I'm usually Gameplay over Story

[BizzleBazzle]

I'm usually more inclined to stick with a game if its gameplay is fun.
I enjoy turn-based strategy, and it seems that there's a decent amount of depth to the system when I did researching. There's also fun quests and interactions with characters.

The only problem I see is pacing. I saw lots of complaints and information online about slow pacing, but I want to ask here, because this game really interests me. I'm also not a big book or visual novel person, but I do like good stories. The closest comparison I can think of in my library right now is The Witcher 3, a lot of small stories wrapped up in one big story.

I try to use Steam's 2-Hour refund window as my trial period for games. Based on your experiences, in that time, would I be able to get a good look at the game and what it has to offer? How slow is this game, and what's a good ratio of gameplay to story? (Someone said 50/50 or 40/60 but I want to make sure.) Would someone like me be better off with something else?

[myhr2]

Hard to say. In the 2-Hours refund window, you'll definitely have more story than gameplay for this game, probably 90/10. It's not entirely representative of the rest of the game, yet it should be a good indication of what you can expect in terms of writing, and the gameplay stays roughly the same, with more options as you progress, but no deep changes.

Plus, even if you have favorite genres, you always can be pleasantly surprised. Yes the pace is slow. No, it's not an objective negative point. And The Withcer 3 is not a very good point of comparison, it just isn't the same type of game. It's closer to something like FF7, a J-RPG. Did you try any J-RPG before? That would help to recommand the game to you. And if you haven't, well, I don't think it's the best starting point in the genre.

[BizzleBazzle]

I used The Witcher 3 in terms of story. Since you're not always going against The Wild Hunt, the main enemy. There's a lot of small good stories and side quests, (entire chapters can be about something other than the main antagonist and still be engrossing) sometimes hinting towards the main plot. I've played JRPGs before, the original Final Fantasy on emulator, Bravely Default, Chrono Trigger, etc.. I'm playing Tales of Symphonia now.
And from what I saw in my research the combat has enough unique points to keep it interesting (turn order, arts, crafts, and the quartz system seem like it could be interesting to mess around with), plus difficulty settings if I get bored. It's not the slow story is that bad, I guess it will be down to each person to decide how slow it is. I may not be trying to decipher each word, I might be a faster reader than others.

[Dragon]

2 hours is 100% guaranteed not to be enough time to understand what this game is really doing. It's a slow-burn that doesn't even begin to amp up towards its true potential until starting at the end of Chapter 2, which is probably when you'll start to see how great it can be. And there is also a Prologue before Chapter 1, which some people consider to be a Chapter on its own...which is to say, you basically have to spend the time & energy complete 3 Chapters before the greatness of the game becomes hugely apparent.

The gameplay is good though.

But the main point of these games is to become fully immersed in the world, such as by talking to all the NPCs again after every story event, in order to get to know them and the world they live in, and feel like you are a part of that world.

If you were to play to the game with a mindset like "I'm just in it for the battles," then IMO you'd be missing out on & cheating yourself out of at least 85% of what makes these games great. Again, that's not to say that the combat is bad - it's not - but it's just not the main point.

As for "complaints" about slow-pacing: yes this game is slow-paced, but it has to be in order to accomplish what it is setting out do, by fully immersing the player in a world, in which the stakes gradually amp up over time. That is to say, the "slow-pacing" is a great strength of these games, not a weakness.

The Ys games from these same developers are more suited to the "combat is the #1 and only thing that matters" kind of mindset. The Ys games are very fast-paced and have great gameplay...but that comes at the cost of the Ys games missing a lot of other good things in them that the Legend of Heroes games do have, but Ys don't have (or likewise for other games that are "fast-paced"). That's not to say Ys/fast-paced games are bad, but just that they don't offer the same type of experience, both of which (fast-paced and slow-paced) can be good.

[OnlyOffensive]

I think you will be into story games once you play trails series. It has solid gameplay, excellent story. Its slow, but if you like detailed worlds you will enjoy it for sure.

I think first sky is an excellent game to test the grounds. Its fairly short for this series, even with doing absolutely everyhting and reading every dialogue it shouldnt take more than ~100-150 hours. All other trails games are longer.

If you are into combat/gameplay ONLY id rather check tales of games, great combat, ♥♥♥♥ story, pace doesnt matter etc.

[blackdog]

I fell in love with the game immediately - within a 2 hour window. It gave me a good idea of what to expect. I actually had an emulated version of this on my phone and decided to purchase it immediately to support the developers and encourage the completion of the series. It is a lot of dialogue, but it's so well written I don't even really notice - like a good book on top of a great JRPG.

Often anime has really cringy dialogue/story-lines for me - here the dialogue shows so much character and finesse - I actually could think of people I know or am acquainted with just through the brilliant way they used different kinds of speech. I wouldn't call the pacing slow; for me it allowed me to really fall in love with the characters. I get 'the feels' for the people and world of this game, and that usually doesn't happen - especially because most anime seems to be targeted at little children (or adults who live in Neverland ranch, or something).

The combat system is great compared to really traditional JRPG's (more to consider, like placement/movement and an 'orbment' system that is a touch more complicated than FF VII's materia system for example).

I can't recommend this game enough. It really scratched an itch I've had since the end of the PS1 era JRPG's - and the writing and combat systems are so much better!

This and the first Ni No Kuni are really fantastic examples of modern JRPG's.

EDIT:

This is nothing like The Witcher 3 - that game is a true, universal masterpiece. If you like the old school JRPG's, this is one of the best examples. I enjoyed the side-quests in Trails of the Sky, but I think that's only because I've become invested in the characters and world.

[Hat8]

Play on Hard - it definitely makes the game more tactical.

Only way to know if you'll like the story is if you play the game.

[OnlyOffensive]

lol, if hes into gameplay than nightmare is the only choice.

[Dragon]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย OnlyOffensive:

lol, if hes into gameplay than nightmare is the only choice.

I don't agree with that at all. I played this game and its sequel on Hard, and if I had known before I played them how ludicrously unbalanced they are on anything above Normal, then I would have chose Normal.

[OnlyOffensive]

How are they unbalanced. Are you worse than AI or what? There are alot of ways to control every battle, which you usually learn from playing on nightmare.

The only "unbalanced" moment in ALL of trails games is prologue of second game, because it requires specific knowledge to beat. Then again, you can just replay it, its not that long.

Thats the point of playing nightmare, to have fun from GAMEPLAY.

[Dragon]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย OnlyOffensive:

How are they unbalanced. Are you worse than AI or what? There are alot of ways to control every battle, which you usually learn from playing on nightmare.

The only "unbalanced" moment in ALL of trails games is prologue of second game, because it requires specific knowledge to beat. Then again, you can just replay it, its not that long.

Thats the point of playing nightmare, to have fun from GAMEPLAY.

Playing on Nightmare would be the exact opposite of having fun from gameplay. On the contrary, that would result in having agony from gameplay. The only way to have fun from gameplay in Trails 1-3 is to play on Normal mode.

These Sky games are just ludicrously unbalanced on difficulties above Normal. There are even posts on these boards from others which corroborate that fact by noting how Normal was the only mode the games were originally designed with, and the other modes were tacked-on much later as an afterthought, with no thought or effort put into balancing them.

It's certainly not only applicable in the prologue of the second game, that's just a common urban legend with no truth to it. Yes that section is ludicrously unbalanced too, but no more so than in crap-tons/most of other parts of the games as well (that is, if the difficulty is not set to Normal) which are equally unbalanced to a ludicrous degree.

How are they unbalanced? Let's see: many enemies, including almost every boss, are immune to every (and/or almost every) status effect, which makes most of your tactics useless.

Those same enemies are also highly resistant to raw damage from Arts, and also raw damage from physical --- which makes the rest of your tactics useless too.

So, you can't debuff, and you can't damage them other than to a negligible degree.

Meanwhile, those same enemies also do insanely high amounts of damage every time they hit your own characters. And they can cast status effects on your characters (of which you can only avoid a couple at time via Accessories, whereas the enemies avoid darn near 100% of status effects from you).

[OnlyOffensive]

ive finished every single trails game on nightmare since first play, so its not an urban legend about SC prologue. Yes the game is hard, but if you are INTO gameplay and skipping the challenge of it, then you are not.

I havent beaten mueller in SC, but thats optional fight and its reaaaaally long. Some enforcers are hard too, but thats the fun, winning in hard conditions instead of playing half-game.

Bosses are not immune to str/def debuff though, and boss fights are balanced so that certain adds or even bosses themselves are not immune to AT delay. And you have earth shield.

I think the best point of sky games is that when you listen to all that bosses banter, its actually TRUE, not like in most games where you oneshot clowns and go next, who cares what he said. But when you listen to loewe and get your ass kicked 10 times, now you gonna pay attention to characters.

[OnlyOffensive]

you just make up some excuses, someone said something etc. Just play nightmare and have fun in combat, thats what it about.

[Berahlen]

OP: 2 hours is almost certainly not likely to be enough to get a feel for how solid the combat will be for the rest of the game. You'll probably get to the tutorial fights, and maybe beat up some crop munchers (wtf why is mun.cher censored?! That's what they're called! They eat crops!) at a farm. And honestly, the combat throughout...isn't bad, but it's not especially great until the second game when your options open up and physical stops sucking. It's not bad, but it's not what makes the game.

If you're going to give it a 2-hour shot, see if the writing has you hooked and if you're willing to treat it as a visual novel or something. Going into this expecting some kind of dragonslaying epic isn't going to turn out well.

Also I wouldn't recommend Nightmare on a first playthrough. It's not overtuned (the guy who said that has a tendency to ignore advice and see anything capable of threatening him as overtuned) and you can even straight-up break the first game over your knee if you know what to do. But it's best to already have a feel for the combat and where all the rewards and stuff are.

[Stabbey]

Two hours is enough to give you a feeling for the characters story. If the characters story don't grab you within the first two hours, you probably wouldn't enjoy the game as a whole, because it's a very story-heavy, character-driven game.

Also I'd recommend playing on Normal for your first time. The thing is that the original two games only had Normal as the default difficulty level. The others were added in for the PSP port and thus didn't get balanced properly. Can you beat the game on Hard and Nightmare? Sure! Will it be more fun than tedious? That's debatable. Hard should be okay if you want more of a challenge, but Nightmare gets to be a slog towards the end.

[Oguzhan]

Honestly if you are not about slow paced stories then I don't recommend this series. The battle system is simple and fun especially thanks to the orbment system and side quests are really detailed and fun BUT the game is really slow.

Not that its a bad thing. Lemme put it this way, I used to hate long dialogues in games even in RPGs but trails with its quality writing changed my mind. The game has a lot of dialogue but its not some shakespeare wanna be writing or HyperDimension Neptunia constant reference/oh look at our cute girls being cute kinda writing.

Like I said though there are A LOT of dialogue in these games whether it be optional or mandatory. It does have some of the best NPCs that you can find. Doesn't matter whether they have quests centered around them or not every NPC has their own story arcs and a lot of them connect with one another. Some of the NPCs still have stories that continue to this day.