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Ty

great vid and great to see you back! I was a bit worried after your last video

Ty

My first time playing this game (I've played it twice), I was also irritated with the whole curse thing as well. But the second time through, I realized that it is more nuanced than people realize/give it credit for. If you recall the cutscene near the beginning of the game where you're in the "dream-like" Thors setting with Juna/Kurt/Altina, Falcom was actually giving us a glimpse into what it was like for those who were under the influence of the curse. Basically, the curse amplifies the desires of those who are afflicted by it, and then twists those desires just enough to make them follow the direction that Ishmelga wants them to follow. Sadly, they didn't really do a good job of showing this in the game, and it diminishes the overall quality of it on narrative level. Because of this, it is easy to mistake what had happened to Juna/Kurt/Altina in that moment as them just having a weird dream that is quickly brushed under the rug. As opposed to what really happened, which was them being granted the illusion of having everything they wanted, provided they forget Rean exists. Because if they forget Rean exists, they can't very well help him, now can they? When worded like that, the curse actually sounds like it could have been pretty interesting, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the curse itself just wasn't written into the story properly. I think they could have done some really cool things with it. If they had put some of the other character we had met throughout the series into those dream-like settings, and then required us to somehow free them from it, I think would have made the curse itself feel like a more engaging/real threat. Because we would: 1) Gain a greater understand of how/why it works the way it does. 2) Understand why some of these characters would willingly submit to it. In some ways, I think this is the BIGGEST issue with Cold Steel 4. Many people simply don't understand why so many characters fell under the influence of the curse. Regardless, I still found Cold Steel 4 to be a good game. Better on my second run of it, in fact. Although that may be because I was noticing things I hadn't noticed the first time.

It’s coming to the switch next month!

Ty

Lol I went to a sale at a used game shop and left with 5 games I want to play but, I just know I probably won't, but they are ones I'd like to, and keep in my collection

In the nut shell, blame everything on the curse~ You get the curse, you get the curse, everybody gets the curse~~

This series is great. It has been almost 3 years since I started with Cold Steel 1 and it made me want to go back and play the older games. But I didn't want to leave on the cliffhanger, so I finished Cold Steel 2, before going into the Sky Trilogy. Luckily the Crossbell games released in the west, while I was playing Sky, so naturally I played them as well before going back to Cold Steel 3+4. I don't think I will finish Reverie before Daybreak comes out. But I'm almost caught up. Back when I started, I wouldn't have dreamt of playing through 10! games in under 3 years, while also taking breaks and playing other games to avoid burnout.

Good game

Personally I feel like portable should get a remake because both games have their pros and cons and additional content. Not only that but it would be a great redemption for Atlas After the kotone reload controversy. Edit: I just realized this video came out in 2023

I recently got into Ys games and wanted to start from the beginning with Origin but I want to play lacrimosa of Dana and celceta so bad since I heard they’re good

This is a game made for 5 year olds

As someone who has yet to play CS3 but has played all its predecessors, Trails combat has always been unbalanced-haha, get it?-but I definitely do prefer the direction in which the series has been going up to this point. It's ultimately my fault for playing Sky games on the difficulties I did, but I think it essentially had the exact same problem in an even worse form: arts spam was good not because arts were too good, but because many crafts were unviable or almost so, until Sky 3. Spamming S crafts eventually loses its luster for sure, but spamming arts is even more homogeneous because they're not unique to the characters like crafts are. Making some characters all but unable to use certain powerful arts by giving them bad orbment lines is the only thing that really made them "unique" in any way, and the Cold Steel games give you lots of characters, which I will always prefer over being forced to use 2-character parties in Sky 1. The more I think about this topic, the more I think Azure probably had the most balanced system overall. Ironically, however, I felt that the finale of that game was oversaturated with fights, both significant and insignificant narrative-wise, to the extent that I felt the series's combat had never held back the story so egregiously before or since. The overall gameplay and lack of QoL of Sky 1 and 2 made me feel similarly at times, but specifically the combat in that finale was the most burned out I'd felt playing a Trails game outside of Sky 1 and 2.

Masterpiece

I just started it and I really love it. The vibes and the soundtracks are so gooood.

Trails from Zero was my first Trails game. Really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to playing Azure this year

It's peak!!!

Best OST IMO, so good

Tales of the abyss. Top tier taste dude

I need to play the sky games but I don’t have a working pc so honestly my best option is the Zero duology. Could I still play and enjoy zero even if I can’t play sky?

Fantastic game! I love it!

I just beat this and I'm now playing nine

Trails is the series with the best worldbuilding in any video game I've ever played, and the Crossbell arc specifically (Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure) are the best games in the series imo. These two games (combined in one spot) is probably in my top 5 favorite games ever.

I personally prefer the Trails series, but Ys is cool too.

Steam sales and game bundles. Basically buying more games than I can play

I only have a ps4. Might need to start with Zero first.

Nice choice of ost, wind of liberl

Do yourself a favor. If The Legend of Heroes interests you, please start with the Sky trilogy! No matter what others say that you can start with the Crossbell duology or the Cold Steel series no, start with Sky.

Love this game definitely apart of my collection.

Man, its really rare to find fellow Trails franchise.

Crossbell games are the best.. hands down

To me, cs3 is where the quality of writing starts to feel amateurish. Throughout the course of the game, they will constantly remind the player that rean is awesome now. As if Rean is not already well developed by this point, Altina will constantly remind you that instructor rean have this badass 6th sense without ever needing a dragon scouter, while the rest of the students will remind you that it's not even his him final form yet. Previous entries show characters growth through their actions and resolves without ever need to blatantly tell the player such.

Very long game.

I just sub.

Excellent choice! I'm 40 hours into my copy. Enjoy.

I Absolutely love Ys 8 Lacrimosa of Dana😭😭

Playing it right now. The story keeps you locked in

5:44 I'd say it's a combination of FFVII's Materia system, FFX's CTB system, SRPG style positioning, and Chrono Trigger style attack areas.

Nooooo, not the PS4 version

I recently was watching your Reverie stream and you said "one day you'll play these games in Nightmare first playhru" and i come here and see this critique about the arts. I agree with you, outside of using crafts the game doesn't give you enough of an incentive to use arts. But that's only the case on Normal (and even hard I'd be willing to say) and lower because the enemies are so weak that using their elemental weaknesses is a waste of time. This is why i personally recommend Nightmare. If you really want to see CS3, CS4 and Reverie's gameplay mechanics (all of them) shine the brightest. You do not get to see this (let alone even need to think about strategy that much or at all) on the lower difficulties. But that's my ongoing criticism with Trails is the difficulty and balancing of things but Reverie in Nightmare i think is great. I'd highly recommend it as your characters are very powerful from jump and you are only going to get more powerful which makes the game even more of a push over. I see later you mentioned perhaps higher difficulties make them more important, your assumption is true my friend and it's worth it in my opinion

Combination of things for me which I've played almost all my backlog now which was primarily n64/ps2/gc/xbox games and I wasn't interested in any game that came out during the ps4 and xone gen hardly there was only 25 the whole generation I thought were worth playing and a few are still on the list because I prioritized the older generation consoles and now im working my way through the ones I haven't played yet along ones I'm playing now that are new but the cuase for me was primarily not being old enough to have a job to get games back then now its due to me playing multiple games at once and forgetting what I'm supposed to do or I just lose all interest then I don't consider it part of the backlog anymore

Good luck with Valhalla I put 200 hours into it

yeah, CS saga arts is very2 bad.. only late games (CS 3 and 4 only) arts become feasible... you can almost see like this Sky: Arts Galore Crossbell: most balance battle (the beginning lean to crafts) Cold Steel: Cratfs unga bunga

Huge fan since the psp games! I love this review and hope you continue to enjoy trails and all of falcoms gems! Keep it up!