Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 11: Trails in the Sky FC
40 Plays1 year ago
Kj and Poly dive into the highly regarded Legend of Heroes: Trails series! Come see what they thought of the game!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Turn Based Tangents Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
and here we are. Okay, so welcome everybody to the next episode of Turn Based Tangents. We are going to be covering Trails in the Sky first chapter. I am KJ. I'm Polly.
00:00:14
Speaker
There we go. And yeah, so we played this game. It's funny. We actually started this game in April. So we had a bunch of different life things happen. Both of us did.
00:00:31
Speaker
which resulted in, funny enough, me finishing the game super quick because I had a bunch of time and Holly was like doing conventions and stuff. So we kind of stretched this out a bit. And we will be covering second chapter very soon as well.
Playing Order and Localization Challenges
00:00:45
Speaker
So.
00:00:46
Speaker
anybody that doesn't know first chapter and second chapter are very much continuous like the end of first chapter leads directly into the start of second chapter so that is something I think we should just keep in mind especially anybody that wants to play the series we definitely want to make sure that you know that so that way if you are watching this and you haven't played this game you can understand that it might spoil some stuff for second chapter as well
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're going to cover all the way up until that little bit that connects into the second chapter. And then we're going to cover the second chapter right here on YouTube again on Tuesday, probably around 8 o'clock, 7.30, 8 o'clock.
00:01:31
Speaker
PM Eastern time is when we're gonna cover the second episode so Because they connect so closely together and because we were like playing them back to back more or less Because I am just I'm just about done. I like three chapters left to go or something so Yeah, you'll get there yeah
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, for those of you who might not know anything about the Trails series, because, hi, hello, I'm a big noob. I knew nothing going into this. There is a particular order to play the games in because they all connect together. So Trails in the Sky is where you start.
00:02:14
Speaker
That's where we've started our Trails Journey, both of us. That's what first chapter is where you start. You go into second chapter, you go in Trails of the Sky third, then it's Trails Zero, Azure, so on and so forth. It's a pretty long series. There's, I think, 10 games now translated in English, and I think only two games are still left.
00:02:40
Speaker
not technically translated or not technically brought into North America. So I think that I think you're right. I think it's 10 as of July, it's 10. Yeah, because Reverie just came out. So that would make the 10th one. And then I think there's two games that haven't been released yet.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, there's two. There's two of them. So it's a pretty long series to be committed to because, again, unlike a Final Fantasy like series, for example, all the games connect into each other. So it's very much if you play later games, you might spoil the previous games. Well, you want not that you might. You will spoil. I was going to say, I don't think there's any like there's no doubt about it that you're going to spoil the previous game. So while you can jump into the middle of the series,
00:03:27
Speaker
know that it's probably better to start from the beginning like we are to go through it. So yeah, just because you're going to be spoiling all the previous games. So if you're like, oh, I want to play the Sky series, you have already spoiled it if you're playing the future ones.
00:03:44
Speaker
Like Zero or Azure or Cold Steel and that stuff. So I think one of the things we didn't mention. So the unfortunate piece of this is that the Sky series is actually the only games that are like the only games that didn't really get.
00:04:01
Speaker
consistent ports and localizations. So they're originally PSP games that then got ported to PC slash Steam. And I think on the PSP, only Sky 1, I want to say, was released in the US. I think there's a Sky 2
00:04:29
Speaker
for the Vita, but I'm not sure. And then Sky 3 is only localized on PC and slash team. So yeah, I mean, I have a copy right here of the Japanese copy of Sky 1. But yeah, of all of the games, these are the ones that are like super
00:04:53
Speaker
difficult to play just because they are only on PC. Yeah. And if you're if you're like us, you can see in our backgrounds, both of us, we both like physical collective physical copies. It's kind of difficult to do that with the Sky series, as KJ said, because of the local localization issues. But what KJ went out and done was that he enjoyed
Collecting and Platform Availability
00:05:16
Speaker
them so much. He went and bought the Japanese copies so that he could have physical copies of it and have a set.
00:05:23
Speaker
Um, cause that was the other thing is that like, even if he could find the Vita version of two, cause I think you're right. I think it is. There is a Vita version of two. It's also really expensive. I believe I do remember. Yeah. So is sky one for like the English version of sky one for PSP is like 100, 150 bucks.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So they're pretty expensive to have them and then you can't have three. So you would not have the physical, you would not be able to get a physical copy of three unless you got the Japanese version. So, uh, KJ, KJ did the way of like, we got, we both got them on steam. Uh, he's been playing it on steam deck and I've been playing it on steam, but
00:06:02
Speaker
link, I guess, technically, we're just cast to my TV. And then he just got the physical copy. So of the Japanese. And it's kind of unfortunate because like these are the only ones that aren't really localized and available elsewhere. I think the like zero and Azure recently got
00:06:24
Speaker
recently got localized, so they're on Steam, they're also on Switch and on PlayStation. The Cold Steel games, at least Cold Steel 3 and 4, I know are on both PlayStation as well as Steam and Switch. And then I think, so Cold Steel 1 and 2, I know there's Japanese versions on the Switch, but they're available on, I wanna say, PS3, PS4 and Steam. Yeah, they're definitely on PS4, because I have- I know they're on PS3 as well. Or at least, I know Cold Steel 1 is on PS3.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, I have Cold Steel 1 for PlayStation 4, and I'm going to collect the whole Cold Steel series on probably the PlayStation 4, 1 to 4, just because I was like, I'm just going to have the match. I wanted to get everything handheld, so I have Sky 1 through 3 on PSP, and then I'm going to get the Japanese copies of 1 and 2, and I have everything else on Switch. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:07:17
Speaker
So, so yeah, so you can get the, and that's why a lot of there I've found, even when I talk to people who've paid trails, uh, some of them even skipped the sky series just because of how inaccessible they are. Um, uh, where they wanted it like on handhelds or stuff like that. And they realized you couldn't get the third and, and so on. So they'll they'd start with zero or they start with Azure or they even, I know people who've start with cold steel, who liked skipped all of them and just went into cold steel.
00:07:45
Speaker
I think a bunch of people started with Cold Steel because that's those are the ones that were localized on console that like were easy to play. Right. I think so for me, Sky One was sitting in my Sky One was sitting in my steam wish list since like 2015. Like when they basically localized it.
00:08:09
Speaker
I just I knew that there were a lot of games and I just never wanted to really jump into them. But it's intimidating. It is intimidating, especially because like they get longer as you go pretty well. That's right.
Art Style and Graphics Discussion
00:08:25
Speaker
Cold Steel was also on the Vita. At least Cold Steel one was on the Vita.
00:08:32
Speaker
Oh, OK. They're they're definitely it's been they've been interesting games for sure. We're going to obviously we're going to dive into the sky one and talk about this. And yeah, I think it'll be good. Yeah. So you want to. And I hope one day if like we could get like just a pack of like the trail series and it's just this big box. I don't know. I don't know if they'll do that. They'll never do that. The only company that does that is Square. And that's because they're trying to milk everybody for all the money they can.
00:09:01
Speaker
This is like the one time I wish they would, Malkos. Wait, phrasing. I wasn't going to say anything. I was going to I was going to say Polly, take it away, talk about the art style and OST. That's what I was going to.
00:09:17
Speaker
So yeah, like the one time I want a big giant pack, like the King of Hearts pack like this year, but like trails, like give me, give me something that. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, let's just hop into talking about the, let's hop into talking about the art style of the game. So, um, this game is actually really interesting. So it is pixel. Um, but it's like, how do I explain it? They're like.
00:09:45
Speaker
I forget how I was looking into how they did it and I think it was something along the lines where they're like 3d models ish pixeled or like hand painted or something or like they're like really smoothed out pixels kind of graphics and I actually thought it was really cool because they stand out very unique.
00:10:05
Speaker
So like if you look at pixel games or if you look at even just like 3D chibi RPG games where they're more chibi and stuff like trails stands out like trails in the sky stands out. You look at that and you go, okay, that's trails game. Yeah, I think it's like like it's a special form of like pixel where it almost looks 3D because it's very smoothed. So like it's very smoothed out. And I understand the words you're saying, but I couldn't tell you what it's called.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's like it's like the artist. Yeah, me to meet and chat right now is got it right. It's like a two point five. It's kind of like what Octopath Traveler did, but less with Octopath Traveler keeping the pixel look. Yeah, very more. It's like they lean more towards the 3D feel.
00:10:54
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah, which I think it adds to the charm of it. Like it does. And I think it it gives it that like, I mean, I feel like a lot of PSP games or I can't say a lot, but I feel like that was kind of the PSP game thing, if that makes sense. Like I feel like it feels like graphically a PSP game, even though it looks a lot better, if that makes sense.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was really interesting because it definitely gave that PSP vibe to me of like what other PSP games were when they were launched but but it looks almost like too good to be on people PSP sometimes like it's just
00:11:36
Speaker
It's just done really, really well for the hardware that they built it for originally. And even when they're running, their hair kind of moves and stuff. And then you're kind of running around the map and the little monsters move and the little trees sway.
00:11:53
Speaker
So they really thought out, except for, of course, the PSP was very limited technology wise. So it's not like they could do anything too, too crazy with it. And you'll see in later series like Cold Steel, for example, they definitely go into the more 3D direction of what other anime RPG kind of looking games go into.
00:12:16
Speaker
and i think that's what really attracted me originally to because i play tested azure and that style is the same as what's in trails in the sky series and that's what really attracted me to it because i was like this is really cute they're really like chibi um how they how they like shade everything is just really like eye popping like the character stands out from the background really nice
00:12:39
Speaker
Um, but like the background is all like really detailed and like you could see like the little carvings on the little, um, rock faces of the buildings and like they, they really put their heart into it despite being so limited by the PSP as a technology.
Voice Acting and Music Impact
00:12:55
Speaker
Right? So, uh, which just, it's just really charming and it's just really visually appealing and like all your little party members follow behind you, which I think is really cool because so many JRPG games don't
00:13:08
Speaker
do that. They have everybody go inside, especially the older JRPG games, especially ones on older technology. They have everybody go inside each other to reduce the frame rate. And it's so common. You'll see that in Final Fantasy games and stuff like that. And Legend of Dragoon and so on and so forth. But with Trails, your whole party hangs out behind you, which was really charming.
00:13:39
Speaker
Until we start talking about the battle system. I was going to say it was awful. I hate it. I hate it so much. I mean, we're talking much rather my party just like. Warp inside of the main character because the clipping of the enemies getting surprise attacks. Oh, my goodness. Luckily in later games, you can turn that off or like you don't even have your characters. You don't even have the characters following you. But oh, my goodness that. Oh, that drove me.
00:14:08
Speaker
That drives me. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about with gameplay with that. But like, visually, I thought it was cool. I thought it was cool. If they didn't have it where like when you were running around like back or like the little monsters could actually hit your body party member and trigger a fight. If they didn't have that, it wouldn't have been frustrating at all. But it was just a very charming sort of.
00:14:32
Speaker
adjustment, even though like, you know, again, it was on the PSP, it was limited. So but it was still it was still really nice to have your whole party like hanging out behind you. And and yeah, I really enjoyed it. What do you think about the OSD and the music?
00:14:50
Speaker
Um, one thing I wanted to I'm going to I'm going to jump around just a little bit because I think your point never do that here. Never. Well, I mean, I'm still kind of staying on topic. It's just like the next thing we're fine. One thing I think the. Attention to detail and everything in the art really did that kind of made me think that that because they put so much into the art and everything,
00:15:18
Speaker
That's probably why there was very limited voice acting like from a budget perspective, because that was one thing that I think really was kind of frustrating was that the game is very wordy. Yes. And there's no voice acting. So I get that that's.
00:15:39
Speaker
That's a like sort of a product of its time, because I think what, 2004, like that you weren't really getting 2004 or 2006 or something like that, that general time frame. You weren't really getting games that had had voice acting, but I still think it would have been nice. Like, I mean, I look at something and again, this is not necessarily a fair comparison because we're talking Square Enix versus Exceed, but like
00:16:10
Speaker
Crisis Core and Birth by Sleep, like those games had voice acting. Yeah, yeah. That seems like a money thing. It definitely feels like a money thing, especially since it looks like the Trails series publication wise has kind of shifted hands as well.
00:16:31
Speaker
And it looks like like some are published under the NIS name and some are not and and I think it did the first through sky games and the first two cold steel games I believe and then I asked has done Has done the whole field three and four lacrosse bell games and now reverie. I
00:16:51
Speaker
So it's kind of like mix and match and they kind of like pass hands a few times with like the publisher and stuff, which a lot of the times with these game studios and stuff like publisher is one of the ones that's actually feeding the money into the company that is producing the game.
00:17:06
Speaker
And so I definitely think it was one of those sad realizations that if it might have had a little bit bigger of a budget, we would have got more voice acting because there's a little bit of voice acting in it. I don't know if they're in the original PSP ones, but they are in the Steam versions. In combat, they do talk in combat, and when they finish combat, they talk.
00:17:29
Speaker
and it's just so unfortunate that that's the only time you hear those voice actors because they actually had this this is kind of mind-blowing they actually had a lot of voice actors that you would recognize today so later on i don't know if the
00:17:45
Speaker
At least back then, you probably wouldn't have. But now you can recognize them as like you would have recognized Joshua's voice right away. One of the characters in the game as itchy goes voice from bleach because bleach got really popular around the same times Trails in the Sky came out. So are those the voices that are actually in Trails in the Sky? Or are those just the who they end up being?
00:18:12
Speaker
Cause like it's very much like the only time you really get voices are at the end of battles. Yeah. So, so the voice actor for Ichigo is the voice of Joshua at the end of battles.
00:18:23
Speaker
Oh, okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, and so, or he made his voice for Bleach also a lot of people, she's done a lot of voice work. She is Estelle in Trails in the Sky, who's the main character. One thing that mind blown me was that I'm sure a lot of people listening might know the anime Demon Slayer. In no skays, voice actor is Agate's voice actor in Trails in the Sky.
00:18:51
Speaker
So they do, even though they have these tiny little cameo voice lines in the battle systems, they are, a lot of them are notable voice actors that you know have gone on to do different anime and different video games and stuff like that. So I thought that like the potential is just right there. It was right at the precipice. And I definitely agree that I think it was either a budgeting issue or they spent more money into the visual side of things.
00:19:19
Speaker
and less into the voice acting. But with how wordy this game is, I really wish they would have had some of it voice stacked, even if they didn't do the whole thing. But some of the key components of the game, some of the key lines and stuff like that would have been really nice because those voice actors I know would nail those roles perfectly.
00:19:43
Speaker
Um, they sounded great when you like finished battles and stuff like that and then heard them talk. Uh, and you're like, okay. And it took me, like, it took my community like dark and peace zone to be like, that's, that's, or a he made his voice for bleach. And I'm like, no way. Cause I didn't even recognize her. She did such a great job playing a different type of character in trails with even just a few voice lines. She got gave a style was that very like, you know, like let's go, you know, like,
00:20:10
Speaker
we can, you know, like that kind of pumped up like I could do it. Whereas a bleach, she's a damsel of distress type character, right? So right there, that's like she has range. And, but it's like, it's so minuscule voice acting that I'm like, I, I played the first game wanting more like I just wanted to hear
00:20:31
Speaker
Estelle's voice more. I wanted to hear Joshua's voice more. I wanted to hear like the different characters and key roles voices more. And I feel like that's the one of the few things where I was like, oh, I would have been fine if they cut back on the art a little bit just to give us a few more lines read to us. I always appreciate this part of like this part of these because
00:20:54
Speaker
I don't care at all about the voice acting. As long as it's not bad and it's there, I never make the connection of like, oh, that's that person or oh, that's that person. I'm just like, oh, there's somebody voice acting. I hope they got paid.
00:21:11
Speaker
I hope they got paid well for this. It's good. Or this voice acting is bad. Like I would have rather it just not be there. Like that's that's typically that is as far as my voice act as as me caring goes for voice acting like I'm just I don't know. I.
00:21:29
Speaker
I think with how wordy this game was, I think it would have benefited from a little bit more voice acting, even just for the, like, key plot points. Like, all the side mission-y stuff, or where they kinda over-explained some things, maybe not, but like, some of the key points would have been so nice.
00:21:50
Speaker
But again, product of the time, it was a PSP game. And like you said, I mean, the examples you gave ones of that had voice acting was Square games, which by that point, Square had, Square had merged with annex and become kind of a powerhouse of, of JRPG funding. So it's, it's, it's like slightly thing, but it's like, it doesn't like.
00:22:15
Speaker
It doesn't hurt it enough that I would call it as like a super like, nah. No, that's fair. And yeah, Keystone did mention that there are a couple of voice acting mods out there that allow voice acting at least for this game. So yeah, I think it's great that people are like taking upon themselves to do that because I think it will help people jump into the series more because I think
00:22:43
Speaker
I think this day and age people are forgetting that, you know, back the day they didn't have voice acting, you know, it was less common in like older games. And I feel like people are being a little less forgiving for that these days. And so I think that's a fantastic thing that the fan, I think it was fan done like those mods and I think some fans. Yeah, I believe so.
00:23:04
Speaker
and did it. And I think that's fantastic. And I hope they do it for all three games. And it'll definitely help bring more people into the series, I think, a little bit that are expecting that. Yeah. OK, so now that I got you off on a tangent about the voices, I knew that was going to happen. I knew that was going to happen. What? We go on tangents never. I'm going to punch my screen. Oh, my goodness.
00:23:35
Speaker
OK, so now that you got me like I'm about to go off on a tangent about the music because I was in this game is fantastic. So I was playing arguably one of the best songs in the. One of the best songs in the game. At the start. And I'll I'll turn it up again as like, you know, this.
00:24:02
Speaker
is so good. And you only get to hear it for like a battle. But like this, this song hits so hard. Like especially as a boss fight. Oh my goodness. It was so good. This is an absolute banger.
00:24:20
Speaker
I get so excited when that music comes on because I know shit's about to get real. It's such a good... It's a boss battle theme, but it's more like a...
00:24:38
Speaker
Not like that one is a specific boss battle theme. Yeah. It's very specific to when it's played and it's low, but it's still like it hits real hard and get to just like, you're like, Oh, I'm grew into this. This is great. And it only comes around at certain specific moments like KJ said. So it's like, it's one of those tracks where you're just like, you're going throughout the game and you're hearing like the music, like the battle music and the regular boss is the battle music.
00:25:09
Speaker
I did the OST. Yeah, I think they did a great job with the OST. I'm not sure the composer, I'm sure Pstone is about to tell us in chat. But whoever composes the soundtrack for Trails really did a good job at putting
00:25:27
Speaker
Just tracks that are emotional in the right spots tracks that are like carefree, you know, like, oh, walking around this village or this town, look at this carefree music. And then you get hit with that boss music every now and then you're like, oh, shit's going down. And you know, it's going to be like an epic fight and you're going to be like super into it. You're just like, I'm just going to listen to the song. I'm not even going to do this fight. And like they did such a good job at
00:25:55
Speaker
composing these tracks at the key moments that they needed to be that I'm like even without voice acting I'm really pulled into this game by like the little things like that like the art style the music pulls me in and while it's unfortunate that there's some stuff that wasn't voice acted even in the battles having those few lines and battles and I'm really excited being like let's go and being like you know like
00:26:23
Speaker
And, you know, characters be like, Oh, scary. And like, you can hear that they're like, there's a little bit there. But the music pulls you in really, really well. And that's why I don't even like for me, I was just like, Oh, there's there's voice acting. But like, the music, like you said, it just pulls you in.
00:26:42
Speaker
Like that battle. The music and sound effects. Like I don't want to even excuse the sound effects too. Like there's like whacking noises and bonking noises and stepping and all these little sound effects throughout the game plus the music.
00:26:58
Speaker
just really pull you in. There's a bird later on that you'll be interacting with and you can hear the flapping of its wings. So they really tried to immerse you in this game with the audio of the game. And it's all these tiny little bits where I'm just like, wow. And I can't think of a time where I didn't feel the track suited, what was going on at the time.
00:27:28
Speaker
So like and there's there's even a part where like a harmonica is played and it's actually a track played by a harmonica. I don't know if you've ever played a JRPG game. There's a few of them out there where they're like they pull an instrument out and they're playing the song.
00:27:46
Speaker
but it's not the instrument that the song is. It's like a guitar or something and it's not a guitar being played or it's a flute and it's not a flute being played and you're just like, what? And whereas a harmonica is pulled out and the song being played is actually somebody playing the harmonica for that song. And I'm like,
00:28:10
Speaker
Hello, like little things like that that they just paid attention to that they're like, OK, we really want to immerse you into these characters and this universe. I mean, they kind of went over like, you know, bent over backwards for it. And I swear that that boss track is one of my favorite tracks of the game. And I love the battle theme, the battle theme, like this battle theme, this like. This jazz like.
00:28:40
Speaker
battle theme. It's so good. And it's funny because Matt had said he felt like he was in an RPG elevator. I think that's perfect. But it's just so good. Like I would vibe to that so much. I'm on the third floor. Yeah, exactly. Like it's it's a vibe. It is great. I love it.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah. And like, I think it's just really unique. I think the biggest word I want to use for the soundtrack for Trails is unique because it stands out to me. And that's a big thing for me with JRPGs. Like we, uh, KJ and I have played a lot of JRPGs at this point and we're still playing new ones every day. But like one thing that the Trails in the Sky FC really nails is the soundtrack is different
00:29:27
Speaker
That battle music, never have I thought I'd groove to jazz elevator music before, but here we are. It was just so groovy. You find yourself dancing to it and you're getting really into it. The fact that as soon as you said battle theme, I was already thinking of dancing into it before you played it for everybody. I know the track.
00:29:54
Speaker
so well at this point because it's just so like it's good and yet it's memorable and I think those are so key for a JRPG because it's so easy for the music to be like a Like a like a second thing like a secondary thing right where they're just like, okay We're gonna slap music in here now and you can feel that in some of the games as some of the other games But in trails, you're like, no, they they they put those tracks and
00:30:22
Speaker
They wanted you to be having a good time and also not a good time at the same time, depending on the track that's playing. They just really wanted to pull you in. I think it was done very, very well. I think the composers should be really proud of themselves and the sound effects.
00:30:39
Speaker
like they're little footsteps. Like where it changes depending off they're walking on rock or if they're walking on gravel or if they're rocking to the grass. Like I'm going little things like that. I'm like, I could appreciate the attention to detail. Oh, and I just realized my floor is wet. Uh oh.
00:31:04
Speaker
That's not good. It did rain a lot today. But but yeah, so it has a very tiny little bit of voice acting. But if you really want some voice acting, as Fisto mentioned in chat, there is, at least for the first game, a fan mod that you can get to put along with it, that it's fans have come together to voice act.
00:31:29
Speaker
the lines and stuff like that so if that's something you need go for it but like i enjoyed this without it personally i don't i don't think it necessarily needed it yeah the music and the sound effects were good enough but it still blew my mind that some voice actors big name voice actors and actresses i know were like in this game and i'm like uh-huh you had like four lines like
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, but at the time, they weren't like we experienced that before with like, Falcon Propel 2, for example, like they were bigger name VAs that now would have done a lot better or something like that. But they were characters that like they were just getting their start at those like they were taking anything that they could if they were just getting their start with those games. So.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like this would have been early on in a lot of their careers and stuff like that, too. So, yeah, it's probably they were just like getting their name out there more and putting it on. But like also those are really great voices because now like I heard a trailer for Bleach the other day and I was like, Joshua. And I love how you can make that connection when the person has like four voice lines.
00:32:49
Speaker
I know. I like guessed it was itchy go like right away. I was like, is that itchy go and like piece that was like, yeah, it is. And like confirmed for me and I'm like, Oh, or I think it is either peace donor cane. Um, but they confirmed for me that it was. And I was like, yeah.
Gameplay Mechanics and Magic System
00:33:04
Speaker
And it's funny cause now because I'm so, uh, I'm so deep into the second game and the first and second game that now when I hear like a bleach trailer, I'm like, even though
00:33:15
Speaker
It was like four lines and he did the voice for Ichigo like what 400 episodes. So it's kind of funny. Oh, my goodness. OK, do we want to talk about story or gameplay? I think you should you should take us away with gameplay. That'll be great.
00:33:37
Speaker
Oh my God. Okay. So the reason why he's, he's poking fun at me is there is a mechanic of this game that I didn't fully click in my brain. It's more than a. It's
00:33:52
Speaker
It's like a big portion of how the magic system works in this game. And I was just doing it blind, not realizing what I was doing and just fiddling with things and not quite clicking until halfway through the second game is when it finally dawned on me. And there's a literal clip of my realization.
00:34:16
Speaker
of learning and what they have affectionately called rock math. So it trails in the sky. They have a very unique magic system, which, again, shout out to the trail series. That's pretty freaking cool. Like it is very unique. It's I've never I've never experienced anything like that. That system like the neither of I have not experienced a magic based system like this before. And it made it so that it was way more
00:34:46
Speaker
I don't know, way more customizable for you. Um, where it's not just like you get a character with set magic abilities as they level up, they unlock. That's not how trails does it. Um, while your party has set ability, like they have abilities when we come to the actual magic system, everybody can use like all your characters that you can get that are in your party can use magic. Um,
00:35:12
Speaker
But that I was going to say, yeah, go ahead. Sorry. But certain ones are better suited to use magic than others because of how they've laid out the system. And it's actually kind of brilliant now that I've actually dawned on me that it worked.
00:35:28
Speaker
and how much Pea Stone raged at me for not allowing him to give me help. Because the funny thing is, all throughout this first game, I was doing it without realizing.
00:35:44
Speaker
the full potential of it. I feel like it's really easy to do that though, right? Because most people are gonna. So if you are going to play this game and you want to kind of do what I did and sort of figure it out on your own, maybe skip this tiny portion of the podcast episode right now. Um, but, uh, if not, we're going to take you through, uh, what, what the community of trails has affectionately called rock bath. So we're going to,
00:36:13
Speaker
We're going to say one thing. Just read the manual. Literally all you have to do. It's not, it's not like, rock math is not rocket science. Just read the, just read the manual. It tells you like between the tutorials and
00:36:32
Speaker
I was this close to wearing a shirt that Enno has that's RTFM this close because it's so ironic because I did not read the fucking manual. Yes. So something Trails does that's unique than a lot of JRPGs, especially older JRPGs probably should have done with how common manuals went missing with the game.
00:36:58
Speaker
is that they gave you a digital version of the manual. So you have access to the entire manual of Trails in the Sky first chapter digitally built into the game. And they sort of tell you right at the very, very start of the game, or if you're fiddling around the menu, you're going to figure out that you have this thing.
00:37:25
Speaker
I will tell you what happened to Polly is that she entirely forgot the manual existed shortly after that. I'm just, okay. So the part that confuses me is like, they even tie it into the story. It's like you become a bracer. They give you a bracer notebook and it's like, Oh, okay. Like, yeah, they give you so many hints read through. They give you so many hints of there's a manual read it kind of thing, but,
00:37:55
Speaker
The main character of the game is very much like, I don't need to read that. I could just go through, and that is exactly me. I am Estelle. So yeah, they give you this digital version of the manual, and then they slowly explain a few little things with the magic system. So the magic systems are like these little quartz stones that Septium
00:38:21
Speaker
could turn into court stones that you can equip to your characters. And there's different elements depending on the stone. So there's fire, water, there's time, all that sort of stuff. Time, space, mirage, wind. Time, space, mirage, wind. I think that's all of them.
00:38:44
Speaker
earth. Sorry, I don't think I said earth. So each of those courts are like tied with those, those different magic. And in the manual, it actually shows
00:38:57
Speaker
It shows you the different magics of all those things that you can eventually unlock depending on how many you have attached to your character in a specific way. And so you have these courts or whatever you can put them in. Some characters have like where it's like, oh, you can only put a water in a particular slot.
00:39:22
Speaker
So like some of them have those. So you have to be careful with those. And then so that's how you get your magical abilities. And so in the magic list in the manual, it'll have like, oh, you could get this cure magic for two water points, basically like two things. And then you can go into your oh, this quartz is worth two water points. So if you put that on the character, they're going to get that
00:39:52
Speaker
magic ability, which is really cool because it allows for super customization besides a couple of the characters where they have a couple slots where it has to be a particular magic.
00:40:05
Speaker
It's very interchangeable, very customizable. So if you want a character to be a primarily healer, you put a bunch of water stuff on them and like mix it around. If you want it to be a more damaged dealer or somebody who could just move further or hit better or like you have all this freedom to like build them. However, there's another key component to AKA rock bath and that's,
00:40:31
Speaker
Each character has a central... When you attach it to a slot, it's like this circular device with these little slot points. If you go into your Orb menu, you'll see it in the bottom right-hand corner of the game. Some characters have particular... You'll see they have no lines.
00:40:55
Speaker
or two lines, or one line. And that's part of where I got stumped on understanding 100% that, and that's why it's so important to read the manual, because it tells you what those mean and why certain characters are better magic users than others.
00:41:16
Speaker
So, for example, a really good one to use as an example is one of the characters throughout the game that you progress and finally release. Actually, I'm going to just start with, I'm just going to talk about Estelle. I think she has two. She has two lines, I think.
00:41:32
Speaker
Or is it three? I'm working on getting an image in as well, so we can kind of like... Okay, yeah, okay. You work on the image as I explained. So Estelle right away is your first character. She kind of, she could be a magic user, but she's a more well-rounded character. So she's good with physical, she's good with magic, she could be a very well-rounded character. And so two, two, perfect. So she has two lines.
00:41:59
Speaker
What I didn't realize until I really dived into it is that each line is separated. So yeah, there we go. That's a good example right there. So this is an example of how this works. And so basically, this is a Stelz. So you would put one quart in the middle, and then it would path out
00:42:23
Speaker
like down into the right or down into the left and then continue on. And so if we say the left half is going to be one line and then the right half is going to be the other line, the left line, everything that's on that left line will correspond to each other. So if you have five blue
00:42:44
Speaker
like five water, six Earth, stuff like that. And then kind of go from there. That's those would apply to one line. And then the other line would be you could have like red and like fire and like time. Quartz, and that would be on that side.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah. And it offers the, offers that thing of like, okay, if you have, so for example, if we look at Estelle's here, she has the central point of the, the central one will connect to both the left and the right line. So that one will apply to both. However, if you put a quartz in the left line, it's only going to like the next left spot. It's only going to apply to the rest of the left at the side.
00:43:28
Speaker
and similarly to the right. So this is where the separation comes from. And so if you see on her, she has three with the middle one being four for one line, and two with the middle one being three on the other. So you have to think strategically, okay, what kind of abilities do I want by looking through the magic list in the manual, the digital manual in the game, you can be like, okay, what kind of magic do I want Estelle to have?
00:43:55
Speaker
And so if whatever I want her to have, I'm going to put it primarily to the left because she's going to have more opportunity to unlock more spells. So the really cool thing is every little quartz you get, there's all kinds of different ones. There's HP1, HP2, HP3. But then there's Mind1 and Mind2. So there's so many of the different colors. There's all kinds of earth ones, water ones, winds, fire.
00:44:24
Speaker
time, mirage, that sort of stuff. There's all kinds of different ones that you can put different ones in that line and they'll work together to unlock new abilities. So let's say you want to heal all your party members, not just one.
00:44:44
Speaker
Well, you need water and earth to be in the same line, or you do not get to heal all spell, and you need to have certain number of water and earth values to unlock those spells, right?
00:44:59
Speaker
It allows you to have way more customization, and I realize now why I was so mad that I had a character who never had area effect magic, and it's just because I didn't put the right courts in the right slots for that line to give them area effect magic, right? Yeah, that's usually how it works. It usually ends up being the case where it'll start as a weaker spell, and as you add more, it'll be a stronger spell.
00:45:27
Speaker
then it'll turn into like AOE or like larger effect, and then it'll just turn into like broken spells. And so something that you had mentioned earlier, so I actually swapped out Estelle's for Agate's. And you can see that there's actually, well, I used his specifically because you can see there's the red lines on the center one are actually like that is designated fire.
00:45:55
Speaker
So that has to be a fire course and that ends up making it. So this is why certain people feel as though some characters are better than others because.
00:46:08
Speaker
the restrictions on where you can put their courts and then also the different paths because the way this is set up, Agate actually has, I believe, three different paths. Yeah, so if you're looking at that, you could see the central point. He's got two to the left and one central. Three are two to the right, one central, and then one above. So it ends up being three separate lines. So it's very hard to make Agate
00:46:34
Speaker
have AOE magic for example or to be really fluent with a particular magic because he also has if you look he has two the two red ones means he has to have fire in those two spots so he's quite limited in terms of his customization when it comes to magic
00:46:54
Speaker
for like making him a magic dealer, which makes sense because his character story is more driven that he is, I, you know, beat people up with a giant sword. So, you know, they kind of thought about like the characters, like personalities as well to kind of bend with their ornaments, which that's what this is that you could see. That's their ornament where you could put the quartz and slot them in.
00:47:19
Speaker
And so Estelle, for example, having only two lines gives you more freedom of customization with her magic. And then you get a character, we'll talk about the characters a little bit in a little bit, but you get a character whose entire courts is just one line.
00:47:36
Speaker
all the courts are connected into a singular line, more or less, except for one, I believe. I think one is an outlier and then it's all one line. KJ with his Google Fu here while we're speaking. Yeah, so look at this.
00:47:53
Speaker
The entire ornament system for this character is a singular line. So that means all the magic affects each other. So it's way easier to make this character a mage.
00:48:09
Speaker
for example, doing some crazy magic damage. Well, yes, you have three that have to be blue. This character is going to be probably a pretty good healer because they have three blue and that's the healing spells. And then they have three other ones that you can build with it like putting like an earth or a fire or
00:48:27
Speaker
a time or a mirage into those slots and or an earth or something like that and put those into the slots and then That will unlock other magic abilities that uses both water and earth and stuff So making a mage type character having something like this is a lot easier to do that but in that sense
00:48:50
Speaker
They consider that, so they often make those characters potentially a little bit weaker physically. They might not be as strong of a physical attacker, but they sure as heck is going to be doing some pretty crazy magic if you really customize it.
00:49:06
Speaker
So there is so much potential and trails in the sky. And I believe this probably carries on throughout the series, but there's just so much potential in here to make customization for your magic spells. However you want them to be. Um, and the only limitation you have is dependent on their ornaments. So like agates, for example, we saw before had three lines. It's really going to be difficult to make agate a magic user. And I think that's
00:49:36
Speaker
That's sort of like if I were to pull up and that's okay because it not everybody needs to be a good mage Not everybody needs to be a good physical attacker You want a balanced party and this allows you to have a little bit more control over making your party Balanced because you can pick and choose the ones you like a little bit more freely that way yeah, this this one right here is I think the one that made me that frustrated me the most because I used in and like There's four paths
00:50:07
Speaker
This is, this is absolutely worse. Sims is literally the worst to make useful. Yeah. Because he's also got two spots where they have to be earth. Which is actually where you, that's the advantage. That's, that's the advantage. Like I, yeah, there were definitely some, some things and it's really interesting cause we have a bunch of people in chat talking about like how they use magic and how magic is broken.
00:50:39
Speaker
did not play Sky One like a lot of people did, I don't think. If you're about to say you didn't really use a ton of magic, same. The only real magic that I used a lot in Sky One was healing. Oh, I didn't I healed, but I didn't I didn't take that approach. Actually, Sky One and Sky. I'm a Sky Two. I used.
00:51:05
Speaker
The reason why Zinn was in my party is because of his Earth slot, because I spammed the like Earth protection and because he had a pretty strong. I give him I just give him the best Earth slots or Earth quartz.
00:51:23
Speaker
And then I give him a couple of water quartz and now I can spam Earth Protection for everybody. So like I didn't need to cast magic because I was just I had the ability to have everyone up front just attacking. Like and then healing.
00:51:41
Speaker
if I did like mess up the turn order or the turn order got screwed up or something like that. But yeah, I didn't I didn't spam magic nearly as much as like a lot of people I think did going through that game. Yeah. And I'll talk about it in our second podcast of the second chapter. But I I'm with you in like in the first game, I didn't use a whole lot of magic either because
00:52:05
Speaker
I also didn't realize how this entirely worked yet by then. So I just kind of brute forced the first game. And the only real magic that I was doing really was having the party member, which we'll talk about the characters in just a bit, who had really, really good healing. And I just had her in my party as much as I possibly can. So a lot of it came from like my AOE spells came from people's like,
00:52:34
Speaker
limits and stuff like that. They're special abilities rather than magic. But in the second game, it's a different story for me. I use it a lot more, and that's why I was trying to figure it out a lot more. It took me half the game, but I finally figured it out.
00:52:51
Speaker
So that's what people affectionately call rock bath because each line will add up to a certain number of points depending on which courts you put in there and those points add up in the manual for different magic to unlock it. That's how you know what magic you want to go for, what you want to unlock is you look at that magic list to go, okay, heal all is to water to earth and a singular like
00:53:20
Speaker
time one or something like that. I forget what it actually is. So I need to make sure my line has at least two water, two earth. And I realized when I took the earth slot out of the character, suddenly I didn't have heal all anymore. And I was like, wait,
00:53:39
Speaker
Where'd my heel all go? So it was very, it was very, um, it was very like, those were starting to be the clues for me. And then when I looked at the manual, I was like, yeah, okay.
00:53:52
Speaker
this digital manual that has been here for like a game and a half. I finally actually looked at it. The irony about that digital manual is in the digital manual is also the plot of the game laid
Quest System and Replay Value
00:54:05
Speaker
out. And I always, all the quests in it, it was a quest book too. And I would always look at those pages. I just always never went back up to the memo. I never went back up to the memo to look at it.
00:54:18
Speaker
Okay, hold on. I thought you weren't looking at it at all. You were looking at the Quest Notebook and just skipping the memo. Yeah, skipping the very top one. I was like, I don't need that. I think I broke Gratia's brain. Yeah, so.
00:54:48
Speaker
You know, cause I was like paying attention to the quest to making sure I was getting the key components of the quest and I just never went back to the talk. Cause I was like, well, that's useless. I don't need that. I know how to play the game. Jokes on Polly. Um, but the irony about this is like, KJ has seen me play golden sun. So like, I don't, I don't read and pay attention to important things. You know this about me.
00:55:18
Speaker
Um, yeah, so now that I've broken KJ, it's very disappointed in me right now. I think, I think the only other thing that is like gameplay wise that we need to talk about is that the game is on like the battle system. It's on a grid, which I think is really interesting because.
00:55:38
Speaker
it gives it sort of like a tactics feel. And it's really funny because that is something I think it was Kane said to me, Oh, you're gonna love this because like, you're really gonna have to think about some of these fights from a tactics standpoint. I was like, we'll see. And I'm just going through, I'm just I'm killing stuff. And then I hit
00:55:59
Speaker
there's a wall in, it's not in first chapter, but there's a wall in second chapter that I was like, all right, it's time for me to start moving characters around. And like, maybe I'll take my turn to move, not to try to attack or try to heal or something like that.
00:56:16
Speaker
That was definitely something where I was like, OK, but yeah, in general, positioning positioning is is very important in this game as well, especially because there's there are different there's different magic. And again, part of it's because I didn't use magic really in the first game, but like there's different magic that like some of it is going to be a set area where it's just going to be a circle and it can be small, medium, large.
00:56:39
Speaker
Um, some of it is going to be like a set line. Some of it is just going to target a specific group of people where your group of enemies where the enemy where like one enemy is the focal point, but it hits everybody else as well. So there's various different pieces of it. And I think.
00:56:57
Speaker
the first game kind of allows you, the first game allows you to kind of brute force it, right? I think the first game definitely allows you to brute force it. And then it doesn't really start until later on in second chapter where like it really forces you to use the game mechanics. And then going forward, you have to use the game mechanics.
00:57:26
Speaker
But yeah, no, I think in general, first chapter, it does allow you to brute force things. The only thing you can't really kind of go in with a hammer and try to get is you cannot 100% this game without like a guide because there's secret quests and different things like you will miss out. And then there's also timing based things where like if you progress the plot, you will just lose out on those quests.
00:57:55
Speaker
Mm hmm. Those are things you cannot brute force. But 100 percenting this game, you definitely need a guide for it because there's just there's just too much of that and you can't like brute force. Like it's it's very difficult because you have to like talk some of them to unlock them. You have to talk to certain characters at certain points in a plot which involves backtracking to talk to them while you're already going forward to the plot. So it's like I missed I missed four quests without a guide.
00:58:23
Speaker
and three of them I could have picked up. I literally talked to everyone, but it was just that like, there's a random, there's one that's like, it's in the third chapter, funny enough, and it's like,
00:58:36
Speaker
a book quest where you have to go find books. So the first one you get on the bulletin board and then the next three you get after you turn in the other books. And I totally forgot to turn in the other books because I got so wrapped up in the story that at the end of the chapter, Joshua was like, we have books to return. I'm like,
00:59:01
Speaker
Oh, and then I went to them. I did everything. And so at the end of every chapter, I was like, after I finished the chapter, I would look at the guide and be like, Oh, did I get everything? And I saw that I missed those three. And I was like, well, there goes my chance of getting close to 100%. And then there was one other quest that I had missed as well. So.
00:59:22
Speaker
Yeah, I forget how many that I ended up missing. I don't think I actually missed that many because I do remember doing a lot of them. I think I did the book one too. But yeah, it involved like talking to a bunch of people. It involved like there was one quest you had to like while you were doing the plot.
00:59:39
Speaker
you had to not keep pushing forward over the pot and like come back and like talk to somebody or something like that. And like that one, I think, uh, was, it was one of the ones that I feel like is like the part where I think you can't brute force getting all the quests done in this game. Um, because of that one specifically, like you, you, you would never, cause it was like, I think it was like one of the only ones you had to do that. So like, and I didn't get that one. I don't, I don't know if you ended up getting that one. I can't, I remember looking out the ones I missed and I was like, Oh,
01:00:09
Speaker
I missed the library ones. I missed three of the four library ones. And I missed one of the escort missions. Oh, that's right. You missed that one escort mission that I had. I missed the first escort mission because I just didn't know.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah. And because it was like, it was such a very short timeframe to do the escort mission. Um, and then like, once you like advance the plot, plot, just a teeny bit, it was gone. So like, I remember, I remember I got that one and I had talked about that and you're like, Oh no, that's the one I, that I missed for the escort. And I was like, Oh yeah, it's such a short window to do it.
01:00:47
Speaker
Another thing to bring up is that even if you do do all the quests, there's still like a lot of times where they're expecting specific answers. So if you don't answer in a specific way, you won't get the extra Bracer points. And this is something that's common throughout the entire franchise.
01:01:03
Speaker
from from what I've played so far is like they're expecting certain answers when dialogue options come up and you'll get more Bracer points and things like that depending on if you do select the correct answer So that's another way that it's like not overly forgiving because like you can just miss out on points with that
01:01:25
Speaker
It does allow for the fact of like replay. It does give it a little replay value if you ever wanted 100% the game to go back and play and like to do those with a guide and like figure it out and get all those quests and stuff like that. But yeah, with those battle points being tied or those bracer points, sorry, not battle points, bracer points being tied into
01:01:44
Speaker
some of your responses to those quests was wild and it does a little bit in the first game but going forward it seems to be a key component that they just kept adding in and adding in depending on your choices changed how many Bracer points you would get which would also prevent you from 100%ing or not 100%ing so
01:02:08
Speaker
There are a lot of, there are quite a few side quests in the game. And even without a guide, KJ and I both ended up with a lot of them done. I can't remember how many I missed out on. I think KJ did a couple more than I ended up doing. The funny thing is, is like, it was like a couple where it was like, I missed them, but he got them, but I got them and he missed them. So it ended up being like there was a couple like the one escort thing that I got.
01:02:37
Speaker
And I was just like, oh, I hate that the stupid escort thing is happening where it's such a short time frame. And you're like, yeah, I missed that one. And I was like, oh, shit. And it's like right at the start of the game, too. It was one of the very first. It's your first escort quest, I think, that you have such a tiny frame to actually do it in. But I think we both did pretty well by the end. I think we were both.
01:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, I got I got to the highest rank. But the problem is even so you can actually carry over stuff, even if you get to the highest rank, you can only miss like four BP to get everything. You can get the highest rank and still not carry over, not get like the ultimate rewards or whatever.
01:03:32
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I don't think I had the top rank then, but I was very close. I think the top rank was like S or SS or something. I think it was Branker or Bracer rank.
01:03:48
Speaker
Yes, something like that. I don't remember. Yeah. Or no. Or was it numbered in the first game and then I think it was I think it was numbered. I think it was. Yeah, I think it was like it is. It is. It is. Yes. It's like Junior Bracer, like one through twelve, because then there's a rank in S. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Once you're a senior Bracer, it's it's letter rankings.
01:04:08
Speaker
It's letters. Okay. I was just getting a confused with the second game. My bad. Again, we're playing these games back to back. Sorry about that. Um, yeah, so it was numbers. I think I was like one or two. I was either rank two or rank one. I can't remember, but like, ah, I got pretty close even without a guide. So like, but yeah, I don't think this game is possible at a hundred percent without a guide. Um, but I mean,
01:04:36
Speaker
When it came to the side quests, like I like, so in trails in the sky, the only way you get money. You don't get money by killing monsters. You get septium, which allows you to take like these little stones that turn into the courts for the magic sister, right? That's what you get for monsters and random items. Um, you don't get money unless they're from a chest, like a treasure chest or.
01:05:05
Speaker
It's from the Bracer Guild for doing quests. So unless you never want to be able to afford equipment, you still have to do some Bracer quests. Some of them, they'll give you plot line wise to do, and then they'll give you money for doing them. But this game, the way the money system works and how you get it, you will have to do some side quests. You're just going to have to do that just to be able to afford stuff.
01:05:36
Speaker
I mean, you can also just grind a ton and then trade in your- I mean, you could grind a ton and like trade in the Septium for money. Yes, you can do that. There is that, but it takes way longer than just doing the side quests. And I actually, I think it's a really great incentive to do the side quests by doing that because the side quests often have extra character development or extra world building.
01:06:03
Speaker
or extra characters that you'll end up seeing down the road as another side quest and you're like, okay, what are you up to this time, sir? Like the escort mission. You have to do the very first one to get the second one. So without doing the first one, you don't get the second escort mission of the same guy. And it's because he's running around trying to get ingredients and not
01:06:30
Speaker
paying attention to his safety. And you're like, sir, you need people around. You can't just be running around picking these monster ingredients, right? And so I think that's just really cool. And it gives you more character development because you get more their interactions with those characters. And you get their party banter between each other dealing with those characters. And it just adds to the experience of the game.
01:06:59
Speaker
It's one of like I I am somebody who is like KJ and I kind of I will go off and get distracted by side quests for a million years where KJ is like plot line. He's he don't sell it like I'm only doing OK. That's ridiculous. No, no, no. You'll do side quests, but you're not like I will do not get it. You get wrapped up in mini game.
01:07:24
Speaker
Which also, by the way, you're going to be totally screwed later on in the series. I'm never going to beat the series if there's so many mini games. But I think the thing about this game was because they did incentivize the because they did incentivize the side quests and there was still enough that like like Polly was saying that you're getting
01:07:52
Speaker
enough plot or like development in the characters. I was like, OK, this is these side quests are worth it. If you're just giving me side quests and it's just like these are side quests and these are fetch quests or something like that. Yeah, I then I'm like, I'm all set right away. But because these side quests actually at least in. The sky games because the side quests are.
01:08:20
Speaker
pretty good and actually do give character development and stuff like that. I'm like, okay, I can, I can do these. Yeah. And like, and that's, uh, and that's more, I was saying, uh, I could get, the funny thing is, is in a, in our RPG game, I could get stuck in side quest no matter how minuscule they are. Cause I'm just having fun wandering around and doing them. And I find I could get those.
01:08:44
Speaker
but i like the way trails the side quests because they make it worth doing them in a sense of like rather than just getting that random item or that random loot that's gonna you're gonna get from it or the money from it uh they give you they give you a reason like you need that money
01:09:02
Speaker
But then it's also like you're going to get those character development, you're going to get those little things. It reminds me of like Star Ocean 2 private actions and stuff that they are the Star Ocean series having the private action system, except for they give you more of a reason to
01:09:19
Speaker
to do them without explaining. So like Star Ocean has these awesome private actions, which is a lot of character building in those private actions and or getting characters through those private actions, but they don't really push you to do them. So it's very easy to go through the game and not really do any of them or very few of them.
01:09:42
Speaker
Whereas Trails, they have these side quests and stuff and unless you are doing the killing the monsters and selling the Septium way of making money, you're gonna need money. You're gonna need to do it, you're gonna need money. And then some of the side quests can tie into like main quests in terms of like you're interacting with certain characters that are in the main quest.
01:10:07
Speaker
So then that's kind of driven being like, oh, I get to interact with this bracer or oh, I get to direct with this person I've already met or or what have you. Right. So you get more like a little bit of story going on there as well. So it's definitely I definitely like the way they do it in this this game, because I feel like it's less likely people are going to just skip them. Again, the incentivize they make it worth it.
01:10:34
Speaker
they make it worth it. And then it's also like, I encourage people to do it because it's like you get all that stuff. And it's like how I encourage people to do the private actions in star ocean. But it's also, I can, I can understand that it's not as incentivized in terms of like, like, like, especially for first play through, um, of like, Oh crap, I could have got a bad ass character if I did that.
01:10:58
Speaker
What? When? Where did it tell me to... I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. We won't go into that because it's kind of a sore spot. But I like how Trails in the Sky, even those... Luckily, there's no character locks behind doing those side quests. That we know of. They give you reasons to do it. And I think that's really cool.
01:11:21
Speaker
Because it also makes the game longer in a way, too. Because you're doing those things and you're doing that building and you're getting to be more immersed in the world, it makes you take longer on the game. I think that can be a negative, though, because...
01:11:36
Speaker
It didn't push its luck though. If it turned a game from a 30 hour game to a 100 plus hour game because you had to do all these side quests. You almost dropped the game because of the side quest, Polly. Let's not call. To be fair. Let's take this at face value and let's call this how it is.
01:11:59
Speaker
So the reason what he's referring to is actually what happened in terms of the timeline when we played this game. So KJ had a portion where he was in like he was going from one job to a different job. So he had this portion of time where he could like dedicate to play it. So he was able to do like six, seven, eight hour play times. I think there was one time where you like sat there like. Didn't you just sit there for like a whole day, some amount of time.
01:12:29
Speaker
Yeah. So like, so you, and it was great because you were like, I'm like, I really want to get through this. I want to do this where I had the exact opposite. I had like an hour, a night, every other night. So my problem was like, when I'd start getting into the plot, I ran over my time a lot.
01:12:50
Speaker
So like I would be like, okay, I have to go to bed at 11. I could play for an hour. I'm going to play. Please don't play trails like that. Do not play trails first chapter the way I had to play it where you only had like an hour a night to do it.
01:13:06
Speaker
Because it's such a plot like it's got such a really good plot that will pull you through and it does so much world building in the first chapter. I think like first chapter is set up and a lot of people call it slow and I felt it was slow and I almost gave up because of the way I was playing it and I realized
01:13:27
Speaker
with second chapter, my problem. Second chapter, I'm able to play it for four or five hours at a time. I'll stream it for like 10 hours. So I'm getting to play it longer, getting right into it, really being immersed. So doing the side quests here and there wasn't a problem. But in first chapter, I was only getting an hour every other night. And when I would start getting into the plot, I'm like, crap, I have to go to bed. And I'm halfway through Joshua's conversation right now.
01:13:56
Speaker
So I'm just like, oh, so like I, I, it stressed me out in terms of like, I was basically only getting to do the side quests for a long portion of time. Like for like almost a month, I was only getting to do side quests and I was bored because of that. So it's like, that's why I said there are, there.
01:14:17
Speaker
It's definitely the case where like the side quest can burn you out. That is. They can. And especially the way I was playing it, where I couldn't play a lot of the plot alongside the side quest, where I was like, just do the side quest. And that's my problem with a lot of RPG games where I get hooked on to the side quests and I'm off doing the side quest. I don't get the main plot line done. The game never gets beaten. Skyrim.
01:14:43
Speaker
Skyrim is a very good example of that I have 200 plus hours in a save file of Skyrim without being passed like going up the hill to see the elders and Getting your shout about all of these past like that's how far I got in the plot and I went ooh shiny Went this way and I never went back so like and then I I would be like I don't care about Skyrim, but
01:15:13
Speaker
So like that's my problem with first chapter is that that's what happened to me. It's like I caught up doing the side quest because they would only take me. Like I'd have an hour and I'd get I'd get a couple of them done and I'd be like, oh, I'm efficient with my game time. But I was like, I wasn't getting too much details of the characters, except for the ones that kind of gave me a little bit of character building. I was getting more world building like side quest kind of feel stuff. And I was just like,
01:15:40
Speaker
Just taking note, Holly doesn't like world building. Oh, I love world building when I had character development and other things happening too. I was missing the key aspects that would drive me to complete the game. And so after that first month, after that convention, I had Anime North, I was done it, I was able to start putting more time into Trails, then suddenly I was hooked.
01:16:07
Speaker
Like I got past a little bit and I started getting more character development along with the side quests, along with the world building, and it all kind of connected together. And like from there, I was like, okay, I want to know what happens. I want to know what happens. And like plot points started to happening where I was like, okay, what's going on? Like there's something going on here. What's this? And so I was driven to do more because I had more time to play it. Um, so I think my recommendation absolutely is if you only got like an hour every other night to play a game,
01:16:36
Speaker
We don't play trails the sky and devote to that because I feel like all the other trails games is just gonna keep getting worse in terms of like There's a lot of stuff in each of them and they get They get longer and longer and longer and longer and like the cold steel games are apparently really long and so like only having an hour every other night It's gonna be like trying to watch the anime one piece. I
01:17:01
Speaker
where you're doing episodes every other night. That would take you three years to get through One Piece, more than that. More than that.
01:17:17
Speaker
more than that. It would take you more than three years to get through one piece if you did it at that pace. So it's like trails might not be trails might not be the way that might not be the sales series to do. Um, so it was just, it ended up being like, uh, and that's why now I'm back to where there's another convention coming up. So I've been less time. Uh, now I'm like trying to really push to get through second chapter because I, I,
01:17:45
Speaker
Like first chapter is a lot of world building. So in this in this one, you're going to get a lot of Wilbur. You're going to get character development. That's why it's so important to be able to be doing the plot along with the side class, along with the world building all together and bits and pieces. Or you're going to end up like me, where I almost gave it up because I was only really doing a little bit of the side quest, which gave me a little bit of the world building. But I didn't care about the characters yet, except for the main character.
01:18:11
Speaker
because I wasn't getting the character development from the main plot line of the game to tie everything in. So it's like, okay, it's not like Skyrim, for example, where the main quest line doesn't really matter a whole lot. And you could go off on the side quests and do your own thing and have a lot of fun doing that.
01:18:34
Speaker
very different kind of experience. That's why I have 200 plus in that without me doing the main thing and trails. I would have dropped if I had to keep doing it that way. Luckily time freed up and I got to play it a little bit more, but like, and you kept telling me cause you knew I would like it. It was just the circumstances to which I was playing the game was the problem, not the game itself.
Battle System and Character Strategies
01:18:57
Speaker
So did we I think we've pretty much we've jumped around a bit. I mean, the only other thing in sort of the only thing we didn't mention, I think gameplay wise, is the S break system, which I thought was really cool, because it it really allows you to manipulate the turn order, which I really enjoyed.
01:19:21
Speaker
And that's something that's just in the Trails game as a whole. Every character has specials that you can equip and you can just interrupt at any point the turn order and just have them use that move if they have that gauge filled up. And that is such a lifesaver. That feature is such a lifesaver.
01:19:48
Speaker
Oh, I like the way they do the turn order too. So like, I like games where they're kind of showing you who's coming up next. Cause it gives you a little bit of like that tactic-y kind of like strategy portion of the RPG, right? So you're like, okay, I have three characters who can get attacks off before the enemy gets their next one off. So you can really strategize how you're going to go through that fight. And while you can brute force most of the first game,
01:20:18
Speaker
the second game you start like really having to like really manipulate that that system and it's really cool because like Keiji was saying as your character gets hit or does attacks they build up this gauge and it's kind of like if you've played like Final Fantasy 7 for example the limit break system where the more you get hit the more it builds up and then it unlocks a limit break it's very similar in Trails of the Sky except
01:20:46
Speaker
that you can use that ability whenever you want, even if it's going to be the enemy's turn, which is so helpful because you can get off an extra heal before the enemy obliterates you. You can get off an attack and kill the enemy before it can ever hurt you. So it's really fun that you have this extra mechanic that allows you to manipulate the turn order like that outside of a spell speeding you up or item speeding you up.
01:21:15
Speaker
Which is freaking cool and in that system is so you have this gauge building up and you can build it up to 100 or 200 to do like basically it's the same like special move you're doing that you have attached.
01:21:31
Speaker
But it does more damage if it gets to the 200. It's like going from like, oh, it'll do a thousand damage to two thousand damage. Like it doubles almost its capabilities. If it's a healing ability where it heals your whole party, it double like it makes it even more powerful healer healing spell. Right. So which is really cool.
01:21:53
Speaker
But you also have special abilities of each character tied to that gauge. So let's say you have like 80 out of 100, you can't do your special move yet. You have these abilities where you could do like Estelle's morale, where everybody around her, their strength will go up if you if you sacrifice 20 of that gauge.
01:22:14
Speaker
So it really starts to like offer, like you're thinking of being like, okay, is it better if for Estelle to do her big Uber move or boost everybody up where they can all do better attacks or stun the enemy or impede the enemy or like throw off the attack order. Like one of my favorite moves to do is agate's turn delay move. Oh yeah. Like attack delay move, attack delay arts. I spam them.
01:22:45
Speaker
It's so awesome to be able to get that off and then you make it so that the enemy can no longer, like they go below your party again. So it's basically like taking their turn away and it's so satisfying to do that and be able to do that. So like sometimes with Agate, cause he, I find his spell almost or his move almost never misses for me on the enemy. So like, I'll let Agate get his a hundred.
01:23:12
Speaker
But then I'm spamming that move so the enemy never attacks anyway, so I don't have to do his ultimate move sometimes. I played that totally differently. I pretty much spam like because Agate has the ability where he can.
01:23:28
Speaker
It's like 70% of his HP for 150 points in the gauge. So I would spam that ability. I've never used that move. Oh, I spammed that ability. Fun fact, I've never used that yet. I would basically try to get my turns so that somebody was close to him and could heal him. So I would use that, use his special,
01:23:54
Speaker
almost clear the board and then heal him and then just do it again. Like I, I spammed that so much. I, especially in later, like in second chapter and stuff like that. Like, yeah, I, I spammed that. Good to know. I, I've never actually been gutsy enough to use that move, but I could see the, I could see the potential of it. Yeah. Cause you shoot up with 150 and then you could spam either the attack delay move or do his, I, I, I like his AOE move.
01:24:24
Speaker
the one where he can hit in a wide area of enemies. Cause it always does crazy damage for me. Um, but, uh, yeah, so you have this extra strategy where all your characters have these special moves that they could do. Um, or they could do an ultimate move and some characters it's better to spam their other like moves. Like there's a character that you get Tita who has a ability where in an area she makes everybody blind.
01:24:51
Speaker
So like they can't, they don't hit you anymore. So it's like, I love using that spell with her because like, I just mop the floor with the enemies. They don't get an attack. They constantly miss me until I kill them, right? So like, I love that move with her. And rather than using her ultimate, which I feel because she doesn't do like super crazy damage,
01:25:13
Speaker
I find it less relevant. So I'm using more of the special move that takes 20s, you know, they're called I think they're called its combat points. So CP, CP. Yeah, CP. So I keep using the 20 or 30 CP to make everybody blind rather than using her ultimate move.
01:25:33
Speaker
So every time you get hit or every time you use a move, it builds up that CP gauge and you have those abilities access to you. And then your special move on that character can change depending on your level. So as you level up your character, you might unlock another special move.
01:25:50
Speaker
Some characters unlock AOEs. Some people start with AOEs and unlock single attacks, which make them better against bosses or one-on-one fights kind of idea. But characters like Agate and Zinn, I just kept their AOEs on because they just did crazy damage. And Zinns was literally freaking Hadouken. He was like, Hadouken? And it was this big explosion. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much.
01:26:18
Speaker
I was like, you know what? I was going to leave that because it's just a cooler looking thing. But but yeah, so like the gameplay is really, really fun. It offers like with the magic system, with the combat point system, with messing with the turn order, getting offers a lot of there's so much customization to the battle system because of it.
01:26:39
Speaker
It offers a lot and it's one of those things where like some of it, you can tell it's been inspired by other games that came out before it, but it's a very unique twist on everything that's out there. Like it is, it is a real... It stands out on its own in the end. It was like, oh, this did this right, this did this. We're going to make this system that kind of picks from this, this, this and this. And it made it its own thing. And it stands out as being such a great system.
01:27:05
Speaker
in that way. The combat's great. You have where you can set up where your characters are, your position of your characters, which is very tactics game feeling. You mess around with the order. You can mess around with the magic systems of the different characters. It's just so much. There's so much there that you can play around with it to customize, to play the game how you want.
01:27:29
Speaker
Because as we've realized doing many of these episodes, KJ and I play RPGs differently sometimes. And this game really allows you to do that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It lets you and even with the characters you choose in your party, too, like people tease me, the characters I choose for my party. But there's really no wrong answer of who you have in your party unless you have Olivier in your party. I was just about to say, if you have Olivier in your party, I'm I'm judging you a little bit, but
01:27:58
Speaker
But otherwise, otherwise, not because of his usefulness in battle, just his character as a whole. Oh, my God, his character just. I mean, I think that's a great big way into talking about. Yeah, should we talk about the characters? Again, Olivier is a.
01:28:19
Speaker
Good battle character, but as a character battle character, I will admit that character. And now that I understand rock math better, I see how he utilizes as being a really strong mage slash combat. Like I said, he's a very good character in battle. He is kind of OP like building him and everything. But his personality and his character development throughout first chapter just made me
01:28:48
Speaker
cringe so like I get they were going for the whole bard thing with him like typical kind of like bard where they're a little bit like more like flirty and playing the music and luring people in with the music and yada yada like I get what they were doing with a but goodness does he just come off like my creep radar goes off every time he has a conversation
01:29:16
Speaker
Like he's hitting on you. He's hitting on your main characters like adopted brother guy, family member. He's hitting on like everybody, hitting on everyone. He's not everybody. And then he's like keeps suggesting, you know, to his decision making is can they walk? If yes.
01:29:44
Speaker
I'm gonna shoot the shot. That is literally his, yeah. And it's one of those things where, so yes, he is harmless, but like, or at least they, yeah, they establish him as harmless, but like, it's just like, I don't know, it's just overdone.
01:30:07
Speaker
It is. And I don't I am unfortunately not the audience for that kind of a character. Like I I don't like characters like that, even if they're like.
01:30:19
Speaker
You know, they're doing, they're doing kind of a bit of a bit, but like they're harmless. They're not going to do it. They're not going to cross a line necessarily. Um, still not, those aren't my kind of characters. I'm not. And so he, he's a character that kind of pops in and out in first chapter. And that's something you'll learn with the trails in the sky game is that characters kind of kind of pop in and out.
01:30:43
Speaker
And so you tend to have KJ's favorite party splits a lot. OK, with Sky One, I wouldn't say like. I didn't hate the way they did it in Sky One because it was the case where every chapter had basically a guest character, right? Or a guest character or two. And they still kept
01:31:13
Speaker
Estelle and Joshua in your party. Yeah, they gave you the two characters from like basically start to end as being the same two characters that we're going to be in your party. And like the battle system and the enemies and stuff like that, like everything's kind of set up in a way that you're pretty OK with them. Like so it matters a little less on who's in your party after that.
01:31:43
Speaker
in the first game Yeah, I was I will say I was very annoyed in the beginning like I had a party
01:31:52
Speaker
And then they took character relief away from me. And then I had, again, had a party. Then they took characters away from me. By chapter three, I was like, okay, I see how this game is going to be because it's a sort of like world building and you're on Joshua and Estelle's adventure. It was like, okay, really? They're gonna be in the party regardless. And then,
01:32:17
Speaker
It's going to be like you're meeting all the different characters. And then at the end, you'll be able to put.
01:32:24
Speaker
you'll be able to put everybody in or anybody in that you want. And that's exactly how it ended up happening. Yeah, that's exactly. And then you set it up that you're that's basically what's going to happen. You knew that was going to happen after a few chapters going, OK, they're going to keep doing this. And I think party splits in that aspect. I'm also OK with because they allow for more character to building. Like you get to use all the characters. Like one thing I find with a lot of JRPGs, they they'll give you these characters
01:32:54
Speaker
and give you the choice to put them in your party or not. And you might never use a lot of characters and never see their potential. A great example is Breath of Fire 3. A lot of people didn't see Pekko, a little onion guy that you could put in your party's potential because he came basically at level one and you could like build him up however you wanted, but everybody else was like 10, 15, level 20, whatever. Quite a few games do stuff like that.
01:33:19
Speaker
And quite a few JRPGs do that. And so while you have these character options, you're like, I don't really know these characters unless I'm going to be using them. And you don't know how they play. And like, I have like a, every time I replay Final Fantasy IX, for example, I keep swapping who my main four people are.
01:33:38
Speaker
because otherwise I wouldn't have really ever utilized some of the characters like Amaranth or Freya or that sort of stuff because I like I had my Garnet and Sedane. Oddly this was my party and I never quite understood how this was my party.
01:33:57
Speaker
We're going to get on a tangent. You're going to tell me your party and I'm going to be mad about it. Garnet, Eco, Vivi, and Zidane was my main party. Don't ask me why. I know. Okay. Don't judge me. But like, so with JRPGs and stuff like that, I tend to be like, okay, like these are the characters I like. I'm going to put them a party, even if they're don't really mesh well together. The three mage thief party? I had three mage party. I'm confused.
01:34:23
Speaker
Yeah. So because I, those were my, those were the characters I liked the most out of all eight characters you got to pick. I liked those characters the most. So that's what I used. Whereas games like trails of the sky, I like that their party splits happen because you have to use all the characters. So you get to experience how their magic system works or their battles, like their mechanics work and you're getting
Character Development and Story Arcs
01:34:46
Speaker
all these stuff. And then by the end of the game, you get to choose your party that you want to go with.
01:34:52
Speaker
I'm still trying to wrap my head around your Final Fantasy IX party. I knew that would break your brain. That was young Polly playing Final Fantasy IX for the first time. That ended up being my default party.
01:35:11
Speaker
Sometimes I go I lose No because I had like the protection so I use protect and Shell and stuff on my party. And so like my mages were like not squishy at all. Okay. So what you're telling me is
01:35:32
Speaker
Really, really, you were playing Final Fantasy 9 for over 100 hours because you're sitting through all those cast animations and all of those summon animations. Oh, my goodness. I would know. I love Final Fantasy 9, but oh, my goodness. That is ridiculous.
01:35:49
Speaker
They were, they were strong if you utilize the magic and everything. Yeah. I was a kid though. You got to remember when I played Final Fantasy nine, I was like a kid with no chores and living out in the middle of nowhere. So I could put like 60 hours into the game. It didn't matter because I was like Ken and I still, I still played through with.
01:36:13
Speaker
Zidane, Garnet, Steiner, Vivi. I also really didn't like Steiner. So every excuse I could have, I'm not in the party. I don't like Steiner either. That's it. We're getting off on a tangent. Okay. We're talking about trails. I was using it as an example of like where you get multiple characters, but they don't really give you like, besides a couple little areas where you had to use a particular character, you were often getting to choose what your party was. Whereas the trails.
01:36:43
Speaker
they were taking and removing characters as you went along and then you got to pick after you experienced everybody. Which I think is such a cool way of doing it where you get to develop connections with all the characters and then pick your favorite by the end.
01:37:03
Speaker
Whereas a lot of JRPGs don't do that. They're just like, throw whoever you want in the party kind of thing and go from there. Or have an astronopically amount of characters like Suikoden, where it's almost like crippling of being like, who do I put?
01:37:19
Speaker
Who do I put? There's so many options. And Trails, I like how they do it. I like the party split system, how they separated it so that I got to experience everybody. And so the characters that come and go from your party, so you have Estelle, who's your main character. And it's basically the entire story is told from her perspective, which is great because she's
01:37:48
Speaker
And don't read the textbook. I don't know what's going on in the world. And so you're getting the world building through her eyes because you're learning it. You're learning it with her. So you're learning it with your main character, which is freaking great because it makes you more connected with the characters. Right. And then she has her dad.
01:38:12
Speaker
present child friend in her party with her. So like. Add present child friend. I mean, that is kind of okay. You start off the game. He's like, I have a present for you. I have a present for you. A boy.
01:38:31
Speaker
So what we're talking about is right at the start of the game on how you find out Estella and Joshua, how they get connected. And then they end up being your core two characters throughout the game. And the entire game is told in their perspective, right?
01:38:45
Speaker
her dad came home and was like, I'm home. She's like, okay. He's like, I brought you a present. She's like, you got me a present. And he like, here's a 12 year old boy. And my first line was like, you gave a, you don't give people other people for presents.
01:39:10
Speaker
Like what the hell trails in the sky? That's how you get started with this series. So right away, it's establishing that Estelle and Joshua, they're not blood related. He was just kind of brought into the family. And they're like, they grew up as
01:39:26
Speaker
You know, kind of siblings ish ish. And so that's how you start off the storyline. And Joshua seems way more like textbook reading, kind of like doing things, but like he seems to be more of like the the the analytical side of things. And then Estelle's like, I'm going to whack people with the stick. Estelle, you should really learn it now. I whack people with the stick. I'm going to go head first.
01:39:56
Speaker
I imagine Estelle being like Polly growing up. I mean it's pretty close actually. That is what I imagine. So when we first started this game, KJ started before me.
01:40:17
Speaker
and kept telling me the main character was me. And I was like, I hadn't even started this game yet. Let's keep this in mind. And I'm like, okay, okay. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Like, like, he's like, no, I like the character. It's a good thing. And, but then, and then dark in the community started playing and he started saying the character was me. And then Meach started playing the game and said, the character was me. And I was like, okay, I'm, I'm starting, I'm starting to feel like put in a box here.
01:40:47
Speaker
like excuse me so when I started the game and I started playing the funny thing is is I was saying things to the game and then Estelle would literally follow with the same line practically and I was like shit I have this character this is literally me this is how I this is how I handle things this is how I am like
01:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, this is me. And a lot of the times I was just like, Oh my God, we're fighting a big giant evil penguin. And it sounds like I'm like, stop. This game is eerily creepy. Like this game knew my life and I don't like it. And the funny thing is this game would have came out when I was a T like when I was her age, I would have been, well, this gave me about what? 2004.
01:41:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I would have been 14, 15, 16. I would have been around that age. That's hilarious. I would have been 16, and she's 16, and I was like, oh. Really, in 2004, they just wrote The Adventures of Ollie. Yeah, so I'm convinced that one of the story writers for Trails went to school with me.
01:42:09
Speaker
And I had no idea. Anyway, so yeah. And so that got told that way. Anyway, so obviously I connected with the main character right away. She's great. And I really like Estelle. I like how spirited she is. I like how she doesn't give up. And she is vulnerable at times. She gets hurt. She cries. She has things happen. She gets emotional and stuff. She's a human.
01:42:39
Speaker
They do a really good job at making her a protagonist you like to play, but also just human. Like she makes mistakes and you know, that sort of stuff. And she learns and she progresses, right? So you kind of get that journey. And, uh, without realizing where this game led, I kept referring to Joshua as a robot.
01:43:07
Speaker
Yo, the robot, the Polly robot Joshua voice was incredible.
Plot Twists and Cliffhangers
01:43:13
Speaker
I am the dark and peace stone and was like, she has no idea. She has no clue the decision that she has made on accident.
01:43:28
Speaker
So we're going to get to a little bit more spoilery territory. For those of you who do not want this game spoiled, please turn down the volume here. We're going to start talking about more of the story and we're going to that will lead us into spoiler territory because we're going to we're going to finish off the story with talking about how it connects into the second one. So I don't even really we don't necessarily have to dive into the like.
01:43:50
Speaker
I think we should dive into the middle of the game. I think we should just jump to the end, honestly. Honestly, yeah. So you get all this world building. You get these characters coming in and out. The characters that you start to come in. There's Chloe. She's the one that both KJ and I really liked because she's a really powerful mage kind of character. She was one of the ornaments we showed on screen earlier.
01:44:16
Speaker
You get Agate, he's this red-haired, spiky red-haired with a giant sword. Immediately, KJ's gonna hate me. But immediately, I was like, Cloud! And he hates me every time I say that. But he was my red-headed Cloud, and I obviously was like, I am team him. And the funny thing is, as I said his name wrong for so long, I called him Agate, because that's how it's spelt.
01:44:41
Speaker
But it's supposed to be Agate in terms of the stone that he's named after. But I kept calling him Agate and I always thought that was such a weird name until I was corrected and I was like, okay, this is much better. Agate is much better.
01:44:58
Speaker
Um, you get Tita who says really smart like child genius, which I am a big fan of like genius type characters and games. So she was right away appealing to me. She's this cute little child genius with a giant gun. I'm like, excuse me, little child. You have this bazooka as a weapon. Um,
01:45:21
Speaker
And then, uh, Olivier, which we've already covered, which is kind of the bar type, but he has a gun too. And he's also a really strong magic user. He's kind of, he's got a little OP if you do use them, if you can get past the very cringy things he says. And then who am I missing? Oh, you have Shera, Shera's odd, who's like also had made some uncomfortable lines, but has grown on me since, uh, has a whip.
01:45:50
Speaker
lady, uh, move is called like sadist whip or some shit like that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, come on. They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing with her. And then finally you get a character who's this just big tall guy who punches everything. He reminds me of Goku so much. He's like Goku in trails. Um, and his name is Zid.
01:46:17
Speaker
And so those are all your characters and stuff like that. I think that's really like, as you go through the game, you're getting a lot of world building of the different countries and stuff like that. You're getting like side quests turned into like actual quests and connecting everything together. And these characters are going in and out of your party depending on what you're going and doing and how it relates to them and why they would be involved. But I think the big thing to talk about is the end of game. And I'm going to let KJ start with it because the end of the game is where this really just
01:46:47
Speaker
Yeah, so it it's so ridiculous. So throughout the entirety of the game, there's a couple of different things that happen. So this is going to be massive spoilers, right? So there is yes, massive, massive, massive, massive spoilers. Please don't listen to this if you plan on to play this game because it might like ruin the ruin the fun of learning this. So like the grand scheme of things, there's like
01:47:19
Speaker
a portion of the military that's trying to overthrow everything and take over the country, right? And you think that the person that's doing that is the main bad guy or whatever. And it just so happens that he also studied under Cassius Estelle's father. But then you find out that actually
01:47:49
Speaker
The so we were talking about the escort missions earlier. Yep. Those escort missions you're escorting a professor. Yep. This dude. With a title card, by the way, he has a little he has he has like a portrait, a title card and everything. Yeah, Professor Alba, I believe his name is. You don't know this, but at the very end of the game,
01:48:19
Speaker
He has an encounter with Joshua where he basically tells him that like. Built him back up like a puppet.
01:48:31
Speaker
Um, and is basically been controlling, effectively been controlling him. And like, he was basically just a shell of a person and it just like sets off so many different things happening and making the robot voice applicable. Yeah. The robot voice was definitely a, uh, is definitely a choice.
01:48:54
Speaker
Definitely a choice many people were outraged and I had a very logical reason to make him with us I could say I was mad. We thought it was funny We thought it was fucking hilarious. I Remember moody coming into my one of my streams and started to hear me. She's like So I explained to her the reason and she's like, oh my god and then when I got to the end of the game I was like
01:49:22
Speaker
I had no idea. But that's basically. Yep. Basically, it was incredible. It was it was absolutely incredible. But that. I don't think that there is like a.
01:49:42
Speaker
That cutscene, I don't know if there's been like a more impactful, like, end of game cutscene than I've ever seen. Like that cutscene literally, because the thing is, it sets, A, gives you a ton of backstory and sets the scene for the next game. But then it also introduces
01:50:11
Speaker
The true. At least to this point, like that, you know, of the true villain, like who's kind of pulling the strings a little bit behind the scenes or gives you a more of a picture into up until this point, you have this world building going on where like you're finding out like mind controlings going on and things and things. But you you keep like getting these certain things. It's like villains, but like they're not. And then you're like,
01:50:40
Speaker
oh you were being mind-controlled you're not really the villain and then you go through that you're being micro so it basically connects all that together and then it gives you who it was and the funny thing is is like it should have been somebody you suspected from like day one but the way the game is laid out and set up and everything and how you're going through
01:51:01
Speaker
You're like, what? It's still like so mind blowing. Cause not only do they reveal the main kind of at this point, like the villain pulling the strings, they also reveal that your party member from day one has also been feeding them information.
01:51:21
Speaker
without knowing it because his mind's all screwed up and shit. And because of his past, and you get portions of his past of what happened there, and you're just like,
01:51:36
Speaker
So not only you get a like, oh my God, it was you. I should have known it was you. Cause you had a portrait, you had a portrait and you were this stupid escort. And you were just always there. And the thing is he was always there. Like every chapter went through. He's the reason you were able to get into like the last area. Like he was there sort of like he was there that like he made, he was, he was basically,
01:52:05
Speaker
clouding the minds of like some of the highest ranked bracer. Yeah. And it was like he screwed up Kurt and like one of the he was like one of those characters were like, oh, my goodness, this dude is is.
01:52:20
Speaker
Really fucked with Kurt. I feel bad. Yeah Kurt anyway, but yeah and then his portrait goes from like the side view like happy nerdy looking to then they give him a front view portrait and he just looks evil as
01:52:36
Speaker
fuck and like you knew if you saw that portrait early on you would have been like I don't fucking trust this guy but because they have like this side portrait throughout majority of the game with these big glasses and his big smile and big like thing you're just like oh look cutesy professor guy like
01:52:55
Speaker
It's so funny at how quickly you go from like, oh, he wouldn't have a fly to, oh shit, he's gonna fuck you up. Like it's very like, yeah, look at this. He does not look like he's gonna be anything important.
01:53:13
Speaker
Yeah. You're just like, okay, he's just a professor character in the game. He's just kind of going to be like the researcher. I kept thinking it was going to be revealed that he uncovered like this whole mystery. Like I thought because you kept seeing him and he kept being at the different things, he was like connecting the dots and he was going to end up being like your main like information guy kind of thing. Cause that's what he did. And then we have this and then he turns to this shit. He goes from like,
01:53:42
Speaker
Professor that you think might be on your side to dude that has hella evil eyebrows like look at that dude's eyebrows He literally goes from goofy professor to fucking eyes in and like like just a slight Swift like he's literally eyes and actually I said is a great example because I don't know that I said a bleach Did a similar sort of concept right? So same kind of thing and I'm just like oh my god. And yeah, so like he He reveals all of that and then he reveals fucking
01:54:12
Speaker
Joshua's been manipulated for so long. And then he just kind of like and this is this is the craziest thing. He's just like. And so you got Joshua stand in there being like my whole fucking life's a lie. And then you got Estelle coming back being like. But it's it's also really interesting because she runs into him.
01:54:41
Speaker
on the way. Yeah. And he switches back to that goofy face portrait where she runs into him and he's like, Oh, hi, how's it going? Oh yeah, Josh was over there. And she's just unsuspected, keeps walking. And there's like, Joshua, like world shattered. And she's like, he unlocks his memories and like gives him more of his past to remember.
01:55:10
Speaker
where he's from, what happened, all of that stuff. And that everything is true, that he had been being like manipulated and he was also being, and he was like there to like infiltrate the family, like he was there to infiltrate the family and get information.
01:55:27
Speaker
It's like, could you imagine like being in your foster family, being super happy, you know, starting to, I hate to actually say this cause like, I don't like this trope in anime and they do it a lot. And I'm not knocking the game for doing this, but like having your adopted brother slash love interest, you know, like I don't like it. Yeah. Weird.
01:55:52
Speaker
they do it in anime and because they push the they push the thing really hard in this game. But yeah, they push they push a couple of things really hard and it's like, I don't like it. Like they push that like, oh, you're close like siblings, but also.
01:56:13
Speaker
trying to be love interest, because they do the same thing with Agate and Tita. And there's a massive, like, other characters are pushing it. Like, they've very, they've very clearly established, like, that is a sibling, like, that is a sibling relationship. Yeah. All the characters push the issue and it's, it's not. Yeah, and that's, that's where I got... There's also an age dynamic there.
01:56:41
Speaker
Yeah, so Agate and Tita is way worse because of the age gap. That's what really bothered me with that kind of questline. But with Joshua and Stell, they're very similar to age, but it's also, I think what frustrated me the most that it was very sibling-y, dynamic, kind of at least on a Stell side. Joshua, I think always kind of was like,
01:57:06
Speaker
there's more here. But it was other people again, like Shara, Olivier, pushing her to be like, Oh, but there's feelings here. And like, there was even portions where you could tell Chloe kind of started to like Joshua, you could see that she was and like, but then she was kind of
01:57:31
Speaker
pushing Estelle too. So it's just like, and then finally, I mean, Estelle kind of starts to realize there's feelings as she goes. And then we get this end sequence where like Joshua just found out that whole life and the person he admires the mouth, his dad, again, this is, I hate that this is a love interest, but his dad, you know, he was there to basically spy on and everything. And he gets all that information.
01:58:00
Speaker
And then his whole past of to why he was led to being manipulated in the first place and everything just all at once. And he's just like. And then his cell comes back with ice cream and you're just like, no, no. So that was wild. I that was not a twist I was expecting.
01:58:23
Speaker
I was not expecting it at all. I knew there was going to have to be a bad guy revealed because I knew there's multiple games, right? I knew there's a second game and a third game. So I'm like, there's got to be more here than what we just dealt with because we also find out Richard was being mind controlled, right? The Colonel?
01:58:47
Speaker
Okay. Like everybody's being mind controlled. Something's going on. So what I, I knew there had to be a thing. I never guessed it was going to be a frigging professor dork guy in my wildest dreams. I would have guessed him, but I, I don't think I would have like, I knew Joshua had a sad past that he kept to himself because it was being teased since the very beginning that Estelle wanted to know, but was also like, tell me when you're ready. I won't push, which honestly hit hands.
01:59:17
Speaker
like shout outs to Estelle for having like, you know, like boundaries that I mean, good job Estelle. But so, and then he kind of like, he eventually starts to tell her a little bit of what he remembers anyway, and stuff. It gives her bits and pieces, right? So like, you knew there was something going to go on with Joshua, but like, I never expected that at all. That whole thing either. Like I thought he was going to have like, Oh yeah, you killed people this path. What a, what a, but like,
01:59:47
Speaker
I never expected that at all. Yeah, that like I said, it threw me for a loop. I was not expecting that at all. Not expecting it at all. And one of those big twists that I'm like, I'm like, OK, I'm hooked. I need to keep going. Like I was already like, I need to fit it, but I'm like, nah, I need to find out the thing with with this game. I think it's one of those games that's
02:00:16
Speaker
once you get through more so than any of the other games, because I will say like having at least to this point that I've played, right? The end of Sky One forces you to play Sky Two because you need to know what happened. Yeah, you can't leave it at that. I could have legitimately said, OK, I'm going to take I'm going to take time and not play three. I just wanted to play it. But
02:00:44
Speaker
one into two, I started to literally the same day. I had to just to know where it picks up. And then I was like, OK, I'll fit this in afterwards. But yeah, two is just.
02:00:58
Speaker
Two, you definitely have to and you got to play these games back to get because they definitely feel like they were meant to be one whole game ish with like the story and stuff like that. And they definitely have that Golden Sun vibe where it's like it leaves off on a cliffhanger. It leaves off unfinished.
02:01:17
Speaker
So after he gets this devastating information, like he finally has a talk with Estelle, he reveals what his past is to her.
02:01:30
Speaker
And then fucking pulls a whole Batman four movie shit on her by like having poison lips or something kisses her, which basically puts her unconscious and then disappears. And that's how you finish this game. Cause he's just like, I can't drag you along with this. I gotta go over the thing. Like, you know, but leaves her be like, you know, that like, you know,
02:01:58
Speaker
I did care about you, but I have to go now. I mean, I don't want to drag you into this mess because he just like, it would have been really hard for him mentally to stick by her side. In all honesty, after learning, he was a literal mole spy. Like that's hard. That's hard to stick by.
02:02:21
Speaker
He put her in danger, keep her in danger and stuff like that. So he he did what he thought needed to be done. And so he like disappears and she wakes up then and he's gone. This person has been by her side. The entire game has gone. This is an unpopular opinion, but I think he did the right thing. By not taking her with him. Yes.
02:02:49
Speaker
I need to play more of the second game. No, even I'm saying even with like I'm not even not even like second game aside. Finding all of that out, I think he did the right thing because it's one of those things where. He's trying to. Not only protect her.
02:03:13
Speaker
But also, I think he then had to like build himself up again and sort of figure out his place in the world because he thought he did that. But with knowing everything that he knows, he definitely needed to make sure that he was in the right place. So I think he did the right thing.
02:03:40
Speaker
I'm kind of torn because while I see it from his side of what he was seeing, like he just had this whole crushing thing. He kind of has to find himself again at this point. That's really hard to do with somebody beside you. But at the same time, he didn't give her a choice. He made the decision for her. And I think that's
02:04:00
Speaker
what bugs me because it's like, you're basically ripping yourself out of this person's life and just being like, See ya with
02:04:11
Speaker
not entirely an explanation. Like you got a little bit of it. He didn't give her the whole freaking story. He didn't tell her everything she finds out. Well, I guess I can't say we'll find, I'll talk about it in the second podcast episode. But so he, he gives her like this little bit of information
02:04:31
Speaker
Poison kisses her, puts her to sleep, and then just takes off before she could stop him. And while on his side, I could see why he did it, but he also didn't give her a choice, didn't give her a say, didn't give her anything, and also didn't really even overly explain it. So she's just left broken and empty of having her family member removed from her.
02:04:57
Speaker
when she's already lost one family member. So it's like, well, I realize I think he was looking more on his side of things than her side of things. What was best for her. He wasn't really considering. He was considering what he felt he needed. He needed to do to to like protect her. But like he didn't like I think my biggest gripe is like and why I kept yelling that I was going to drag him back by his damn shirt.
02:05:24
Speaker
was collared naked back is because he didn't let her like he didn't fill her in on everything and
02:05:34
Speaker
He didn't give her any choice whatsoever. Even though everything up until that point, they were deciding things together. So that's really hard to suddenly do to somebody you care about and then rip yourself out of their life when they've already lost a family member pretty tragically. Like you find out through the first game that she lost her mother through the war and stuff like that. And then her dad's always like fucking,
02:06:00
Speaker
Okay, her dad's never in the picture. He's doing cool guy shit all the time. I think the biggest thing for me with that is you can't be there for someone else if you have to find yourself. So that's why I think he did the right thing, because honestly, this trauma that he went through has nothing to do with itself.
02:06:25
Speaker
And at that point, it's like, yes, his actions are going to affect everyone, not just the style. They're going to affect everyone, but he has to build himself back up before he can be.
02:06:41
Speaker
there and figure out what this new normal is around everyone else like you can't it's that it's like i think he should have told her that i think he should have like i know she would have wanted to be by her side but if he would probably wasn't the right call but to be fair poison lips is never the right call
02:07:00
Speaker
There's no way that she would have let that happen. That's the thing. So that is, I think that's him being aware and knowing Estelle and saying, there's no way she's gonna let me leave. I need to leave to do this soul searching to figure out where all of this stands, to cope with all of the things that he just got back into his memory. And it's like,
02:07:29
Speaker
that old saying of like, you have to love yourself before you can love anybody else. So that I think that's where it's holding information with her. Like he didn't get the part of the frustration was she was still like left. Not knowing the I think like, yes, I think she probably would have tried to push to go with him and he would have had to. There's no if she definitely would have. He she would have pushed and he would have had to sneak off in the middle of the night regardless. Bush.
02:08:00
Speaker
But he didn't give her enough context. He didn't give her enough information. And I think she wouldn't have understood. She would have still been like, no, we can do this together.
02:08:15
Speaker
The fix it with a hammer is legitimate. Okay. Like, yeah, but at the same time, I just wish he would have given her more context. Like he leaves her a lot more broken than she needed to be. And even after she kind of like, I can't talk about it because it's the second game. Now I see what you meant about it. But like, so
02:08:37
Speaker
But like, I just feel like he just, he didn't tell her enough. And then she's just like, like that broker more than it needed to break her. I think he would have still had to sneak off. You're right. Because you, she probably wouldn't have let him go, especially because they had bids together so long. They hadn't been apart since they knew each other. Right. So he didn't like the two of them. And I think, like, I think even for herself as a person needed to grow without him.
02:09:07
Speaker
But they both needed to separate at that point. I guess I just keep looking back at it and he withheld so much. And I get that's also part of the whole storyline to make it that you play the second game and it gets revealed further on.
02:09:27
Speaker
It was also like kind of also in a sense unfair that way. Whereas like if you needed to really go and you needed to do the thing and you still did the thing, that's fine. But like leave her with a little bit more information. I guess my thinking here is if he would have given her more context. She still would have said. Oh.
02:09:54
Speaker
I'm coming with you. Like she would have still said that. So he still would have had this like the results would have still been the same, but he would have left in a less mean way to her. Like he he she would have at least like she she wouldn't have been able to process it either. She would have needed time to process it. So like he would have had to you know Batman disappear in the night regardless. Like that that that would not have been able to change because he had some heavy shit to go through.
02:10:21
Speaker
she needed to have time to herself to figure things out but I feel like giving her more context so she knew why so she wasn't just like oh he just he just didn't like me anymore he didn't want to be a part of my life anymore he did which is like beyond what it actually was like there she
02:10:41
Speaker
It didn't involve her at all. The reason why he left had no involvement whatsoever, but she didn't know that. So not giving her enough context in the information. Yeah, she still would have been like, no, I'm going to think because she wouldn't have, she wouldn't have really processed it. She would have needed time to also like, Oh,
02:11:00
Speaker
I couldn't go with him like he needed to go and do his stuff and like rebuild his sanity kind of idea and I needed to learn to let people do that kind of thing because she's she was very much like now fucking doing it with but here's the thing I just felt like it was just such a mean way to have done it and then just to leave her like bits and pieces but not the full story and then she just kind of sitting there and like
02:11:28
Speaker
Like, of course, she's going to chase after him regardless. But like, it's it's one thing. It's just like it was just I don't know. It was just a really mean way to do it. That's fair. I do. I think the results still would have been he had to separate. Like, I agree with you there. He had to leave 100. I agree with dark that if he gave her more context and then knocked her out or and or left, it would have been worse because then it would have been like,
02:11:57
Speaker
you confided this in me, but didn't think that you could, I didn't think that I'd be able to help. I think that would be worse. And I mean, I guess I'm projecting myself onto the character a little bit here at this point.
02:12:14
Speaker
thinking about it from the perspective of somebody telling me something and then being like, I'm telling you this, but now leave me alone. Like, I need to just do this. It's like, damn, like, I can I not. I see what I see what you're saying. So I think this is such a really tough one. And it's a good conversation to have.
02:12:34
Speaker
It's a good conversation to have because I'm trying to think of the perspectives of both and what would have been the best avenue. I think the agreement here is there would have been no right way to do this. Yeah, there definitely would not have been a right way to do it. There would have been no way to do this perfectly without one party or both party being hurt.
02:12:55
Speaker
Um, because separation regardless is going to hurt regardless of it was like, even if they were like a collective decision, even if for some reason I still got bonked on the head and was just like, okay, you go do your thing.
02:13:08
Speaker
It still would have been mutually heartbreaking. It still would have been really difficult for that separation, right? So it's like there's no right way or wrong way to have done it. And I like this conversation because we're looking at it like different angles and stuff, but it's opening up that like,
02:13:26
Speaker
I mean, what if we're saying, no, I don't think that would have been like, no, I don't think that would have been like, yeah, yeah. I think he may be doing this. He could be doing like he definitely could have left her more from the like perspective of, hey, I'm leaving because of like, even if it was more vague or something like he still could have he could have given her a little bit more.
02:13:52
Speaker
Yeah. Like, like I, I need to, I, I, I need to kind of figure myself out or I need to like, I'm having some difficulties. I need to go figure my shit out kind of thing. Like even just a little bit more than how vague it was. But at the same time, like there would have been no right or right way to do this. It was gonna, it was gonna suck either way. And it had to be done.
02:14:15
Speaker
because I don't think he would have, I don't think he's going to be able to, I'm going to phrase this in a way like I haven't been playing this like a game, but I don't think he, he's going to be like able to kind of like piece himself by having somebody there. He kind of has to go do his own thing and same with her. And that's, I mean, when you, they had to learn to be, they have to learn to be separate to figure their own shit out. Yeah.
02:14:46
Speaker
I'm trying to catch up on chat as well. Yeah. And see, I agree with peace zone too. I, I, I think the full story, you're right to dump all of that and then run. Wouldn't it have been fair to the person you dumped on? Yeah, that's true. Like you, you never want to like give this heavy information and just be like, okay, I'm gone. And like delete all socials and never hear from them again. Like what?
02:15:07
Speaker
That's really hard for somebody to process. But yeah, like I don't, I don't know what the answer would have been, but it's like, it just felt so cruel to at the same time. Like it just, it was really cruel, but it was also like, I get like, when you have that heavy shit and you're just like, I got to figure my shit out. Sometimes you can't, you can't do that with people around you, even the closest people around you. Yeah. Like the knocking of a Stella was a little like,
02:15:37
Speaker
I know people are like people like I think it was peace to instead of chat that he thinks it was a pill But I keep thinking it was like he kissed her and he had like his pretty sure he did kiss her and it was like I Think he had something in his mouth that he likes That sounds gross and weirder to me. I don't know Whatever you did knock her out
02:16:04
Speaker
I just pictured the fourth Batman movie there with Poison Ivy and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Ice Guy, Mr. Freeze. I just pictured the Poison lip thing. We got ice. There's some ice, y'all. Yeah.
02:16:23
Speaker
but oh my, the funny thing is, is so, okay. So when we were setting up this podcast, nether tangent, of course, cause we have to have more, um, uh, KJ was like, Oh, I'm wearing your merch too. Cause he could see my camera, but I can't see him until we start the host cause he's the one hosting. And I did, I do, I am wearing a Dave shirt. Also this shirt is very comfortable and I love wearing it.
02:16:48
Speaker
Like I like the material and I guessed his shirt was gonna be the wiggler and he just did He's like you're gonna have to find out and it's the fucking cheese grater. Sure. Yeah, it's great. Oh Never guessed it
02:17:03
Speaker
Okay, so we've talked a lot. No, because there was, it was the fourth one because that's the, so there was four Batman movies originally. There was the two with Michael Keaton, the third with, oh, I forget his name. And then the fourth one had George Clooney. And all of a sudden we're talking about Batman movies.
02:17:24
Speaker
OK, sorry, but like that scene reminded me of the whole like poison lift scene from the George Clooney Batman movie, which I think was that one's fourth one of that series of like those that set of Batman movies. That's fine. I've seen like two of them, I think.
02:17:44
Speaker
That's what I pictured. That's how I picture Joshua, like not slipping a pillow. Like, like that's just fucking weird. No, it's poison lips cannon. That's how it happened. OK. Yeah. So you literally end this game with Estelle waking up. Josh was gone. So like anybody would be like, all right, let's play the second game. And like, I don't know. I usually hate cliffhangers.
02:18:13
Speaker
I definitely wanted to know more. I wish they would have given us, teased out a little bit more, but because there was another game and I didn't have to wait to play it, it was great. Like I think playing this when it came out would have been awful because these weren't localized like back to back to back like that. There was, I'm pretty sure there was like a couple year wait.
02:18:35
Speaker
before this was local, before Sky 2 was localized. So that would have been rough. Yeah, that would have been terrible. But I would have hated having to wait for that one. Honestly, it's like it's like leaving off on like an anime cliffhanger being like, all right, the next season will be out in.
02:18:59
Speaker
Now that we got the games, you can just like jump in. Yes, that's nice. How did you feel about the game overall?
02:19:07
Speaker
I really liked it. Again, I realized the reason why I disliked it in the beginning was entirely the way I was playing it, not the game. I wasn't on the game. That was because of life stuff and all that sort of stuff. So I really thought about it and I really sat down, especially after the stream where I beat it, because I beat it on stream and then went right into the second game for a little bit and then I got off stream. I really thought about it, wrote down kind of my thoughts of it.
02:19:34
Speaker
and I think it was really really good and I like that it connects into the second game with that cliffhanger because of how much like the first game is world building and then has a very like oh my fucking god this just happened ending and then the second game is just like now it's just like
02:19:57
Speaker
You know what I mean? So it's like, I like that pacing.
Overall Game Review and Comparison
02:20:01
Speaker
I liked that I got to try the characters that kind of came in and out of your party all throughout first chapter to figure out who I liked mechanically. I kept messing around with like their different magic. I kept messing around with who like that. And then by the end, I had obviously my favorites and I went through with my favorites and stuff. Like overall, I think this is a really, really, really good game.
02:20:25
Speaker
The mechanics are great. The music is great. The art style is great. The characters are all fantastic. Like Olivier's creepiness aside, uh, people like that kind of a character. So like, you know what? He's not my cup of tea, but he's, I guess somebody's cup of tea. He wants to be somebody's cup of tea. Not about it.
02:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not about that tea, um, at all. But like, also a lot of people weren't about agate and I really liked agate. Like I, I liked,
02:21:02
Speaker
I like that kind of character. So like, so it allows you to like kind of have your own favorites because they have so many different personality types and so many different characters. Like, you know, you got the child genius, you've got the princess of disguise, you got the, got the big Goku kind of character. Like there's, you've got the creepy part guy, you've got the sadist whip lady girl.
02:21:30
Speaker
whatever, like who drinks a lot. Um, or yeah, the alcoholism was definitely something I'm like, uh, but yeah, again, like there, there, there were things in it where it's just like, okay, but it's like, it was more like, that's not my cup of tea. It wasn't like a knock at the game in my opinion. Um, and like, Oh, one thing is I thought, so
02:21:54
Speaker
I thought going into this game, we'd have like an overworld because I just assume in JRPGs, especially older ones, you have that overworld, but you don't have that with sky. You just kind of go like from place to place to place. And it all kind of connected, right? I actually really liked that. I really liked that mechanic. I, it very much proved that you don't need an overworld and every day JRPG for it to be like, you know, like.
02:22:21
Speaker
um to still have that exploration and stuff like that and so and with the side quest you really did get to have more of that exploration because it did send you back to certain areas for certain bosses and all that sort of stuff so Uh got you to those areas more and everything and everything felt relevant like there wasn't anything that really felt like oh this town wasn't relevant or Going to this place wasn't really everything was like relevant. It was all connected and stuff. So yeah
02:22:47
Speaker
I think it was a really good game. I definitely would give this a solid eight or nine out of 10. The tiny little gripes that I might have with it. Honestly, there's very little that I have that would be fair to judge for a PSP game. So it's like, I don't know. Or a PSP game. Shots fired. Well, back then, PSP was very limited, OK?
02:23:17
Speaker
fired Wow But the funny thing is as I say for PSP game, but honestly the PSP was able to hold quite a bit considering it had like crisis core Entirely on it and like birth by sleep and those are Those are big games like yeah, decidia. There's um, there was a lot of great games the virus we got ported on to there and
02:23:41
Speaker
Oh, a lot of games got poured out today. I was going to say the remakes of the remakes and Final Fantasy Tactics, Star Ocean. Yeah, there's tons of stuff on it. It did. It did really push the PSP and I like I like games in their time that really pushed the system like. Oh, what's a good example of something I played and on the PS one.
02:24:06
Speaker
Or PS2 rather. Final Fantasy X on the PS2. Even Final Fantasy IX on the PlayStation 1. I don't know if you could have squeezed anything else out of the PS1 at that point with that game. I really like games that really push the limit of the console that they're on. This is another one. This is another one where it had a lot in it.
02:24:34
Speaker
for what it was like, especially even with the graphical style. They went with like the two point five D sort of look to everything. It had a lot. It did have a lot. So like I yeah, I I solidly like this game. How about you? Solid eight point five. I think I was between eight and nine. So I think that's a solid eight point. Yeah. Go right in the middle. There's there's little things I don't like. Also, Keystone does raise a great point that I'm going to bring up next.
02:25:01
Speaker
on the next stream. Very excited about that. That's that's one of my first. Yeah, we're definitely going to comment on what piece don't say a good chat there in the second episode. Yeah, like I had a love hate relationship with the timed side quests as well as like the fetch quests that sometimes you had to do. I thought little things like the chest messages were hilarious, like the treasure. Oh, we didn't even talk about that. Yeah, that was like one of my favorite parts of this freaking game.
02:25:29
Speaker
Yeah, that was that was really cool. Like if you talk to a treasure chest after you loot it, it has like random messages that they send you that they give you and stuff like that. So funny. Really, really, really good.
02:25:43
Speaker
I think the cliffhanger was very well done, but I don't like when things end on cliffhangers, which is funny because like one of my favorite games of all time is Golden Sun. I was gonna say Golden Sun does because I literally referenced that one. But I think the reason, so here's the reasoning, and this isn't fair, but I think because I like, because I thought Sky 2 was a better game,
02:26:12
Speaker
than Sky One, it kind of took away from it a little bit because it's like, OK, this there could have been more here, whereas like I don't have the opposite opinion with Golden Sun. I think Golden Sun One is the better game. So you do you do find that is that is why I'm like like. Obviously, when you look at a game that came out afterwards, like it's going to. Be better in the sense of like
02:26:43
Speaker
You're going to have more things, but I enjoyed playing Sky second chapter more than first chapter. So like it took away from it a little bit because I was like, this feels like it should just be one thing. So like leaving it off on a cliffhanger felt a little bad, but also like the cliffhanger was so good that I can't really like I'm nitpicking. I'm very. Yeah. Um.
02:27:08
Speaker
But yeah, and I think I think Golden Sun one can stand on it. Like, even though it still leaves off at a cliffhanger, it still was like there was still a lot that was built in the game. Whereas first chapter with Trails in the Sky. Well, it had a lot of world building.
02:27:27
Speaker
A lot of the, a lot of the like really like stuff is it starts to happen in the second game. So I could definitely, I could definitely see why. Cause like the golden sun one could kind of stand on its own, even if it does fall on a cliff ever, because there's a lot in golden sun one that was already like, like fleshed out a lot of character development, a lot of like,
02:27:51
Speaker
like storyline, a lot of plot things, like you knew who the bad guys were going to be by the end of it, yada, yada, yada, right? While you still kind of have that with like Trails of the Sky first chapter, you get more development and stuff in the second game in terms of the storyline and less of the world building.
02:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's kind of like where you are where you already kind of had that in the first game But then with Golden Sun 2 you're now with a different party So like if you weren't like super jiving with that party The first one definitely is gonna feel better because the first party was like the first party was really OP I think the other thing is I think you make a very good point of like with Golden Sun and
02:28:37
Speaker
It was the case where with the pacing of Golden Sun One, it did feel more like a standalone game because it was like there was less world building and more of like, yes, we're going through and there's an objective. This is what we're doing. Whereas like with Sky One. You kind of had a feeling of.
02:29:01
Speaker
what you were supposed to be doing, but there was a lot more. You could tell that that game was setting the scene for something much bigger. Yeah, exactly. And that's why it felt less standalone than Golden Side. Yeah, I can. Yeah, we're like, I would say if you play this game, you have to play the second game where Golden someone you I mean, you should play this. You should play the second game. But you could even just leave it on the first one.
02:29:33
Speaker
Cause you still had quite a bit of development and stuff like that in it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the difference. And I think that's why golden sun can hang at least on its own. Um, whereas trails in the sky first chapter, you really have to play the second one. Like you can, like there's just no, you don't get enough in the first game to light, like you need more, you need, you need more. And that's why they have a second one. It's the more that I I'll say this for tomorrow.
02:30:02
Speaker
next. But yeah, so so you'd give it 8.5. I was between eight and nine. So yeah, I think right in the middle eight. I think we're both right, right aligned with that. That's pretty I think that's pretty accurate. Yeah. Awesome. Well, this was fun.
02:30:20
Speaker
This is why I wanted us to separate the two of them because when I started like one, just to give me a little bit more time, that was part of it, but it was also two, it was like, I feel like there's just so much between the two games that we could talk about because the third, the second, like our second podcast episode of this, I know we're going to talk a lot about the plot.
02:30:40
Speaker
Oh, I think I think we're only going to talk about the plot because exactly doesn't change the mechanics. I was going to change a ton from from Sky One to Sky Two. If we were doing Sky Three, I would think we have quite a bit more to talk about. But yeah, there's a character we could talk about in the second one. And like, yeah, so like, well, we'll have other things we will be thinking. But this one was great to be important because we could like talk about the go into more detail about the
02:31:05
Speaker
mechanics. I could explain rock math now that I figured it out. We were going to have this where I would explain what I thought it was and KJ would have to just sit there, sip it on the water bottle and not say anything. And then the rest of chat can't say anything. And then we would go into second chapter and then he would actually explain it if I did figure it out by then. But no, I figured it out. So that's why we had me explain it. I'm glad you figured it out. Oh, and my water bottle is a duck.
02:31:36
Speaker
It's a duck. I could not tell what it was. It's a little duck. Yeah, I know. I definitely think that it'll be really interesting. I do agree. We'll be talking a lot about plot in. Yeah. And then I and it's going to be equally probably a few hours because I think we can wrap this up then. Let's.
02:31:58
Speaker
So yeah, the next game we're gonna be reviewing is Trails in the Sky second chapter. And that will actually be on Tuesday at, I think I'm gonna say 8 p.m. Eastern just because it gives you a little bit more time after your workday too.
02:32:15
Speaker
to straighten out and everything. So we'll say Tuesday at 8pm Eastern time here on YouTube. We're going to keep going for the next little bit of just streaming the podcast episodes on YouTube. KJ is going to teach me how to host it. Probably not for the next one, but for the one after that. But yeah, our next episode will be