Been watching reviews all morning because I love the crossbell arc of this series lol and I have to say: your review is the best I've seen so far. So articulate and you nail every key point in what makes this game great in such a detailed yet concise manner. And I agree (despite a lot of other trails fans) you CAN START HERE. On it's own, this story, these characters, and this setting are FANTASTIC to say the absolute least. Lloyd is one of my fav video game protagonists and I normally do not typically gravitate towards characters like him, but they wrote him that well. I started with Cold Steel 1 during the pandemic and then backtracked to the previous games and am now finishing Cold steel 4 and have no regrets. The more people play these games, the better and more frequent they will be. Any jrpg fan is missing out on something so special by not playing these games imo. Great review homie!
Thanks for the review. I found this video looking for information about this game. I’m a fan of Cold Steel although I replayed the first cold steel instead of finishing 3 for some reason. I just love the characters in Cold Steel 1 and 2 but I’ll play them all eventually I hope. I wish they made a console version of Trails in the sky trilogy as the game keeps crashing on my PC despite me having a modern gaming PC. I prefer to play JRPGS on consoles to have less issues and it just feels right having gotten introduced to the genre with FF7 on PS1. Also you can’t get physical copies to collect on PC. I heard to PS4 version of Zero isn’t great so I’ll guess I’ll get the Switch version but I’m not sure if it will run as well. I prefer 60fps if possible.
The PS4 version runs fine. It just doesn't have some of the graphical improvements. I'm the same with collecting. All the footage you saw was from the PS4 version.
@@DrLevelUp Thanks. I heard that Switch has the improved graphics from PC but might run worse instead. In any case it should be a good game no matter which version. I think I’ll wait for Switch reviews to hit before I finally decide.
@@DrLevelUp That's not true, I don't know why everyone thinks it's just graphical improvements. There's the text log. (Critical for me) Can change whether enemies trigger battles by hitting any party member or just party leader. You can enable much faster map transitions. You can disable intro movies/logos to get into the game faster. (Plus "Resume from last save" on PC, where you can boot directly into a save file!) Autosave frequency options. Dunno if PS4 has autosaves, but on PC/Switch you can change how often it saves, as often as every minute. UI scaling which is good for different screen sizes. Display what music track is playing on-screen for a few seconds, plus where it can be found in the OST. (This way you can actually learn the BGM names!) Dynamic shadows for light sources. (This is separate from "graphical improvements" because it's basically a feature they had to manually re-add in from a different version and had to place light sources themselves.) At least on PC, support for arbitrary frame rates, arbitrary resolutions and arbitrary aspect ratios, meaning no matter your setup, it'll look and run right without any black bars or awkward FPS-related issues. (And the Switch runs at 1080/60, even with the graphical improvements!) Option to choose between different button icons, I think Switch Pro Controller/Joy-Con on the Switch and basically every single platform's icons including stuff like Stadia on PC. Dynamic cloud saves on PC, so if you have multiple PCs/laptops/a Steam Deck, you can play the game on, say, your Steam Deck, and since you're more likely to put the system to sleep than to shut down your game, it'll upload your most recent saves when you hit the sleep button, meaning you can seamlessly continue on PC, even more seamlessly thanks to that "Resume from last save" option I mentioned earlier. More control over turbo mode, you can make it faster or slower and swap between a hold or a toggle. (I like hold as I use it in small bursts) Really minute stuff people might not even consider like, since they redid the character sprites, they couldn't decide whether they liked the "original" versions better, which had a slight glow to them, or whether they liked the slightly darker but more natural looking versions. So they defaulted to the original but added the option to swap to the other. A very small thing most people won't care about, but exceptional attention to detail. Option for FXAA on or off on the Switch, and up to like a massive 8xMSAA on PC, absolutely demolishing that even looks like a jaggy. Only a few of these might qualify as something "big" (to me the text log is the most massive one and it's a damn shame the PS4 version doesn't have it -- being able to review what was said, especially in a game where you're a detective, is huge... or if you hit the button accidentally and skip text like a REAL detective) but I think we can agree it's not just graphical improvements. The PS4 version is totally fine if that's your only option, the absence of any of this does not ruin the game; after all, they weren't there in the original release and that didn't stop it from being many peoples' favorite set of JRPGs ever. That said, if you insist on a console version, go for Switch. It'll look better than the PS4 version, have more features, and run just as well.
Great review mate. Very cool game. Good build up for the absolutely awesome Trails to Azure. The 2 best games in entire trails saga is Sky SC and Trails to Azure imo. Bring on more trails. Well done to Geofront for translating this bad boy and ultimately being responsible for the western localisation. :)
Been watching reviews all morning because I love the crossbell arc of this series lol and I have to say: your review is the best I've seen so far. So articulate and you nail every key point in what makes this game great in such a detailed yet concise manner. And I agree (despite a lot of other trails fans) you CAN START HERE. On it's own, this story, these characters, and this setting are FANTASTIC to say the absolute least. Lloyd is one of my fav video game protagonists and I normally do not typically gravitate towards characters like him, but they wrote him that well. I started with Cold Steel 1 during the pandemic and then backtracked to the previous games and am now finishing Cold steel 4 and have no regrets. The more people play these games, the better and more frequent they will be. Any jrpg fan is missing out on something so special by not playing these games imo. Great review homie!
Thank you for your kind words. I’ve fallen in love with this series since last December. It’s certainly got flaws, but I love the overall package.
Not sure if I'm into the Trails series, but I haven't completely ruled it out. This entry does look cool though!
This would be a great place to jump in and try. Do you watch much anime? This series is anime tropey as all get out.
Trails from Zero was my first Trails game. Really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to playing Azure this year
Thanks for the review. I found this video looking for information about this game. I’m a fan of Cold Steel although I replayed the first cold steel instead of finishing 3 for some reason. I just love the characters in Cold Steel 1 and 2 but I’ll play them all eventually I hope. I wish they made a console version of Trails in the sky trilogy as the game keeps crashing on my PC despite me having a modern gaming PC. I prefer to play JRPGS on consoles to have less issues and it just feels right having gotten introduced to the genre with FF7 on PS1. Also you can’t get physical copies to collect on PC. I heard to PS4 version of Zero isn’t great so I’ll guess I’ll get the Switch version but I’m not sure if it will run as well. I prefer 60fps if possible.
The PS4 version runs fine. It just doesn't have some of the graphical improvements. I'm the same with collecting. All the footage you saw was from the PS4 version.
@@DrLevelUp Thanks. I heard that Switch has the improved graphics from PC but might run worse instead. In any case it should be a good game no matter which version. I think I’ll wait for Switch reviews to hit before I finally decide.
@@DrLevelUp That's not true, I don't know why everyone thinks it's just graphical improvements.
There's the text log. (Critical for me)
Can change whether enemies trigger battles by hitting any party member or just party leader.
You can enable much faster map transitions.
You can disable intro movies/logos to get into the game faster. (Plus "Resume from last save" on PC, where you can boot directly into a save file!)
Autosave frequency options. Dunno if PS4 has autosaves, but on PC/Switch you can change how often it saves, as often as every minute.
UI scaling which is good for different screen sizes.
Display what music track is playing on-screen for a few seconds, plus where it can be found in the OST. (This way you can actually learn the BGM names!)
Dynamic shadows for light sources. (This is separate from "graphical improvements" because it's basically a feature they had to manually re-add in from a different version and had to place light sources themselves.)
At least on PC, support for arbitrary frame rates, arbitrary resolutions and arbitrary aspect ratios, meaning no matter your setup, it'll look and run right without any black bars or awkward FPS-related issues. (And the Switch runs at 1080/60, even with the graphical improvements!)
Option to choose between different button icons, I think Switch Pro Controller/Joy-Con on the Switch and basically every single platform's icons including stuff like Stadia on PC.
Dynamic cloud saves on PC, so if you have multiple PCs/laptops/a Steam Deck, you can play the game on, say, your Steam Deck, and since you're more likely to put the system to sleep than to shut down your game, it'll upload your most recent saves when you hit the sleep button, meaning you can seamlessly continue on PC, even more seamlessly thanks to that "Resume from last save" option I mentioned earlier.
More control over turbo mode, you can make it faster or slower and swap between a hold or a toggle. (I like hold as I use it in small bursts)
Really minute stuff people might not even consider like, since they redid the character sprites, they couldn't decide whether they liked the "original" versions better, which had a slight glow to them, or whether they liked the slightly darker but more natural looking versions. So they defaulted to the original but added the option to swap to the other. A very small thing most people won't care about, but exceptional attention to detail.
Option for FXAA on or off on the Switch, and up to like a massive 8xMSAA on PC, absolutely demolishing that even looks like a jaggy.
Only a few of these might qualify as something "big" (to me the text log is the most massive one and it's a damn shame the PS4 version doesn't have it -- being able to review what was said, especially in a game where you're a detective, is huge... or if you hit the button accidentally and skip text like a REAL detective) but I think we can agree it's not just graphical improvements.
The PS4 version is totally fine if that's your only option, the absence of any of this does not ruin the game; after all, they weren't there in the original release and that didn't stop it from being many peoples' favorite set of JRPGs ever. That said, if you insist on a console version, go for Switch. It'll look better than the PS4 version, have more features, and run just as well.
I need the Sky games on console now.
I think we might see a remaster of them!
Wow loved the review my friend I’ve have now become a subscriber love your passion for games keep up the good work sir
Thank you so much!
Great review mate. Very cool game. Good build up for the absolutely awesome Trails to Azure. The 2 best games in entire trails saga is Sky SC and Trails to Azure imo. Bring on more trails. Well done to Geofront for translating this bad boy and ultimately being responsible for the western localisation. :)
Thank you so much! Loved this game, looking forward to Azure early next year!
Amazing video! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Thank you!!