The final boss in Hajimari is f***ing impossible on Nightmare man, what the f***

edit: all done

Damn you already finished?

Yeah

The structure of the game is really similar to Sky 3rd, so you can get through the game pretty quickly if you want. I didn't talk to every NPC like I usually do since some locations throughout the game didn't have any of them translated, so I'm sure that saved me like 10 hours lol.

I still did a decent amount of side content, but didn't want to do 100% it with the game getting localized next summer. I'll get the plat on PS5 when it drops

There is a ton of optional content in this game though, it's kinda crazy. I finished up the main game on Sunday, but spent my last two work days doing the extra stuff Credits had me bawling at like 1am

Some thoughts on Hajimari. S*** slaps

Really great ending to the Crossbell and Erebonia games. Despite this being so many games in, these characters still get some crazy development. The new protag, C, already up there with Rean and Lloyd as a favorite. Really gonna miss all these characters going into Kuro, though I'm sure some will pop up again because that's just the nature of these games lol. The ending credits got me really f***ing good

Combat is definitely the best it's been in the series as well. There are SO many options with what you can do; the customization is just insane. The True Reverie Corridor is also a really nice gimmick for this game. Damn near endless amount of grinding you can do to level characters, their equipment, costumes/attachments, quartz, etc. + the option to level enemies up to +100 levels adds some more difficulty to the game. Plus, there being like 51 characters to pick from is absurd.

The equivalent of the doors in Sky 3rd is great. Huge fan of getting more development/backstories with these characters. Couple of em brought a tear to my eye too.

My only real complaint is that one of the routes is just OK. The others are really good, but I kinda felt like this one in particular was just something that felt not as interesting.
Definitely still enjoyed it, but it's not the highlight of the game until you get to the final chapter lol.

Music was also really good. The final dungeon & boss theme are so incredibly good Not quite my favorites (CS2's final dungeon & CS4's final boss are the best ones imo), but these ones fit everything perfectly.

Overall, def another easy 10/10 & all time favorite. It's probably my favorite behind CS4 along with Azure.

Onto Kuro

Good review; got me excited to see whats going on in hajimari. Must be crazy to think that you only have 1 game left in this insanely long series

I actually finished CS2 a few days ago, didn’t post my thoughts on it cause I booted up CS3 right after and it has been insanely good. The visual upgrade is so welcome; I honestly thought CS1/2 looked like s*** to the point that the 2D games looked even better

There are so many unique animations in this game compared to before lmao. Seeing every student have a really unique character design is cool as f*** too; this game seems like the first one where they are really taking advantage of Kiseki becoming a 3D game.

Gameplay changes have been exceptional too. Orders and Break mechanic is such an insanely good addition to the game, you now have so much variety on how you want to consume BP; the amount of depth you have in combat now really makes this one of my favourite turn based combat systems. It helps that they balanced Rush to inflict crazy amount of Break damage so you really have to think about if you want to use Rush or use an Order.

In terms of characters I'm currently in the beginning of chapter 2 and I have been f***ing with it heavily so far. The NC7 members are so good since theres no where near as many members as OC7 which means that character traits isn’t split into like 7 different characters to try and make them stand out. I really love how mature NC7 is compared to OC7 as well; a lot of the drama between OC7 felt insanely childish and forced like Fie/Lauras beef in the beginning of CS1. Juna and Kurt had some conflict in the beginning of this game and both characters resolved it themselves immediately instead of dragging it on for 2 in game months. In general I just love how they are actually written like young adults instead of children.

Seeing returning characters like Tita and Agate in 3D is the coolest s\*\*\* ever too; Titas 3D model is so good and I was not expecting her to be enrolled at Thors.

Shoutout to Jingo too that was unexpected asf; I loved here in Crossbell

I’m also really glad that one of the first characters you meet up again in CS3 is Vivi and Mint cause I love them so much man lmao; I wonder if they are fan favourite NPCs or something. Also when Randy appeared I was going crazy; literally one of the best bros in JRPGs

Gonna quickly talk about CS2 since I didn’t get the chance too. The f***ing craziest reveal ever is obviously that Ousbourne is Reans dad I swear I stopped breathing for like 5 minutes when that s*** was revealed and the credits just started rolling. Seeing Lloyd and Rixia right after the credits had me in shambles too I could not believe wtf was going on lmao
That being said I really felt like that last chapter after the Crossbell segment was unnecessary; game just felt like it would never end and not in a good way.

Overall I would probably put this game in the same place as CS1 for the rankings. CS1/2 probably weakest part of the series for me and I feel like playing CS3 is making its issues even more apparent for me with how they handled the characters. CS3 is following the same structure as CS1 but it doesn’t feel like a drag right now which is in part because the trips are more eventful but its also because the trips aren’t focused on childish dramas. Rean being an Instructor is also just infinitely more interesting than him being a student. I understand that CS1/2 were necessary to get to this point but I just wish they were better games

Also, all that being said; I actually don't dislike OC7. I just think they are weak when compared to the cast from previous games

Despite really liking 2, you ain't wrong Steam is telling me I have 48 hours, so I got through that one pretty quickly. I don't think I started to try and get everything done until CS3. I liked the epilogue chapter (since the Reverie corridor was fun to play around in as the Phantasma mirror characters or w/e the item is called), but kinda I think the "real" ending was a really f\*\*\*ing good stopping point (guess that would've meant no ||Crossbell stuff and that s\*\*\* was raw so idk lol).

Also, it was insane to see that Instructor Thomas is a Dominion

Yeah, when I was playing through CS1/2, I really missed the isometric style from the previous games. It just looked so much better. I'll blame it on them making these games on the PS Vita alongside the PS3. CS3-Hajimari are definitely my favorite graphics style since like you said, it looks really good lol. I only have a few hours in Kuro, but that s*** almost doesn't even feel like a Trails game with how much of an upgrade it is.

The ending of the final chapter in CS2 was f\*\*\*ing NUTS man. Crow dies, Rean revealed as Osborne's son, and you get to play as Lloyd/Rixia WITH a boss fight against Rean and Altina. Two MCs fighting each other in so f\*\*\*ing raw man lmao. I live for the twists in these games

NC7 is just so much better than OC7 man. I do like OC7, but some characters like Machias and especially Elliot are just there. NC7 definitely has some of my favorite characters. Altina is easily top 5. Nice not having petty arguments for literally no reason though I still like the Machias and Jusis one because it makes sense in the context of everything and the two of them going back and forth cracks me up lol.

Tita, Agate, and Randy popping up in like the 15 minutes had me hype as hell. Though I think they did Randy's 3D model a bit dirty. His face just seems off lol

You have any difficulties on CS2 Nightmare? The Brave Orders are a bit overtuned in CS3, but they feel a bit more balanced in 4 and Hajimari. I believe Rean's defensive order and Juna's Sledgehammer trivialize everything.

Steam tells me I have 90 hours on CS2. The open world sections were pretty cool at first; the Courageous is a really nice hub area but Chapter 2 just being "Liberate X location" and recruit NPCs got extremely tiring, then you have to do all the shrines. There is also a whole civil war going on but it kind of felt like everyone was just chilling lmao; i'm not asking for deaths but Celdic being burned down and 1 person dying being the worst thing that happened during the war was kinda funny to me

I really liked the Epilogue chapter with Lloyd and Rixia; either that segment or the one before would have been my preferred stopping point for the game.

Also I love how you linked Phantasmal Blaze and Blue Destination those 2 are some of my favourite tracks. I love it when the keys come back in on Blue Destination at 0:57

I love NC7 so much so far man, also love Altina too; was pretty crazy to get confirmation that she and Millium are actually humonculus. And actually you are right with Machias and Jusis those two characters interacted pretty well with each other

I don't recall having any difficulty in CS2, actually Laura carried the whole game for me; I had her attack at 2600 and just abused the f*** out of her S-Craft. Also had the Moebius quarts which makes items AoE and the Burst Strike quarts which gives you 2 turns. So basically every boss is just Use Laura S-Craft -> Burst Strike -> Use AoE CP Item -> Use Burst Strike -> Repeat. Probably the most unbalanced game in the series so far since you have unlimited turns with Burst Strike

CS3 Nightmare has been pretty difficult so far in the early game since you have to realise how important Break and BP is but as you said Reans Order to mitigate damage by 50% for 8 turns is kinda busted since it only costs 1BP

Yeah, the deaths (or lack thereof) in this series really makes me feel like it really is a video game version of One Piece. It took me up until like CS3 to realize that Loewe is actually dead. Was expecting that fool to just pop up out of nowhere at some point

I did the exact same thing with Laura. Tossed on Domination and whatever MQ does huge damage, Moebius on Jusis + his Noble Command craft and just went to town blowing things up lol.

Have you done any Divine Knight/Soldat fights at all in CS3? Think they developed into a pretty enjoyable time. The music for the fights are crazy good too. Also gets me hyped as hell whenever Rean summons Valimar. You can buy a bunch of the BP consumables, pop those, and then you can just use the rush/burst attacks over and over.

Unlike most of OC7, NC7 gets a ton of focus and development. Pretty much used them in all of my party comps as well. Overall just really good characters imo. Altina always sitting in the cafe eating pancakes cracks me up.

Did a few Divine Knight battles so far; they really developed the hell out of these fights from the first game where it was complete ass (on Nightmare where the fight was just complete RNG; still never gonna forget how ass that was)

I screenshotted the s\*\*\* out of Altina eating pancakes I love her

Somehow haven't completely binged Kuro in a week Only at like 20 or so hours in, but it's been great. New combat took a bit to get used to, but I think I prefer it to how it used to be since I got to the point where I could do fights on Nightmare in the previous games without looking lol.

Music is really good too. Pretty jazzy sound overall, so I'm definitely not complaining about that. This boss theme is basically a new version of Exceed! from CS1

Never gonna get tired of the main city theme or the battle theme

Music is sounding pretty good from what you linked, how are you liking the cast in Kuro?

Currently at the start of Chapter 4 in CS3. Been liking the game so far, definitely a lot more than CS1/2 my biggest issue at this point though is Ouroboros and how they are integrated into the plot.

When they were first introduced in Trails in the Sky Ouroboros was an interesting group to deal with since you had the Joshua/Loewe relationship and all the Enforces had somewhat of a relationship with the main cast. In Cold Steel they just show up say some cryptic s\*\*\*, fight you then say "time to move on to the next step of the experiment". Don't think I could care less about Mcburns or Campanella right now; I do like Arianrhod and the Stahlritters tho since Duvalie is just entertaining and it seems like theres more to Arianrhods' character + that fight with OC7 and Aurelia (I love Aurelia so much man lmao) vs her and the Stahlritters at the end of Chapter 3 was really good. Idk, feels like Ouroboros started of as mysterious but they gradually got worse with each game and now they are just Team Rocket

I actually have a theory about whats going on in the story right now and that is that Airianrhod, the person that looks like Crow and certain other characters are actually dead and have just been brought back to life via some sort of Gnome magic or something which is probably why Airanrhod is so similar to the Lance Maiden that is currently supposed to be dead.

Cast is really solid. Can already tell Van is gonna be fighting for a favorite MC spot Only have like half the full party rn, but I imagine the others will be really good as well. There is one character in particular (who I know is a guest party member) that I need in my party IMMEDIATELY

The game is much darker than the previous games too. Van really doesn't care about killing people, whereas you know that wouldn't happen with Estelle, Lloyd, and Rean lol. Some pretty crazy/"gory" deaths too, especially for a Trails game.

For the Ouroboros stuff you mentioned, I sorta was thinking the same thing when I was playing through. Felt a bit weird to go up against McBurn and Arianrhod who could EASILY clear everyone in Class 7, only for them to just f\*\*\* off after the fight lol. Without spoiling anything, their actions make more sense when you get more of the story.

Also from what I'm seeing in Kuro, it's looking like it'll be similar to Sky in the sense that there's some existing relationship between characters and Ouroboros. Still haven't seen much at all when it comes to them though. (minor "spoilers" for CS3 onwards, so I wouldn't click if you don't wanna risk anything; hard to say how spoiler-y it really is lol).

Bro the at Arianrhod/Stahlritter fight with Aurelia was f\*\*\*ing nuts. I had chills the entire time, especially with Unfathomed Force playing. I did get spoiled on that just before it happened in game, but was still insane to see lol.

As for your theory, no comment

I'd say the rest of the game is where it is like, REALLY good. I was glued to my desk Chapter 4 onwards (more so than I usually am with these games lol).

Van sounds promising, last time we had an MC okay with killing people was Kevin and that game is in my top 3. Ever since then it seems like they have been afraid to kill literally anyone; CS2 had a whole war going on and the only thing the player sees is 1 town getting burnt down and 1 random NPC dying; the stakes in these games can really be non existent at times (with the exception of Crow but it looks like he is getting brought back to life or some s\*\*\*)

Power scaling in trails game never makes any sense lmaoo; it makes it a bit hard to get invested in the fights when you know Falcom will just do whatever the f*** they want regardless

Finished CS3 so its time for a review.

Had to wait a few hours before writing this because some of the characters actions/motivations really annoyed me but sitting down and looking it at from their perspective I somewhat understand that theres a reason they did what they did and I don't have the full picture yet I'm talking about the Ironbloods

The gameplay in this game is the best out of the series with some of the new mechanics they introduced like having 2 MQz (Master Quartz) slots available which is funny because prior to this game I didn't like the MQz at all but just adding in another slot fixed so many issues I had with it since it really opens up how you can build certain characters. I honestly enjoyed just spending time in the menus and figuring out the best quartz combinations.

I think I talked on this before but the order system is really f***ing cool since it adds more depth to BP. Orders weren't that well balanced when you have s*** like +300% break damage and 50% damage mitigation for the cost of 1BP (lmfao) that being said using Rush was still valuable since Rush does a good amount of Break damage and is quite useful for finishing off bosses when they have low HP and you aren't in danger of needing BP.

The Divine Knight battles are actually really good now; crazy to think we have come this far from what could have possibly been the worst final boss in a game in CS1 (if you were playing on Nightmare difficulty). They are still nothing complicated but I just found them more fun since you now have control over a Knight and multiple Soldats.

Story Spoilers

On the story side I have quite a lot of complaints with how the overall story is structured mostly regarding Ouroboros and how they are integrated into the story which I went over on my last post.

With that being said I wanted to specifically talk about the last chapter of this game because as amazing and shocking as some of the events should have been I feel like because of the trails series having a severe lack of consequences a lot of the events did not have that much of an impact on me.

The scene where The Courageous blows up didn't shock me because I know Falcom wouldn't kill them off, pretty convinced Angelica is still alive and Millium will somehow comeback to life. With how many times Falcom has faked character deaths its become pretty difficult to give a s\*\*\* when they show someone dying, I understand that that it's impactful to the characters in-game but I can't help to feel exhausted every single time this happens.

The villains also being shocked at seeing Olivier, Toval and Victor "die" and making comments like "that was too far" was strange when you take into account that the Phantasmal Blaze Plan is literally to end the world I like Duvalie but her commenting "What have we been working towards" was actually insane

Wanted to talk about the Ironbloods now because the reveal that Claire and Millium turned their back on Class VII annoyed the f\*\*\* outta me until the end of the game.

I really loved Millium and Claire as characters and just thought it was completely out of character for them to switch sides like that; Millium, a character that pretty much developed emotions from being in Class VII and actually admitted that she didn't care when Osborne "died" decided to just abandon her friends out of nowhere, that being said, after processing everything that happened. I get it; somewhat.

The Ironbloods are COMPLETELY loyal to Osborne. Through out CS2/CS3 Claire never seemed that stable and she is always getting blamed for s\*\*\* going wrong, even Rean started giving her s\*\*\* in CS2, it seems like she is actually always doing s\*\*\* she doesn't want to actually do, her character is actually quite similar to Rean; she basically doesn't respect herself. I can see that she genuinely wanted to help Class VII but she fell back to her tendencies and decided to put being loyal to what Osborne wanted over what she wanted to do. It also could have just been that she decided that if she joined them then Millium wouldn't be the homunculus that gets sacrificed.

Millium switching sides really hurt me because I really loved her character but you could argue that she did that so she could save Altina at the end. That being said when Cedric was about to choke Altina out she didn't do s\*\*\* so idk lmao

Overall, despite my issues with the story I really did enjoy the game. The new cast especially, Reans interactions with NC7 were probably the highlight of the game for me as well as watching his growth; I actually booted up CS4 immediately after but decided to stop once I seen the characters in the prologue since I probably wouldn't have got a chance to write this if I continued

The loyalty aspect of the Ironbloods is kinda weird and I'd say it gets worse in CS4 (from a different standpoint). It's still something I get I guess, but I'm not super in love with how it's set up. You'll know what I'm talking about when you get to it lol. That's probably my main complaint with the writing in the CS arc. Maybe I'm just missing something?

Like, everything brought up (just in general) makes sense from the characters' POV and in the world itself, but there's a few things where I'm just like "uhh, OK". Again, CS3-Hajimari are in my top 5 favorite games period, so I still love these games very much, but there's some weird things with the writing in this arc (less so Hajimari; no real issues in there imo). In hindsight, don't really care about it much at all, so I guess it's just w/e to me.

Very curious to see how CS4 is gonna be for you. I thought it f***in slapped the entire way through, but I know some people f***ing HATE it

The scene where Ash shot the Emperor was crazy good. His VA snapped. Also, the actual ending to the game would've killed me if I had to wait like two years to get CS4.

Also, I damn near screamed when I saw the characters in the CS4 Prologue

The Heimdallr leitmotif is too elite

Ash is probably my favourite character from NC7 Hate to see him get used like that smh. The fact that there was another survivor from Hamel was f\*\*\*ing crazy I can't wait to see how Joshua reacts to that s\*\*\* man

Also the Spiral from Erebos track is insane, I loved the Heimdallr theme as well that s*** is incredible

Also gonna post this here since I finished CS3 and can watch it now

Just finished up Kuro. Van the absolute GOAT MC

The wait for Kuro 2 in English is going to kill me man

Actually caught up thats insane; the feeling of having no more trails games to play must be crazy

How did you like the gameplay? I know they get better every game but the jump from CS4 to whatever I have seen of Kuro looks insane

I already hate being caught up man; I need more This series hits every checkbox for me and then some. It's honestly pretty crazy because I figured I would've been burnt out by the time I got to Zero or something like that, but that obviously did not happen lmao.

Gameplay was great. It took a bit to get used to since I didn't really understand how to utilize the new equivalent of master quartz (Hollow Cores) effects, but once I got that down, I had a really good time with the combat. Heard Kuro 2 improves the shortcomings 1 had, so I'm looking forward to see what those changes are.

I see the action combat as more fleshed out preemptive strikes (or w/e they're called), since you can just kill lower leveled monsters without going through all the turn based stuff or you can stun the enemies, get the turn bonus effects, and then go into the turn based mode. The action combat is only in the field, so you're not using it on bosses or anything.

I actually utilized moving around on the field in Kuro because with every other game, you only "have" to move to dodge arts or something. There's a few crafts that have directional based bonuses (think it's like 1.3x damage), so you wanna take advantage of it. Van also has a craft that gives him aggro for a few turns, so you generally want to use that then move away from your party members.

Oh f*** the positional mechanic sounds really cool actually, I found moving around the field useful for baiting enemies who aggro by proximity but adding this just adds a whole other layer. Don’t know how many times I said this but I really gotta give props to Falcom for just pushing turn based combat to its limits by far the best implementation I have seen in a RPG

Positional was the word I was looking for But yeah, it definitely adds another layer to the combat. It's also really nice to have complete freedom on movement in the turn based fights since you don't need to waste a turn using the "move" option.

It is pretty crazy how Falcom adds something new to the combat every game. Figured I would've gotten tired of it by now, but they've done a great job to keep it fresh.

One absolutely massive downside to Kuro is that they removed the S-Craft cut-ins Took me like half the game to realize they weren't there lol. Though they added dynamic cut-ins in Kuro 2 that look pretty good, but I'm really gonna miss the 2D art because it always looks nice. Rean's in Hajimari is probably my favorite.

I'll do a write up on Kuro some point soon. Overall, really f***ing good game. Doesn't quite reach the emotional highs of the "climax" games since it's the first game in a completely new arc so it makes sense, but I'd say it's easily the best "first" game (Sky 1, Zero, CS1; which I guess isn't a huge accomplishment, apart from Zero, at least lol). I think I'd prob put it around Azure in terms of how much I enjoyed it, so like a top 3-5 Trails game for me (and honestly at this point top 5 overall since all my favorite games are Trails now lmao).

You working on CS4?

Sucks about the 2D art cut ins I love seeing that type of art in game, actually reminds me of how much I loved the Trails in the Sky UI because the character portraits in the menu looked nice as f***; Kevins in the 3rd especially

In CS4 I just got done with Crossbell and just recruited Renne and KeA and about to go rescue Rean. I love seeing the Bright family and Lloyd interact you can draw so many parallels since they both ended up adding someone to their family at the end of their arcs

Also I didn’t ask before but what did you think of the whole curse thing at the end of CS3? I know there’s probably more to it but I’m not really a fan of the whole “everything that is wrong with Erebonia is because of a curse” including even the Hamel incident. They made it sound like people are incapable of doing evil and anything evil is due to some curse; personally out of everything in the trails series this is without a doubt the dumbest element they introduced to the story

EDIT: This gotta be one of the hardest moment of cold steel

Fortunately there's 2D art everywhere else in the game, but just odd the specifically removed them from S-Crafts (especially since that's where they have the most impact lol). I was watching my friend play Sky FC and the start of SC, and the UI in the Sky games is pretty damn unique.

Got me incredibly hype going to Crossbell in CS3. Seeing that in 3D for the first time was so cool

As for the curse, I don't mind it. I know that's the main point of contention when it comes to the story and I kinda get it. I don't know how much has been said so far, so potential spoilers but the curse kinda just amplifies the negative thoughts in people, so it's not really forcing a good person to commit some insane crimes outta nowhere; they gotta be capable of it/harboring those thoughts in the first place.

Def spoiler territory lol, so I wouldn't click until you're done with the game.
dunno when it happens, think maybe at the end, Valimar mentions the curse came from humanity. It's similar to all of the other Sept Terrions being abused by humans like in Sky with the Aureole and KeA (or the equivalent of her in the past? can't remember tbh) in the Crossbell games.

Stuff does get explained more as you get deeper in the story. Not sure if you'll be more cool with it once more info is given on it, but I don't think it's as bad as I see made it out to be (though I do understand the complaints, for sure). I looked up some discussions after reading your post to get a better idea of the curse in general in case I missed stuff (which I did lol), and after reading those, I think it's less of an issue than I did prior.

Then again, I am pretty easy to please so once I see something like Crow saying he's going to pay back his interest, I just say "raw" then I am incredibly content with whatever is going on.