Topic: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 3

@C-Chakra
I’ve become a believer, that’s for sure 😊 I now ascend into the ranks of Trails fanboy-hood

I bought the collector edition for the first game on Vita many years ago. Funny it took me this long to finally get into it though. I remember the first time I played it when it first released on that system and it was rather overwhelming, to say the least. I was much less experienced with RPG‘s at the time. And even now, being well versed, it took a bit to adjust to all the systems at play. Now that I understand it it all makes perfect sense and I see that it’s pretty much the same across the board and all the games. I fired up Trails in the Sky today and was astounded, that despite a different menu layout, it was basically all the same options. But that combat system can be very complex for someone who is new to JRPG‘s. I think that’s what put me off when I first played it.

@BruceCM
The market stalls being destroyed and goods stolen. Still early in the game but it feels like I’ve been playing a while. There’s just so much dialogue and you spend so much time battling when you’re out on quests. And exploring every nook and cranny everywhere you go. I had also been playing on a separate save game on vita though and was playing the game on both PC and the vita at the same time while I decided which platform I was going to stick with lol. So that probably ate up some of my progress 😊 That and still making tiny bits of progress in 3. I may just put 3 on hold and do the first two.

If you’re talking about the giant mechs, I have done the training session in 3 where you fight that haughty blonde kid and teach him some respect. I liked it.

Have you played all of them?

@JaxonH I totally agree with your comment on the fans gatekeeping and scaring people off this game. That's why fandoms irritate me for the most part. Most reviewers, and from what you guys have been saying here on the forum as newcomers to the series, it's fine to start here and get interested in the series. I think it just boils down to elitist attitudes, with a little dash of wanting people to share the same experience they did. The funny thing is that the two biggest Trails fan youtubers (KillScottKill and TheKisekiNut) both started with Cold Steel anyway. Eh, i'd rather more people get into the series.

Personally I think if you're interested in picking up the game, you're best listening to people on here who are playing CS3 as their first Trails game and hearing what they have to say about it.

-Edit- Oh yea, I think porting the older games over would be an absolute goldmine, given Sky and Crossbell are fairly outdated (even Cold Steel is pretty outdated). Switch players are far more likely to buy these games (given how popular retro/indies are) than people who own current gen systems like PS4 or 5 soon. Falcom hopefully won't sleep on the opportunity, their games are perfect for Nintendo.

Well, I'm only just playing the Sky trilogy now, @JaxonH .... Since one of those was missing on Vita, I didn't get the other 2 but I played ToCS I & II there It basically takes the whole game to get the DK but it plays quite a part in 2.

@JaxonH Yeah, I think you're right. This level of support started after Disgaea 5 released. I'm guessing their PS4 figures have been pretty dreadful, too, what with the way they spoke out against Sony and its culture of only focusing on "big" games (although that'll change come the start of this next gen; once Sony transitions to a new console, it'll always go crawling back to indies and smaller developers to help carry it through that rockier period after launch).

I actually read an interesting topic on the Falcom reddit community where they were discussing this issue of gatekeeping, and I think they largely stumbled on the same conclusion that you did: it's cool to heavily recommend people start with the older games, but acting like it's impossible to enjoy anything in the series unless you start playing Trails FC and go from there is just keeping new fans from discovering the series.

With that said, I'm sure NIS probably expected ToCS would undersell Ys. Hopefully the port still does well enough to make the man hours they pumped into making this playable on the Switch pay off in the end.

@BruceCM
I’ll get to the Sky trilogy one day. But I think the older games are a lot harder to get into for a newcomer. I’m already sucked in but I’m right smack dab in the middle of the Erebonian arc, so I’ll hold off on it until later.

Trails 3 was particularly a good place to start because the first two games kind of work as a duology of sorts. Most of the major plot points are wrapped up from 1 to 2. So 3 kinda starts off fresh. You’re now the teacher, not the student. Overarching plot is still there, but no cliffhangers like there was between 1 and 2. If you started 2 you’d genuinely be like, huh?

@Ralizah
I hope so. I mean, at least the 4th is already announced. But I think we’d have had a better chance of getting the first two if these were bangers like YS VIII. Ah well. We always have Steam. Good ol’ Steam.

Oh my gosh, my Vita keeps corrupting files on the proprietary memcard. I had heard this thing had a 50% failure rate but, ughh. I’m gonna be so mad if I lose access to all the PSP games on there (that’s really what I care about, all the Vita games are ported off now and the PSone games are too retro for my liking, but the PSP games are where it’s at). Tried loading Trails, says corrupted. Tried again, hang loads infinitely. Did similar thing yesterday. Ya know what, I’m just done with this thing. It lost all my data once before and I’m not paying $60 a year to back up saves for system hardly play. I should’ve hacked this thing so I could use normal SD a long time ago but now I just don’t have the will to go through it. Just formatted the card and wiped everything. Fantastic.

edit
Can I also say how much it sucks downloading your games piece by piece, asset by asset. Only got like 47 different persona 4 dancing items to download one by one. And after each and every one it starts you back at the top of the list so you have to scroll all the way back down and find your place again in a long list of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of assets and items for various games. I always regretted the fact switch would not let you pick and choose which DLC to download, it was all or nothing. Honestly I prefer that though. This is gonna take all week.

I'm glad that never happened while I had a Vita .... The Sky games aren't as worth playing as the 1st 2 ToCS but I got them on good sales & they're definitely still good Supposedly, Falcom never expected the Trails games to do well in the West, being 'story heavy', while they were a lot less surprised by Ys games selling well

@JaxonH well it didn’t scare me off from playing it. I’m enjoying 3

@AndyD
That’s great to hear.

The first Trails of Cold Steel is getting really tough! I nearly died fighting a monster for a quest. I’m in chapter 2, in the town of Bareahard. And I already used 2 Shining Pom Baits. It’s a struggle in some of these fights, even random monsters can be super tough. I think this game more so than the new one relies on arts to damage certain enemies that take virtually zero damage from physical attacks. And I’m always running out of EP, especially cause I have to heal between battles.

I'm a fair few hours into it now, just reached Parm. I totally understand now why characters like Randy and Tita etc. aren't covered in the story summary. Rean and crew don't know them and you learn about them through their perspective. So they're in Rean's notebook instead, makes sense. I kinda think it is better too that they didn't explain everything that happened in Crossbell etc. because nothing so far that i've seen in CS3 would ruin playing through them. If anything, after playing CS3 you will probably be more keen to play Crossbell given that Randy is a main character on his own adventures with his crew. Saying all that, i'm still pretty early in the game but atm I agree with Falcom that it's a fine entry point. Lovin' it!

I'm so tempted to pick up CS3 and start there as my first Trails game. Looking for a bit story heavy JRPG to get into. I've downloaded the demo and have been reading the plot summaries, watching YouTube videos etc to get up to speed. I haven't really dived into the game yet though besides trying out a few of the initial battles.

It's good to see the conversation here being positive about starting from CS3. Mostly I've encountered "you've got to play all the other games first". The set up of 3 being about a new class of students definitely seems like it makes it a good point to jump in. You're going to experience the rest of the story along the way, just from a different perspective.

Does any body know whether the demo starts at the same place as the full game?

Yes, with the prologue, although you can save your progress so you don't have to replay it, @mcdreamer .....

@BruceCM Excellent! Love it when you can transfer your save from a demo to the full game.

I don't know if anyone here ever said that you literally can't start with 3, only suggesting it'd be better to do otherwise but since others have done so & they say it's certainly possible, I'd listen to them .... Maybe you'll want to go onto the earlier ones afterwards

Yeah, reading back through here the vibe on starting with CS3 after reading the summaries etc seems very positive. I'm mainly referring to discussions I've seen elsewhere online where people insist that playing all previous games is the only option.

Well, it's one long story but I only just got the Sky trilogy & haven't played the other duo yet .... I think it's hard for long-term fans to imagine jumping in at this stage It still works if you go back to the earlier ones after playing this, though, although some of the impact of certain story bits you already know about is lessened There's a few here who hadn't played any before, so they're the experts in that, though

Yeah, that might be it. I'm sure if I'd played all the others it would be hard to imagine jumping in now. As you say, you can kind of play in any order you like so long as you're OK with points from earlier games having less impact etc.

I actually played Torna through during chapter 3 of XC2. Going out of order didn't take away from the story for me there so I'd be confident of the same being true with Trails as well.

Fair enough & there is the menu part for covering the story up to ToCS III (which I didn't need to go through but those who did say it's good) Just if that only takes 30 odd minutes to read, the previous 2 Cold Steel games are 100 odd hours each to play through, so it's a bit condensed

Yeah, I've read the summary for CS1 on there and it seemed pretty good. Nicely put together with screenshots from the game etc. Will read the CS2 summary and more tonight if I have time.

Just glad that there's a positive discussion around here about the topic. I come to NL quite often each day, but this is my first time to really dive into the forums. Seems like a nice place to be