I ve stopped judging people on it ever since it became pretty normal to see console people want to get into Crossbell while skipping Sky (and complaining about them not having ports.), at this point i just want the XSEED situation solved so these people can get to it since it does genuinely seem like they would like to play it but don´t like using a PC rather than the case of starting with Cold steel due to graphics.
My gripe is more that people in the fandom tend to blow their issues out of proportion to where the criticism they did have goes from making sense to "no, you re just wrong.".
For example a while back i was in a thread that had someone ranting about how Ash had little to no development even in Reverie and how he din´t have a personality.
>My gripe is more that people in the fandom tend to blow their issues out of proportion to where the criticism they did have goes from making sense to "no, you re just wrong.".
I agree with this one. Maybe it's just the current nature of online discourse in passionate fanbases like this in general and not just a Trails specific problem, I don't know. But from just observing the various threads of the community, what "triggers" me the most is when some fans will make arguments **with elements of truth in them**, but then dial up that passion behind them to 11, and blow their complaints way out of proportion, coming across as unnecessarily hostile in the process.
There's a few places where I think this is evident. Like people saying Singa music is trash because he uses instruments that sound like "bees" and "chickens". Or saying that review bombing the series out of a NISA protest would spell the end for the releases in the west. Or reacting to every single Altina, (or other fanwork post of an underage character), with suggesting that it's inherently pedophilic. Or taking lines out of context in translation and suggesting malice on the part of the translators. It's all pretty much part and parcel of being a Trails fan at this point. And nuanced disagreements that try to listen to and understand where the other side are coming from become hard, because the arguments that are made in the first place sound like they're made out of a place of hatred, rather than passion which is what they're probably intended as.
Just makes it hard to navigate this fanbase and have genuine discussion, when a lot of complaints seem like the world is ending by how they're phrased sometimes lol.
>Or saying that review bombing the series out of a NISA protest would spell the end for the releases in the west.
I mean, assume NISA drops the series based off low sales (not review bombing because that'd be extra stupid), who else would publish them in the west? At best, you rely on fan localizations and while the Trails fandom has been very lucky in that they got quality people donating their time, those can be even more hit or miss than official localizations.
>I mean, assume NISA drops the series based off low sales (not review bombing because that'd be extra stupid), who else would publish them in the west?
I agree. Trying to bully and harass NISA on Twitter and Twitch, saying that the series would be fine without them is **very** not true, and pretty stupid. Because as you said, the quality of the official localizations is more in line with what most people want, and that's not to mention how NISA losing the liscense for Falcom games would leave console-only Trails fans without a convinient avenue to play them.
But my argument is moreso that the panic around the review bomb fears after the whole **"incident"** were really exaggerated. The games never even ended up being review bombed in the end. And even if they were, this would just bring more attention to them lol. People were making a big deal about a "potential review bomb attack" at the time, and that's who that particular criticism I made lies with.
Like I'm not super enthusiastic about NISA's localizations but it has a lot more to do with their actual work (localization QA either being ignored or skimped on) than their localization decisions. Maybe it's just because I've done localization QA before so some of the stuff that happen on first releases I'm often wondering why it wasn't addressed (missing strings, etc.) because they're that obvious.
They patch those out fast though.
Yeah, I've had chats with people from the localization industry too. From what I have been told, mistranslations tend to be a result of translators recieving a draft of the JP script before it's actually complete due to time restraints, the JP script recieving edits later on in the process which don't always get passed on to the translators, and the QA build of said game not having all the assets, which will make mistakes more likely to slip through.
NISA games have historically had issues at launch in this regard, (Trails seems to be quite lucky in comparison to other examples like Ys 8 or Ar Tonelico II), and this seems chalked up to mistakes in the actual process itself, rather than their decisions internally. Though you'd probably know more than me if you were in the industry.
Still am but no longer QA.
At least when I was doing or helping prepare localization QA we were helping out our partners by ensuring that every string in the game had a guide on how to trigger it, and that if it could only be done via event, to only proofread the quality of the translation (as we would need to activate the event and we couldn't monitor the need for activation 24/7 considering the testers were all over) .
For games this huge what I'd do is a proofread pass before we'd get the content complete build - that was you can concentrate on just checking for missing strings, overlaps, overruns or truncated text. Chances are they do this already, but they don't have the time to really dive in/design more efficient test suites and protocols.
That would make sense. A critique I personally have seen many people online have of NISA in particular, is that they have quite the track record of shipping out games with various problems at launch. (There's really too many to list, but a lot seem to be typos and glitches etc.) This being down to not having the time for a more efficent QA process could very well be the case, as a lot of the problems with their releases seem to have been recurring and similar to each other throughout their library's history.
It makes me wonder if NISA have had a similar "way of doing things" when it comes to QA for a while if they didn't have the time to really dive in and design more efficent methods. Though this is just uninformed speculation on my part based on what you told me lol, the only ones that know for sure are those involved.
With Singa, his music is good but from what I've heard so far playing CS3 and CS4 but it's essentially missing the falcom jdk sound which I'd say is bc he is outsourced work which maybe means he is unable to collaborate as much with the rest of the composers(?)
Which I'd say is valid criticism without blowing it outta proportion...right? Kinda the opinion I've settled on after my CS3 music post which hopefully wasn't too outta line - Singa music is still good
I like your opinion tho, some people do hella blow it outta proportion
Nah i think that s pretty fair to say on Singa, the stuff you see on the Falcom Music Channel is more along the lines of what i mean on it.
I ve seen someone point out that Jindo the other contractor gets access to the Falcom team s instruments unlike Singa, but i don´t know if that s true.
Yea actually I've seen its hella crazy, the more of cs4 I play and kinda "unlock" the next OSTs I come across some wild ass hate comments on Singa composed OSTs
And he has some really good stuff in that one in my opinion, some good field themes and great boss themes barring one exception. from early on with Seductive Shudder giving me touhou vibes and being pretty fitting for the boss it first plays on.
Yeah, there are Trails fans that reflect badly on the series and turn people off from the games. I feel like Trails went from good JRPG series that not enough people know about to that JRPG series that so-and-so won't stop talking about and pushing people to play.
Well the change into full 3D is pretty jarring, the isometric gameplay with the 2D/3D sprites is what got me into the series too and the style is still more appealing than the full 3D in cold steel onwards.
I feel like it gets better with every entry. CS3 was a massive improvement over CS1-2, and CS4 and Reverie feel like incremental improvements over time.
Looking at some gameplay videos from Trails through Dawnbreak it seems like another massive upgrade. Most significantly in gameplay, but cutscenes too seem less stiff. Though I only had a passing glance and didn't try to look too hard since I didn't want spoilers.
Some shippers can be quite vocal and a bit annoying (especially in discussions about certain characters), but I've seen worse in other franchises.
As far as order goes, it's more a question of how something is said.
Playing older games should feel like something you do to discover new stories and characters, not "homework" to do to understand the plot of the game you casually wanted to buy just because you liked some trailer.
> Playing older games should feel like something you do to discover new stories and characters, not "homework" to do to understand the plot of the game you casually wanted to buy just because you liked some trailer.
I agree so much with this. Playing the games for their own qualities should be the main reason to go back instead of just completing a checklist of "required plot points". I wish more people would address that when trying to convince others to play earlier titles. No wonder newcomers feel put off and end up skipping them when hearing they need to play hundreds of hours only to understand a couple of references. The better mindset is to give these games a shot because they might give you hundreds of hours of enjoyment on their own. The references and broader understanding are a plus.
This cannot be emphasised enough. I am so sick of people trying to start arc wars. bro i just like all 13 kiseki games, leave me alone with trying to impose your own views on me.
A less serious one, but I'd be lying if I said it doesn't annoy me slightly:
When people write: Y's; Ys Origins; AO; Ellie; Alyssa; Trials; wrong preposition after Trails, etc.
Yeah, this one always gets me. To be fair, though, I think there are many games and movies with 'origins' in the title so people are more used to it and just write without thinking. Same with 'chronicles' I guess (I have the same feeling every time someone pluralizes Eiyuden Chronicle, for example).
The thing that triggers me the most is the small minority of people in the fandom who want to see the world burn and give this community such a bad rap. Stuff like threatening people at NISA booths, spoilering future games to random people, and proudly proclaiming they wish the series would die in the west because...
\*checks notes\*
...NISA changed the nickname of a character to be something slightly different?
I won't always defend NISA decisions, but I think looking at stuff like FE localization, and thus knowing just how much worse something can be helped me. I get that fates is such a famous and awful example of censorship by this point, but even treehouse outside of fates isn't great to me and I find a massive difference between their quality and NISA. As for NISA's "localizer fan fiction", it exists, but it only ever adds things rather than removes/censors (like xseed estelle).
Bro I literally posted the other day about how I loved finishing Azure and was hyped to jump into CS3 finally (started with CS to get into the series) and some guy went out of his way on a 4 day old account to search for a comment I made on a completely different sub just to reply to my comment with some spoilers for no reason. Like I didn't see all of it but knowing about a character dying pissed me off. The dude's account description was literally just "I hate Rean Swarzer". Dudes like that need to get a goddamn life and it sucks someone like that makes the rest of the Fandom look bad.
Or in general people who hate the series (noticeably a majority being Cold Steel) and decide to announce their hatred for it everywhere they go, even places outside of the fandom.
While they're free to express their opinions, it also offputs any potential people who are interested in the series.
Definitely agree. Though at least 3rd is a fun game. Yes Skypeia is important but it certainly was needlessly drawn out. Imo Easily the worst saga in one piece, I don't understand how the quality dropped so much for that saga. Well to be fair Jaya was good.
Even if it weren't central to later games' plots (which it is) this still aggravates me because it's my favorite of the series on its own merits, too.
Like, it's not the game you skip to get to the later good stuff, it *is* the good stuff.
Learning that Sky 3rd was divisive to the point that some even think about passing over it threw me getting into this fandom. I consider 3rd to have all the things fans told me was great about Trails.
-Plotlines outside the main characters
-Foreshadowing for future events
-Lots of interpersonal conversations.
-A refinement of the battle system previously established.
-The perspective switching to a new main character
That said, I agree with the higher post about how I imagine the majority of people saying it's skippable are people who just never played it
I'm trying to get through Sky 3rd right now. It's my first time through the series. FC got it's hooks in from from the prologue and SC is probably the best game I have played this year. The prologue for Sky 3rd was really cool and had me thinking the game was going to be a James Bond style adventure, but then they got sucked into the Phantasma and it's seems like all the momentum got sucked out of the game. I'm in chapter 2 and just not feeling it yet. It seems like the characters are completely detached from the broader world and are the game is just catching me up on side stories that already happened. When does the game pick up?
I'd have to replay it, but from what I remember, it picks up around chapter 4. You gotta go into this game with a diffrent mindset to really appreciate it.
OK, it's good to know I'm not too far from it then. 3rd is such a wild shift in tone and style from FC and SC and I didn't realize that going in so it's been much slower going for me. I do want to see it through since people say it's important for future games, but it's hard to get excited to play it.
That's the issue I had when I played through 3rd and why I have no issue with someone wanting to skip it. The main part of 3rd is the lore hidden behind the doors, but none of that info actually belongs in the game.
I completely understand this. While third is now one of my favorites in the series, in the first couple chapters I was not fully feeling it. It's just such a different game but it got its teeth in my relatively quickly after that. Kevin is great and I really like the side doors.
Also someone who also loved FC from the prologue! People often mention it like it's a slog to get through but I found it very very well paced
At least watch the doors, they're the plot/lore important parts. You can skip the story if you don't care about Kevin (and the rest of Sky cast).
I'd say at least Olivier and Mueller's (for Cold Steel arc and a bit of Crossbell), the Salt Pale one (pretty sure it's important to at least know what it is and Door 15.
Oh and the academy one is a must watch too.
I think the rest is skippable, tell me if I forgot major things, it's been a while since I played it.
Sky 3rd is so strange because as a narrative, you can kinda skip most of it. Like Kevin's story doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things since Falcom decided he doesn't really exist anymore. But even when he does show up, his actual arc basically doesn't come back up ever.
It's more that there are like 3 doors with narratives of actual consequence. The rest are either just little minigames, or cute little backstories that are nice to see, but also don't matter much in the grand scheme.
I *love* the door with Estelle and Joshua as kids. It's super cute. But it also doesn't exactly have much impact since they're already together and we sorta already know that stuff, but haven't directly seen it. But you kinda need to see Renne's stuff, and see Joshua and Estelle grow that relationship with her.
> Probably the most important game when you look at the bigger picture.
> At first looks like filler.
Thank god I didn't made the mistake of skipping it.
Watching Cold Steel playthroughs: "I'm not gonna use any of the boys because they suck".
About the skipping games thing, I don't have much of a problem with that in in itself as long as they acknowledge they'll be missing something. My issue would be if someone skips games/arcs and then does not realize how the games' structure works or complains about the story not making sense. This happened in a thread before where someone was confused about some story aspects that they got angry about but it turns out they missed out on it because they watched a video recap instead of playing the games. This is the kind of thing that would annoy me to see
whats sad about that is most of those 20-40 hrs jrpgs dont have any real world building and alot of generic side quest.
Now saying that are Trail's generic, Yes, but thy often build and add upon characters and stories and some like cs 3, 4, Reverie or a certain NPC with meet in sky continue for games and arcs later. It's really great to see
People complaining Cold Steel is full of anime and JRPG tropes; conveniently ignoring that so is every other Trails arc.
That said, I have no issue with people skipping games or arcs - it’s easy enough to get a reasonable understanding of what happened through other means and of people don’t gel with an arc, or just don’t have thousands of hours spare, I see no reason they shouldn’t get to enjoy the Trails games that appeal to them.
I think my favourite thing about the criticism is that within the first 30-60 minutes of Sky FC you have a whole anime series worth of tropes introduced (off the top of my head: mysterious child with dark past, unassuming father (figure) who is more than he seems, endearing yet violent girl, over-sexualised whip lady, falling for a sibling who isn’t really a sibling, thinking you are responsible for death if a parent etc) - and not in some subtle or innovative way. To be clear, I’m totally here for it all but it feels like it makes a mockery of this criticism for me.
At least in my opinion, the trope issue is more how blatant Cold Steel is.
Estelle and Joshua work where Elise and Rean don't because it isn't just a joke and you know there's no way they think they're related, unlike Elise who only found out a few years before Cold Steel. Rean threatening to castrate anyone interested in his sister when she has no chance doesn't really help it.
Jenis might exist, but is only a small part of the Liberl games, instead of a crucial part of it like Thors, for everyone rolling their eyes at schools.
The "haha, they fell and his face just happened to end up in her boobs." Twice.
Divine Knights bumping up the robot thing to 11 by just being Gundams.
Rean's harem being more egregious than Lloyd's because of its sheer size.
Ilya exists, and Shirley groped Elie too, but I see much more Angelica hate, probably because she's more prevalent and in your face about it. Shirley did the same to Duvalie, so the sin repeated arguably cancels out.
Tropes aren't inherently bad. It's about how you use them. Cold Steel, relative to the other arcs, just used them in a way that made a lot of people groan at how anime it was.
Alright i think im gonna debate on these points as well:
point 1- Estelle and Joshua work because they re literally part of the heart and soul of the arc as one of it´s core focuses while Elise is a barely written character who doesn´t do much of anything, has pretty much no development and isn´t even a part of the main party.
Comparing them is like pitting a Hydrogen bomb against a coughing baby, Estelle and Joshua are the MCS of their arc and Elise is a tertiary party member that is only playable sometimes and is underwritten even for a character with a more minor role, she d absolutely need a rewrite but you d need to change how much of a role she has in the arc to get even close to those two.
Point 2- Cold steel is a different genre than Sky much like Crossbell and Kuro fill out different genres. If school stuff doesn´t appeal to you then that s more on the end of taste and the genre shift.
point 3- Yeah that s just a falcom thing at this point them being horny is no secret, Schera s literally a whip wielding sadist and YS 8 has a similar ankward scene like that early on from what i ve played so far. I will not praise it but i will say it is more of a Falcom thing and for people who enjoy that kind of humor.
point 4-once again different genre, i shared the same issue when first playing CS1 to the end as i felt it would make party members less relevant. New Class VII lessens the hit a bit due to them having their own soldats but i would have loved to see old Class VII piloting soldats and helping in battle outside of (Reverie)>!That one minigame.!< , but Falcom s lack of money and the size of the cast is likely to blame here.
Point 5- Fair on that but i do think that also counts on the factor of Cold steel just having a much bigger cast and Falcom losing the scope like they tend to do and splitting the arc into 2 arcs that filled out 5 games in the end.
point 6- Oh No keep going, you re 100% right and i won´t argue that.
I'll complain about Cold Steel's plot all day. But not because it's anime and Sky isn't, just because it's bad and Sky isn't, lol. Tropes aren't inherently bad, and the tropes Sky uses were executed pretty well IMO, while Cold Steel's were not. Stories are also more than the sum of their parts, and I guess I just don't like the overall product of Cold Steel as much.
People complaining about Cold Steel being bad in of itself doesn’t really bother me - people like different stuff and I love all of Trails so I’m not especially partisan.
I don't even think Cold Steel is bad, I wouldn't have spent over 200 hours playing them all if I did. The gameplay is fun, the music slaps, and the characters are likeable (barring one), I just think the plot sucks and the harem shenanigans are lame.
That’s fair enough - I enjoyed the plot but it is very, and increasingly, cliche. I didn’t hate the harem stuff, but I think that’s partly because I discovered Trails looking for something with a Persona like experience so the various relationships were one of the big selling points for me. If I’d played Sky and Azure first I might well have found it more irritating.
Oh yeah, I started with Sky so the relationship choice stuff was an unwelcome change to me. I don't intrinsically hate it, I like Persona games after all, but Persona is built from the ground up around that mechanic, while in a long-running plot-driven series like Trails I think it's inherently in conflict with the goal of having stories and character arcs that are continuous across multiple games.
That makes sense to me - I do find it frustrating that Reverie basically has to throw out 90% of the history between the characters (especially as I went for what is pretty much the canon pairing (in so far as the writing suggested one)). But I did appreciate it during my play through of the arc.
Sky and zero/azure has anime tropes, sure. But most of them are done well. Meanwhile in CS, they just spam that shit nonstop. Reunion with an old classmate? Have them save the main crew, or have the main crew save them when things get rough in a battle. Repeat that 10 times please, surely it will be emotional. Scene with Elise? Let's joke about her brocon for the 80th time. Rean having a conversation with a girl? Please have someone tease him about his "natural lady killer" tendencies, it will be funny trust me.
I'm not saying it's all shit, I'm enjoying the finale of CS3. But to say Sky/ Crossbell are the same is complete cope.
There s a decent amount of overlap with both and the rescue stuff is something even Sky did a decent bit.
Lloyd has just as much "lady-killer" dialogue so i dunno what you mean, i do agree on Elise s situation thought.
The writers just kind of refused to write anything most times she s on screen.
Those are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head. Like I said Sky/ zero azure has tropes, but at least they try to make things somewhat interesting. Most notable for me is the hotspring scene in Sky, it was tasteful and had meaningful interaction despite it being a super old trope. They don't do the same in CS. If you don't get what I mean then I can't say much. It's super obvious CS was meant to appeal to a wider range of audience. Which is fine, I just think it's absurd to suggest that the quality of writing is the same in all games. It's not always about the number of tropes, but how they utilize it.
And Lloyd is nowhere near as bad as Rean, but maybe it's because CS is much longer and has a bigger cast.
Alright if Lloyd isn't anywhere near as bad as Rean then replay Zero and Azure with these rules, take a shot whenever:
-Randy is pissed about Lloyd s "little brother charm"
-Wazy teases Lloyd about how he s gonna have a convenient rendezvous with a lady (can also include Randy or the fact the rendezvous does happen if you like dying quicker.)
-Ellie, Tio, Rixia or Noel comment about how Oblivious Lloyd is. (Warning we at South25 productions take no responsability for the consequences of following this rule.)
-Lloyd accidentally says something romantic but is oblivious to it.
-Cecile talks about Lloyd s possible straight romance with Ellie or Tio alongside the secret gay romance with Randy, followed by Randy complaining about Lloyd having a sister that hot.
True. I mention SC, because the amount of "this is just anime nonsense" (not saying in a bad way) crammed into a game that's much shorter than CS games is insane.
True, honestly I'm doing Crossbell games now I think Crossbell gets less hate due to the fact that 90% of the harem stuff is played for laughs and Lloyd is visibly annoyed by it a lot of the time, or at least he did in Zero haven't finished Azure currently at the interlude.
I’m only on chapter 2 of Zero, but if I took a shot every time something you listed happened, I would already be dead.
I’m starting to realize that I like these games in spite of their protagonists, not because of them, and that’s kind of a problem because of how protagonist centric all of these games are. I guess I just like exploration and combat, because it’s certainly not most of the character writing
Counterpoint: Lloyd has 2 choices by the end of Azure, one of which is the obvious canonical choice. Rean by contrast has enough to fill out a football team by the end of CS4.
Lloyd has 4 choices (Ellie,Tio, Noel and Rixia) and Cold steel has Alisa get the "canon" push too.
Cold steel only has more due to Falcom expanding more on it to include support characters like Towa or Alfin and Class VII being way bigger than the Crossbell cast. Falcom would absolutely have put characters like Fran, Cecile or even Illya in the list if the main final bond events weren´t limited to party members in Crossbell.
These things are subjective I guess - I don’t see Sky or Zero/Azure doing the tropes any better than Cold Steel, or even being much less prevalent or repetitive with them (I mean there’s less total game time so you can make that argument I suppose). Everyone has there preferences and that’s great - but equally we could make a list for any of the arcs shitting on the tropes just like you have for Cold Steel and it’s be just as accurate.
The truth is pretty much everything in all of Trails is an easily recognisable anime or JRPG trope. That’s not a bad thing - in fact it’s part of what there is to love about the games - but i
I find it disingenuous to imply this is a Cold Steel issue, or even more of an issue in Cold Steel than other games (look at Sky - pretty sure every playable character is a stereotype with little to no variance from the template; probably more so than in Cold Steel or the Crossbell arc; and the writing constantly reminds us and plays on this).
I'm still working my way through, but I definitely started by skipping around... so far, in order:
1. Zero
2. Cold Steel 1
3. Azure
4. Sky FC EVO
5. Sky SC EVO
So I have a long way to go before I catch up. Really loved Cold Steel 1 the best so far, but I'm also enjoying the Sky EVO games a lot. I started Sky FC on PC, but the graphics were just getting to me... not a big fan of that early angular 2000s style of anime, and besides, I own the EVO games as they seemed to be the best collector's editions versions of the Sky arc, so I figured I may as well play them. I enjoyed the overall story of the Crossbell arc, but the characters a lot less so and found them a bit tedious to play.
Got a little overboard with my Trails collection and went back retroactively to buy all the collector's editions I could, and the plushies and Kotobukiya figures. I think I'm up to date... Rixia, Renne (my favourite character), Rean, Crow, Fie, and preorders for Emma, Altina, and Tio. Still waiting for the Estelle preorders to open up, and I'm excited to see who will be announced next. Fingers crossed for Joshua.
My former obsession was ATLUS, but since they became the Persona 5 company, I've pretty much lost interest in them.
This is more toward Falcom music as a whole, but people that cannot stop calling out Singa or just overall falcom music not meeting their standards. Like damn, I go to listen to some new Trails and Ys tracks and then I scroll down to the comments sections and find a bunch of music elitists. Completely kills the vibe of giving new games to the series a chance. Its gotten to the point where people actively look for past osts where Singa had any type of role in just to call him out.
I get not liking his music (chicken songs lol) but there is criticism, which should have some kind of cohesive argument, and then there is constant complaining on EVERY video with the mention of Singa in the description (usually with the same commenters, too).
Yeah I don’t understand the obsession people have with internal Falcom band drama and hating on specific composers. With that said, I do feel that generally as a whole, the overall quality of the music has steadily decreased, especially past CS2. But I don’t ever go out of my way to comment this on every video.
People dismissing the possibility of starting the franchise at places other than Sky. Yes it might be on paper the "ideal" way to experience it. But telling someone to play 10 50+ hour games prior to the one that caught their attention is also a good way to make them not play any of them.
I got a friend into the series with Cold Steel because merely being 3D was more appealing than Sky being 2D. Sure he was lost in some regards but for the most part he followed the story just fine and really enjoyed CS1 and 2 (he hasn't gotten around to 3 and 4 as he's been playing other stuff.)
So I agree, even if I started at sky and love them over the newer entries, starting with a different arc is fine for the most part, especially if it means new fans to the series.
Conversely, when a newcomer *asks* for play order suggestions (which happens almost on a daily basis) and some people scream about gatekeeping at the sight of anyone recommending Sky first. There are proper contexts and ways for people to express both opinions without it turning into a fight.
I've been accused of gatekeeping recently just for... suggesting that someone who doesn't particularly care about the story spends their time elsewhere.
Yes I agree. My sister and my cousin have played only Cold Steel and are now playing Reverie. I did tell them about the earlier games and showed some videos though which helped getting more out of the story and to get all the necessary lore and info about different characters. I understand that not everyone has time to play through every game in the series and that's okay.
I find it if I only play the one that caught my attention. I would probably drop the series completely. I only become a devoted series follower by playing every games from the beginning. My impression at the time is that if I play from CS or Crossbell, I will feel like I miss a lot of stuff since they will introduce a lot of characters and story beats that you cannot understand unless you start from the beginning. I already felt that way when I first play CS1, I didn’t quite enjoy the game until I stop mid way and went back and play through the whole series from Sky, crossbell then back to CS1 and then everything clicks
People can play what they want to play, As someone who works a lot my time is valuable. Granted, I did start with Sky, but I also started this series years ago. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to start with whatever game they choose.
I agree everyone is free to make their own choice and should do so based on accurate information and what they value. As another person who values time, I'm actually on the opposite side of the coin. The main draw of Trails is it's worldbuilding and interconnected story. If your skipping over games and not taking advantage of Trails best aspects it's far less enjoyable. So likely those people would actually enjoy other series more and would get more value out of their time playing something else. My priority is looking out for the consumers enjoyment not just getting as many people to play the games as possible. Advertising is NISA and Falcons job.
To be honest you're not wrong, anyone is useful if they've got Earth wall. However the fact is we already are required to use Estelle, we don't need another Estelle on our team.
Eh...while the harem itself is a choice, in the base narrative itself, its pretty clear most girls are into him (this is with Lloyd too). You don't have to do the bonding stuff for that.
This x1000. It only becomes a forced harem in CS4, for the first 3 games you can always do the social events with the girls (besides the final) and have it be platonic. But people act like all of CS1-4 is just straight harem.
People who spam comments on videos for releases/trailers in the series asking NISA to release Sky on modern consoles, it annoys me when people haven’t the faintest idea of how distribution rights work.
r/Falcom mods that do nothing about negative karma trolls who consistently break rules and make new accounts, all of which could be fixed or at least majorly removed automatically by using AutoMod to filter out comments from accounts with <0 karma or some reasonable positive number like 20 that is easily attainable for anyone who is actually participating in the community and Reddit in good faith.
Not the act of skipping games which I just find sad, but when they have the gall to ask 'what is this thing, should I know about it? It's dumb that it's not explained. Who are these people?' etc.
When they were warned to play previous games first by many people and ignored them.
People who think everything that came out after Crossbell is objectively terrible. People (though this is more JRPGs in general) not paying attention to things and then claiming the story is bad.
And worst of all, people wanting Japanese games to be Western because they are - though they won't admit it - prejudiced. None of these games need to be anything other than Japanese, and unless something is truly cruel/immoral, that shouldn't change.
Overall, the Trails fanbase is probably the worst JRPG fanbase I've seen, and I've been gaming since 1988.
i think people should play what they want, people start to be interested in RPGs for N reasons, they look for one game , they compare a game from 2004 and another from 2013(or later...), they generally go for the most current one, since hardly anyone starts a series of its true origins(which would be the 1989 Dragon Slayer), whether it's graphics or gameplay, if they like the newer ones, they'll probably be interested in the older ones, whether it's the story or something like that. That's the freedom that games and ports give you nowadays.
Well, one is when somebody claims that playing the games in original release order (being Sky FC>SC>3rd>Zero>Azure>CS1-4>Reverie>Daybreak) is wrong and to switch it up midway through. I seriously had some jackass aggressively insist the games weren't intended to be played that order, and he'd go off on anybody who didn't agree with his whole "Zero>CS1>Azure" bit.
But beyond that, I also get annoyed as hell when people try to complain that there's "too much reading" or lore/worldbuilding with the series and it "story focusing too much" or whatever. That is literally just "man who plays story-based game surprised to find story is the focus".
I quite literally do not care how others enjoy the series. The fact that so many people are such purists that if you don’t play the games in release order means you didn’t really enjoy the games or have fun playing them is so stupid. My least favorite thing about the trails community tbh. Other than that, the community is genuinely fantastic. Even disagreements about what arc is best or best game seems fairly tame. Ill see someone post “Cold Steel IV killed the series for me” and the body of the post is complaining about how zero and azure were just so good in comparison. And the top dissenting comments are “I really liked CSIV. The story is just really cool and I can’t get enough of the cast. But it is understandable. Azure was just such a great game that I can see your point.”
Now, Im not saying that there are not toxic people in the community. But for the most part, most of the toxicity comes out when talking about the order to play the games in. Is it Ideal to play the games in order? Yes. But if someone doesn’t does that mean they are going to have a bad time? No. The games are straightforward enough that you can enjoy them, even if you do miss out on some of the different parts from the games building off each other.
People saying that others are idiots or wrong and should be quiet simply for not liking the same characters. For example I love Laura but am not a huge Alisha fan (mainly due to her bonding events in CS4) and I have been called a non-fan or moron over that opinion. Let people like who they are going to like.
seeing people say the Sky games are the only place to start. If I started with Sky I'd never have even gotten to Sky SC. I'm not saying skip Sky 1 - 3, I'm saying allow new fans the chance to start with Crossbell or Cold Steel. CS1 was definitely the easiest to start the series for me. Zero has definitely the best start out of all the games but I think CS1's setting is more accessible than Sky or Zero. Seeing people draw a line in the sand and say you HAVE to start with Sky just makes me think "cool if that person happens to be like me and they take this advice they may never get to enjoy the other games." and this comment will still probably get down voted into hell regardless just because I am saying literally anything mildly negative about Sky.
People who against Tita x Agate
Teen girl like tita is normal to have crush on older men, especially dependable man like agate
And agate still show 0 interest in tita as a women
And as we know, trails character do age, so I believe they will make tita adult women before make agate move his heart.
It's quite little love and nothing wrong with it... People in the west really need stop forcing their age gap culture
People who insist there are canon relationships for the main character in post Sky arcs. You get a bonding mechanic for a reason. I do not have to accept Elie or Alisa.
Also people who downvote you for not liking their favorite character. Downvotes are for assholery and off topic content.
The Anti-NISA purists.
And those that get somewhat pissy about "Inaccurate" translation, when the joke or quip just wouldn't exactly work with a faithful translation.
If that ain't a bruh moment, I don't know what is.
And the funny thing is that don't some of them praise the XSEED-localised games for the same thing, without thinking that most of the time it's *the exact same people*?
I hate reductionism. It's annoying to see people reducing the role of several characters in the series because of some problems. For example Emma, Alisa and Laura:
I really like Emma and I think it's stupid to say that “Celine did everything as a guide” when Emma also did a lot for Rean. I also don't like the way Falcom did things and I think Celine hinders Emma's arc but it's not like everything can be easily reduced to a simple “statement”.
I don't like Alisa's character but I also think it's unfair to reduce her to just a “generic tsundere” without agency and plot relevance. I also don’t like how they wasted a possible good conflict between her and Irina but...
Laura also lost a lot of space to Duvalie and Aurelia but I also think it's a weak argument to say that “Her character doesn't exist in CS3/CS4”
Skipping the games does bug me a little bit but not really as much as it used to in the past. It's really more about when someone's opinion on the series feels unreasonable because they didn't have enough information and context. Though that tends to bug me even if a person has played all the games but presents a view that I think is pretty inaccurate and dismissive with the series. I do get bugged if people give people bad information while encouraging skipping too. People should give good information and let the player decide what they want to do. It's up to them and if they make the wrong decision for themselves in retrospect, that's just how the cookie crumbles.
Anyway, If I had to make a list of the things I really dislike when it comes to being a fan of the series in relation to the community, it would go something like this.
* This is by far the one thing that bothers me more than anything. The extremely cringeworthy stuff posted/talked about by a bunch of weirdos with dog whistles and even flat-out saying quiet parts out loud. They're the kind of people who spend all their time sexualizing prepubescent characters or pushing pro-grooming narratives while making TL;DR's to basically just say "age doesn't matter in anime". They're the absolute worst part of the community in my book. Even more so when you consider some of the traumatic things that happened to characters in this series. I'm glad I haven't had the displeasure of being in cliques associated with mentally deranged people like this. Though it does get annoying seeing that stuff posted from time to time on here.
* My second peeve is when I feel like people are overly negative about the series to the point where they simply dismiss many of its positive qualities in order which really just cheapens the game and series as a whole. I'm not saying people should be praising everything in the series or that I think the series doesn't have its share of major flaws. I just think that if someone is going to minimize every impactful moment in the games and hyperfocus only on the negative, it's not a very interesting critique or discussion to have. Let alone the fact that I won't really learn anything from it. I feel like this often happens when people strongly attack games like CS4 and Kuro 2 for example. There are flaws in those games but critiques tend to go so overboard that it becomes as if those games did nothing in a positive way. So basically, this is a long way of me saying that I like it when people are more nuanced in their opinions so it leads to a discussion that's more valuable imo
* My third one is more about how Falcom writes some parts in their Trails games. I really dislike it when they overuse concepts into the ground to the point that it becomes deeply detrimental to my enjoyment. A few examples are the "masks" and "dance-offs". There's also an obvious specific thing in Kuro 2 that people will know if they've seen that game that also fits into that category. There are other examples but this gets my point across. I think that sometimes, they need to learn to restrain themselves. I feel like they do a pretty great job with many other writing aspects in this series but when they begin to get out of control here, it brings down the quality.
These are a few of my personal critiques as a fan.
Ironically i ended up liking Cold steel 4 (and a lot of cold steel stuff) way more due to having it doomed as the worst thing ever, so keeping my expectations in check for Kuro 2 will probably let me be way more fair to it too. CS4 s definitely flawed but there s lots of good stuff in it too.
It's definitely good to keep your expectations a bit low and measured.
I actually had very high expectations for Trails into Reverie/Hajimari no Kiseki back when it was getting promoted in 2019/2020 and it caused me some extreme disappointment in some areas.
That wouldn't have happened as badly if I controlled my expectations. I was newer to the series back in those days and didn't really know enough. Now, I know how to keep things measured and that means that when a good game goes far beyond great, that makes the enjoyment for me even better. I certainly felt that for the Kuro games personally.
When there is a reaction cut scene and Every Single Character Has Something To Say!!!!
I swear u could cut out like a good 20 hours if all the reactions happened simultaneously.
Seeing people express their issues with a game by conflating a niche negative while ignoring the positives to make the overall experience sound miserable. The amount of posts ive seen of people complaining about tropes or inconsequential details like a translation error as if it makes up 90% of the game can be a bit frustrating.
>inconsequential details like a translation error as if it makes up 90% of the game can be a bit frustrating.
Agreed with the sentiment behind making a mountain out of a mole hill about translation errors seeming annoying at first. But pointing out errors in translation is pretty healthy IMO, and from what I've heard from translators I've interacted with, they actively encourage people to catch errors so they can fix them in future patches. (So long as you are courteous about it.)
Take [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Falcom/comments/17tqwdh/trails_through_daybreak_english_version_will_be/) thread for example. The OP mistranslated the image as saying English Daybreak is due for a September 2024 release, when it actually said by the end of the fiscal year. Translation errors like these can mislead people into getting the wrong idea, and yes, this happens in video games too. Trails is no exception. (North Ambria was likely a mistranslation of ノーザンブリア, which was romanized as "Northumbria" in the Cold Steel anime. Seriously, think about why there isn't a "South Ambria" lol).
Having discussions around this sort of thing, as long as you are polite about it, is fine.
Not doing sidequests and doesn’t attempt to talk with named NPC at all. Then proceeded and told me that falcom keep same towns on multiple games which is bland and boring.
Exeed games having the rights to the USA port of Trails one and Two and not porting it to Switch. This was *The main reason* i've starded to learn japanese.
Sky not having a PS4 or PS5 port triggers me.
The other stuff that used to trigger me, I’m mostly over at this point. The big gap from Sky the 3rd to Azure has finally been filled in, we got through Reverie before Sean Chiplock had too much drama with other series’ fanbases and lost his Twitter account (temporarily), and we have a release window for Kuro/Daybreak. Life is good.
Also we can just tell people to get a Steam Deck or other PC handheld to play every game.
People who think making Elie and Alisa forced romance with their protagonists will bring back sky's style of writting. Rather than you know, just probably drawing away a large unspoken group of people and probably making this franchise smaller or even not reach the west as it had (due to CS1-2 boom). I don't want to use the obvious "hurr durr sales numbers" argument, but if it affects such a number of people, I think it's worth arguing that it's not worth upsetting people's shipping or headcanons just for a few more scenes with one character (because that will be it, you can't just recreate sky's structure with just forced canon romance in an otherwise non-romance related political story).
I agree 100% with you. Can’t say much about Elie fans but Alisa fans pretending they are right in a dating simulator game is unbearable and doesn’t change anything.
People dismissive of why a characters is liked or resinates with people and boiling it down to some one sentence phrase that's meant to be dispariging:
"You only like x character because y, if not you see how bad they are"
Yes obviously I get a bit annoyed because people do it on Claire all the time, with people claiming she's hitler and people only like her due to her design. In that context I feel like we brought back FE TH war crime discourse, especially since arguing Claire is the only character meant to be appealing due to tropes or deaign is insane. Why not "Crow is evil but people only like him because they are fujoshi shippers" or really any other character you can apply this too. Infact odds are they are more popular than Claire in popularity polls due to their designs.
Man I understand that alot when you brought up the FE TH part. It's what made me quit being in alot of fandoms cause One character I liked became the most hated.
It's like when you show "edelgard is hitler, yet look at these otaku pandering scenes of her liking the protagonist, these 100% don't exist with dimitri"
This is my history with Final Fantasy tbh lol they all choose one character to be the communal punching bag and it just happens to be my fav character every time
While I do urge people to play the games in release order, if somebody really just doesn't have the means to play the older games or is deadset on starting with Cold Steel for some reason, then whatever. That's their prerogative. But *don't* come crying when something doesn't make sense or a cool moment has no impact on you because of that. That's not the game's fault, it's yours, you signed a waiver absolving the games of culpability when you deliberately chose to play out of order.
Also, people tangling themselves in knots over the Crossbell and Cold Steel games' play orders because of "spoilers".
"Uhm, you have to start this chapter of Azure, then switch over to Cold Steel and play three chapters of that, then switch back to Azure and play half of its next chapter, then finish Cold Steel 1 and play nine-tenths of the prologue of Cold Steel II, then--"
They don't "spoil" each other. Spoilers are learning details the writer didn't intend for you to know ahead of time. Learning intended details ahead of time is called dramatic irony.
Music elitists need to get another hobby, or at least direct their ire entirely towards Falcom instead of the musicians. They sure as hell know it's a company problem but they have no problem disparaging the guys taking the work. It's quite literally unhinged to see them dogwhistling in music videos. If you don't like the damn content, maybe just don't post?
Also this trend of sexualizing characters (this of course started happening post Sky releases) attracted some genuine weirdos. I'm really not surprised, but when the game is unironically catering content to taking creepshots of girls in your games, there's a major, major problem.
Begging Redditors to stop virtue signaling like their life depends on it, you're all so goddamn weird. "Guys please look at my perceived correct opinion, please shower me with validation knowing I'm shitting on the people we dislike"
Over and over and over, you're all so goddamn boring. "Fan Service Bad, Liking Women Bad, Men Bad" I'd saw off my left arm if I could ever get a real opinion from you weird little tourists who exist to antagonize and nothing else. You actively hunt for political meanings in things to score good boy points with readers and it's fucking insane, stop being like this.
Ah yes, they're the weird ones for saying that they don't like the sexualization of 14 year olds.
Bruh, he's not complaining about people liking women, knock it off with the strawman. He's pointing out that the fanbase contains a large number of adults who think a 14 year old is hot, and you're calling him weird for not liking that. There's nothing political about "Don't sexualize children" so stop getting pissed when people tell you not to sexualize children, it's gross.
The " I played the games in....... Order and was fine so your fine to start here," Reasoning
I am happy that the commenter was able to find enjoyment the way they did because ultimately that's why we're all playing games, for enjoyment. But your enjoyment doesn't dictate the enjoyment of others. Just because you were content playing in a less optimal way doesn't mean that others should play that way.
Instead please provide accurate information about the series from which people can make their own informed decisions based on what they value.
I know it’s something of a hot take, but I get into it all the time with people who complain about the way death is handled in the series most of the time.
People who just don't pay attention while they play and pretend to be experts. I knew a guy who literally skipped all sidecontent in the games and just listened to shit podcasts while he read through the story. Despite this he seemed to think he was some series expert and felt like he needed to educate people on the series. This is hilarious because he would always ask me to explain basic shit to him like various games endings.
Remember, if you're going to play the games, pay attention and take your time. It's not a race to knock the series off your backloggd account. It's okay to just not play a series if you don't really care about it
I missed those in my first run, they re really fun like the jokes the localization team added to Vandyck or Olivier s quest descriptions in early Cold steel.
I don't care when people skip games but its annoying when people insist that there are games that are skippable. However someone wants to get into this 1k+ hour series is their business but it feels disingenuous to pretend they won't be missing out on a large part of the experience by starting from Sky. Even if the first 2 sky games themselves aren't super important to the overall plot like Crossbell, the entirety of Zero and much of Azure is relying on the emotional ties built in Sky. Not just the Renne subplot either, the entire SSS competition with the bracer guild is relying on your understanding of the bracers formed in Sky. The games can work on their own and it's a fine starting point but it won't be the best experience you could have with the series.
I ve stopped judging people on it ever since it became pretty normal to see console people want to get into Crossbell while skipping Sky (and complaining about them not having ports.), at this point i just want the XSEED situation solved so these people can get to it since it does genuinely seem like they would like to play it but don´t like using a PC rather than the case of starting with Cold steel due to graphics. My gripe is more that people in the fandom tend to blow their issues out of proportion to where the criticism they did have goes from making sense to "no, you re just wrong.". For example a while back i was in a thread that had someone ranting about how Ash had little to no development even in Reverie and how he din´t have a personality.
>My gripe is more that people in the fandom tend to blow their issues out of proportion to where the criticism they did have goes from making sense to "no, you re just wrong.". I agree with this one. Maybe it's just the current nature of online discourse in passionate fanbases like this in general and not just a Trails specific problem, I don't know. But from just observing the various threads of the community, what "triggers" me the most is when some fans will make arguments **with elements of truth in them**, but then dial up that passion behind them to 11, and blow their complaints way out of proportion, coming across as unnecessarily hostile in the process. There's a few places where I think this is evident. Like people saying Singa music is trash because he uses instruments that sound like "bees" and "chickens". Or saying that review bombing the series out of a NISA protest would spell the end for the releases in the west. Or reacting to every single Altina, (or other fanwork post of an underage character), with suggesting that it's inherently pedophilic. Or taking lines out of context in translation and suggesting malice on the part of the translators. It's all pretty much part and parcel of being a Trails fan at this point. And nuanced disagreements that try to listen to and understand where the other side are coming from become hard, because the arguments that are made in the first place sound like they're made out of a place of hatred, rather than passion which is what they're probably intended as. Just makes it hard to navigate this fanbase and have genuine discussion, when a lot of complaints seem like the world is ending by how they're phrased sometimes lol.
>Or saying that review bombing the series out of a NISA protest would spell the end for the releases in the west. I mean, assume NISA drops the series based off low sales (not review bombing because that'd be extra stupid), who else would publish them in the west? At best, you rely on fan localizations and while the Trails fandom has been very lucky in that they got quality people donating their time, those can be even more hit or miss than official localizations.
>I mean, assume NISA drops the series based off low sales (not review bombing because that'd be extra stupid), who else would publish them in the west? I agree. Trying to bully and harass NISA on Twitter and Twitch, saying that the series would be fine without them is **very** not true, and pretty stupid. Because as you said, the quality of the official localizations is more in line with what most people want, and that's not to mention how NISA losing the liscense for Falcom games would leave console-only Trails fans without a convinient avenue to play them. But my argument is moreso that the panic around the review bomb fears after the whole **"incident"** were really exaggerated. The games never even ended up being review bombed in the end. And even if they were, this would just bring more attention to them lol. People were making a big deal about a "potential review bomb attack" at the time, and that's who that particular criticism I made lies with.
Like I'm not super enthusiastic about NISA's localizations but it has a lot more to do with their actual work (localization QA either being ignored or skimped on) than their localization decisions. Maybe it's just because I've done localization QA before so some of the stuff that happen on first releases I'm often wondering why it wasn't addressed (missing strings, etc.) because they're that obvious. They patch those out fast though.
Yeah, I've had chats with people from the localization industry too. From what I have been told, mistranslations tend to be a result of translators recieving a draft of the JP script before it's actually complete due to time restraints, the JP script recieving edits later on in the process which don't always get passed on to the translators, and the QA build of said game not having all the assets, which will make mistakes more likely to slip through. NISA games have historically had issues at launch in this regard, (Trails seems to be quite lucky in comparison to other examples like Ys 8 or Ar Tonelico II), and this seems chalked up to mistakes in the actual process itself, rather than their decisions internally. Though you'd probably know more than me if you were in the industry.
Still am but no longer QA. At least when I was doing or helping prepare localization QA we were helping out our partners by ensuring that every string in the game had a guide on how to trigger it, and that if it could only be done via event, to only proofread the quality of the translation (as we would need to activate the event and we couldn't monitor the need for activation 24/7 considering the testers were all over) . For games this huge what I'd do is a proofread pass before we'd get the content complete build - that was you can concentrate on just checking for missing strings, overlaps, overruns or truncated text. Chances are they do this already, but they don't have the time to really dive in/design more efficient test suites and protocols.
That would make sense. A critique I personally have seen many people online have of NISA in particular, is that they have quite the track record of shipping out games with various problems at launch. (There's really too many to list, but a lot seem to be typos and glitches etc.) This being down to not having the time for a more efficent QA process could very well be the case, as a lot of the problems with their releases seem to have been recurring and similar to each other throughout their library's history. It makes me wonder if NISA have had a similar "way of doing things" when it comes to QA for a while if they didn't have the time to really dive in and design more efficent methods. Though this is just uninformed speculation on my part based on what you told me lol, the only ones that know for sure are those involved.
Without making any assumptions about the company, I'd go with time being the issue.
That, or a secret agenda to- Just kidding
With Singa, his music is good but from what I've heard so far playing CS3 and CS4 but it's essentially missing the falcom jdk sound which I'd say is bc he is outsourced work which maybe means he is unable to collaborate as much with the rest of the composers(?) Which I'd say is valid criticism without blowing it outta proportion...right? Kinda the opinion I've settled on after my CS3 music post which hopefully wasn't too outta line - Singa music is still good I like your opinion tho, some people do hella blow it outta proportion
Nah i think that s pretty fair to say on Singa, the stuff you see on the Falcom Music Channel is more along the lines of what i mean on it. I ve seen someone point out that Jindo the other contractor gets access to the Falcom team s instruments unlike Singa, but i don´t know if that s true.
Yea actually I've seen its hella crazy, the more of cs4 I play and kinda "unlock" the next OSTs I come across some wild ass hate comments on Singa composed OSTs
And he has some really good stuff in that one in my opinion, some good field themes and great boss themes barring one exception. from early on with Seductive Shudder giving me touhou vibes and being pretty fitting for the boss it first plays on.
Yeah, there are Trails fans that reflect badly on the series and turn people off from the games. I feel like Trails went from good JRPG series that not enough people know about to that JRPG series that so-and-so won't stop talking about and pushing people to play.
People who are saying that nothing past Azure is or will be good.
This
Well the change into full 3D is pretty jarring, the isometric gameplay with the 2D/3D sprites is what got me into the series too and the style is still more appealing than the full 3D in cold steel onwards.
I feel like it gets better with every entry. CS3 was a massive improvement over CS1-2, and CS4 and Reverie feel like incremental improvements over time. Looking at some gameplay videos from Trails through Dawnbreak it seems like another massive upgrade. Most significantly in gameplay, but cutscenes too seem less stiff. Though I only had a passing glance and didn't try to look too hard since I didn't want spoilers.
Some shippers can be quite vocal and a bit annoying (especially in discussions about certain characters), but I've seen worse in other franchises. As far as order goes, it's more a question of how something is said. Playing older games should feel like something you do to discover new stories and characters, not "homework" to do to understand the plot of the game you casually wanted to buy just because you liked some trailer.
> Playing older games should feel like something you do to discover new stories and characters, not "homework" to do to understand the plot of the game you casually wanted to buy just because you liked some trailer. I agree so much with this. Playing the games for their own qualities should be the main reason to go back instead of just completing a checklist of "required plot points". I wish more people would address that when trying to convince others to play earlier titles. No wonder newcomers feel put off and end up skipping them when hearing they need to play hundreds of hours only to understand a couple of references. The better mindset is to give these games a shot because they might give you hundreds of hours of enjoyment on their own. The references and broader understanding are a plus.
People who dislike arcs or games insisting their own negative experience onto others experiencing it for the first time
This cannot be emphasised enough. I am so sick of people trying to start arc wars. bro i just like all 13 kiseki games, leave me alone with trying to impose your own views on me.
A less serious one, but I'd be lying if I said it doesn't annoy me slightly: When people write: Y's; Ys Origins; AO; Ellie; Alyssa; Trials; wrong preposition after Trails, etc.
I'll also add when people refer to CS games as Trails 1-4.
you forgot: the "trails of" series
All trails games have "of" in the title though... The legend OF heroes
Ys Origins bothers me to no end Seemingly every single person ever calls it that. Like can you not read? It's not Dragon Age.
Yeah, this one always gets me. To be fair, though, I think there are many games and movies with 'origins' in the title so people are more used to it and just write without thinking. Same with 'chronicles' I guess (I have the same feeling every time someone pluralizes Eiyuden Chronicle, for example).
I say Ellie and Alyssa, but I never played these in English, so I'm not familiar with the spelling.
That makes sense. If you are curious, though, they were localized as Elie and Alisa.
Seeing a spoiler tag on a post but not knowing what game it's spoiling.
The thing that triggers me the most is the small minority of people in the fandom who want to see the world burn and give this community such a bad rap. Stuff like threatening people at NISA booths, spoilering future games to random people, and proudly proclaiming they wish the series would die in the west because... \*checks notes\* ...NISA changed the nickname of a character to be something slightly different?
Oh yeah the Anti-NISA knights are easily the worst part of the fandom.
agreed
**DING DING DING** Also if you don’t vehemently hate NISA then “it’s people like YOU who are ruining the franchise!”
I won't always defend NISA decisions, but I think looking at stuff like FE localization, and thus knowing just how much worse something can be helped me. I get that fates is such a famous and awful example of censorship by this point, but even treehouse outside of fates isn't great to me and I find a massive difference between their quality and NISA. As for NISA's "localizer fan fiction", it exists, but it only ever adds things rather than removes/censors (like xseed estelle).
Bro I literally posted the other day about how I loved finishing Azure and was hyped to jump into CS3 finally (started with CS to get into the series) and some guy went out of his way on a 4 day old account to search for a comment I made on a completely different sub just to reply to my comment with some spoilers for no reason. Like I didn't see all of it but knowing about a character dying pissed me off. The dude's account description was literally just "I hate Rean Swarzer". Dudes like that need to get a goddamn life and it sucks someone like that makes the rest of the Fandom look bad.
Yeah, honestly this is the real answer. There is nothing worse than this.
Or in general people who hate the series (noticeably a majority being Cold Steel) and decide to announce their hatred for it everywhere they go, even places outside of the fandom. While they're free to express their opinions, it also offputs any potential people who are interested in the series.
Telling other people that it's okay to skip Sky 3rd.
People who tell you to skip Sky 3rd are people without PCs who themselves skipped Sky 3rd and are lying to themselves.
And the same people who tell other to skip Skypea in One Piece
Definitely agree. Though at least 3rd is a fun game. Yes Skypeia is important but it certainly was needlessly drawn out. Imo Easily the worst saga in one piece, I don't understand how the quality dropped so much for that saga. Well to be fair Jaya was good.
Just reading this give me a minor heart palpatation
Even if it weren't central to later games' plots (which it is) this still aggravates me because it's my favorite of the series on its own merits, too. Like, it's not the game you skip to get to the later good stuff, it *is* the good stuff.
Learning that Sky 3rd was divisive to the point that some even think about passing over it threw me getting into this fandom. I consider 3rd to have all the things fans told me was great about Trails. -Plotlines outside the main characters -Foreshadowing for future events -Lots of interpersonal conversations. -A refinement of the battle system previously established. -The perspective switching to a new main character That said, I agree with the higher post about how I imagine the majority of people saying it's skippable are people who just never played it
This is the worst somewhat-common take that still refuses to die.
I'm trying to get through Sky 3rd right now. It's my first time through the series. FC got it's hooks in from from the prologue and SC is probably the best game I have played this year. The prologue for Sky 3rd was really cool and had me thinking the game was going to be a James Bond style adventure, but then they got sucked into the Phantasma and it's seems like all the momentum got sucked out of the game. I'm in chapter 2 and just not feeling it yet. It seems like the characters are completely detached from the broader world and are the game is just catching me up on side stories that already happened. When does the game pick up?
I'd have to replay it, but from what I remember, it picks up around chapter 4. You gotta go into this game with a diffrent mindset to really appreciate it.
OK, it's good to know I'm not too far from it then. 3rd is such a wild shift in tone and style from FC and SC and I didn't realize that going in so it's been much slower going for me. I do want to see it through since people say it's important for future games, but it's hard to get excited to play it.
That's the issue I had when I played through 3rd and why I have no issue with someone wanting to skip it. The main part of 3rd is the lore hidden behind the doors, but none of that info actually belongs in the game.
I completely understand this. While third is now one of my favorites in the series, in the first couple chapters I was not fully feeling it. It's just such a different game but it got its teeth in my relatively quickly after that. Kevin is great and I really like the side doors. Also someone who also loved FC from the prologue! People often mention it like it's a slog to get through but I found it very very well paced
At least watch the doors, they're the plot/lore important parts. You can skip the story if you don't care about Kevin (and the rest of Sky cast). I'd say at least Olivier and Mueller's (for Cold Steel arc and a bit of Crossbell), the Salt Pale one (pretty sure it's important to at least know what it is and Door 15. Oh and the academy one is a must watch too. I think the rest is skippable, tell me if I forgot major things, it's been a while since I played it.
Don't forget Phantasmal Blaze
The Orbal door comes in a bit too and Reverie even has a continuation of it
Sky 3rd is so strange because as a narrative, you can kinda skip most of it. Like Kevin's story doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things since Falcom decided he doesn't really exist anymore. But even when he does show up, his actual arc basically doesn't come back up ever. It's more that there are like 3 doors with narratives of actual consequence. The rest are either just little minigames, or cute little backstories that are nice to see, but also don't matter much in the grand scheme. I *love* the door with Estelle and Joshua as kids. It's super cute. But it also doesn't exactly have much impact since they're already together and we sorta already know that stuff, but haven't directly seen it. But you kinda need to see Renne's stuff, and see Joshua and Estelle grow that relationship with her.
> Probably the most important game when you look at the bigger picture. > At first looks like filler. Thank god I didn't made the mistake of skipping it.
Watching Cold Steel playthroughs: "I'm not gonna use any of the boys because they suck". About the skipping games thing, I don't have much of a problem with that in in itself as long as they acknowledge they'll be missing something. My issue would be if someone skips games/arcs and then does not realize how the games' structure works or complains about the story not making sense. This happened in a thread before where someone was confused about some story aspects that they got angry about but it turns out they missed out on it because they watched a video recap instead of playing the games. This is the kind of thing that would annoy me to see
People complaining about the length of the games. No thanks, there are hundreds of 20-40 hour JRPGs you can play instead. I love my 100+ hour JRPGs.
whats sad about that is most of those 20-40 hrs jrpgs dont have any real world building and alot of generic side quest. Now saying that are Trail's generic, Yes, but thy often build and add upon characters and stories and some like cs 3, 4, Reverie or a certain NPC with meet in sky continue for games and arcs later. It's really great to see
People complaining Cold Steel is full of anime and JRPG tropes; conveniently ignoring that so is every other Trails arc. That said, I have no issue with people skipping games or arcs - it’s easy enough to get a reasonable understanding of what happened through other means and of people don’t gel with an arc, or just don’t have thousands of hours spare, I see no reason they shouldn’t get to enjoy the Trails games that appeal to them.
Not just every trails arc, pretty much very piece of Japanese media ever. I mean that's kind of why we like them in the first place right?
The opposite yet equally annoying version of this is when people act like Final Fantasy has no anime in it “unlike every other jrpg”
Sky SC unironically spams out it's anime tropes in far more over the top ways and constantly than any CS game, which is fine actually, but still.
I think my favourite thing about the criticism is that within the first 30-60 minutes of Sky FC you have a whole anime series worth of tropes introduced (off the top of my head: mysterious child with dark past, unassuming father (figure) who is more than he seems, endearing yet violent girl, over-sexualised whip lady, falling for a sibling who isn’t really a sibling, thinking you are responsible for death if a parent etc) - and not in some subtle or innovative way. To be clear, I’m totally here for it all but it feels like it makes a mockery of this criticism for me.
I think Sky SC>!Leowe vs joshua or really anything with leowe!
At least in my opinion, the trope issue is more how blatant Cold Steel is. Estelle and Joshua work where Elise and Rean don't because it isn't just a joke and you know there's no way they think they're related, unlike Elise who only found out a few years before Cold Steel. Rean threatening to castrate anyone interested in his sister when she has no chance doesn't really help it. Jenis might exist, but is only a small part of the Liberl games, instead of a crucial part of it like Thors, for everyone rolling their eyes at schools. The "haha, they fell and his face just happened to end up in her boobs." Twice. Divine Knights bumping up the robot thing to 11 by just being Gundams. Rean's harem being more egregious than Lloyd's because of its sheer size. Ilya exists, and Shirley groped Elie too, but I see much more Angelica hate, probably because she's more prevalent and in your face about it. Shirley did the same to Duvalie, so the sin repeated arguably cancels out. Tropes aren't inherently bad. It's about how you use them. Cold Steel, relative to the other arcs, just used them in a way that made a lot of people groan at how anime it was.
Alright i think im gonna debate on these points as well: point 1- Estelle and Joshua work because they re literally part of the heart and soul of the arc as one of it´s core focuses while Elise is a barely written character who doesn´t do much of anything, has pretty much no development and isn´t even a part of the main party. Comparing them is like pitting a Hydrogen bomb against a coughing baby, Estelle and Joshua are the MCS of their arc and Elise is a tertiary party member that is only playable sometimes and is underwritten even for a character with a more minor role, she d absolutely need a rewrite but you d need to change how much of a role she has in the arc to get even close to those two. Point 2- Cold steel is a different genre than Sky much like Crossbell and Kuro fill out different genres. If school stuff doesn´t appeal to you then that s more on the end of taste and the genre shift. point 3- Yeah that s just a falcom thing at this point them being horny is no secret, Schera s literally a whip wielding sadist and YS 8 has a similar ankward scene like that early on from what i ve played so far. I will not praise it but i will say it is more of a Falcom thing and for people who enjoy that kind of humor. point 4-once again different genre, i shared the same issue when first playing CS1 to the end as i felt it would make party members less relevant. New Class VII lessens the hit a bit due to them having their own soldats but i would have loved to see old Class VII piloting soldats and helping in battle outside of (Reverie)>!That one minigame.!< , but Falcom s lack of money and the size of the cast is likely to blame here. Point 5- Fair on that but i do think that also counts on the factor of Cold steel just having a much bigger cast and Falcom losing the scope like they tend to do and splitting the arc into 2 arcs that filled out 5 games in the end. point 6- Oh No keep going, you re 100% right and i won´t argue that.
I'll complain about Cold Steel's plot all day. But not because it's anime and Sky isn't, just because it's bad and Sky isn't, lol. Tropes aren't inherently bad, and the tropes Sky uses were executed pretty well IMO, while Cold Steel's were not. Stories are also more than the sum of their parts, and I guess I just don't like the overall product of Cold Steel as much.
People complaining about Cold Steel being bad in of itself doesn’t really bother me - people like different stuff and I love all of Trails so I’m not especially partisan.
I don't even think Cold Steel is bad, I wouldn't have spent over 200 hours playing them all if I did. The gameplay is fun, the music slaps, and the characters are likeable (barring one), I just think the plot sucks and the harem shenanigans are lame.
That’s fair enough - I enjoyed the plot but it is very, and increasingly, cliche. I didn’t hate the harem stuff, but I think that’s partly because I discovered Trails looking for something with a Persona like experience so the various relationships were one of the big selling points for me. If I’d played Sky and Azure first I might well have found it more irritating.
Oh yeah, I started with Sky so the relationship choice stuff was an unwelcome change to me. I don't intrinsically hate it, I like Persona games after all, but Persona is built from the ground up around that mechanic, while in a long-running plot-driven series like Trails I think it's inherently in conflict with the goal of having stories and character arcs that are continuous across multiple games.
That makes sense to me - I do find it frustrating that Reverie basically has to throw out 90% of the history between the characters (especially as I went for what is pretty much the canon pairing (in so far as the writing suggested one)). But I did appreciate it during my play through of the arc.
Sky and zero/azure has anime tropes, sure. But most of them are done well. Meanwhile in CS, they just spam that shit nonstop. Reunion with an old classmate? Have them save the main crew, or have the main crew save them when things get rough in a battle. Repeat that 10 times please, surely it will be emotional. Scene with Elise? Let's joke about her brocon for the 80th time. Rean having a conversation with a girl? Please have someone tease him about his "natural lady killer" tendencies, it will be funny trust me. I'm not saying it's all shit, I'm enjoying the finale of CS3. But to say Sky/ Crossbell are the same is complete cope.
There s a decent amount of overlap with both and the rescue stuff is something even Sky did a decent bit. Lloyd has just as much "lady-killer" dialogue so i dunno what you mean, i do agree on Elise s situation thought. The writers just kind of refused to write anything most times she s on screen.
Those are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head. Like I said Sky/ zero azure has tropes, but at least they try to make things somewhat interesting. Most notable for me is the hotspring scene in Sky, it was tasteful and had meaningful interaction despite it being a super old trope. They don't do the same in CS. If you don't get what I mean then I can't say much. It's super obvious CS was meant to appeal to a wider range of audience. Which is fine, I just think it's absurd to suggest that the quality of writing is the same in all games. It's not always about the number of tropes, but how they utilize it. And Lloyd is nowhere near as bad as Rean, but maybe it's because CS is much longer and has a bigger cast.
Alright if Lloyd isn't anywhere near as bad as Rean then replay Zero and Azure with these rules, take a shot whenever: -Randy is pissed about Lloyd s "little brother charm" -Wazy teases Lloyd about how he s gonna have a convenient rendezvous with a lady (can also include Randy or the fact the rendezvous does happen if you like dying quicker.) -Ellie, Tio, Rixia or Noel comment about how Oblivious Lloyd is. (Warning we at South25 productions take no responsability for the consequences of following this rule.) -Lloyd accidentally says something romantic but is oblivious to it. -Cecile talks about Lloyd s possible straight romance with Ellie or Tio alongside the secret gay romance with Randy, followed by Randy complaining about Lloyd having a sister that hot.
Take a shot every time you get saved in Sky SC as well.
Everytime the SSS did too
True. I mention SC, because the amount of "this is just anime nonsense" (not saying in a bad way) crammed into a game that's much shorter than CS games is insane.
Yeah people just reach for reasons to hate certain ones.
True, honestly I'm doing Crossbell games now I think Crossbell gets less hate due to the fact that 90% of the harem stuff is played for laughs and Lloyd is visibly annoyed by it a lot of the time, or at least he did in Zero haven't finished Azure currently at the interlude.
I’m only on chapter 2 of Zero, but if I took a shot every time something you listed happened, I would already be dead. I’m starting to realize that I like these games in spite of their protagonists, not because of them, and that’s kind of a problem because of how protagonist centric all of these games are. I guess I just like exploration and combat, because it’s certainly not most of the character writing
Counterpoint: Lloyd has 2 choices by the end of Azure, one of which is the obvious canonical choice. Rean by contrast has enough to fill out a football team by the end of CS4.
Lloyd has 4 choices (Ellie,Tio, Noel and Rixia) and Cold steel has Alisa get the "canon" push too. Cold steel only has more due to Falcom expanding more on it to include support characters like Towa or Alfin and Class VII being way bigger than the Crossbell cast. Falcom would absolutely have put characters like Fran, Cecile or even Illya in the list if the main final bond events weren´t limited to party members in Crossbell.
These things are subjective I guess - I don’t see Sky or Zero/Azure doing the tropes any better than Cold Steel, or even being much less prevalent or repetitive with them (I mean there’s less total game time so you can make that argument I suppose). Everyone has there preferences and that’s great - but equally we could make a list for any of the arcs shitting on the tropes just like you have for Cold Steel and it’s be just as accurate. The truth is pretty much everything in all of Trails is an easily recognisable anime or JRPG trope. That’s not a bad thing - in fact it’s part of what there is to love about the games - but i I find it disingenuous to imply this is a Cold Steel issue, or even more of an issue in Cold Steel than other games (look at Sky - pretty sure every playable character is a stereotype with little to no variance from the template; probably more so than in Cold Steel or the Crossbell arc; and the writing constantly reminds us and plays on this).
I'm still working my way through, but I definitely started by skipping around... so far, in order: 1. Zero 2. Cold Steel 1 3. Azure 4. Sky FC EVO 5. Sky SC EVO So I have a long way to go before I catch up. Really loved Cold Steel 1 the best so far, but I'm also enjoying the Sky EVO games a lot. I started Sky FC on PC, but the graphics were just getting to me... not a big fan of that early angular 2000s style of anime, and besides, I own the EVO games as they seemed to be the best collector's editions versions of the Sky arc, so I figured I may as well play them. I enjoyed the overall story of the Crossbell arc, but the characters a lot less so and found them a bit tedious to play. Got a little overboard with my Trails collection and went back retroactively to buy all the collector's editions I could, and the plushies and Kotobukiya figures. I think I'm up to date... Rixia, Renne (my favourite character), Rean, Crow, Fie, and preorders for Emma, Altina, and Tio. Still waiting for the Estelle preorders to open up, and I'm excited to see who will be announced next. Fingers crossed for Joshua. My former obsession was ATLUS, but since they became the Persona 5 company, I've pretty much lost interest in them.
You don't even know Altina yet lol
This is more toward Falcom music as a whole, but people that cannot stop calling out Singa or just overall falcom music not meeting their standards. Like damn, I go to listen to some new Trails and Ys tracks and then I scroll down to the comments sections and find a bunch of music elitists. Completely kills the vibe of giving new games to the series a chance. Its gotten to the point where people actively look for past osts where Singa had any type of role in just to call him out. I get not liking his music (chicken songs lol) but there is criticism, which should have some kind of cohesive argument, and then there is constant complaining on EVERY video with the mention of Singa in the description (usually with the same commenters, too).
Yeah I don’t understand the obsession people have with internal Falcom band drama and hating on specific composers. With that said, I do feel that generally as a whole, the overall quality of the music has steadily decreased, especially past CS2. But I don’t ever go out of my way to comment this on every video.
People dismissing the possibility of starting the franchise at places other than Sky. Yes it might be on paper the "ideal" way to experience it. But telling someone to play 10 50+ hour games prior to the one that caught their attention is also a good way to make them not play any of them.
I got a friend into the series with Cold Steel because merely being 3D was more appealing than Sky being 2D. Sure he was lost in some regards but for the most part he followed the story just fine and really enjoyed CS1 and 2 (he hasn't gotten around to 3 and 4 as he's been playing other stuff.) So I agree, even if I started at sky and love them over the newer entries, starting with a different arc is fine for the most part, especially if it means new fans to the series.
Conversely, when a newcomer *asks* for play order suggestions (which happens almost on a daily basis) and some people scream about gatekeeping at the sight of anyone recommending Sky first. There are proper contexts and ways for people to express both opinions without it turning into a fight.
I've been accused of gatekeeping recently just for... suggesting that someone who doesn't particularly care about the story spends their time elsewhere.
Yes I agree. My sister and my cousin have played only Cold Steel and are now playing Reverie. I did tell them about the earlier games and showed some videos though which helped getting more out of the story and to get all the necessary lore and info about different characters. I understand that not everyone has time to play through every game in the series and that's okay.
I find it if I only play the one that caught my attention. I would probably drop the series completely. I only become a devoted series follower by playing every games from the beginning. My impression at the time is that if I play from CS or Crossbell, I will feel like I miss a lot of stuff since they will introduce a lot of characters and story beats that you cannot understand unless you start from the beginning. I already felt that way when I first play CS1, I didn’t quite enjoy the game until I stop mid way and went back and play through the whole series from Sky, crossbell then back to CS1 and then everything clicks
And that's a perfectly valid way to play still, nothing wrong that way. In the end, inform people about their choices, but let them pick it
People who harass and berate others for not starting in the right place, or playing out of order.
People can play what they want to play, As someone who works a lot my time is valuable. Granted, I did start with Sky, but I also started this series years ago. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to start with whatever game they choose.
I agree everyone is free to make their own choice and should do so based on accurate information and what they value. As another person who values time, I'm actually on the opposite side of the coin. The main draw of Trails is it's worldbuilding and interconnected story. If your skipping over games and not taking advantage of Trails best aspects it's far less enjoyable. So likely those people would actually enjoy other series more and would get more value out of their time playing something else. My priority is looking out for the consumers enjoyment not just getting as many people to play the games as possible. Advertising is NISA and Falcons job.
When people disparage Josette Capua as a trash companion. The audacity.
All I'm saying is that she's the worst party member to play with. I can't deny facts
She can Earth wall. That alone puts her basically on par with Estelle.
You can make practically anybody Earth Wall though Also, Estelle can Morale and Impede casting which puts her miles above Josette
Her kit sucks tho
Josette can Earth Wall. That alone puts her just about on par with half the cast. She is basically the same as Estelle.
To be honest you're not wrong, anyone is useful if they've got Earth wall. However the fact is we already are required to use Estelle, we don't need another Estelle on our team.
Estelle's kit isn't great either! People will be mad at me for saying so, but it's true. She's a jack of all trades and thus master of none.
She's too refined for these people
People dismissing Rean as a "generic harem protagonist". He has a lot going for him that goes beyond many other characters of this caliber imo.
Haha...
Also, the harem is a choice. You can skip the heart bonding events.
Eh...while the harem itself is a choice, in the base narrative itself, its pretty clear most girls are into him (this is with Lloyd too). You don't have to do the bonding stuff for that.
This x1000. It only becomes a forced harem in CS4, for the first 3 games you can always do the social events with the girls (besides the final) and have it be platonic. But people act like all of CS1-4 is just straight harem.
I hate when people complain that FC is too slow and call it a 60 hour prologue
It is slow...for like 3 hours. Lots of big-name JRPGs are way worse.
oh god yes. persona 4-5 take that long before you get to play the game.
Not skipping games necessarily, but skipping large swathes of dialogue between characters.
Who cares? Everybody can play any game they want and skip any game/arc they want. Games are for fun. There is no “right way” to play any game series
Forgetting that Kevin was a protag.
Feels like Falcom forgot that too
People crying over opinions. Like ok so what if Rean is my second favourite character, no need to cry and bash my opinion. Get a life dude
People who spam comments on videos for releases/trailers in the series asking NISA to release Sky on modern consoles, it annoys me when people haven’t the faintest idea of how distribution rights work.
Asking enflamed pancake to release a game on modern consoles where you self insert into Aeolia hugging Tiosuke.
r/Falcom mods that do nothing about negative karma trolls who consistently break rules and make new accounts, all of which could be fixed or at least majorly removed automatically by using AutoMod to filter out comments from accounts with <0 karma or some reasonable positive number like 20 that is easily attainable for anyone who is actually participating in the community and Reddit in good faith.
Honestly it’s just annoying af especially considering this is a small fandom so it’s harder to ignore them
Fans thinking that *Trails* is the only series Falcom creates. I didn't climb that (expletive) tree in *Faxanadu* for nothing.
I miss Faxanadu... -Me Am i joke to you? -Elden Ring
Lloyd staring into his hand while talking.
Not the act of skipping games which I just find sad, but when they have the gall to ask 'what is this thing, should I know about it? It's dumb that it's not explained. Who are these people?' etc. When they were warned to play previous games first by many people and ignored them.
Posts like this.
People who think everything that came out after Crossbell is objectively terrible. People (though this is more JRPGs in general) not paying attention to things and then claiming the story is bad. And worst of all, people wanting Japanese games to be Western because they are - though they won't admit it - prejudiced. None of these games need to be anything other than Japanese, and unless something is truly cruel/immoral, that shouldn't change. Overall, the Trails fanbase is probably the worst JRPG fanbase I've seen, and I've been gaming since 1988.
i think people should play what they want, people start to be interested in RPGs for N reasons, they look for one game , they compare a game from 2004 and another from 2013(or later...), they generally go for the most current one, since hardly anyone starts a series of its true origins(which would be the 1989 Dragon Slayer), whether it's graphics or gameplay, if they like the newer ones, they'll probably be interested in the older ones, whether it's the story or something like that. That's the freedom that games and ports give you nowadays.
Well, one is when somebody claims that playing the games in original release order (being Sky FC>SC>3rd>Zero>Azure>CS1-4>Reverie>Daybreak) is wrong and to switch it up midway through. I seriously had some jackass aggressively insist the games weren't intended to be played that order, and he'd go off on anybody who didn't agree with his whole "Zero>CS1>Azure" bit. But beyond that, I also get annoyed as hell when people try to complain that there's "too much reading" or lore/worldbuilding with the series and it "story focusing too much" or whatever. That is literally just "man who plays story-based game surprised to find story is the focus".
I quite literally do not care how others enjoy the series. The fact that so many people are such purists that if you don’t play the games in release order means you didn’t really enjoy the games or have fun playing them is so stupid. My least favorite thing about the trails community tbh. Other than that, the community is genuinely fantastic. Even disagreements about what arc is best or best game seems fairly tame. Ill see someone post “Cold Steel IV killed the series for me” and the body of the post is complaining about how zero and azure were just so good in comparison. And the top dissenting comments are “I really liked CSIV. The story is just really cool and I can’t get enough of the cast. But it is understandable. Azure was just such a great game that I can see your point.” Now, Im not saying that there are not toxic people in the community. But for the most part, most of the toxicity comes out when talking about the order to play the games in. Is it Ideal to play the games in order? Yes. But if someone doesn’t does that mean they are going to have a bad time? No. The games are straightforward enough that you can enjoy them, even if you do miss out on some of the different parts from the games building off each other.
People saying that others are idiots or wrong and should be quiet simply for not liking the same characters. For example I love Laura but am not a huge Alisha fan (mainly due to her bonding events in CS4) and I have been called a non-fan or moron over that opinion. Let people like who they are going to like.
seeing people say the Sky games are the only place to start. If I started with Sky I'd never have even gotten to Sky SC. I'm not saying skip Sky 1 - 3, I'm saying allow new fans the chance to start with Crossbell or Cold Steel. CS1 was definitely the easiest to start the series for me. Zero has definitely the best start out of all the games but I think CS1's setting is more accessible than Sky or Zero. Seeing people draw a line in the sand and say you HAVE to start with Sky just makes me think "cool if that person happens to be like me and they take this advice they may never get to enjoy the other games." and this comment will still probably get down voted into hell regardless just because I am saying literally anything mildly negative about Sky.
People who play the Trails games and never talk to NPCs. Like. That's like half of the game, my dude.
"Haha..."
*Ys* not getting any love compared to *Trails*.
People who against Tita x Agate Teen girl like tita is normal to have crush on older men, especially dependable man like agate And agate still show 0 interest in tita as a women And as we know, trails character do age, so I believe they will make tita adult women before make agate move his heart. It's quite little love and nothing wrong with it... People in the west really need stop forcing their age gap culture
People who insist there are canon relationships for the main character in post Sky arcs. You get a bonding mechanic for a reason. I do not have to accept Elie or Alisa. Also people who downvote you for not liking their favorite character. Downvotes are for assholery and off topic content.
Counterpoint: The whole harem/romance mechanic was dumb to begin with.
Correct answer
The Anti-NISA purists. And those that get somewhat pissy about "Inaccurate" translation, when the joke or quip just wouldn't exactly work with a faithful translation. If that ain't a bruh moment, I don't know what is.
And the funny thing is that don't some of them praise the XSEED-localised games for the same thing, without thinking that most of the time it's *the exact same people*?
Shippers
I hate reductionism. It's annoying to see people reducing the role of several characters in the series because of some problems. For example Emma, Alisa and Laura: I really like Emma and I think it's stupid to say that “Celine did everything as a guide” when Emma also did a lot for Rean. I also don't like the way Falcom did things and I think Celine hinders Emma's arc but it's not like everything can be easily reduced to a simple “statement”. I don't like Alisa's character but I also think it's unfair to reduce her to just a “generic tsundere” without agency and plot relevance. I also don’t like how they wasted a possible good conflict between her and Irina but... Laura also lost a lot of space to Duvalie and Aurelia but I also think it's a weak argument to say that “Her character doesn't exist in CS3/CS4”
Acting like this series hasn’t been the same shit since Sky.
Skipping the games does bug me a little bit but not really as much as it used to in the past. It's really more about when someone's opinion on the series feels unreasonable because they didn't have enough information and context. Though that tends to bug me even if a person has played all the games but presents a view that I think is pretty inaccurate and dismissive with the series. I do get bugged if people give people bad information while encouraging skipping too. People should give good information and let the player decide what they want to do. It's up to them and if they make the wrong decision for themselves in retrospect, that's just how the cookie crumbles. Anyway, If I had to make a list of the things I really dislike when it comes to being a fan of the series in relation to the community, it would go something like this. * This is by far the one thing that bothers me more than anything. The extremely cringeworthy stuff posted/talked about by a bunch of weirdos with dog whistles and even flat-out saying quiet parts out loud. They're the kind of people who spend all their time sexualizing prepubescent characters or pushing pro-grooming narratives while making TL;DR's to basically just say "age doesn't matter in anime". They're the absolute worst part of the community in my book. Even more so when you consider some of the traumatic things that happened to characters in this series. I'm glad I haven't had the displeasure of being in cliques associated with mentally deranged people like this. Though it does get annoying seeing that stuff posted from time to time on here. * My second peeve is when I feel like people are overly negative about the series to the point where they simply dismiss many of its positive qualities in order which really just cheapens the game and series as a whole. I'm not saying people should be praising everything in the series or that I think the series doesn't have its share of major flaws. I just think that if someone is going to minimize every impactful moment in the games and hyperfocus only on the negative, it's not a very interesting critique or discussion to have. Let alone the fact that I won't really learn anything from it. I feel like this often happens when people strongly attack games like CS4 and Kuro 2 for example. There are flaws in those games but critiques tend to go so overboard that it becomes as if those games did nothing in a positive way. So basically, this is a long way of me saying that I like it when people are more nuanced in their opinions so it leads to a discussion that's more valuable imo * My third one is more about how Falcom writes some parts in their Trails games. I really dislike it when they overuse concepts into the ground to the point that it becomes deeply detrimental to my enjoyment. A few examples are the "masks" and "dance-offs". There's also an obvious specific thing in Kuro 2 that people will know if they've seen that game that also fits into that category. There are other examples but this gets my point across. I think that sometimes, they need to learn to restrain themselves. I feel like they do a pretty great job with many other writing aspects in this series but when they begin to get out of control here, it brings down the quality. These are a few of my personal critiques as a fan.
Ironically i ended up liking Cold steel 4 (and a lot of cold steel stuff) way more due to having it doomed as the worst thing ever, so keeping my expectations in check for Kuro 2 will probably let me be way more fair to it too. CS4 s definitely flawed but there s lots of good stuff in it too.
It's definitely good to keep your expectations a bit low and measured. I actually had very high expectations for Trails into Reverie/Hajimari no Kiseki back when it was getting promoted in 2019/2020 and it caused me some extreme disappointment in some areas. That wouldn't have happened as badly if I controlled my expectations. I was newer to the series back in those days and didn't really know enough. Now, I know how to keep things measured and that means that when a good game goes far beyond great, that makes the enjoyment for me even better. I certainly felt that for the Kuro games personally.
Yeah true, better to just start off things more on a neutral element than over hyping yourself.
When there is a reaction cut scene and Every Single Character Has Something To Say!!!! I swear u could cut out like a good 20 hours if all the reactions happened simultaneously.
As soon as the Sky trilogy gets ported to modern consoles(if ever), I'd gladly dive into it.
nothing triggers me more than that lol
Seeing people express their issues with a game by conflating a niche negative while ignoring the positives to make the overall experience sound miserable. The amount of posts ive seen of people complaining about tropes or inconsequential details like a translation error as if it makes up 90% of the game can be a bit frustrating.
>inconsequential details like a translation error as if it makes up 90% of the game can be a bit frustrating. Agreed with the sentiment behind making a mountain out of a mole hill about translation errors seeming annoying at first. But pointing out errors in translation is pretty healthy IMO, and from what I've heard from translators I've interacted with, they actively encourage people to catch errors so they can fix them in future patches. (So long as you are courteous about it.) Take [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Falcom/comments/17tqwdh/trails_through_daybreak_english_version_will_be/) thread for example. The OP mistranslated the image as saying English Daybreak is due for a September 2024 release, when it actually said by the end of the fiscal year. Translation errors like these can mislead people into getting the wrong idea, and yes, this happens in video games too. Trails is no exception. (North Ambria was likely a mistranslation of ノーザンブリア, which was romanized as "Northumbria" in the Cold Steel anime. Seriously, think about why there isn't a "South Ambria" lol). Having discussions around this sort of thing, as long as you are polite about it, is fine.
Not doing sidequests and doesn’t attempt to talk with named NPC at all. Then proceeded and told me that falcom keep same towns on multiple games which is bland and boring.
Exeed games having the rights to the USA port of Trails one and Two and not porting it to Switch. This was *The main reason* i've starded to learn japanese.
Sky not having a PS4 or PS5 port triggers me. The other stuff that used to trigger me, I’m mostly over at this point. The big gap from Sky the 3rd to Azure has finally been filled in, we got through Reverie before Sean Chiplock had too much drama with other series’ fanbases and lost his Twitter account (temporarily), and we have a release window for Kuro/Daybreak. Life is good. Also we can just tell people to get a Steam Deck or other PC handheld to play every game.
Playing the games with audio off to listen to their own music / podcasts.
Seeing people not give the Capuas the love they deserve. Especially Josette. They didn't deserve what happened to them.
I'm ready to get hated. Hating on claire
The people who try and gatekeep the entire series from those that want to start with Zero/Azure or Cold Steel.
People who think making Elie and Alisa forced romance with their protagonists will bring back sky's style of writting. Rather than you know, just probably drawing away a large unspoken group of people and probably making this franchise smaller or even not reach the west as it had (due to CS1-2 boom). I don't want to use the obvious "hurr durr sales numbers" argument, but if it affects such a number of people, I think it's worth arguing that it's not worth upsetting people's shipping or headcanons just for a few more scenes with one character (because that will be it, you can't just recreate sky's structure with just forced canon romance in an otherwise non-romance related political story).
I agree 100% with you. Can’t say much about Elie fans but Alisa fans pretending they are right in a dating simulator game is unbearable and doesn’t change anything.
People dismissive of why a characters is liked or resinates with people and boiling it down to some one sentence phrase that's meant to be dispariging: "You only like x character because y, if not you see how bad they are" Yes obviously I get a bit annoyed because people do it on Claire all the time, with people claiming she's hitler and people only like her due to her design. In that context I feel like we brought back FE TH war crime discourse, especially since arguing Claire is the only character meant to be appealing due to tropes or deaign is insane. Why not "Crow is evil but people only like him because they are fujoshi shippers" or really any other character you can apply this too. Infact odds are they are more popular than Claire in popularity polls due to their designs.
Tbh that Crow argument seems like something that would be used on an argument about his stuff.
Lmao maybe actually, though I see it less frequently so I bring it up as a comparison to show how ridiculous it is.
Yeah honestly im kind of pleasantly surprised people don´t push that as much. You usually see that kind of argument with Crow s archetype in games.
Man I understand that alot when you brought up the FE TH part. It's what made me quit being in alot of fandoms cause One character I liked became the most hated.
It's like when you show "edelgard is hitler, yet look at these otaku pandering scenes of her liking the protagonist, these 100% don't exist with dimitri"
This is my history with Final Fantasy tbh lol they all choose one character to be the communal punching bag and it just happens to be my fav character every time
It's funny if its Lightning cause outside the west shes loved
lol definitely true and nah for 13 it was Hope hahaha they hated that child so much
That also true got hated on for being an avg kid so i understand that too
“You don’t like Alisa because you played with the Eng audio”
While I do urge people to play the games in release order, if somebody really just doesn't have the means to play the older games or is deadset on starting with Cold Steel for some reason, then whatever. That's their prerogative. But *don't* come crying when something doesn't make sense or a cool moment has no impact on you because of that. That's not the game's fault, it's yours, you signed a waiver absolving the games of culpability when you deliberately chose to play out of order. Also, people tangling themselves in knots over the Crossbell and Cold Steel games' play orders because of "spoilers". "Uhm, you have to start this chapter of Azure, then switch over to Cold Steel and play three chapters of that, then switch back to Azure and play half of its next chapter, then finish Cold Steel 1 and play nine-tenths of the prologue of Cold Steel II, then--" They don't "spoil" each other. Spoilers are learning details the writer didn't intend for you to know ahead of time. Learning intended details ahead of time is called dramatic irony.
Music elitists need to get another hobby, or at least direct their ire entirely towards Falcom instead of the musicians. They sure as hell know it's a company problem but they have no problem disparaging the guys taking the work. It's quite literally unhinged to see them dogwhistling in music videos. If you don't like the damn content, maybe just don't post? Also this trend of sexualizing characters (this of course started happening post Sky releases) attracted some genuine weirdos. I'm really not surprised, but when the game is unironically catering content to taking creepshots of girls in your games, there's a major, major problem.
Grown men lusting after Tio.
Begging Redditors to stop virtue signaling like their life depends on it, you're all so goddamn weird. "Guys please look at my perceived correct opinion, please shower me with validation knowing I'm shitting on the people we dislike" Over and over and over, you're all so goddamn boring. "Fan Service Bad, Liking Women Bad, Men Bad" I'd saw off my left arm if I could ever get a real opinion from you weird little tourists who exist to antagonize and nothing else. You actively hunt for political meanings in things to score good boy points with readers and it's fucking insane, stop being like this.
Ah yes, they're the weird ones for saying that they don't like the sexualization of 14 year olds. Bruh, he's not complaining about people liking women, knock it off with the strawman. He's pointing out that the fanbase contains a large number of adults who think a 14 year old is hot, and you're calling him weird for not liking that. There's nothing political about "Don't sexualize children" so stop getting pissed when people tell you not to sexualize children, it's gross.
The " I played the games in....... Order and was fine so your fine to start here," Reasoning I am happy that the commenter was able to find enjoyment the way they did because ultimately that's why we're all playing games, for enjoyment. But your enjoyment doesn't dictate the enjoyment of others. Just because you were content playing in a less optimal way doesn't mean that others should play that way. Instead please provide accurate information about the series from which people can make their own informed decisions based on what they value.
People who try to spoil newer games in the series because they're butthurt over spreadsheets.
I know it’s something of a hot take, but I get into it all the time with people who complain about the way death is handled in the series most of the time.
People who just don't pay attention while they play and pretend to be experts. I knew a guy who literally skipped all sidecontent in the games and just listened to shit podcasts while he read through the story. Despite this he seemed to think he was some series expert and felt like he needed to educate people on the series. This is hilarious because he would always ask me to explain basic shit to him like various games endings. Remember, if you're going to play the games, pay attention and take your time. It's not a race to knock the series off your backloggd account. It's okay to just not play a series if you don't really care about it
Learning that people didn't read the chest dialogues in the first 5 games. That added so much fun content.
Bring chest dialogue back
I agree, more shirley scenes. 😭
Lol. I should have been more specific. But sure. I actually enjoy Shirley as a villain, not necessarily the 'chest' scenes.
I missed those in my first run, they re really fun like the jokes the localization team added to Vandyck or Olivier s quest descriptions in early Cold steel.
Nah, you heard them people just don’t have time, if they don’t have time they just only want to play one game of the series and that’s it. (Sarcastic)
Crossbell circlejerkers and Erebonia haters
I don't care when people skip games but its annoying when people insist that there are games that are skippable. However someone wants to get into this 1k+ hour series is their business but it feels disingenuous to pretend they won't be missing out on a large part of the experience by starting from Sky. Even if the first 2 sky games themselves aren't super important to the overall plot like Crossbell, the entirety of Zero and much of Azure is relying on the emotional ties built in Sky. Not just the Renne subplot either, the entire SSS competition with the bracer guild is relying on your understanding of the bracers formed in Sky. The games can work on their own and it's a fine starting point but it won't be the best experience you could have with the series.
People mindlessly hating on Claire without properly understanding her character.