The Trails Franchise (Legend of Heroes)

We need a thread for this series.

Handy dandy graphic:

 

My history with the series.

- Played Trails in the Sky years ago, died on the final boss and never finished
- Restarted it a few years ago and finally finished it
- Finished Trails in the Sky SC
- Never played Trails the 3rd
- Started Cold Steel 1 a few months ago, currently in Chapter 4
- Bought Trails from Zero on sale a few weeks ago, will start soon

Way behind most people in this series as I'm a very slow gamer and often have multiple JRPGs going on at once (concurrently dragging my ass through Atelier Lydie & Suelle).

Consequently I may need to avoid this thread for spoiler purposes lol but at least it exists now!

 

Yay fresh new thread smell!

My history:
Got TiTs for the PSP when it first came out, it bored me to tears and I shelved it for a while. It took hearing from others to keep pushing past the slow burn intro to wait for the world building to sink it's teeth in me. And oh man it did. Then I was all aboard the hype train for TiTS SC after that cliffhanger ending. Unfortunately between the wait I got to playing other titles and when it finally came out it was sent to the backlog. And since then (yes it's been YEARS) I'm finally in the home stretch about to beat it. I have all the games, just sitting on my shelf looking at me waiting to be played haha. And since this is the first time in the series history we've been this close to the JP schedule I figured it's finally time to catch up. I remember just a couple years ago when we were behind the JP schedule by like 3-4 games. Now, were just behind by one.

One of the things I see people say and I also use as a selling point now is, if you were a fan of, or simply remember the Suikoden games from the PS1 days, it's almost a guarantee you'll like the Trails games. Suikoden was simply stellar at world building, fleshing out different nations and countries and groups of people all living in said world and having war be a central theme. The world felt alive. Which is also my biggest regret about Suikoden the world that we were promised.... we'll never see it again, we'll never see it fleshed out. Harmonia is no more. But Trails.....this series is easily then we masterclass in world building. Once I was told that, once I began to play and understand that, it all made sense and I realized what I was in store for. Plus, the JP games were so ahead of us and I had people who understood the language telling me IT ONLY GETS BETTER. So I kept adding to my backlog and am finally starting to make a dent in it.

 

I'm also a verrryyy slow gamer. I'm currently playing BG3, Genshin Impact, and TiTS SC. Assassins Creed is soon, I recently beat Shadowbringers in FFXIV so I haven't even started on the latest expansion, and FF7R and countless other JRPGs release in February. My backlog shall stay a backlog for a while haha.

So yeah probably others are ahead of me too!

 

I've played Cold Steel 1&2, watched TitS and then played SC and 3rd. Near the end of Trails from Zero.

Just taking a break to play newer games out at the moment.

 

I played (and streamed for friends) all of the Sky trilogy back around 2021~2022, such good games, although I did start FC back in like, 2017 or 2018 and bounced off it pretty quickly. Going back to it a second time I was super into it though. I think SC was my favourite, but Third is great too. I considered playing Cold Steel, but then they announced they were localising Crossbell (finally), so I just waited for those first.

I started Zero, but I need to get back around to it at some point. I only played like, 6 or so hours? I'm pretty interested in it though, since I've heard a lot about the Crossbell duo. My friends seem pretty excited about all the newer games too, which is real cool. Trails is just a fun series I feel like.

 

Just such an unfortunate acronym.

 

The memes have been there since the beginning hahaha. It's especially important to properly upper case and lowercase it!

Otherwise it's oh you like tits? I like tits too!

 

Alright, got to the Axis Pillar. Thank God someone on gamefaqs wrote down the e tire conversations that take place for 2 of the fights. The important ones too. Cuz I ain't bringing Zane or Schera for those.


And I ain't bringing Tita either lol.

 

Monster.

 

Look. I had enough sepith to deck out my main 4. They're all 80+.

Tita's weak ass is 68. It's gonna be like when Josette joined the party and I spent every other turn reviving her cuz she was useless and squishy.

 

Speaking of monsters, what's funny is how I had a thing spoiled for me while browsing figures online and saw a grown up version of a certain scythe wielding monster.

 

I always forget Zin was called Zane in the original localisations lol, always throws me for a second when I see it

 

Yeah, I saw that in threads on Steam and I was like, "Who the fuck is Zane?"

 

LOLOL that I didn't know! Interesting!

Got distracted by BG3 last night. I'll finish SC today tho.

 

Now about 27 hours into Cold Steel 1, I think I can finally say I'm not too into the way the game is structured. The cycle of school/sidequests/practical exam followed by field studies gets a little tiresome by chapter 4.

 

Having never played a Persona game, I'm intrigued to find out how these school life RPGs operate.

 

Also, for those who choose to play Sky the 3rd, you'll want to become adequately familiar with every party member by the end of the game, as the final dungeon requires you to use all 16 in 4 parties of 4.

 

Are they set parties or can you mix and match?

 

You choose

 

This was my complaint too.

 

Oh neat. That reminds me of the Luca Blight fight in Suikoden 2, I think it was 3 parties of 6 members each.

 

I've never played a Persona game either. Only school based JRPG I've played is Fire Emblem Three Houses, which ruled

 

Just started Chapter 1 of Trails From Zero and I'm totally that Leo pointing scene at the couple who just walked in the door of the Crossbell Bracer Guild.

 

Alright I'm at the point of no return, last 2 bosses. The 4 Enforcers went down easy, all except for the lil scythe wielding gremlin and her mecha. I need to go buy items and get in some more fights before the actual end tho, I need to enter with full CP.


Whew.