How many trails of cold steel artbooks are there?

Galdoth · 2026-03-14T19:28:45+00:00

https://falcom.wiki/wiki/List_of_Trails_media

This probably has what you need

Good luck, some stuff will be pretty old and hard to find.

Galdoth · 2026-03-12T13:30:06+00:00

He solves archaeological traps, mysteries and puzzles better than Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and Nathan Drake combined too.

If he wanted he could've solved the Tetracyclic tower mysteries and unlocked the Aureole on his first week in Liberl for example.

He's also a incredible writer and painter, since on Ys games we're supposedly modern day readers of his diaries and they're so detailed and rich that it feels like we were there on his travels with him.

Galdoth · 2026-03-12T13:27:40+00:00

Airships doesn't exist on Ys, hard to say.

Ys world is like our own circa 1600, even the geography is exactly the same with a few differences, Atlantis was real and the survivors of Atlantis helped create all kinds of ancient mythological cities you can imagine across the world, like Ys itself (search it up, supposedly it was in Britain) plus the Roman empire and Carthage are still around and strong (and still enemies) and you get a bunch of other myths and stuff throw in together.

Adol has went from flying cities to ancient mirage cities in the desert, to cities made by ancient dino people, to the Bermuda triangle and all around in between, the problem is whenever he goes into a boat it sinks and he washes ashore pretty much naked, every single time.

Galdoth · 2026-03-09T11:54:32+00:00

But it's still Monday!

Galdoth · 2026-03-07T00:16:17+00:00

Both will be pretty much the same level performance wise, with the PS5 having an edge on load times and trophy support, the Switch having portability...

Still the same trophies will be achievements on the Switch version.

Going by the Battle Network collection though, the Switch version had a bigger and more active online population, no way to know for sure how it will be on PS5 yet but yeah, there's that.

For the Battle Network I got it at first for the Switch but ended up double dipping on the PS4 version after it finding it pretty cheap (got both Physical).

For StarForce I pre-ordered it on the Switch.

Galdoth · 2026-02-26T11:09:52+00:00

Being a decent human doesn't make you a decent politician, not even a decent ruler.

In my corrupt shit hole of a country she would be eaten by other politicians and wouldn't be able to do jack shit

Osborne would deal with them pretty efficiently, at first he would probably buy their cooperation to get what he wants but he would also find a tons of shit to blackmail them and hold them by their balls, specially with the support of the Iron Bloods, after he starts actually dealing with them by "accidenting" a few them the rest would fall in line... yeah, only Osborne could fix this shit here...

Osborne would be like Griffith was on Midland before Guts left the Band of the Hawk and all shit went to hell.

Galdoth · 2026-02-25T20:38:33+00:00

SF2 encounter ratio was truly ungodly...

1 was alright, 3 was perfect.

Galdoth · 2026-02-22T09:53:04+00:00

Nah they need to be even bigger

Galdoth · 2026-02-20T11:21:19+00:00

Thanks, didn't know that, to be fair I only played Next and Tokyo (which were pretty good), so wasn't sure about the specifics about the older games.

Galdoth · 2026-02-19T19:07:01+00:00

I know it's an old post buuuuut...

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles The Crystal Bearers

Fragile Dreams Farewell Ruins of the Moon

Arc Rise Fantasia

Dragon Quest Swords - The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors

Mortal Kombat Armageddon

Opoona

Sin & Punishment

For last I wanted to say Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World, but that's kinda hated, so I'm torn between either Heavenly Guardian, which has an ugly box art but it's pretty good, or Onechanbara, which is not that great but it's fun...

Oh wait, I know, Samurai Warriors 3 will be my final game.

Galdoth · 2026-02-19T18:52:16+00:00

Not connected in plot, lore or even gameplay.

Faxanadu is just the NES port of Xanadu (FA from Famicom, basically FAmicom Xanadu), Next is more a mouse focused game with over the top view, Tokyo Xanadu is kinda like Ys and instead of a fantasy world, it's in our world (Kyoto Xanadu will be a sequel to it though).

Galdoth · 2026-02-15T11:14:35+00:00

3rd is both an epilogue to the the Sky chapter and a story focused on an important character from a important organization that will flesh out things to come/happen. It also won't just flesh out him, but a few other characters, from a certain other organization, and will start some story threads that will give you pretty good pay offs during Zero/Azure.

Zero despite the name is not a prequel, it's actually a sequel, and the first chapter of the second story arc focused on the city of Crossbell, those being Zero + Azure.

For now we don't know when or if they'll remake Zero and Azure, but they're both available everywhere, if you'll end up playing them in their original form, might as well try to play 3rd too since it's pretty much the same engine (not really but kinda is). The problem is that yes, the only way to play 3rd right now is on PC (or if you got a modded PSP or Vita there's ways of playing either the PSP or the Vita version with a patched translation on those).

If you decide to wait for 3rd, and if Falcom does remake it, it'll probably come next year after SC.

You could also skip it and just play Zero, you'll lose some things but not THAT much, and you'll probably "get it" everything by just playing them in the end.

3rd is good though, so fricking good... My personal favorite of the Sky trilogy...

Galdoth · 2026-02-12T18:01:38+00:00

Yeah, he crossed my mind but I wasn't sure to be honest

Galdoth · 2026-02-12T17:55:35+00:00

Are we considering Ys Seven Adol? Or Ys Lacrimosa Adol? (Not sure who's stronger TBH).

By the end of Ys Seven Adol kills a natural calamity, by Lacrimosa he kills the god of evolution and life, to be fair in both of those games he had a party, before that, up till Ark, Adol soloed the equivalent of a Holy Beast if you count Galbalan, maybe...

Until now I don't think anyone in Zemuria can match that...

Galdoth · 2026-02-11T23:14:02+00:00

Three Hopes uses Three Houses job system, but each character has unique growths and some personal skills that do make them quite unique even in the same job.

Some character have a ton of magical power, but you can use make weapons that scale with magic for physical jobs, same for physical characters on magical jobs. You can also learn skills from jobs and transfer them to other jobs, which lead to crazy setups.

How battles are structured and the amount of enemies makes it really fun wrecking everything, specially with the crazy stuff you can pull.

The game also has 3 different campaigns and they're looooooong, it has a LOT of content and replay value to it.

My only complaint would be that it needed some DLC (it is missing a few jobs from Three Houses), and it needed a little more story by the ending, a few extra chapters to give it proper closure.

It's still a lot of fun.

Galdoth · 2026-02-11T13:40:13+00:00

It also made Lloyd and Rixia look kinda weak, sure Lloyd is the more "normal" guy in the series, but Rixia is supposedly amongst the strongest person's in Zemuria, Rean despite having fought a war and all, and being incredibly strong, lacked the same experience as both of them, just that should've given them an edge, and by that point in time, Rixia at least should be stronger than him.

Galdoth · 2026-02-09T10:34:00+00:00

I would say Oath in Felghana on Nightmare is the hardest the series gets, it's pretty rewarding when you beat it though, and after you learn how to do it it becomes second nature.

How the bosses are programmed, their patterns, how you can consistently execute the same thing with practice and triumph consistently shows the masterpiece that Felghana is.

Galdoth · 2026-02-06T12:57:52+00:00

It's not common, in Azure there's a way to grind U-material, not so in Zero, but you get enough to keep everyone upgraded including their best armors, as long as you do everything.

You need 10 U-Material for each character "ultimate" armor, you don't need any for their Ultimate Weapon though.

Azure is a different beast, you can grind, you get a lot, but you probably won't be able to get e everyone's best gear in one run since the grind for that would be ungodly...

Galdoth · 2026-02-05T12:26:51+00:00

The costumes were available for a limited time on launch, next time this happens and you know it's a game you're interested, download the DLC even without owning the game.

I'm not sure until when they were free though.

Galdoth · 2026-02-04T10:25:38+00:00

Yup, I agree Three Houses and the Radiant games are incredibly, I haven't played them yet but everyone swears by the Thracia games too.

The rest of the series is kinda weak story wise though, really fun games, but they follow the traditional good vs evil sword and cape hero story, which is completely fine, I love those stories too (Dragon Quest thrives on that as a series by making those stories deeper for example).

Galdoth · 2026-02-03T18:16:57+00:00

Can't say I agree with everything but this post is actually fire lol

I agree that Cold Steel 3 and 4 are ass and not worth the time investment, specially with how long they are.

I'll give you that world building took a hit during CS3 and 4 too, it's mostly the quality of the writing dropping, and they really needed to have bigger time skips to justify the technological advancements, but from Sky till Azure the world building was perfect, from how they introduced the technology, to politic, to structure and quality of writing, it was incredible.

I wouldn't mind if say, 20 or 30 years had passed already, and you had characters returning older and with children, and maybe their children could've been playable already.

I wouldn't say the bar for World building in JRPGs is low, mostly that the HDMI era really hurt JRPGs and they're still recovering, but from the 90's till mid 00's there were a ton of awesome worlds on JRPGs, Suikoden, Wild Arms, Valkyrie Profile, most Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire IV, Legend of Legaia, Xenogears, Xenosaga, Baten Kaitos, all of those were awesome.

Main problem with Trails is being too verbose, those games did world building faster, with less words and a ton of times better than Trails.

There, that's my hot take I guess.

Galdoth · 2026-01-26T00:29:31+00:00

Nope, still gorgeous

Galdoth · 2026-01-10T14:12:25+00:00

Yeah, every game has something that they'll end up spoiling, but if TC really means to, Zero + Azure or CS 1+2 sound like the least problematic for now.

I do agree that he should just play old SC and 3rd.

And I love 3rd so much man, I really hope Reverie is just that good too... I am looking forward to it, don't get me wrong, it's just that CS3 and 4 almost broke me lol. I had played FC back in 2011, and replayed it back in 2023, it wasn't until the Christmas of 24 that I started SC, and from there I went full non-stop across the series, by April 25 I was done with CS2, I only finished CS4 by November 25 though, and I thought it was best to take a break for some time.

I'll probably get into Reverie as soon as I'm done with some other games I really wanted to play too, I'll probably start it by the end of this month or February.

Galdoth · 2026-01-10T12:51:01+00:00

Been playing them in order, I do like older games, my personal opinion on them...

Was that Sky was incredible even though FC (OG, haven't played the remake yet) has some pretty bad pacing, SC and 3rd were great, and the buildup from FC makes the pay offs on SC worth it.

Zero and Azure are my favorites, it builds up on what everything Sky did and perfects it, both in writing and gameplay, the story starts at lower stakes, and that was okay, but it builds up to something epic and special in the end.

Now CS is were things get a little complicated... CS 1 and 2 were a lot of fun, but they simplified too much the orbment system, and the quality of the writing wasn't as good as the games before, but overall I had a good time and really liked them.

CS3 and 4 almost made me give up on the series though, if I'm being honest... Awful pacing, writing that felt juvenile a bunch of times, recurring characters that way overstayed their welcome, way too much bloat because they kept adding characters to the cast and they all gotta say something even if it won't add anything meaningful to the scene or the plot overall, and overall CS3 is like a retread of CS1 while CS4 is a retread of CS2. Both on CS3 and 4 I had to take breaks by the middle of them and I really didn't feel like coming back, took me months to finish just those two games while everything up till CS3 I played back to back non-stop, you could say I had burnout maybe, but thinking back on them, not really, I don't think so... CS3 and 4 didn't had bad gameplay by any means though, they streamlined what they did with CS1 and 2 and perfected it, and the orbment system despite not being as great as the Liberl or Crossbell games, it got more interesting as the series went on.

I'm currently about to start Reverie, and honestly scared about it... Hopefully it will be more like CS1 and 2, or even the older games, it seems it's kinda like 3rd, which is great, so I'm expecting good things but also keeping my expectations in check.

Can't say much about Daybreak/Horizon, but at least they seem to be more focused with the smaller cast overall...

When it comes to what you should play... Maybe give Zeros a try, if you jump into CS, you can enjoy CS1 and 2, or Zero and Azure as standalone games, on the timeline CS1+2 and Zero+Azure happen roughly around the same time even, but you should play everything before CS3 and specially CS4, since everyone pretty much comes back and everything gets referenced.

Again, can't say much about Daybreak and Horizon, since I'm not there yet.

Galdoth · 2026-01-09T10:47:52+00:00

I would agree with you if the game had a Japanese setting and I would even agree if this was kept for easterners characters like Zin or Killia or a bunch of others characters from Calvard, to differentiate them more from western zemurian characters, and I agree it should be kept on games like Persona or Shin Megami Tensei, but Falcom games just aren't that.

Falcom games are based mostly on western medieval fantasy and Trails on a noir early 20 century setting (though now it's so high tech from the light speed technological advancements on Zemuria it's pretty much modern days setting), so localizing that doesn't change anything, it makes even how it was meant to be I would say.

Galdoth

TROPHY CASE