A Newcomers Introduction To The Trails Series | The Legend Of Heroes Trails Of Cold Steel 1 Review

[@Natreg44]

Well, Cold Steel 1 is not a bad starting point in itself. Any first game in an arc is a good starting point. However, I personally think that starting on Sky First Chapter is the best option. You get a continuous plot, and also see the gameplay evolve in each game. That being said, I do understand that Sky may not be the game for everyone, either for how it's structured and because the old 2.5D engine. Cold Steel 1 does spoilt a lot of things, but on it's own, is not that bad. However, Cold Steel II does spoil a lot of the previous games. The Crossbell duology gets completely spoiled, and the Sky arc, has a few things spoiled as well. The thing here is that I don't see as a good thing playing only CS1 and not going directly to CS2. Otherwise the momentum is also lost... It's recommended to play all previous game before CS3 though. That game takes into consideration a lot of plot points from the older games. There is also the Sky The First remake next year, which would remake the first game. The issue here is that since it will only be a remake of the first game in the Sky trilogy, I'm not sure it would be the best option as a fist game. Best order, both plotwise and gameplay wise, would be Sky FC > Sky SC > Sky the Third > Zero > Azure > Nayuta > Cold Steel 1 > Cold Steel 2 > Cold Steel 3 > Cold Steel 4 > Reverie > Daybreak 1 > Daybreak 2 > Kai > Sky the First Regarding difficulty, I always play on normal, but, it usually gets way to easy, to the point that some climatic battles could be ended in one or two turns if you know what you are doing. Some feedback about the review (just because you asked :D), I did enjoy more listening to your opinions themselves than to the story recap. This is just my opinion, but I always feel more interested on hearing an opinion on certain plot points or characters than to a recap. Everything else felt great. Good review. Looking forward for more Trails reviews.

[@mwcgsports5379]

FIrst of all, thank you for taking the time to write a comment and for the feedback, i really appreciate that and im glad you liked my review! So i guess my problem with the difficulty is that i dont know what im doing, which seems about right xD. One question though.. would you recommend to play sky fc next or cold steel 2 and then go back to the sky trilogy?

[@Natreg44]

@@mwcgsports5379 That's a difficult question... I think you would appreciate more Cold Steel 2 if you play the previous games. However, the cliffhanger of CS1 is a big one... I don't think I can give a good answer to this question, but I'll try. If you can wait to see how CS1 cliffhanger gets resolved, yeah, maybe try the previous games. I recommend using the voice patch for the Sky games. Also... the pacing of the previous games is also all over the place as the CS1 game. Although, back on my first playthrough I though CS1 was the slowest of them all. Also, avoid hard/nightmare mode on Sky. That trilogy is not balanced for hard/nightmare. It's better to play on normal. The big thing of Trails is the plot and characters, and the rewards for going from the very first game until the latest are great. I'm now playing Kai, and I still get a lot of references to the Sky games.

[@mwcgsports5379]

@@Natreg44 Okay so i guess i will go with sky before trails 2 maybe they even go on sale on black friday :D. Thank you for the help!

[@pmintertek]

@@mwcgsports5379 First of all, I want to say that I don't remember Cold Steel 2 spoiling as much as Natreg says. Sure some things are covered but they barely scratch what was happened in those games (and if you want to be technical about it, I don't remember anything "spoiled" from Zero and to be honest CS1 already about talked about a few things but you need pretty pointed out at those spoilers to notice. Honestly, I think you should just continue with Cold Steel 2. While, yes there are narrative bonuses for following from the first game, there is nothing really in CS2 that requires it and wouldn't work with it. But also, yeah CS3 is where series rewards for following through with it. Everything will be explained but won't have the same impact. About status elements... I honestly don't remember many bosses giving them. But if they are you have a few ways to deal with, like having accessories that block them or having mage healer that has Recuria which has big area of effect and heals every status element or just ignore it all together. Mute on Fie and Laura can be just left on since their biggest strength is either evasion or physical damage and Poison deals so little damage that can be ignored all together Don't know if playing previous games would help much with the combat outside of giving more experience with the systems.

[@mwcgsports5379]

@@pmintertek first of all thank you aswell for taking the time to write a comment. The problem i now have is the same i had before starting the series. Because i use my pc for work instead of gaming and it was the second best option for an entry point i started with cold steel. Now im again not so sure anymore if i should go back like natreg said, play cold steel two and then go back or if i should maybe even wait for the remake before going back to trails in the sky. The problem i had with the status effects was, that i felt like i had to know them before the fight to avoid them but that might just have been my inexperience :D.