[Spoilers] I was a little disappointed on the second Field Study

[coldreactive]

To be honest, I had really hoped that Raen wouldn't be able to make progress between Machias and Jusis, and yet, Raen somehow managed to get them to let Jusis explain the city we're going to. It would've been a far better plot point if the two of them could stay emotional enemies, Sara would comment on it and all that, and maybe one of them could get severely injured as a result of the issue. (Raen was injured, but it would've been better if one of the two fighting each other was, or if the fighting would get worse thanks to Raen being injured.)

But, it seems like the game's storytelling really wants to be as positive it can be in those regards, it's almost sickening to a fault.

P.S: I noticed that the Duke in his white/silver car had issues with his head rendering its polygonal vertices, this wasn't shown to be true in the still image flashback version though (IE: the flashback version is perfectly fine), so it's likely something failed to render properly during the actual scene, or a patch caused a regression or it's a bug.

Also, I noticed this: https://i.imgur.com/cSamLpu.png . The 28th is the first day of the field study I believe? So This menu would be changed on the second day. (Yes, horribly nitpicky, since this texture would've been so obscure on the vita.)

[Y0DASTITCH]

I humbly advise you to lower your expectations in order to enjoy the rest of the game.

If you find the chapter 2 underwelming regarding the drama intensity, you're not out of disappointment regarding this game plot / character development.
Incidentally, I agree that the Jusis/Machias antagonism could have been resolved (or not) in a more dramatic fashion.

[糾う]

There's barely any moments that don't feel forced here. Character traits are only for moving the plot.

[OnlyOffensive]

Story might start clunky ( which was unexpected for me, considering they probably had it figured long before developing a game ) but later parts of game are really good, i'd even say better than Sky series, except they forced a little grinding for nightmare in the end, but well it was the same in sky SC prologue.

And btw they will still stay rivals and will not like each other for almost all game, but machias overhearing their talk and later story of Machias and Jusis. It will make sense that they at least dont hate each other, after all they aren't bad people.

[coldreactive]

Originalmente postado por yodastitch21:

I humbly advise you to lower your expectations in order to enjoy the rest of the game.

If you find the chapter 2 underwelming regarding the drama intensity, you're not out of disappointment regarding this game plot / character development.
Incidentally, I agree that the Jusis/Machias antagonism could have been resolved (or not) in a more dramatic fashion.

Sorry, I've been playing FFXIV a lot recently, and my expectations for dramatic storytelling have been set high as of late. I'll try to lower them a bit, and see how I feel later in the story.

[ShadowHawk]

Why does a petty squabble need to be resolved in a dramatic fashion exactly?

[明星ヒマリ]

Originalmente postado por Kreygasm:

Why does a petty squabble need to be resolved in a dramatic fashion exactly?

It's just what today society used to from all those soap operas and forced drama. Even a tv show about hyper active steroid Britbong chef always have drama for some reason (only on US version).

Originalmente postado por coldReactive (Iyeru):

Originalmente postado por yodastitch21:

I humbly advise you to lower your expectations in order to enjoy the rest of the game.

If you find the chapter 2 underwelming regarding the drama intensity, you're not out of disappointment regarding this game plot / character development.
Incidentally, I agree that the Jusis/Machias antagonism could have been resolved (or not) in a more dramatic fashion.

Sorry, I've been playing FFXIV a lot recently, and my expectations for dramatic storytelling have been set high as of late. I'll try to lower them a bit, and see how I feel later in the story.

That's just what kiseki series had been. They cut short of almost all unnecessary drama in order to let the world building develop further. If they let those petty squables to extend further it would just feel forced and drag the whole story down. The story isn't about Machias vs Jusis anyway, the way they develop from total hostility into rivalry with occasional banter seems perfectly fit with their personality.

[Cneq]

I personally would've been a bit annoyed if they contiuned like that, I found it pretty cliche to begin with and I believe they handled how things progressed really well in the end.

Seeing as this game is the first in a "new" trilogy, The story starts off very slow (Which is for sure NOT a bad thing) and starts picking up at chapter 4. And even then it takes a while till things get really serious. And by the end of the massive plot twist near end-game It sets up directly to tie into Trails of Cold Steel 2

Maybe I'm a bit here biased since I enjoyed the slow pace of the first Trails in the Sky and the Build up which lead to Trails in the Sky SC. But that's just me.

[coldreactive]

Originalmente postado por Cneq:

Maybe I'm a bit here biased since I enjoyed the slow pace of the first Trails in the Sky and the Build up which lead to Trails in the Sky SC. But that's just me.

I should've expected much, since both Legend of Heroes and Ys have similar pacing to their story. Older Legend of heroes are even slower and more vague at times. Yes, I remember playing the old PSP versions too a while back.

That said, I'm not a big fan of over-positivity, so it gets annoying when things get too positive depending on the ambience of the game. For instance, in Final Fantasy XIV, there's a lot of dread here and there, and whenever I see this lalafell girl "tataru" I just want to go up and punch her in the face.

[OnlyOffensive]

Things arent gona be positive in this game, compared to 1st sky game for example. You are just making too much conclusions from extremely small part of the game and side event, i personally think the amount of positive and negative is good enough.

Im pretty sure you are gona be for a decent amount of surprises closer to the end, especially if you familiar with other series events/characters.

[糾う]

Originalmente postado por Supreme Officer:

Originalmente postado por coldReactive (Iyeru):

Sorry, I've been playing FFXIV a lot recently, and my expectations for dramatic storytelling have been set high as of late. I'll try to lower them a bit, and see how I feel later in the story.

That's just what kiseki series had been. They cut short of almost all unnecessary drama in order to let the world building develop further. If they let those petty squables to extend further it would just feel forced and drag the whole story down. The story isn't about Machias vs Jusis anyway, the way they develop from total hostility into rivalry with occasional banter seems perfectly fit with their personality.

If only they cut the drama between Laura and Fie...

[LrdDimwit]

In my opinion, Cold Steel 1 is the weakest of all 5 (localized) entries in the whole Trails series. It is poorly paced, and its characters aren't up to the standard of previous games. I still liked it - even bad Trails characters are still better than characters in a lot of other RPGs I've played over the years - but it is what it is.

I'm convinced much of the trouble is from so much schooltime being timeskipped. That's a lot of time the cast spent getting to know each other, etc and it's mostly offscreen.

Certainly you couldn't do a Persona-style system where they give you control every day. That wouldn't work at all. (I can only imagine changing everybody in Trista's dialog literally hundreds of times! Utter madness.) But they should have done ... something.

[明星ヒマリ]

Originalmente postado por LrdDimwit:

In my opinion, Cold Steel 1 is the weakest of all 5 (localized) entries in the whole Trails series. It is poorly paced, and its characters aren't up to the standard of previous games. I still liked it - even bad Trails characters are still better than characters in a lot of other RPGs I've played over the years - but it is what it is.

I'm convinced much of the trouble is from so much schooltime being timeskipped. That's a lot of time the cast spent getting to know each other, etc and it's mostly offscreen.

Certainly you couldn't do a Persona-style system where they give you control every day. That wouldn't work at all. (I can only imagine changing everybody in Trista's dialog literally hundreds of times! Utter madness.) But they should have done ... something.

They perfected it with Crossbell arc by having smaller number of main cast to focus on. Seems they got too confident and put on a lot more main cast (class VII).

[LrdDimwit]

I can only compare Cold Steel to Sky. And Sky seems to have a similar cast size to CS. 8 playable in FC, 13 in SC versus 11 in CS1 and ... 13 or 14 in CS2, I think?

It's probably not fair to compare SC to CS1, because SC had a whole game before it to establish character. But even if we compare FC to SC1, I don't think CS's characterization problems can be blamed on just too many characters. There's other things wrong. Just look at Estelle or Kevin versus Rean: Rean isn't a bad character - he's very tropey and can be kind of bland-ish, but that's not too bad. No, the problem is - this is the series with Estelle and Kevin as our other leads, and Rean is no Estelle.

[Senoinya Aumeriyal'e]

Why would anyone want to extend the issue between Machias and Jusis? It was incredibly petty, and not even balanced between the two. Jusis didn't do anything wrong - Machias decides to treat him like he's the worst person alive just because he's a noble. Sure, Jusis antagonizes him a bit here and there, but he wouldn't have anything to antagonize Machias with if Machias had just controlled his judgements.

But it's not poorly handled. Machias's reasons for why he hates nobles get explained, and even he admits that it doesn't justify his attitude toward other nobles, and it's not like the two just become best of friends after this either - they still have issues, but they aren't at each other's throats.

It ends when it needs to. If it had gone on longer than it did, it would have made Machias too annoying to ever like any part of him later on. The Laura vs Fie thing is a good example of what happens when a petty problem is drawn on way longer than it should have been - Fie did absolutely nothing wrong, so it just makes Laura seem uncharacteristically petty and childish.

[Oguzhan]

Originalmente postado por LrdDimwit:

I can only compare Cold Steel to Sky. And Sky seems to have a similar cast size to CS. 8 playable in FC, 13 in SC versus 11 in CS1 and ... 13 or 14 in CS2, I think?

It's probably not fair to compare SC to CS1, because SC had a whole game before it to establish character. But even if we compare FC to SC1, I don't think CS's characterization problems can be blamed on just too many characters. There's other things wrong. Just look at Estelle or Kevin versus Rean: Rean isn't a bad character - he's very tropey and can be kind of bland-ish, but that's not too bad. No, the problem is - this is the series with Estelle and Kevin as our other leads, and Rean is no Estelle.

I agree. I don't hate Rean but compared to Kevin and ESPECIALLY Estelle , he is no award winner. He is not bad though , its just the previous characters (from what I hear Crossbell games have a cool character too) are just much better. I haven't played CS2 yet but FC did much more for Estelle then CS1 did for Rean.