For future players about difficulty.

[ShinyFuji]

If you want try this game on nightmare in first playthrough, go on, there nothing scary in this difficulty.
Both zero and ao games do not require grind. Unless, of course, grind not means for you clear every area at least one time. No reruns in the same spot are required.
Therefore, I advise you to start on this difficulty, and you can be proud that you complete this game with she gave you everything she could.
Because when I watched the walkthrough on normal. It was braindead running without any challenge.

[Mauman]

Hard is the perfect difficulty. Not aggravating in general, but there will will be a few points where you want to tear you hair out (a certain pair of female bracers can go to Gehenna).

But yes, Normal is too easy I agree. That being said, Nightmare...no...just no.

[Oliverio]

I am going to play on Hard, it's the perfect difficulty
Sky was too hard on Nightmare and even on Hard tho

[DiaCrusher]

Yeah, nothing scary except the final boss, might be just me though.

[Dragon]

I don't agree with any of the posts in this thread.

I played on Normal and plenty of the fights were extremely hard, especially at the beginning of the game when lots of quest monsters can one-shot your characters and take out your whole party since they all get to attack together in a barrage at around the same time, and also in the middle and ending boss fights too.

And the "timed fight" which uses 5 minutes of real-time, or else you lose points, is probably the most asinine & ludicrious & unfair mechanic ever put into any Trails/LOH game.

No way the average player is going to find that fight to be "easy" if they want to get full points for it.

And if they are playing on Hard or Nightmare, then they are probably going to be unable ever to get full points for that on their first playthrough, especially if they didn't read a walkthrough before reaching that point.

[Koby]

Sky Nightmare was hard cause it wasn't part of the game originally and never properly balanced. The rest of the series... is so easy that Nightmare is generally recommended for anyone who has at least a little knowledge of properly utilizing quartz setups and characters and actually want to not just roll right over everything.

[arta]

pro tip not waste you time with leveling and gearing noel and wazy play game with orginal sss members reandy still best becouse war cry teo best healer in game

[Hitoshizuku]

I always play Nightmare on every Trails except Sky because back then I didn't feel familiar with the game yet (not counting Zero for obvious achievements reason). In Trails, most of the time you can pass nightmare easily by abusing some of the OP MQ / craft / arts / eva stat. Tio's Zero Field is one of those, so try not to abuse it too much. You also need good positioning and a bit of a grind, but not too much because it can make the game a lot easier sometimes (I remember fishing U-Material in CS4 a lot. It broke the game).

You are probably going to invest a lot of time into the game, so you should avoid nightmare on the first run if you don't want that.

[Nutaris]

It's almost like people have a diverse range of skill levels and can choose their preferred difficulty. Shocking.

[tievapauteen]

I just finished nightmare mode. Not that impossible as I imagined, expect final boss.