How well do the trails of cold steel games play blind?

[Katie]

I'm not one that enjoys using guides. I am curious how forgiving these games are to playing blind. I don't just mean how beatable these games are if you miss a bunch of things, but I also mean how forgiving are these games in making it clear that you are about to miss things or how well-hidden are these missables? Does the game force progression which can cause missables? And if you do miss something despite making an effort, how important are the average items that are missed?

[Koby]

As long as you explore the nooks and crannies and revisit characters to talk to them, you should be fine without a guide.

[Stabbey]

There are only three missables of note: Recipes, Hidden Quests, and Collectible Books/Newspapers. All of which can be found blind by exploring all over and talking to all NPC's every time the main plot updates, and keeping an eye out for things which have shiny lights. EDIT: Wait, there's a FOURTH type of missable in Cold Steel 1: Accessories which have "part of a set" in the description, which are purchasable in stores.

The games get increasingly more merciful to blind playing as the series goes on. For instance, the questing structure is far more organized, new quests won't blindly pop up out of nowhere, the games are structured so that questing happens at a certain point of the story, and then it's main questing, and hidden quests tend to show up at the same time as normal questing, not after. Hidden quests give you items/accessories as a reward, as well as AP which lets you advance your student rank faster, meaning you get better items sooner.

The collectible books you missed earlier can be bought at a pawnshop by leaving and re-entering repeatedly. Collect the whole set and give them to the right person and you get an item to make a single character's ultimate weapon.

The game also tends to warn you about points of no return and make you explicitly confirm moving on instead of just wandering into the main plot and getting locked out of everything else.

As Koby says, if you explore, talk to everyone at every opportunity whenever the dialogue updates, make frequent saves, you should find just about everything.

[Valk]

Tbf they play fine blind. You can just play however you want for most entries in the series. If you want to 100% the games, you've got to do a second playthrough anyway due to NG+ locked content in most cases, so you can just play however. You're guaranteed to miss stuff on a blind run, but if you enjoy the game enough you'll probably be willing to go back and hit it on the second run anyway.

[DooG Is Eternal]

Just finished Cold Steel 1 and playing Cold Steel 2 rn,
Honestly unless you are a trophy hunter, the things that get carried over to the next game is pretty meh....

If I were to do it again I will play it completely blind for first playthrough, and that's what I'm going to do for CS 2.

[Valk]

Originally posted by DooG Is Eternal:

Just finished Cold Steel 1 and playing Cold Steel 2 rn,
Honestly unless you are a trophy hunter, the things that get carried over to the next game is pretty meh....

If I were to do it again I will play it completely blind for first playthrough, and that's what I'm going to do for CS 2.

By extension why even bother with CS1+2 though, because absolutely nothing from CS1+2 saves carries over to CS3+4.
The missable stuff that people tend to care about in kiseki entries is mostly just the side-content for character development or background, or little bonus bits of info, not stuff like "open every single chest" and "obtain every single master quartz" etc.

[DooG Is Eternal]

Originally posted by Valk:

Originally posted by DooG Is Eternal:

Just finished Cold Steel 1 and playing Cold Steel 2 rn,
Honestly unless you are a trophy hunter, the things that get carried over to the next game is pretty meh....

If I were to do it again I will play it completely blind for first playthrough, and that's what I'm going to do for CS 2.

By extension why even bother with CS1+2 though, because absolutely nothing from CS1+2 saves carries over to CS3+4.
The missable stuff that people tend to care about in kiseki entries is mostly just the side-content for character development or background, or little bonus bits of info, not stuff like "open every single chest" and "obtain every single master quartz" etc.

Well it's how all the vets of the series keep overselling - "interact with every NPCS to enjoy the game" that leads to FOMO making me wanted to do all these extra stuff, Having gone through Sky 1 and CS 1, I realised I don't really care much about those side characters, side content, and side quests are boring.

Going forward for rest of the series, I'm just going to focus on the main story which I'm interested in.

[Valk]

Originally posted by DooG Is Eternal:

Originally posted by Valk:

By extension why even bother with CS1+2 though, because absolutely nothing from CS1+2 saves carries over to CS3+4.
The missable stuff that people tend to care about in kiseki entries is mostly just the side-content for character development or background, or little bonus bits of info, not stuff like "open every single chest" and "obtain every single master quartz" etc.

Well it's how all the vets of the series keep overselling - "interact with every NPCS to enjoy the game" that leads to FOMO making me wanted to do all these extra stuff, Having gone through Sky 1 and CS 1, I realised I don't really care much about those side characters, side content, and side quests are boring.

Going forward for rest of the series, I'm just going to focus on the main story which I'm interested in.

Hate to break it to you, but CS4 kinda....locks the true ending behind that side content. It's the only one that does that in the whole series, but the result is that the longest game with the most side content, and the finale to act 1, has a missable canon ending if you dont do the side content. And yes, that is the important part. It isn't an "additional ending that just gives a bonus fight and slightly different outcome". It is a case of "if you get the not true ending, a completely different non-canon ending plays out, rather than the canon true ending which leads into Reverie"
Also I'll be honest, most of the side content is still worth *doing*, its just, not worth "going out of your way to force yourself to do all of it without missing anything". You get plenty of main cast development found through said sidequests, and considering that most of them are not TOO long, its not like you're wasting 30m+ just to get two lines of dialogue to do with a main characters backstory or anything.

[DooG Is Eternal]

Originally posted by Valk:

Originally posted by DooG Is Eternal:

Well it's how all the vets of the series keep overselling - "interact with every NPCS to enjoy the game" that leads to FOMO making me wanted to do all these extra stuff, Having gone through Sky 1 and CS 1, I realised I don't really care much about those side characters, side content, and side quests are boring.

Going forward for rest of the series, I'm just going to focus on the main story which I'm interested in.

Hate to break it to you, but CS4 kinda....locks the true ending behind that side content. It's the only one that does that in the whole series, but the result is that the longest game with the most side content, and the finale to act 1, has a missable canon ending if you dont do the side content. And yes, that is the important part. It isn't an "additional ending that just gives a bonus fight and slightly different outcome". It is a case of "if you get the not true ending, a completely different non-canon ending plays out, rather than the canon true ending which leads into Reverie"
Also I'll be honest, most of the side content is still worth *doing*, its just, not worth "going out of your way to force yourself to do all of it without missing anything". You get plenty of main cast development found through said sidequests, and considering that most of them are not TOO long, its not like you're wasting 30m+ just to get two lines of dialogue to do with a main characters backstory or anything.

No worries, thanks for the heads-up, I'm still going to play it blind for CS4 even it won't leads to "true ending"

Just going to watch the alternate ending on youtube and save myself from doing the boring side quests. :)

[Valk]

Originally posted by DooG Is Eternal:

Originally posted by Valk:

Hate to break it to you, but CS4 kinda....locks the true ending behind that side content. It's the only one that does that in the whole series, but the result is that the longest game with the most side content, and the finale to act 1, has a missable canon ending if you dont do the side content. And yes, that is the important part. It isn't an "additional ending that just gives a bonus fight and slightly different outcome". It is a case of "if you get the not true ending, a completely different non-canon ending plays out, rather than the canon true ending which leads into Reverie"
Also I'll be honest, most of the side content is still worth *doing*, its just, not worth "going out of your way to force yourself to do all of it without missing anything". You get plenty of main cast development found through said sidequests, and considering that most of them are not TOO long, its not like you're wasting 30m+ just to get two lines of dialogue to do with a main characters backstory or anything.

No worries, thanks for the heads-up, I'm still going to play it blind for CS4 even it won't leads to "true ending"

Just going to watch the alternate ending on youtube and save myself from doing the boring side quests. :)

About that. The true ending is one of those things that is just....too good to not play. It has the best boss fight in the whole series, and is also what the entirity of act 1 has been building up to. Watching a video of it is going to leave you with a far worse experience of what it is.
Also to be honest, if you hate the idea of stuff like sidequests, why are you even playing the series? RPGs like this are notorious for sidequests and character development. Sounds like you might have more fun elsewhere, to be honest.

[DooG Is Eternal]

Originally posted by Valk:

Originally posted by DooG Is Eternal:

No worries, thanks for the heads-up, I'm still going to play it blind for CS4 even it won't leads to "true ending"

Just going to watch the alternate ending on youtube and save myself from doing the boring side quests. :)

About that. The true ending is one of those things that is just....too good to not play. It has the best boss fight in the whole series, and is also what the entirity of act 1 has been building up to. Watching a video of it is going to leave you with a far worse experience of what it is.
Also to be honest, if you hate the idea of stuff like sidequests, why are you even playing the series? RPGs like this are notorious for sidequests and character development. Sounds like you might have more fun elsewhere, to be honest.

I just like how the series are connected, intertwined story, and the lore. It's well well thought out and intricating, I'm just treating this as more of a VN to me than a game, just like Persona 5, because the gameplay loop isn't anything to shout about, just passable for me.

So what's wrong with just enjoying the main story?

[Dr. Rudolf von Richten]

Regarding CS IV; even if you skip all the side content, you'll get an opportunity, after the regular ending, to 'go back' a bit, do a certain sidequest-ish thing, and then return to just before the final boss. When you fight that final boss (again), you'll get to the True Final Boss and the True ending.

Since even if you did the side content, you have to do the normal ending anyway before being able to get to the True ending, the only practical difference is that you have to do the regular final boss fight again. Well, and that 'sidequest' I mentioned earlier (which is just a single boss fight) which you'd otherwise have done earlier in the story.

I mean, there are lots of good reasons to do all the side content, but 'being able to see the true ending' is not one of them. Falcom clearly wants you to see the True ending, and puts up only a minimal roadblock for players to be able to do so even if they missed out on the side content.

[Valk]

Originally posted by Dr. Rudolf von Richten:

Regarding CS IV; even if you skip all the side content, you'll get an opportunity, after the regular ending, to 'go back' a bit, do a certain sidequest-ish thing, and then return to just before the final boss. When you fight that final boss (again), you'll get to the True Final Boss and the True ending.

Since even if you did the side content, you have to do the normal ending anyway before being able to get to the True ending, the only practical difference is that you have to do the regular final boss fight again. Well, and that 'sidequest' I mentioned earlier (which is just a single boss fight) which you'd otherwise have done earlier in the story.

I mean, there are lots of good reasons to do all the side content, but 'being able to see the true ending' is not one of them. Falcom clearly wants you to see the True ending, and puts up only a minimal roadblock for players to be able to do so even if they missed out on the side content.

Oh wasn't it tied to the thors unity rating? I thought the criteria for it were that sidequest, lost arts, and then maxed out unity rating. Maybe I'm just misremembering. You definitely needed to do some of the side content for it, but maybe it was all stuff that once you could start it, it would remain for the rest of the game.

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by Valk:

Oh wasn't it tied to the thors unity rating? I thought the criteria for it were that sidequest, lost arts, and then maxed out unity rating. Maybe I'm just misremembering. You definitely needed to do some of the side content for it, but maybe it was all stuff that once you could start it, it would remain for the rest of the game.

If you want to be eligible for the true ending right of the bat you need to do a few very specific sidequests and get all Lost Arts to unlock the "?????" quest.

If you beat the final boss without meeting the requirements and chose to "go back in time" you can jump straight to the "?????" quest and then go back to the final dungeon. You miss out on some background and cool bling, but can get the True Ending regardless.

[Legendary Mr. Tiddles]

About Cold Steel IV, one of the coolest things they did, was that all the side quests that were once completely hidden in previous games are now marked on your map, and you no longer have to talk to every faceless nobody twice to pick up whatever they want to give you; they hand over their old books and whatever trash right off the bat the first time you hit them up. I can appreciate a good chat or a treasure hunt, but this was a HUGE quality of life improvement. I NO LONGER fall asleep mid-conversation. My dignity is saved.

Also, Katie, my lady-friend, you'll want functional eyes for this game, trust me.

(I'm just messing.)

[Valk]

Originally posted by Legendary Mr. Tiddles:

About Cold Steel IV, one of the coolest things they did, was that all the side quests that were once completely hidden in previous games are now marked on your map, and you no longer have to talk to every faceless nobody twice to pick up whatever they want to give you; they hand over their old books and whatever trash right off the bat the first time you hit them up. I can appreciate a good chat or a treasure hunt, but this was a HUGE quality of life improvement. I NO LONGER fall asleep mid-conversation. My dignity is saved.

Also, Katie, my lady-friend, you'll want functional eyes for this game, trust me.

(I'm just messing.)

Didn't they start doing that in cold steel 1? They had red markers for main quests, and green markers for side quests on the map in 1+2.
Or was it more that they specifically removed hidden quests entirely, meaning you couldn't accidentally just skip over a quest because you never realised it existed.