That fight can be kinda tough. I beat them, then went to grind the corridor a bit more, fought em again and my ass got beat

Cracks me up when bosses will get first turn and a zero craft turn bonus, then just one shot you

Everything is pretty much smooth sailing until they start using their S-Crafts lmao

Think I'm just gonna bring Tio for her order so I don't have to deal with that s*** next time

Yup, pretty much always bring either Tio or Altina in any party Those two plus Lechter's tagalong brave order

Unrelated, anytime Alisa talks, all I can hear is Hanyuu from Higurashi

Only game that my JPN account ever came in handy for was Nier Automata. It released a week early in Japan but if you bought it from the store it still had ENG subs available so you could play no problem

I honestly had no idea they shared the same VA thats crazy

At the point of no return and I missed three chests in either Rean's or C's routes

decided to start playing on nightmare since I have broken link attacks and I guess I'll try to hold off on C's route til theres a fix

how far can I get in Lloyd and Reans route before I'm forced to play through C?

rixia got the bug, fell to my knees this s*** like an STD

could've swore she was playable in 4

iirc, both can go up to the end of Act 2 before you have to swap to C. Not really a spoiler, but I'll do it anyways C does have an Act 1, but it's two battles and a total of like 10 min.

My friend finished up the game the other night playing on Nightmare on PS5, so you can definitely play through the game if you really want to. I saw that NISA said the patch is coming soon, but that can be next week or two months from now lol.

Nice

Haven’t had time to post my thoughts but I only have Reans route left on Act IV

Don’t think I will get the plat as I have f***ed up scanning on some enemies in the early game

Rest of the game is heat Hope you enjoy it. C Act 4 spoilers I popped off when I saw Arios joined the party in Rufus' Act 4\. He's so cool man. Also did the same when Rean summoned Tyrfing S.

I ended up missing three chests and a single enemy at the beginning of the game during the takeover of Crossbell. There are two enemies with the name EDF Soldier (Sword). I scanned one of them, but not the other

Fortunately you can FLY through the game on NG+ in like 2-3 hours. Getting the 1500 victories was my last achievement, so it was good to make progress on that going through the game on NG+ for the things I missed.

I made a lot of notes but haven’t had a chance to post my thoughts cause work has been busy but yeah those 2 moments you mentioned were extremely hard

I been f***in with Cs route so hard man, (Act IV) Duvalie and Arios joining that team is crazy, these niggas really makin an all star team

Looking forward to your thoughts

C's route is nuts man. Who knew Rufus was gonna be such a good protagonist lmao. Everyone else in that squad is great too. I told myself I was gonna use Swin more this time around, but ended up swapping Arios in frame 1

@Lisa looks like the patch is out on PS5

just in time. finished prologue and Lloyd act 1 and had just started Rean

lloyd act 1

rufus had me heated trying to get that RP. had to try like 3 times and then the one time I got it I realized I didn't scan him so I had to do it again anyway :sasmh:

had to go back to geofront and make sure everyone had max CP to S craft spam

Yeah that Rufus fight was nasty, also had to go back in the Geofront and grind, Crescent Mirror is what got me through that fight its so clutch

In the middle of the finale

@wes I love this scene between Rufus and the replica with Rufus reflecting on what Lapis said to him (which was probably my favourite scene of the game), they made perfect use of this flashback and you can tell how much of an impact Lapis and Rufus has been having on each other throughout this route; seeing it all accumulate to this scene has me kneeling

Honestly haven't really been a fan on Lloyd and Reans route - they have good moments but a lot of the dialogue just feels like rehashing past games and at this point I have experienced Cold Steel like 5 times and I just want to get to Kuro no Kiseki

Which kind of leads to a problem I have with the series, I love the character writing and the gameplay but I feel like the actual story writing can be pretty awful at times? Said this many times before but I feel like there is too much reliance on deus ex machina like brainwashing to push the plot forward, I don’t really like discussing power scaling in JRPGs cause at this point its part of the genre but its especially nonsensical in this series. Usually these issues aren’t that present in the beginning of an arc but in the later entries Falcom tries to continuously up the stakes and thats when the issues with the writing start occurring - which also explains why I’m so excited to start Kuro no Kiseki cause its kind of a reset

Rufus' route definitely the highlight of the three routes. I really enjoyed Rean's, especially how it ends up tying into the game's finale.

As for the deus ex machinas, you are not gonna be happy with Kuro 2 onwards. In your case, you're almost better off just playing the start of each arc.

I heard about some time travel s*** going on with Kuro but depending on its execution I don't think I will mind

JRPGs usually have you fight some abstract concept so I don't usually mind things like this but the way brainwashing has been overused in Cold Steel has really annoyed me

Alan Richard is goated tho

The time travel isn't too bad, but it got pretty grating at one point, even for me (who lets a lot of bs slide lol). Though I looked at it like I was reading a VN, so it was pretty cool to me. It just got SO overused at a point in the story, where I just wanted to move onto the next plot point. In hindsight, it wasn't too bad and lowkey kinda funny lol.

Regarding the brainwashing, I will wait for your posts whenever you get around to the game

If even you couldn't stomach it then theres no hope for me

If anything I expect the cast and gameplay to carry the game for me anyway

Oh yeah, the cast, gameplay, and music are really good (might even be my favorite, actually), so you've got no problems there.

What annoyed me without spoiling anything specific was something bad would happen, time turns back, they fix it and everything is good. In this case, I think time turned back like 3-4 times because some new bullshit would pop up. I just wanted to see what was going on in the next part of the story instead of just sticking on that specific spot. While it was important, it's not like it was fighting the final boss or some s\*\*\* so I don't know why they dwelled on that spot for so long lol.

edit: I do say that and it's still a top 3 game in the series for me. Game is just so f***ing cool man Highkey would replay it in a heartbeat lmao

This Renne VN in the post game,didn't think I needed a VN of just Renne going through high school

Student Council President Renne Bright. I'm so proud of her!