Which is your favorite chapter? And you least favorite chapter?

[HarbingerOfDestruction「俺様」]

Which is your favorite chapter in the first Trails Of Cold Steel game?
And your least favorite chapter?

This game has 8 chapters (Including the prologue) and while all of them are good in my eyes, there were a few that felt a chore to go through, especially if you're going for a max AP playthrough like I did last time on Nightmare.

So allow me to start with my own opinion:

My favorite: 4th Chapter: A Midsummer's Revels. This chapter is exceptional in my eyes, not only is the game's pacing begins to advance at a faster pace, we also get character background stories of, Elliot, Machias, and Fie. Additionally, being that Laura is my favorite Class VII character aside from Rean, her feud with Fie was finally resolved in the 4th chapter as well, after feeling stagnant for a while.

We also have the Imperial Liberation Front unveilings, as well as V, S and C introductions.
Class VII finally meet one of the best characters in the series and the most intimidating character in the franchise overall. Chancellor Gilliath Osrborne.
Most of the boss fights in that chapter were fun to be pitted against and Heimdallr is beautiful and its OST is pretty darn good, especially in the 3rd Cold Steel game, but let's not get into that..

Least Favorite: 3rd Chapter: Beyond The Railways. Only part of the game that felt like a slug for me to get through, the overall story feels uninteresting and tedious at parts. Doesn't help that map of the Nord Highland is huge and completing side quests is tedious at best, I'd probably feel way worse about it without turbo mode.

While it does have a few good character introductions such as Gwyn, and the past of Alisa revealed, and the ending is pretty epic by itself. The Nord Highlands soundtrack is incredible (Too bad it's not returned in CS2) - The rest of the chapter feels like filler, to me at least.

Alas, this is my opinion. What is yours?

[Stabbey]

My favorite is Chapter 6. If there's one word to describe the chapter, it's surprise. The chapter has one surprise after another, most of which come out of nowhere to completely blind-side you. In addition, this is where your power level is at peak, and you can complete development of characters. (This is where you can turn Alisa into a speedy, unkillable magic spammer.)

It's also a heavily Alisa-centric chapter, and it clearly demonstrates how her character has developed since both the start of the game, and Chapter 3.

Roer itself is an interesting city with a lot of varied terrain and the quests send you to several different places. It's not the largest city in the game, but it feels the closest to a modern city.

***

My second favorite is Chapter 3 for the complete change of pace and different feel to everywhere else in the game. (And it's also quite Alisa-centric and has that very nice nighttime scene.)

***

My least favorite chapter is Chapter 4, because there are just so many friggin' people to talk to. The quests are a lot of running around and busywork without even monsters to deal with along the way, and the dungeons are brown sewers where you can't really avoid fights if you don't feel like fighting.

Not to mention it's the culmination of the Laura-Fie feud, and I was very underwhelmed at the resolution of that and Laura's complete non-reason for being cold and angry with Fie. It made the whole feud seem like a waste of time.

EDIT: Thanks for the reminder, butterbattle22! On the bright side of Chapter 4, it has absolutely No. Millium. Whatsoever.

[butterbattle22]

Chapter 3 was also my favorite chapter. It's completely different from the first two and felt super relaxing after chapter 2. Some people will find it boring, but I love slice of life, and this brought Trails back to its roots. The roots being a very paced story that wastes people's time. Hehehe.

But seriously, Sky FC is still my favorite.

I can't say I have a least favorite chapter.

While it does have a few good character introductions such as Gwyn, and the past of Alisa revealed, and the ending is pretty epic by itself. The Nord Highlands soundtrack is incredible (Too bad it's not returned in CS2) - The rest of the chapter feels like filler, to me at least.

Don't forget Millium. Ah, the moment it first turned into a hammer. Bliss.

[zefyris]

I have to go with chapter 3 as well. I like how they made us fee llike everything here was beautiful, vast, harsh yet welcoming; the horse travel and so on was a nice touch as well, but most importantly, it's by far the chapter that made me the most worried about NPCs' fate. They really nailed the tension with the republic and the worries that all those nice peoples that we learned to like, including several children, may at any moment become caught in the middle of a war with nowhere to hide. The chase, encountering Milium and Alisa's grandpa, discovering that you can break stuff in the environment and the like was cool as well, and of course encountering that general was nice too. lots of nice stuff from start to finish.


In reverse chapter 5 failed to do any of this. The town itself and its ambiance with the fog was nailed properly imo, but it failed at making me care for the children in danger completely, and it also got two of the most annoying boss encounters, in the form of the floor 5 blue dragon that is way too fast and the end boss of the castle that requires your entire party to be immune to a type of ailment that was never a problem before entering this dungeon, and doesn't provide any way to loot or buy items countering the ailment once inside (and you can't exit the dungeon once caught inside). stupid design imo.
The last part of the 5th chapter was good though. So I think I may still like it better than chapter 1 which was very basic compared to the others .

So 1st chapter less liked,3rd chapter most liked for me.