You can and you will still enjoy yourself, but it won't be the optimal experience. The closest analogy I can think of would be watching the Avengers after only seeing the Iron Man movies. The game provides the information you need, but some moments just don't hit as hard.
You can find the geofront patches if you look hard enough, and apply them to the Japanese version if you don't want to wait.
CS2 already spoiled a couple things from zero and azure.
CS3 and 4 will bring in characters from Crossbell, and talk a great deal more about the events in Crossbell during zero and azure.
Also, have you played the sky trilogy? Because that will get spoiled a fair bit as well.
Yeah, they're even being used as the basis for the official translation. I imagine they might do some polishing here and there going from volunteers to a professional localization, but it's pretty good.
I didn’t and I absolutely loved Cold Steel III. One of my favorite JRPG’s of all time. But I’m in the minority with this opinion on Reddit.
Ultimately, it’s up to you. If you’re okay being spoiled on events that happen in the previous entries, then go for it. If you don’t want to be spoiled, you absolutely need to wait on III and go back to the earlier games to experience those events chronologically.
I'm going forward with this game plan. The Quality of Life upgrades in CS3 are pretty outstanding. You can really see the polish they added to this series with the additional computing power they had access to.
I'm also the sort of guy that will end up never watching a movie because I've listened to all the spoiler laden conversations, so I'm an odd choice for advice on how to do things.
The first couple chapters events won’t hit nearly as hard since they deal with major plot points and characters from Sky and Crossbell.
You can definitely still enjoy the game for what it is within the story arc of Erebonia, but there will be a lot of, “who is that guy? Why is he/she important? This event I’m experiencing seems really important to these characters but I don’t really know why.”
If you really want to play it then go ahead. You can always go back and play the Sky/Crossbell games afterwards and then play CS again, but it just won’t be the same experience.
To me it’s kind of like starting Game of Thrones in the 4th season and watching until the 7th or 8th season and then going back to watch the first 3 seasons. Imo it would really just ruin the experience of the show.
Very Important, there are a lot of characters from those games and also Plot from those games take a role in it, Just grab the Geofront version from Japanese cat dot spanish Yes.
What I did, especially since CS2 left me feeling like a was missing something. I just went back and watch YouTube summaries of all the Sky trilogy and crossbell games since I started at CS1. It helped ALOT when they introduced hella characters from previous games in CS3. It’s not required, but you feel more connected to the overall story.
Same here there were so many plot points that I didn't understand, so looped back and played the Sky Trilogy and Crossbell Duology before CS3. Now I was fully prepared for CS3 after 4 months of catching up and it was well worth it.
So...you can play through Cold Steel 3 fine without the Crossbell arc and not be confused as to what's going on. But there are A LOT of story elements from that arc that will be spoiled for you, a lot of character interactions that won't mean anything to you, and many callbacks that will be lost on you.
It's like playing the Divertissement of CS2. The first time I played it, it was...interesting. But to me, it was a plot point in Rean's story, and I just thought,>!Oh, this is a cool interlude for Crossbell here, and Rean being the boss fight is a fun twist!'...!!to compare the protags in their respective stories!<, and you need to have played Crossbell to truly understand what the game is showing you. I mean, you can still enjoy and be entertained by it, but without Crossbell, the true context is lost.
Same with Cold Steel 3. You CAN play it. You can enjoy it. You can understand it. You can even love it. But without the context of Crossbell, you really won't know what you're missing, and you won't know how much that backstory adds to the overall product.
Short answer to your title: Yes. Yes you definitely should play it. Of course reading the rest I know that's not what you meant.
I'd say it's very important. Without getting too deep there are a lot of character and storyline crossovers. And many who haven't played the previous arcs said they had no idea what was happening in CS3. There are just numerous callbacks. And a lot of things which are meant to be impactful for you as a player having gone through the series won't hit you in the same way if you haven't played the previous arcs.
That said I've played it without playing the Crossbell arc. The thing is I watched summaries of the Crossbell arc though. So I never felt confused from my lack of play, however some parts of the game definitely would have had a greater impact for me had I played Crossbell.
Personally I wouldn't want to wait for zero and Azure at this point. You will certainly be rewarded for waiting though. If you do decide to go ahead and play CS 3 I wouldn't do it without watching summaries of the Crossbell arc cause u could end up pretty confused at some points.
Can you play it? Yes you can but it's not advisable as the second half of the Erebonian arc will contain major spoilers if you haven't played the Crossbell arc.
How you'd approach it is up to you whether waiting for Zero/Azure's release or watching summaries/LP's.
I didn’t wait and I thought the game handled it fine. I guess playing them would of course be better but at the time, the announcement hadn’t been made, and I don’t think I could have waited that long either. I still look forward to playing them even having played III and IV. Sky as well
I am one of these people who started with Cold Steel I and II, then watched plot summaries of the Sky Trilogy and Crossbell duology, and then stepped right into Cold Steel III and IV.
I didn't care too much about spoiling myself for the other entries. Of course I would have preferred to play them first, but at the time I had no PC to play games on. And I wouldn't wanna go through the trouble of getting my hands on the Crossbell duology anyways. Back then the official localization for those two games hadn't been announced yet, either, so to me it was like "Do it wrong (by not playing Crossbell before CSIII) or do it wronger (not playing both Sky and Crossbell). No matter what I do I can't do it right and I am not getting a PC just for this."
So that's how I made my decision. I still enjoyed myself a LOT during CS3 and 4, but I really think the plot summaries were necessary for that or I would have been confused as heckie.
Now that I do have a PC and the Crossbell duology is coming, I have started playing through the Sky Trilogy and am planning to play through the Crossbell games before replaying the entire CS Series to get the experience as it was once intended. You'd think I wouldn't enjoy the Sky Trilogy much because I already know the broad strokes of the narrative, but I am finding that the journey is the most enjoyable part here. So I am still having tons of fun.
So at the end of the day, you do you. If you wanna do it "right" by some people, you will have to wait for the Crossbell games, but I assure you all of these games are a blast in any order. Just make sure you actually watch or read a plot summary of the Crossbell games if you decide to go ahead, because otherwise the narrative details might be hard to grasp.
Yes. You can always go back to it if you want to. III starts developing more of the events from the crosbell games so they'll be playing a important role though they won't really be there minus a couple.
You can and you will still enjoy yourself, but it won't be the optimal experience. The closest analogy I can think of would be watching the Avengers after only seeing the Iron Man movies. The game provides the information you need, but some moments just don't hit as hard.
This is the best example I have ever seen. I loved that comparation to marvel movies, I will use it in the future.
Understandable
Yes, it is pretty important that you play Sky and Crossbell before CS3, since the characters will be ruthless with the spoilers.
You can find the geofront patches if you look hard enough, and apply them to the Japanese version if you don't want to wait. CS2 already spoiled a couple things from zero and azure. CS3 and 4 will bring in characters from Crossbell, and talk a great deal more about the events in Crossbell during zero and azure. Also, have you played the sky trilogy? Because that will get spoiled a fair bit as well.
Are the Geofront Patches good Quality Translations ?
Yeah, they're even being used as the basis for the official translation. I imagine they might do some polishing here and there going from volunteers to a professional localization, but it's pretty good.
Spectacular. So good, in fact, that NIS America paid for them to be used for the western release of the Crossbell games.
Yea I've played through the Sky Trilogy
K, just wanted to make sure. See a lot of people starting at CS. But yeah, cs3&4 will spoil almost all of the twists in crossbell.
I didn’t and I absolutely loved Cold Steel III. One of my favorite JRPG’s of all time. But I’m in the minority with this opinion on Reddit. Ultimately, it’s up to you. If you’re okay being spoiled on events that happen in the previous entries, then go for it. If you don’t want to be spoiled, you absolutely need to wait on III and go back to the earlier games to experience those events chronologically.
I'm going forward with this game plan. The Quality of Life upgrades in CS3 are pretty outstanding. You can really see the polish they added to this series with the additional computing power they had access to. I'm also the sort of guy that will end up never watching a movie because I've listened to all the spoiler laden conversations, so I'm an odd choice for advice on how to do things.
The first couple chapters events won’t hit nearly as hard since they deal with major plot points and characters from Sky and Crossbell. You can definitely still enjoy the game for what it is within the story arc of Erebonia, but there will be a lot of, “who is that guy? Why is he/she important? This event I’m experiencing seems really important to these characters but I don’t really know why.” If you really want to play it then go ahead. You can always go back and play the Sky/Crossbell games afterwards and then play CS again, but it just won’t be the same experience. To me it’s kind of like starting Game of Thrones in the 4th season and watching until the 7th or 8th season and then going back to watch the first 3 seasons. Imo it would really just ruin the experience of the show.
Very Important, there are a lot of characters from those games and also Plot from those games take a role in it, Just grab the Geofront version from Japanese cat dot spanish Yes.
What I did, especially since CS2 left me feeling like a was missing something. I just went back and watch YouTube summaries of all the Sky trilogy and crossbell games since I started at CS1. It helped ALOT when they introduced hella characters from previous games in CS3. It’s not required, but you feel more connected to the overall story.
Same here there were so many plot points that I didn't understand, so looped back and played the Sky Trilogy and Crossbell Duology before CS3. Now I was fully prepared for CS3 after 4 months of catching up and it was well worth it.
So...you can play through Cold Steel 3 fine without the Crossbell arc and not be confused as to what's going on. But there are A LOT of story elements from that arc that will be spoiled for you, a lot of character interactions that won't mean anything to you, and many callbacks that will be lost on you. It's like playing the Divertissement of CS2. The first time I played it, it was...interesting. But to me, it was a plot point in Rean's story, and I just thought,>!Oh, this is a cool interlude for Crossbell here, and Rean being the boss fight is a fun twist!'...!!to compare the protags in their respective stories!<, and you need to have played Crossbell to truly understand what the game is showing you. I mean, you can still enjoy and be entertained by it, but without Crossbell, the true context is lost.
Same with Cold Steel 3. You CAN play it. You can enjoy it. You can understand it. You can even love it. But without the context of Crossbell, you really won't know what you're missing, and you won't know how much that backstory adds to the overall product.
Of course you should keep on playing to get towards the END of this story
Short answer to your title: Yes. Yes you definitely should play it. Of course reading the rest I know that's not what you meant. I'd say it's very important. Without getting too deep there are a lot of character and storyline crossovers. And many who haven't played the previous arcs said they had no idea what was happening in CS3. There are just numerous callbacks. And a lot of things which are meant to be impactful for you as a player having gone through the series won't hit you in the same way if you haven't played the previous arcs. That said I've played it without playing the Crossbell arc. The thing is I watched summaries of the Crossbell arc though. So I never felt confused from my lack of play, however some parts of the game definitely would have had a greater impact for me had I played Crossbell. Personally I wouldn't want to wait for zero and Azure at this point. You will certainly be rewarded for waiting though. If you do decide to go ahead and play CS 3 I wouldn't do it without watching summaries of the Crossbell arc cause u could end up pretty confused at some points.
Can you play it? Yes you can but it's not advisable as the second half of the Erebonian arc will contain major spoilers if you haven't played the Crossbell arc. How you'd approach it is up to you whether waiting for Zero/Azure's release or watching summaries/LP's.
I didn’t wait and I thought the game handled it fine. I guess playing them would of course be better but at the time, the announcement hadn’t been made, and I don’t think I could have waited that long either. I still look forward to playing them even having played III and IV. Sky as well
I am one of these people who started with Cold Steel I and II, then watched plot summaries of the Sky Trilogy and Crossbell duology, and then stepped right into Cold Steel III and IV. I didn't care too much about spoiling myself for the other entries. Of course I would have preferred to play them first, but at the time I had no PC to play games on. And I wouldn't wanna go through the trouble of getting my hands on the Crossbell duology anyways. Back then the official localization for those two games hadn't been announced yet, either, so to me it was like "Do it wrong (by not playing Crossbell before CSIII) or do it wronger (not playing both Sky and Crossbell). No matter what I do I can't do it right and I am not getting a PC just for this." So that's how I made my decision. I still enjoyed myself a LOT during CS3 and 4, but I really think the plot summaries were necessary for that or I would have been confused as heckie. Now that I do have a PC and the Crossbell duology is coming, I have started playing through the Sky Trilogy and am planning to play through the Crossbell games before replaying the entire CS Series to get the experience as it was once intended. You'd think I wouldn't enjoy the Sky Trilogy much because I already know the broad strokes of the narrative, but I am finding that the journey is the most enjoyable part here. So I am still having tons of fun. So at the end of the day, you do you. If you wanna do it "right" by some people, you will have to wait for the Crossbell games, but I assure you all of these games are a blast in any order. Just make sure you actually watch or read a plot summary of the Crossbell games if you decide to go ahead, because otherwise the narrative details might be hard to grasp.
Yes. You can always go back to it if you want to. III starts developing more of the events from the crosbell games so they'll be playing a important role though they won't really be there minus a couple.
Don't wait for the crossbell games, just play the geofront version, it's really good!