Four chapters in, and the worst part of the game--by *far*--is Ries Argent. (Very mild chapter 4 spoilers)

[Arsene Lupin]

I seriously was not expecting this. I knew The 3rd was more of a dungeon crawl going in, and that's fine--we're exploring more or less the same(!) areas from the past game, with the same characters. So there's a lot less padding. Or, rather, chatting. We already know these characters so we don't really need all the scenes of them chatting.

But then there's our brand new heroine, Ries Argent.

Who is essentially absent from the story entirely.

She has *one* scene where she interacts with Tita early on, but for the most part she doesn't really interact with *anyone* other thank Kevin, only briefly. And locking her into the party means we can't even any of those small background dialog scenes w/ inactive NPCs in the Hermit's Garden.

This is a very mild spoiler for chapter 4, but basically... Ries leaves the party after chapter 3 and does not return until chapter 5.

And I didn't even notice.

Honestly, I never thought a Trails game would fail at *characterization*, off all things. That's, like, the defining strength of the franchise. TBH, this kind of barely-there heroine is like something out of an Ys game.

....

(Yes, I'm certain her role expands later in the game. But I do not think anything Falcom could possibly due subsequent to chapter 4 could possibly justify her lack of presence in all the chapters prior. When the main cast consists of about a dozen returning characters and ONE new character, it seems to me that the new character should get *more* screentime, not less).

(And just in case any fanboys get triggered: having a "worst aspect" does not make The 3rd a bad game... good games can, and usually do, have flaws. I'm not pointing this out to nitpick, but rather because this is the LAST flaw I ever expected to see in a Trails game).

[Plerr]

I don't disagree. I wish she was more than "Kevin's childhood friend who eats a lot" early on.

[Gambio]

Given the nature of the game thats unavoidable

Altough i believe a certain sense of disconnect is intended, everyone already knows each other except for Ries which makes her more distant. At your point she has scenes in the Garden, so you get some more characterisation out of her.

Personally(pretty close to the end) i feel rather indifferent about her, i wouldn't call her the Heroine either, this game is very much about Kevin

[SureShot]

I'm kind of surprised she isn't required to bring along more. I kind of forgot about her as well during the middle portion of the game. It also didn't help that she had a melee fighter/caster thing going on which I didn't care for -- hybrids were always meh to me in Trails games and aside from her Holy Blessing ability, nothing really grabbed me about her kit.

With that said, I'm likely going to bring her along for story reasons at the end even if it is hilariously optional for some odd reason.

[Renaissance Of Dreams]

I feel like you might be exaggerating the issue a bit. Personally, I didn't feel this was such an issue. She also becomes more relevant later on.

[That's ich!]

i was more pissed that i wasn't be able to heavenly bless in ch4 tbh xD.

Originally posted by медведь тигра:

the entire game is just a huge excuse for side stories for minor characters that nobody cares about with massive recycled dungeons in-between after all.

TIL i am nobody

[marionettethree]

Characters value is not judged by the amount of their screentime but how much impact they have on the stroy in the given screentime. And IMO, I give Ries a pass due to her role in later chapter.

Originally posted by медведь тигра:

the entire game is just a huge excuse for side stories for minor characters that nobody cares about with massive recycled dungeons in-between after all.

besides those small pieces of Kevin back-stories per chapters, and Renne's and Uroboros' star door, everything else are irrelevant bunch that can be removed, including Ries whole existence.

Sorry but I care about all characters so all stories in 3rd are great for me. I learnt a lot more about them. Please don't assume that everyone will think like you.

[SureShot]

Originally posted by marionettethree:

Sorry but I care about all characters so all stories in 3rd are great for me. I learnt a lot more about them. Please don't assume that everyone will think like you.

Same -- I care more about the minor characters in this than the MCs of most other jrpgs.

I think my only complaint is how incredibly modest almost everyone is so a lot of conversations are characters complimenting each other then said characters downplaying their abilities. I can attribute that to Japanese views on politeness and idealized characters. I actually liked it in the previous games, but due to the huge cast in TC, you'll see it happen a lot.

[Arsene Lupin]

Yeah... if you don't care about the secondary or tertiary characters, WTF are you even doing here? Trails is not the series for you.

I mean, I can kind of understand not caring about the random NPCs in Sky since their stories tend to be fairly generic, but once we hit Crossbell and especially Erebonia (largely thanks to the move to 3D) even the most minor of NPCs becomes interesting and worth going out of your way to speak to.

Originally posted by Gambio:

Given the nature of the game thats unavoidable

Altough i believe a certain sense of disconnect is intended, everyone already knows each other except for Ries which makes her more distant. At your point she has scenes in the Garden, so you get some more characterisation out of her.

Personally(pretty close to the end) i feel rather indifferent about her, i wouldn't call her the Heroine either, this game is very much about Kevin

She's clearly presented as the heroine, whether or not she is sufficiently developed for a heroine is... another matter altogether. That said, this problem is *far* from unavoidable. One of the nice things about The 3rd is that if a companion has a dialog scene in the Hermit's Garden, you don't actually have to remove them from your party to view that scene--provided that whoever they share the scene with is not also in the party.

This means that they could very easily have given Ries little dialog scenes with anyone and everyone else.

The greatest strength of The 3rd is that the main cast is already well established, so most all of the dialog is meaningful and directly related to the plot... but its greatest weakness is that all of the (often-only-seeming-to-be) irrelevant "chatting" and characterization that the prior games used to do that simply isn't there for Ries.

She comments very briefly at the beginning of chapter 4 on feeling alienated because she's basically the odd-one-out, stuck in Phantasma among strangers who all know each other and are all friends (or at least friendly) with one another... but that's not really established through dialog. It's hard to feel any sympathy for her feelings of alienation when she never really tries to get to know anyone else, and for the most part doesn't really even speak to anyone other than Kevin.

I mean, don't get me wrong. The 3rd is a fantastic game and I'm loving every minute of it (except those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Anglers Duels)... In any other game I'd just brush something like this off. I just hold Falcom to a much higher standard--especially so with Kiseki.

As far as disappointments go, thank god it's nothing like the problems with Cold Steel 2's writing.

[omgfloofy]

Originally posted by marionettethree:

Sorry but I care about all characters so all stories in 3rd are great for me. I learnt a lot more about them. Please don't assume that everyone will think like you.

Originally posted by Arsene-Lupin:

Yeah... if you don't care about the secondary or tertiary characters, WTF are you even doing here? Trails is not the series for you.

I would just ignore him. As proven elsewhere on this board, he's just a troll who hasn't even played the game so he's just parroting what he's heard from complaints elsewhere.

---with regards to the topic of Ries, I think she's one of those characters where you might see a bit more from her on a second playthrough. She makes a lot of interesting comments and observations on things that, I think, are harder to see without knowing exactly what's going on already.

Even when she comes in again later in the series, Ries remains a very subdued character in a sense, where she's content to remain as an observer on the sidelines, until crap begins to hit the fan. It's her way of gathering information and putting everything together.

[Iridium]

I somewhat agree. They do a decent job of making up for Ries very late in the game during a certain chapter, but she still never really feels like 'part of the gang' even compared to the other two major newcomers to the party. I felt like they were trying to subvert that for character development with her lines early on, but instead she just sorta vanished for a while and it gets dropped by her return to the forefront.

It doesn't help that her combat role isn't really that obvious, either. She's a physical oriented character, but many of her weapons give a steep magic bonus, and she has an amazing support craft it seems wasteful to not exploit, and none of these things really synergize. I found myself picking more obviously powerful characters when I had the chance.

She needed her own Door honestly.

[AnemoneMeer]

Gameplaywise, Ries gets better the harder the fight due to being the games best resurrection machine. With Auto-CP and purely built for durability and speed, it's virtually impossible to lose with her in your party. She also acts as an amazing fuel cell for the CP based characters such as Agate and Richard.

Characterwise, she needed to be there for the latter quarter of the game to work at all, but she ends up underdeveloped due to kevin and phantasma itself being the focus.

[asdf]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Gameplaywise, Ries gets better the harder the fight due to being the games best resurrection machine. With Auto-CP and purely built for durability and speed, it's virtually impossible to lose with her in your party. She also acts as an amazing fuel cell for the CP based characters such as Agate and Richard.

Characterwise, she needed to be there for the latter quarter of the game to work at all, but she ends up underdeveloped due to kevin and phantasma itself being the focus.

Eh, resurrection is nice but it's not like it's *that* valuable. I don't consider her resurrection to be better than someone with Athelas for instance (in the situations where people are dying I'd rather have a full health character than a half health with 50 CP character in most cases - on nightmare half HP isn't really any better than being at 1 HP because you'll die in 1 hit either way), and even without athelas it's not *that* much better than just thelas (and thelas is really easy to get so you shouldn't have any trouble getting that on someone). The resurrect is a decent ability, but it's nothing groundbreaking - overall I think I'd consider her fairly average in terms of combat compared to other characters, maybe a bit below average - but being average means you don't want her on your party because there are only 4 characters being used and 16 characters to choose from.

[Kyle G]

Well, I'd tap that.

[AnemoneMeer]

Originally posted by asdf:

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Gameplaywise, Ries gets better the harder the fight due to being the games best resurrection machine. With Auto-CP and purely built for durability and speed, it's virtually impossible to lose with her in your party. She also acts as an amazing fuel cell for the CP based characters such as Agate and Richard.

Characterwise, she needed to be there for the latter quarter of the game to work at all, but she ends up underdeveloped due to kevin and phantasma itself being the focus.

Eh, resurrection is nice but it's not like it's *that* valuable. I don't consider her resurrection to be better than someone with Athelas for instance (in the situations where people are dying I'd rather have a full health character than a half health with 50 CP character in most cases - on nightmare half HP isn't really any better than being at 1 HP because you'll die in 1 hit either way), and even without athelas it's not *that* much better than just thelas (and thelas is really easy to get so you shouldn't have any trouble getting that on someone). The resurrect is a decent ability, but it's nothing groundbreaking - overall I think I'd consider her fairly average in terms of combat compared to other characters, maybe a bit below average - but being average means you don't want her on your party because there are only 4 characters being used and 16 characters to choose from.

It's both a resurrection skill and a 50 CP donation +50% heal without a cast time. Great if they die. Great if they're alive and need CP like the people I listed. For CP based characters, it is a VAST improvement over Athelas, because most of them have enough HP to survive a hit of incoming damage, but would struggle to get the CP to spam with impunity.

The problem with Ries from a party construction standpoint is that Richard, Renne and Joshua exist, and eat three slots by default, and you rarely have three slots through the game. Ries is certainly on the high end of the power spectrum of the cast due to being a functional damage + support character and the best single target CP battery in the game. Agate LOVES her due to her easily enabling 200 CP Dragon Dives, and Richard uses so much CP so quickly that without a battery, he can burn out. Being on the high end of the spectrum isn't enough in a game with 16 characters and at least 5 characters easily better than her.

Personally, I place her as the 6th strongest party member, with my tiering being Renne(Earth wall solves all her problems Can be built physical or magical and do amazing at both. Pater Mater is pseudo full map and hits like a bus if she builds physical)>Joshua(Max speed, spam support spells) >Richard(Damage/10) >Tita(Orbal Gear Tita: Lolis of the Patriots. Vastly weaker before it.) >Kevin (I hold in my hand the chalice of heaven, may its holiest of lights act as our shield) >Ries>Kloe(Slower than Renne, orbment sucks. Sanctus Nova exists) >Agate (Dragon Dive) >Schera (Enables others, useless on her own) >Mueller (Chain crafts, ragna bind, high damage) >Olivier(Still gearscrewed. Still heals) >Anelace (would be below Zane if it wasn't for a long period where Anelace is gearcarried hard) >Zane(So slow. Distend at least makes it sort of worth it offensively)>Julia (Attack Orders: The Character)>Josette(Has utility, unlike Estelle, still can't fight)>Estelle(Bad at everything. Julia has better buff. Josette has Stampede and Bobcat, cannot reliably do damage with crap attack stat and can't debuff either)

[Hat8]

You dislike her for not being overly emotional or gregarious?

Alright then.