I'm pretty excited today because my order of Etrian Odyssey Nexus is waiting for me once I get off work today. Expect some initial impressions of that pretty soon. I'm a huge fan of this series and I can't wait to get engrossed in more mapmaking, party-building goodness.
In the meantime, though, let's talk about the games I missed talking about that I finished back in June of 2017. Now, this was a bit more of a crowded month. I played a lot of very long games during the first part of 2017 so I feel like I was craving more variety. I sought out games from different genres that were a bit shorter so I could actually get through more than a couple in the span of a month. I started with one last holdout from the group of longer RPGs called The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd, which is a mouthful of a title that had only recently been localized for PC by XSeed.
I really enjoyed the first two entries in the Trails in the Sky series and for that reason I happily played the two Trails of Cold Steel titles that are from the same overarching series. Trails is a very long and convoluted series of games that is rare in that all of its different entries are directly related and take place within the same world. Each of the sub-series follow a certain group of characters but you'll find that many characters will recur even if a certain group of games follows a separate group entirely. Trails in the Sky takes place in Liberl for instance and follows Estelle Bright and her foster-brother Joshua in their adventurers completing tasks for the Bracer Guild. Trails of Cold Steel follows Rean Schwarzer and a whole group of other folks as they complete their education at a military academy. These games take place in Erebonia, an entire separate country within the same world. There's even another subseries called Ao/Zero no Kiseki that was never officially localized and it follows a guy by the name of Lloyd Bannings who has recently enrolled in the police force for a country called Crossbell.
Now, I played Trails in the Sky the 3rd much later after having already completed both Trails of Cold Steel games, because at the point I played Cold Steel, 3rd was not yet available in English. After finally playing it for the first time, I kind of started to understand why a localization may not have been a huge priority for the series' developer, Falcom. Trails in the Sky is, judging by the first two entries, a series that is intensely focused on character development and story. It is about flavor and world-building and especially in the case of the first title, a little directionless. Things start to pick up considerably in the second of these games, but there is still very much a focus on following the arcs of these characters. Trails in the Sky the 3rd on the other hand could honestly be described as a dungeon-crawler with much more of an emphasis on combat. Character development and story still exist, but the way in which they're delivered is much more compartmentalized than before. There are a series of optional side-stories that flesh out some of the characters' stories but for the most part these chapters seem very. . .tangential, and not overly relevant or necessary to complete these characters' arcs.
At the same time, though, I'm sure these plot threads must be referenced in future Trails games and I'm glad I played it at the end of the day. In practice though, the game feels very grindy and repetitive--and the story that's there is distributed in such a way that it's almost a chore to experience. The balance between gameplay and story is much more elegant and interesting in the first two games of that series. Trails in the Sky the 3rd essentially focuses in on an element of the first two games that wasn't their strongest point and then makes a game all about that. It definitely wasn't my favorite direction they could have gone, but it was fun sailing past level 100 with all these characters I had come to know and love over the course of the 140+ hours I'd spent completing the first two games.
Okay, well, it looks like I did the same thing again and ended up talking about one game much more than I'd intended. That's okay, though. I'll pick back up on June 2017 next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment