division boss music is great, but the bosses before that), etc. But just the outdoor areas, and the event music and stuff, man it really grew on me. There's some little social moments that just matter so much more now that I'm more invested in the series too. Like one that comes to mind is when Estelle is Sitting with Joshua behind that barn thing in that village before Ruan and the university and the sky is orange and Estelle remarks how important moments in life always seem to happen around sunset.
I mean I know the writers of the games themselves probably do this on purpose, and Estelle is Fictional, but it still is touching seeing it anyway, especially since that time is one of the few times it's not something tragic or shocking but more of a wholesome moment.
Also when the series is over, I'm sure all the random 'unimportant' NPCS will get some more screentime at some time or another even more, and it'll be really fun to do a little bit of fictional stalking for each and every one lol. Speaking of which, I lost that damn fan site that tracks the lives and h istory of all the NPCS AGAIN. I SWEAR TO GOD I BOOKMARK THAT THING AND IT KEEPS VANISHING JWKLASDFGHASLKJFHSAD
Well over a year later helping my friend get through Zero, we finally finished the game. I am glad that I try to play each game at least 2 times, since it helps me solidify feelings and get a full perspective. Originally, I was not a fan of how late game set everything up to wrap up the mafia stuff so nicely and neatly. It still bothers me slightly, mainly because with how real life goes it feels unrealistic, but this is a fantasy game and with how everything was set up and Crossbell having a chaotic political climate makes everything work out.
I still hold feel the main antagonist is pretty weak compared to past and even some of the future games. It mainly comes down to how out of nowhere it comes, where even in the second playthrough knowing the events there doesn't seem to be breadcrumbs to pick up. I rate Sky FC so highly because while it's only the final chapter where things ramp up, on replays you can really pick up hints and get behind the motivation of the main antagonist of that game, as well as pick up on things on one of the end game reveals.
Overall, I do think much more highly of the game compared to my first playthrough, probably in the top 3 or 4, below Sky FC and 3rd at least.
Most of the breadcrumbs regarding the main antagonist (or rather what they represent) comes up in The 3rd rather than Zero itself, until you get to the actual reveal. You have to piece together for yourself the fact that what Kevin says about a devil-worshipping cult and Star Door 15 refer to the same group, and notice that both these things and the mention of a major international incident that Cassius was instrumental in resolving happened at around the same time. You can possibly work out the connection in Zero if you notice that Guy and Tio's first meeting happened around the same time.
It's a much more subtle buildup, whether that was intentional on Falcom's part (to go with the detective story concept) or not.
I don't mind having certain hints from other games, but the lack of it in the game it's integral to hurts it a lot more. Unlike some other games even with knowledge of what to expect it still feels out of nowhere. Still, not the worst case in these games for me, as Cold Steel 4 did a much worse job for me.
