Before There Was Trails - The Legend of Heroes' Gagharv Trilogy (Part One)

[@link6705]

I didn't play The moonlight witch but in Tear of Vermilion there are a lot of chests throughout the game. In fact the game feels like an early version of Trails. Gagharv trilogy are the roots of Trails series, here Falcom tested all ideas that we all know and love.

[@link6705]

I just finished the last game in Gagharv trilogy and I feel a bit sad because this story ended. The last game plays a bit different from the first 2, the implementation of magic and finishing moves in the third one took a step in the direction of Trails series. For those who are willing to try these games I recommend to start with “A tear of Vermilion”. The story here is straightforward, cohesive and stands apart from the other two, being connected to them more through characters (especially in the Song of the Ocean). The third entry “Song of the Ocean” is somehow similar to Sky the 3rd, where heroes from previous entry come together to help. Or maybe it’ll be more accurate to compare to the role Estelle and Joshua played in Trails from Zero. The events in Moonlight Witch are connected to Song of the Ocean through some plot twists, so you’ll have to play them in order. A Tear of Vermillion can be played as a standalone game. Don’t listen to others, just try them for yourself and create your own opinion on these games. They are not ideal but they are part of The legend of heroes series and it feels when you play them. Good luck and give them a try!

[@DarkPrinceOfAwesome]

Babe wake up, new TJtheEmperor video just dropped.

[@certainlycity4906]

Fuck yeah, man. Doing god's work as usual. I'm currently on my Trails journey (up to Trails to Azure right now) , and always kind of wondered about the greater Legend of Heroes' series. Thanks for doing the research. KZbin actually needed this retrospective pretty badly. Also, you should post this in r/JRPG. That subreddit is full of Trails-heads and I've never seen a single person talking about Gagharv trilogy so I'm pretty sure everyone there would be interested to learn about it.

[@TJTheEmperor]

Thanks for the advice! I just posted the link a few seconds ago

[@0x44_]

I very much appreciate the brief history sections at the beginning. I know most the history myself too, but I still like hearing it. That said, I agree with not forcing yourself to play anything you aren't enjoying. I also think games are like books and movies in that our appreciation and opinions for them can change over time, so you never know if one day you'll actually enjoy them enough to want to finish them.

[@aarond82ueyd7e8wd.dhe8]

Shoutout to Botan and Yusuke at 4:22

[@josephnelen3601]

great video with a lot of great points and history, deserves more views and completely agree on playing vs feeling a need to complete these crazy long and drawn out games.

[@AnnyMouseyMouse]

I really hope you continue this, I've always been interested ever since playing half of the psp game and I have just started my trails journey. Your research and narration are great, keep up the great work.

[@TJTheEmperor]

I’m definitely going to finish it at some point. I’ll probably do another part where I discuss the story of the other two games, and maybe a brief video on the Windows version once The Geofront’s translation is finished. Finishing those PSP ports is gonna be a major slog though

[@AnnyMouseyMouse]

@@TJTheEmperor I was going to ask if there was no english patch for the computer games but you answered my question

[@Asbestosp0isoning]

Great video! I'd love to see something about the one crucial part of Trails DNA no one talks about: Arcturus, the Curse and Loss of Divinity, a 2000 krpg, and one of the most famous in Korea. It was localized for Japan by Falcom, and Kondo had stated it inspired parts of Trails. It received a fan translation fairly recently, and it's absolutely worth a play, if you've got a free 80 hours and love that genre of RPG.

[@TJTheEmperor]

@@Asbestosp0isoning I have heard of Arcturus, and I would certainly like to check it out!

[@TheRevengeOfKhat57]

Oh heck yeah, I have the Gagharv trilogy on PSP but I haven't gotten far into them yet. They definitely have that Falcom charm though

[@samuelbarrios7749]

Keep it up love these kinds of videos

[@guardianrandy]

Thank you for posting this! I'd tried to play the Gagharv games on PSP several years ago, and I quickly lost interest partway into it. I'm going to give the Sega Saturn remake a try since I really love the sprite work they did for it. Had you not made this video, I wouldn't have even known that existed!

[@Wonderhoy8]

Awesome vid! It's a shame you didn't like the game but I respect that you were completely honest about your feelings. Hopefully these games get proper remakes one day considering how important they are to Falcom's history, (also I hope the Saturn version gets a fantl or my Japanese gets good enough to play it one day because it looks interesting as hell). On the topic of games that inspired Trails, have you ever heard of Arcturus? It's a korean rpg and, while it's never been confirmed to have been an inspiration as far as I know, Falcome handled the Japanese localisation of it and the simularities between it and Sky are a bit uncanny! There's an english fantl if you ever want to check it out.

[@alexandreturcotte6411]

FFIV 3D do have neat camera angles because of the 3D graphics though. And I greatly appreciate their style. Less of a "the 3d version is the best" and more of a "The 2 are aestheticly pleasing" deal. Nice video otherwise. I discovered you with the GITCY saga (I knew GITCY due to Cadicarus' video on it) Even if I'm not always fan of some of your opinions, I still grealtly like watching your videos; I like Ready Player One (The movie at least, from what I heard, the novels are way less beareble) and I liked the Ninja Gaiden OVA when I watched it (what's in it didn't seem out of place compared to the NES trilogy and the 3D games, even if those ones came way later). I'll be glad to see your future Gainax videos, as I become one of your subs.

[@TrevRockOne]

What game is on screen at 15:10 ? Looks rad.

[@TJTheEmperor]

@@TrevRockOne That’s Cosmic Star Heroine, it’s an indie rpg that came out a few years ago. Definitely recommended

[@TrevRockOne]

Cool. Thank you.

[@MiBrCo4177]

having just found this video due to me wanting to play through these great RPG's finally! What's the play order of the Gagharv Trilogy? I know the japanese order and english order.. but which one will have references to the others? I feel like i should play tears of vermillion first, then white witch then songs, but can I do white witch then tears then songs last and still get a complete story?

[@TJTheEmperor]

White witch - vermillion - song is the order I would go with. That’s the way they were released in Japan, and I prefer playing them in the same way the Japanese did, as that was Falcom’s original intent

[@MiBrCo4177]

@@TJTheEmperor makes sense. Aside from the History section in the psp versions, I'm sure the story flows better with the original Japanese play order so I'll do that. Thanks!

[@petrkisselev5085]

PC-88 graphics still look better than modern RPGMaker graphics 🤣

[@Natreg44]

I found your channel with the Trails ranking video, and when I saw you were doing a review of Gagharv, I suscribed. Sadly, it seems you didn't enjoy the games as much. Also, sorry for the long post, but I have so many things I would like to mention here. I want to give some perspective about White Witch and the series as a whole. The PSP ports... are just bad and very difficult to recommend. Graphics take a hit, with the only good thing in them being the portraits. There is lesser enemy variation, the towns, as you say, all look the same. Translation is reallly bad as well with even some connections between the games being completely lost. The world, specially in Moonlight Witch, is completely butchered. The original maps, even though they were linear as well, at least have enough detail to made them look as if they weren't as linear. And finally, combat is also changed. It tries to simulate the Trails combat system to an extent but fails misserably at that. In the case of Moonlight Witch, as you have notice, the combat seems really off with magic. The reason for that is that this version of Moonlight Witch (the translated one) is not even using the combat system of the Japanese PSP version. In that version, characters moved automatically and thus got near the enemy faster, making the spells more useful. Regarding Moonlight Witch in particular. Combat is not satisfying in any version, not even in the windows port. However, the Windows port adds a few sidequests and a few extra scenes here and there. A Tear of Vermillion may seem boring at first, however, this is the closest to Trails you'll get in the series. The best analogy here would be to think about Tear of Vermillion as a complete FC/SC game. It has a slow starting point, and at some point it gets more interesting. I really recommend giving it one more chance. If by the half point you don't get any interest in the plot, then this series is probably not for you. And you will know what the half point is, don't worry :) The reason for this is that technically the version you're playing of Tear of Vermillion was the game that was made just before Sky FC. This is a remake of the original Tear of Vermillion. The original Tear of Vermillion is a completely different game, with a more sandbox kind of approach, but the remake put everything in a more cohesive way. And finally, if you ever finish Tear of Vermillion, and give a try to Cagesong of the Ocean... you must know that the first 2 to 3 chapters are incredbily bad, but once it gets going, it doesn't stop until the end and you will get how the entire series is linked. As a side note, regarding the original Legend of Heroes game. I'm not sure if you have played, but that's also a game that got really hurt in the localization process. Also, again, the original 2 Legend of Heroes is really interesting. The first one will look very generic, except for a few things that seem out of place. The second game has an incredible plot twist and gives a different view to everything prior to that. Very good duology as well.

[@skye.xv88]

I feel like FFIII and IV are among some of the best examples to how NOT to 3D-remake a 2D game. They were made for the DS thus both had a lot of limitation, but actually I feel like on that system they managed to look on the better side of the pool. Especially III, since IV had a lot of low-poly enemy designs (neither game could properly display the same amount of enemies as the 2D games without issue, so in III Matrix Software decided to half the number and just make each of them stronger, while in IV they kept the same number and instead decreased heavily the amount of polygons the enemies had). On the DS this was all fine, I say this from experience I enjoy FFIII on the DS a lot! But when you play their phone ports (which made it onto steam too but psst, they're phone ports), those blown up HD versions, you're going to notice every single shortcut they had to take. All the 2D sprites they used instead of modeling a full city (can't do bc again too many polygons), the way the camera is insanely zoomed in making it even harder to see shit on a big screen... yeah those versions suck. We should've got a PSP remake of III like we did of I-II and IV instead of just putting the phone port on PSP again.

[@Zino_blade]

Of course the Xeno to trails pipeline

[@TJTheEmperor]

IT'S REAL, AND IT'S POWERFUL

[@Mintcar923]

From what I recall I finished YS Seven summer of 2016 but round that same time period I got into the original Suikoden duology.. I was looking for something similar and then found out about Trails.. I requested the Lionheart edition of Cold Steel for that Christmas which my gut told me i had to check out on Vita.. It was back ordered so I didn’t get it til New Year’s Eve 2016.. It was still kinda cool to get it then however.. And that’s how it became my favorite rpg series! About halfway through Reverie now I think but I still got a ways to go.. Have yet to finish Azure & Sky 3.. The series is pretty massive tbh I’m hoping they have the resources to maybe remake what came before Sky while continuing on with the latest endeavors

[@roguerifter9724]

My biggest, and unfortunately probably least likely, Falcom related wish is a remaster of the first two Legend of Heroes games though adding the Gagharv trilogy would be awesome. I played the first game on a childhood friend's TG-16 but for some reason Falcom decided to be jerks and not release part II in the US even though both games were released on the Super Famicom and Megadrive meaning bringing them to systems with a much larger US install base then the TG-16 would have been easy.

[@logiclunacy606]

While I think it's mostly acceptable now to say 2d pixel art can still be beautiful. I don't think it's the same for early 3d of which I think has a kind of charm to the look. It just depends on artstyle, a lot of pixel art can look like asset flips too and making a distinguished look really helps seperate your game from the shovelware. At the time the FF3/FF4 remake visuals looked unique.

[@middle_pickup]

SPOILER: he didn't play the game, but waits to tell us at the end of the video.

[@derheadbanger9039]

I played this game on the PSP - but I'm pretty sure, I abandoned the sequel and also never finished it! 😅

[@bakacdaz]

Interesting this mean Falcom isn’t just follow the trend to make ARPG for zoomer. They are pioneer or ARPG and Turnbased is actually the one came after ARPG.