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Just start with two hours of the first game; see if it is to your liking. But it sounded like you're up for it anyway. You will get completely absorbed into the world of Zemuria unlike any other rpg world--another bold statement. The following games of course build the world further upon the foundation laid in the first game.
Also, I think Estelle as the protagonist of the Sky trilogy is one of best characters in all of rpg games (with my limited experience and expertise). Just watching her take the helm time and time again is a joy, and she takes the reins of the story within about two hours of the first game. The rest is just a grand adventure.
Plus, the concept of a Bracer is fundamental throughout all of the Trails games; you are introduced and really exposed to what a Bracer is and does during the Sky trilogy. What they do and how people relate to them is very thoroughly explored throughout the Sky games. Bracers remain fairly important and influential in Erebonia as much as the Liberl setting. So, although upon meeting any Bracer in the Erebonia arc, one can infer their qualities such as power, generosity, etc, if you'd like to feel intimately what it's like to walk in their shoes, just follow Estelle and Joshua's adventure from student Bracers to among the best of the best. It's fun.
Really, the only thing you'd get out of playing the Sky Trilogy before playing the Cold Steel Trilogy is that a few beloved characters from the Sky cast make a triumphant return (in the supportive cast) in Cold Steel. Their re-introduction is just so much more impactful if you'd gotten to know them from the earlier series. I nearly died upon seeing them again.
All this talk about playing the older trilogies prior to Cold Steel in order to enrich your enjoyment really boils down to, let's say, playing Cold Steel w/o playing Sky is a 99%; playing Cold Steel w playing Sky is a 100%. Kinda negligible. These games really can stand alone. We just recommend you play all, simply cuz they're all fun as hell.
Now to answer your question: you should start with "Trails in the Sky", and then after that you should play "Trails in the Sky SC", and then "Trails in the Sky the 3rd". After that, you can play "Trails of Cold Steel", and then "Trails of Cold Steel II" once it's ported to PC.
If you want more details, you can check out this spoiler free guide I made here on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1187195045
It is meant to explain what this franchise is, a little of its history, what games there are in the series, and what the best orders there are to play them in.
I'll probably be spending the majority of next week smashing 3rd out.
She's certainly one of the least cliched. Joshua is also surprisingly refreshing as a lead male character; he definitely has more of a defined personality than many "self-insert" JRPG protagonists.
This game is apart of an ongoing series, called "The Legend of Heroes". It is divided into story arcs, which have their own beginning, middle, and end. As such, you should start with the beginning of one of the arcs.
The arcs are as follows:
The Liberl arc (Trails in the Sky: First Chapter -> Second Chapter -> the 3rd)
The Crossbell arc (NOT LOCALIZED YET)
The Empire arc (Trails of Cold Steel 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4)
You can either start here with ToCS1, or with the first arc at Trails in the Sky First Chapter.
Despite what other people may say, it is NOT in anyway essential that you begin with the first game. To be brutally honest, the first arc is only loosely connected to the Empire arc, and Trails of Cold Steel 1 stands on it's own as a fantastic entry into the franchise. In fact, I'd actually advise people to start their journey into the series here. If you finish this game and are hooked on the franchise, then go ahead and play the older games.
Umm, I am hesitant to go into details due to possible spoilers, but this isn't true at all. If you've played or know of the events in the future Cold Steel games, you would know this is not the case. Not to even mention the Crossbell Arc.
I would also argue against this, but again, going into detail would bring up spoilers.
If you didn't play sky you would probably have very different opinion on chancellor one of the key characters, hadn't know about Prince and many more other things.
- Trails in the Sky FC
This is where the story begins and you couldn't find better starting point. Problem is beginning of the game which is kind of slow. Other problem is that this game is already 14 years so you must be prepered for that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP-aoI7x51U
- Trails of Cold Steel
2nd possible best starting point and this is where I began my journey with The Legend of Heroes. Developers tried to minimize any spoilers of prevoius games of the series but they couldn't avoid all of them. By playing this game you must be prepared that you WILL get spoiled about Trails in the Sky alas Liberl Arc.
What spoilers? The only way ToCS1 connects to the Liberl arc is that it includes a handful of supporting characters (Olivier, Osborne, Lechter, and Phantom Thief B) from those games, and playing the Liberl arc is in no way essential to understanding or empathizing with their story in Cold Steel 1. The plots of the two arcs are almost completely unrelated. I absolutely cannot recommend someone spend 150 hours playing through a trilogy of games for the twenty minutes of connecting plot points just so they can get "the best experience" if they came for Cold Steel.
To be brutally honest, I honestly feel that playing Trails of Cold Steel first, then going back and playing the Sky games was the best move for me. Meeting certain characters, and hearing vague references to past events allowed me to focus on certain parts of the 'Sky story that I would have absolutely overlooked had I not known to look out for them. Furthermore, Trails in the Sky's worldbuilding has some things to be desired; with ToCS1, I would've missed the intricacies of whenever the Empire, Crossbell, Orbments (which was incredibly lacking in explanation in 'Sky), and the overall state of the world over the past fifty years.
When I replayed ToCS1 after binging the Sky trilogy, my perspective on a few events and characters changed, but in no way did it make me go "woah, NOW I understand that!" ToCS1 stands perfectly fine without the previous games.
That said, I've heard conflicting reports that you need to have played the Crossbell arc to understand Sen 3. I can already see how Crossbell is going to factor into the Empire arc going forward, but I do not know to what extent Sen 3 is actually a continuation of that storyline, or if it's just Kiseki fans overemphasizing playing all of the games.
spoiler for fc and sc
If you start or not with the sky game, both hakken gate event will be different for you. The one in FC will be funnier if you start in cold steel and know who this little blond guy is, sometimes i wish i knew about him first xD. But the one in SC... well it's far better to play this part of the game without you knowing about him first
@cold_steel_iii Somebody will have a fun surprise when meeting the salty one.
Well for the biggest one: (Trails in the Sky SC Big Spoiler) Olivier being a prince. And there are more spoilers for both the Liberl and Crossbell games, but they are more minor.
True, but that wasn't what I was arguing about.
This is what I was talking about. Cold Steel I does not make up the whole Erebonia Arc. You keep saying things like this when you haven't even played a single game after CS I. If you haven't played the other games in the Erebonia Arc, how can you say its plot is unrelated to the Liberl Arc?
Kondo, the President of Falcom himself, has said this about Cold Steel IV: "Sen no Kiseki IV will be an important entry in the 14-year-old series, something they've been working to since FC. The logo therefore contains elements of all prior games."
For just Cold Steel I? Sure. I've always said that it was okay to start with this entry, that is one of the things it was intended to do, but it certainly isn't the most dieal starting point as you will get spoiled. I've eevn seen some people have a harder time going back to the older games after beating Cold Steel due to its age. I recommended FC as a starting point, because the OP asked where to start, and FC is the first and best game to start with in the series.
And it very well probably was. There is nothing wrong with starting with CS I, aside from the spoilers/references, which may not mean that much to some people. I was only ever arguing against you saying the Arcs were mostly unrelated and that all the Arcs have their own ending.
The same could be said for Cold Steel.
Trails in the Sky focuses on a much smaller scale than Trails of Cold Steel does. Liberl's circumstances are much different than that of the Erebonia's. Liberl focuses on its own problems and is a smaller nation than Erebonia, and Liberl is also situated in a less 'messy' place unlike Crossbell, while Erebonia is a national powerhouse. It is only natural that Erebonia has a bigger view into the world than Liberl.
Orbments get a much more detailed explanation in FC in the first 30 minutes than in Cold Steel. Unless you are refering to battle orbments onlly, in which case I would agree with you that they gave a more thorough Tutorial in Cold Steel. But otherwise, FC goes to greater lengths to explain what Orbments and Quartz and Septium are.
While maybe not "Wow!" moments, I can think of quite a few things in Cold Steel that would mean much more to you after playing the Sky Trilogy: (Spoilers for the entire Sky Trilogy and the first Cold Steel) Everything and anything to do with the Society for one. Sharon being an Enforcer is a huge reveal that won't mean much to anyone who hasn't played Sky first. And then you have the Azure Abyss, whose reveal also won't mean as much without the Sky games.
Then there is the Higher Elements and what they actually mean. If you only played CS, you would think "Oh a new battle mechanic" when it is introduced in Nord. But since the game just casually introduces this with Emma, it really never explains what the presence of the Higher Elements means. Only Trails in the Sky the 3rd does that. After playing the 3rd, every time you see the Higher Elements active, it should set off red flags letting you know that "something isn't right with this area". And for a less important scene: You have that flashback to Star Door 8 in the game.
I'd say that you can play Sen III without Crossbell and Sky about as much as you can play Sen III without Sen I and II. Sen IV is going to be eevn more reliant on those past games as well, as can be seen in that quote from Kondo.
I don't think it's possible to overemphasize playing all the games, since that is intended and the main point of the series is its interconnnectivity. You need all the games to understand the whole plot of the series.
But as for how much Crossbell factors into the Erebonia Arc: You'll have a good idea of that after you play Cold Steel II.
Hehehe, I had the same thought. xD
Im pretty sure biggest spoiler that connects Sky and CS not that Olivier being a prince. since you learn it in CS rather early. I think the biggest ones are the Olivier and chancellor scheming against one another. Chancellor started war in Liberl in rather disgusting way, he involved Ouroboros in that ( which raises a question for me about his death ). And overall structure of Ouroboros who definetely seems to be major theme for CS aswell. All these topics are hidden in CS1.
You are correct that that is a big connection between them, but I was only mentioning things that CS actually spoils about Sky. That thing that is shown early is a big spoiler for Sky SC, while the connection you mention under the second spoiler tag is a more important connection between the games, it doesn't really spoil much from Sky.
But you certainly can play Cold Steel 1, and probably also 2, without any problems. But past that, they assume you've played everything. So if you do play Cold Steel, you're going to want to go back and play Sky before moving on (which is a large part of why I assume we're getting Crossbell eventually, it's kind of necessary).
I'd also recommend starting with Sky, because while overall it is excellent, the first game has a slow burn. A lot of stuff is only vague foreshadowing that wll be really important later. FC is basically a whole game dedicated to what, in a lot of RPGs, is the opening act - some weird stuff is going on, but you don't know what any of it means yet.
So playing Cold Steel 1 first would make FC a bit harder to get through for people who are already kind of bothered by the slow pacing, because they'll know some of what's coming. In that sense, I think Sky is a better place to start.
I also think that skipping 3d sky isn't that bad an idea, except few scenes it's pretty insignificant for overall plot even in Sky series, but maybe it's just me, because i didn't really like it.