New Players do not buy this game until completing previous titles

[Tanchyon]

*Update*
After much discussion it's clear from the players that one must start from the beginning, you cannot just jump in and expect a good experience, you will not understand much of what is going on. If interested start at a previous title, not this one.

*Original Post*
All those players saying you must play the previous titles first -
I honestly don't have the spare time in my life for that. It makes me not want to buy this. Can I play the best entry in the series without playing the predecessors or not?

[Alistair]

You can play it but you would miss a lot of backstory and references. It might be a good idea to at least play Trails From Zero.

[Sage Pirotess]

Usually I would side with you, for example, technically you c as n start on cold steel 3, not 1.

But in this case yea Zero is that much you should p lo at it unless you are just buying the game for art.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by Tanchyon:

I honestly don't have the spare time in my life for that. It makes me not want to buy this. Can I play the best entry in the series without playing the predecessors or not?

Why even bother playing any game in series if you are not interested in story.

[Hentaika]

Honestly - best entry in the series is misinformation.

Kiseki games individually are just simple 'good' games, nothing special individually, what makes them amazing is the scope of the world/lore.

Zero/Azure IS kinda fine to play without playing the first 3 games.
But Azure is useless without Zero.

Instead of thinking of those 2 as separate games - think of them as 'insert disc 2'.

The only reason they are separate is mostly just gameplay balance reasons and avoiding one game being too long.

If you want a simple time waster rather than an ~500 hour long unfinished epic - look elsewhere, there are hundreds of better individual titles to experience if you can't afford the above.

[Stabbey]

This game starts off with you literally being dropped into the middle of a ton of plot threads, references and characters from the previous game, Trails to Zero. Without having seen the first game, you probably won't understand much of what's going on. It would be tremendously confusing.

It's "the best game in the series" because of how it skilfully weaves together different story elements from Trails to Zero with dashes of spice from the previous arc (Trails in the Sky 1-3). If you have not played Trails from Zero, you'll be missing out on the emotional connections to the world and the characters which are the reasons to care about the events in Azure.

You probably wouldn't think of it as the best game if you lack the context of Zero.

[Nemesis]

If you absolutely must start with Azure, do your self a favor and (spoil yourself) look up the story summary for all three Trails in the Sky games (FC, SC, 3rd) and Trails From Zero or you will miss a lot of backstory and references.

LadyVirgilia Trails Archive - Story summary:
Playlist for Trails in the Sky FC, SC and 3rd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVvQioljryI&list=PLKbYRtPzuiWez75jBU3C-3nUqhewuMR83
(Trails FC, 2 parts: 1h 22 min - Trails SC, 2 parts: 1h 45min - Trails 3rd, 3 parts: 1h 51min)
(Total: 4h 58min)

Playlist for Trails From Zero and Trails to Azure (Of course don't watch Azure)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQMPj2urDU&list=PLKbYRtPzuiWepnJRmywm3oyP_wZSC2iWo
(Zero has 4 parts, view time about 4h 4min)

[Pnume]

Originally posted by Nemesis:

If you absolutely must start with Azure, do your self a favor and (spoil yourself) look up the story summary for all three Trails in the Sky games (FC, SC, 3rd) and Trails From Zero or you will miss a lot of backstory and references.

LadyVirgilia Trails Archive - Story summary:
Playlist for Trails in the Sky FC, SC and 3rd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVvQioljryI&list=PLKbYRtPzuiWez75jBU3C-3nUqhewuMR83
(Trails FC, 2 parts: 1h 22 min - Trails SC, 2 parts: 1h 45min - Trails 3rd, 3 parts: 1h 51min)
(Total: 4h 58min)

Playlist for Trails From Zero and Trails to Azure (Of course don't watch Azure)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQMPj2urDU&list=PLKbYRtPzuiWepnJRmywm3oyP_wZSC2iWo
(Zero has 4 parts, view time about 4h 4min)

Or enjoy the franchise at his own pace 1 game at a time. There's no need to rush.
I'm replaying from the start (currently in the last chapter of FC) and I won't play them back to back. I'll probably play SC after RE4.

It's not like FC and SC are shores to be skipped. SC is arguably the best of them all and even the combat are fun in Trails, at least if you play hard or nightmare.

[Corey]

To get the full experience, I agree it is so overwhelming starting from Trails in the Sky and working towards Cold Steel 4, so for casual fans it is completely fine to start at the first entry in each series. This saga is actually the shortest one they've ever done for Trails, so all you really need to play is Trails from Zero first, then this game after and you'll get the complete story. At least play the first of these two games first.

[Tanchyon]

Originally posted by Corey:

To get the full experience, I agree it is so overwhelming starting from Trails in the Sky and working towards Cold Steel 4, so for casual fans it is completely fine to start at the first entry in each series. This saga is actually the shortest one they've ever done for Trails, so all you really need to play is Trails from Zero first, then this game after and you'll get the complete story. At least play the first of these two games first.

Interesting. So just 2 quick questions. Is the story or the gameplay better for this game? Also how many hours roughly would it take to finish the first two games?

[Nemesis]

Originally posted by Pnume:

Originally posted by Nemesis:

If you absolutely must start with Azure, do your self a favor and (spoil yourself) look up the story summary for all three Trails in the Sky games (FC, SC, 3rd) and Trails From Zero or you will miss a lot of backstory and references.

LadyVirgilia Trails Archive - Story summary:
Playlist for Trails in the Sky FC, SC and 3rd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVvQioljryI&list=PLKbYRtPzuiWez75jBU3C-3nUqhewuMR83
(Trails FC, 2 parts: 1h 22 min - Trails SC, 2 parts: 1h 45min - Trails 3rd, 3 parts: 1h 51min)
(Total: 4h 58min)

Playlist for Trails From Zero and Trails to Azure (Of course don't watch Azure)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQMPj2urDU&list=PLKbYRtPzuiWepnJRmywm3oyP_wZSC2iWo
(Zero has 4 parts, view time about 4h 4min)

Or enjoy the franchise at his own pace 1 game at a time. There's no need to rush.
I'm replaying from the start (currently in the last chapter of FC) and I won't play them back to back. I'll probably play SC after RE4.

It's not like FC and SC are shores to be skipped. SC is arguably the best of them all and even the combat are fun in Trails, at least if you play hard or nightmare.

Oh, I agree with you, but it seems OP has no spare time in his life. I'm a purist, so I would prefer if people play them all in order. As for Sky difficulty levels, Hard is fine, but Nightmare is just a grind unless you are on NG+, regular mobs 2-shotting you ain't my idea of fun.

[Stabbey]

The story is the better part of Azure. The gameplay for Azure isn't bad, but it's largely the same as Zero. There are some new additions, and some rebalancing tweaks, but the core gameplay is very similar to Zero and the Sky series.

As for length, doing the main game and sidequests are probably about 40-60 hours for each game in the series (Sky SC is probably longer). If you take your time exploring and talking to every NPC whenever the dialogue changes, the time can grow a whole lot.

All the games in the Trails series scale XP so that grinding for levels is unnecessary and pointless, but occasionally people may want to grind for items.

[RTSsence]

Fundamentally, playing the later games in an arc is expected of you to have experienced the prequels.

Just jumping about any entry in an arc is gonna ruin your own experience because of how the narrative is inherently structured to be a serialised, linear work.

The least you can do is the play the prequel game for the Crossbell arc.

[Corey]

Originally posted by Tanchyon:

Originally posted by Corey:

To get the full experience, I agree it is so overwhelming starting from Trails in the Sky and working towards Cold Steel 4, so for casual fans it is completely fine to start at the first entry in each series. This saga is actually the shortest one they've ever done for Trails, so all you really need to play is Trails from Zero first, then this game after and you'll get the complete story. At least play the first of these two games first.

Interesting. So just 2 quick questions. Is the story or the gameplay better for this game? Also how many hours roughly would it take to finish the first two games?

It's a subjective opinion. I see people online praise the first game and roast this one's story, and vice versa. If I'm being honest the gameplay across the series is very consistent, with the largest evolution being this game to Cold Steel where it went full 3D instead of the graphics style here. My advice is, play the first game. If you like it, you'll probably like this one. If you're skeptical, find gameplay on Youtube. As for trails length, I've found these games are roughly 40-50 hours long if you don't rush it. It's no Persona, and depending on your reading speed these games shouldn't be offensively long.

There is only one game before this one in this 'saga' and it's called Trails From Zero. If you want to play the ENTIRE series from the first saga, it's the Trails in the Sky trilogy, then Trails from Zero, then Trails to Azure, then the Cold Steel series.

[Tanchyon]

Originally posted by Corey:

Originally posted by Tanchyon:

Interesting. So just 2 quick questions. Is the story or the gameplay better for this game? Also how many hours roughly would it take to finish the first two games?

It's a subjective opinion. I see people online praise the first game and roast this one's story, and vice versa. If I'm being honest the gameplay across the series is very consistent, with the largest evolution being this game to Cold Steel where it went full 3D instead of the graphics style here. My advice is, play the first game. If you like it, you'll probably like this one. If you're skeptical, find gameplay on Youtube. As for trails length, I've found these games are roughly 40-50 hours long if you don't rush it. It's no Persona, and depending on your reading speed these games shouldn't be offensively long.

There is only one game before this one in this 'saga' and it's called Trails From Zero. If you want to play the ENTIRE series from the first sage, it's the Trails in the Sky trilogy, then Trails from Zero, then Trails to Azure, then the Cold Steel series.

So you can get away with playing Trails From Zero then Trails to Azure?

[Nemesis]

Originally posted by Corey:

Originally posted by Tanchyon:

Interesting. So just 2 quick questions. Is the story or the gameplay better for this game? Also how many hours roughly would it take to finish the first two games?

It's a subjective opinion. I see people online praise the first game and roast this one's story, and vice versa. If I'm being honest the gameplay across the series is very consistent, with the largest evolution being this game to Cold Steel where it went full 3D instead of the graphics style here. My advice is, play the first game. If you like it, you'll probably like this one. If you're skeptical, find gameplay on Youtube. As for trails length, I've found these games are roughly 40-50 hours long if you don't rush it. It's no Persona, and depending on your reading speed these games shouldn't be offensively long.

There is only one game before this one in this 'saga' and it's called Trails From Zero. If you want to play the ENTIRE series from the first saga, it's the Trails in the Sky trilogy, then Trails from Zero, then Trails to Azure, then the Cold Steel series.

Zero: main story about 40h, ~60h with side stories and 70h+ for completionist.
Source: https://howlongtobeat.com/game/10599

Azure: main story about 45h, ~70h with side stories and 100h+ for completionist.
Source: https://howlongtobeat.com/game/10598
(Great site for finding out how long a game takes to beat)