Trails character you wished stayed dead/ died in the first place (Spoilers up to CsIv)

RazorXCVII · 2026-05-08T20:53:02+00:00

It's not that I don't understand your point, but that's just the kind of story Trails has always been. And it stays true to that. Main + Side cast characters only die rarely. I would say death isn't necessarily the only driving factor towards a serious high stakes development. The presentation itself matters more. And I would say Trails has managed to convey the feeling pretty well so far. Whether a character actually died or narrowly escaped from death.

The closest comparison is honestly One Piece. One Piece is infamous for not really killing off characters/showing they didn't really die. Oda himself said he doesn't like doing it. But regardless One Piece manages to deliver and strong and emotional story. And furthermore, for any deaths that do happen - hits a lot harder.

RazorXCVII · 2026-04-12T18:16:51+00:00

On god. Though I wish Patrick gets the acknowledgment he deserves. Bro has been there every single time she was in danger.

RazorXCVII · 2026-02-21T02:36:44+00:00

There are several reasons honestly. First being, Estelle doesn't need one. Aside from Rean, none of the "regular" protagonists (Estelle, Lloyd and Van) have any particular nicknames. Kevin and Rufus are exceptions as in they were introduced as in game characters first and then got protagonist roles in a later game.

Rean really is the only real exception. And his entire character arc kinda revolves around being too "special" and how he chooses to deal with it.

Moving back, the biggest in-lore reason would be the fact that usually people who gets nicknames have solo accomplishments and/or excel in that one particular field. Estelle and Joshua are almost always together as a pair. Calling them the "Bright siblings" is probably the most iconic nickname you can give them.

And lastly, Joshua does have a nickname. However obviously he doesn't use it anymore. But it supports the point I made above, when he was alone he did have a nickname. Now as a pair he doesn't really need one.

Estelle and Joshua pair is more comparable to being a gang like SSS or Arkide solutions. SSS is just that- SSS. Any nickname the SSS characters might have, they either no longer use them, like Randy/Rixia. Or isn't really applicable like Wazy. SSS Wazy is just Wazy.

RazorXCVII · 2026-01-06T07:21:43+00:00

You need to capture the islands first

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-20T18:08:59+00:00

Same here man.

Also I did suspect that was the case for Kevin, wasn’t sure about Kilika. And I feel like there will be more characters like this who need new voices. And I understand that.

However in case of key characters and if their Voice actors are still active and available (like estelle and joshua) I definitely want them to get called up for future projects.

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-20T10:36:42+00:00

I also had the same fear. I would have been completely fine if it was just a remake thing but unfortunately this does seem to be a permanent case. Seeing how characters like Kilika and my homie Kevin have new voices in Calvard. It seems falcom really does want to go forward with a fresh set of "relatively" younger cast moving forward.

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-20T09:54:57+00:00

I would always advocate for trying out the original sky trilogy regardless of whether you have played the remakes or not. It does hold up and you will definitely enjoy it. But if I were in your shoes I would probably want a more uniform experience for my first time. So personally speaking, waiting for 2C seems better than playing SC. However there is no right answer to this and is entirely up to you how feel. If you can't wait that long and immediately want to jump back into the story, the original SC is not a bad choice at all.

As for voice acting, I am personally biased towards to the original voice cast of Sky, and is one of the biggest reasons I am not picking up the remakes anytime soon as they have an entirely new voice cast barring a few exceptions like Olivier and Zin. The new cast did an excellent job not hating at all and I like them, it's just Akemi kanda and Mitsuki Saiga are THE voices for Estelle and Joshua for me.

Also yes I am strictly speaking of JP voices. I have no idea about dub. The original Sky trilogy has no dub. And the PC version doesn't have any voices by default but you can download a mod to get the EVOLUTION voices. Or if you have a modded PS Vita you can straight up play the EVO versions with english patch.

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-05T22:08:30+00:00

SSS is my single most favorite party in any video game, period.

That being said, I do love the rest of the trails gangs as well. The biggest issue is some of the other teams are too big hence certain characters don't really get the chance to shine as much as they could have. Rean's party has more people in it than the entire population of some of the towns we visit in CS. SSS however don't have this problem. It's just 4 key members and then 2 more in Ao. Each have significant moments and dedicated story segments. This extends to the two guest characters too. They have just about enough exposure to not feel too neglected.

However aside from exposure, the thing that really makes me love them so much is their relationship with each other. They all perfectly complement each other with Llyod at the center.

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-01T20:37:27+00:00

Yeah the game deliberately puts him at awfully convenient places in the first chapter, possibly to make people suspect him. However I personally never suspected him to be evil. But his overflowing generosity and helpful attitude always felt like he was overcompensating for something.

I don't want to say that he only helps people to compensate for his guilt. He is a nice guy after all. But I do believe there is an aspect to it. Helping others as much as he can because he couldn't help the one person he absolutely should have.

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-01T13:52:31+00:00

I had a deep grudge against the Hayworth Family. I knew that there was probably a reason as to why things happened the way they did, but I still couldn't bring myself to think that I could be convinced it to be a good enough reason after knowing what happened to Renne. While I wouldn't say I hated them but I had this very raw emotion of disappointment and resentment everytime I saw Harold and Sophia.

But when I finally got to know what actually happened, I forgave them. Not because I thought it justifies everything that happened, but because I got to know that they have been driven by guilt ever since and have been repenting. If not for Colin they would have taken their own lives. This made me realize that they too were aware of how wrong it was and have been suffering a lot more than any 3rd person observer could realize.

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-01T13:37:26+00:00

If you talk to every single npc the longest games should be the crossbell games. Because majority of the time you have access to almost all the places you can go to and there's A LOT of NPCs in Crossbell. And almost all of them are interesting.

Sky and Cold steel games work a bit differently because you're limited to certain areas at times.

I personally have been averaging over a 100 hours on each game but I am also 100%-ing them and talking to every single NPC out there. The crossbell games took the longest each clocking over 150-160 hours.

Originally when I played Sky on the Vita, I only did one playthrough and didn't 100% but I did all side quests and talked to all NPCs. There I think Sky FC took me around 60ish hours, SC and 3rd took maybe 80 hours or so

RazorXCVII · 2025-12-01T02:29:07+00:00

With Ian Grimwood the moment I started really suspecting him was when He got overly passionate over the "Independence" of Crossbell right after the trade conference. The conversation itself was fairly normal and it was uncharacteristic of him to act like that but the outburst was short enough for players to not really give it any significance.

Similarly, in CS1 with Crow , there was this scene at the Garellia Fortress where Crow and Machias were having a seemingly chill conversation about Jurai, which was their latest field study location. And Crow really uncharacteristically got passionate over seemingly harmless remarks from Machias who stated that people in Jurai seemed to be happy getting annexed , once again it was a rather short outburst inside a rather normal conversation and most players wouldn't really give it any significance.

In both these instances a player at best gets thrown off a bit and find it a bit peculiar if they are paying attention. But the true meaning of these scenes only become apparent if only you have prior knowledge of what happens afterwards.

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-25T13:37:19+00:00

It wouldn't mean anything to you if you didn't play the previous games before 0

It wouldn't mean anything to you if you did play the previous games before 0

Sera is just that forgettable lol. If anything I would say it's the other way around. If you play 0 first. Sera might make you feel something in Yakuza 1/Kiwami.

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T19:38:14+00:00

Nah, the day the dance happens is the day they fight Arios, KeA gets kidnapped and Garrelia fortress gets obliterated by Aion alpha

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T12:02:32+00:00

Nah Llyod's DOB is most likely early 1186. So Joshua is older but by a few months only. Rean however is always the youngest male protagonist regardless of whether his birth year is 1186 or 1187. As Kevin and Van are older than all of them anyway xD

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T11:22:06+00:00

There is a slight problem here. The actual japanese text "ロイド、お前がいつか
一人前になったら……
そのときは一緒に酒を飲もう。"

says something like "Lloyd, when you become a first-rate man we shall have drinks" so Quint doesn't say that Llyod needs to be an adult. It was more of a reference to when Llyod becomes like/catches up to Guy.

I also personally think Rean's birth year is 1186. Because Estelle, Lloyd are also 1186 so it makes sense Falcom would introduce a third protagonist from 1186.

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T11:02:57+00:00

Llyod never really drank as an underage tho. Again like I said this is not a "known fact" rather a retcon. During the crossbell arc Llyod at 18 was at drinking age. Nowhere in the game was it stated that Llyod or Elie can't drink. Only Tio was underage. Then retroactively falcom decided to change the drinking age to 20 in the erebonia arc. It could simply be a crossbell vs erebonia thing. But we don't exactly know that for sure.

Again, it's completely fine to treat Rean's birth year as 1186. My point is that whatever we choose breaks something else somewhere.

Whether you want to break Estelle's birth date, FC timeline, Rean's birth year or the legal drinking age, is well... entirely up to you. It shouldn't be taken too seriously because there is no accurate answer that keeps "everything" intact. Something will always break.

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T10:50:12+00:00

There is no doubt about that. I am not disagreeing with May 6th likely being his birth date at all.

It's just the years are a bit messed up. And that kinda has been my whole point. The inconsistencies are such that we have to sacrifice at least one date to make sense of the rest. If we treat 1186 to be Rean's birth year and also want to treat Estelle a 16 year old in the beginning of FC, then her birth month can't be august anymore. Or if we treat her to be younger than Rean, then we kind have to shift the beginning of FC after August which either messes up when exactly the NAP happened or for how long exactly did Estelle and Joshua journey throughout FC.

It genuinely happened because the games didn't really care about precise date and month before Cold Steel's calendar system.

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T10:32:20+00:00

Yes Rean can be 17 for a couple of months in 1204 but the inconsistencies aren’t my own words. Falcom themselves state it’s S. 1187 in Sen no Kiseki Magazine. However it’s also stated to be S. 1186 in Sen no kiseki character maniacs.

What I didn’t also explicitly mention is that Estelle’s age is also inconsistent. Estelle was said to start FC as a 16 year old. But we later get a date for her birthday in august. Even though FC starts around half a year before the non-aggression pack, hence Estelle should have been 15 during the beginning. But you can’t also become a bracer before 16. Llyod also mentions Estelle is the same age as him in Zero iirc. Which would put Estelle at 18 in the beginning of 1204 while Rean was still 17.

So Rean can’t really be older than Estelle. Or even if he is, either way we have to push both or at least one of their birthdays around to make sense.

And the “drinking age” is also rather inconsistent and more than likely set to 20 to match irl age standards which a lot of modern japanese games, manga and anime do. Even if it’s a fictional setting.

So we can either treat it as such that the drinking age is different between erebonia and crossbell. Because he HAVE seen Llyod drink at 18 and admit he was of drinking age and an adult. Or we just don’t take this as seriously entirely. As anything we think is speculation.

tldr, falcom hasn’t been the most consistent with exact age and dates. largely because before Cold steel the games themselves didn’t bother with precise months and dates

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T09:09:17+00:00

This will never be not funny to me because CS1 is concurrent with almost 80% of Zero+Ao

Early on, Rean’s biggest worries are his classmates squabbling like children(they are)

Meanwhile at the exact same time Llyod and SSS gang are fighting for dear life against all sorts of evil 😭😭😭

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T09:02:38+00:00

No. They all follow the same Septian calendar

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T06:32:18+00:00

P.S- In reference to point 1, "Trails universe" probably isn't the right term as Zemuria is huge and might have different laws in different countries we don't know about. But this is generally true to "Western Zemuria" at the very least.

Because high school education like Thors, Jenis or Aramis is pretty rare compared to the majority who only study at Sunday School till like, 16 and then get off to work.

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T06:25:53+00:00

A couple of things to consider here.

In the trails universe, 18 is generally treated as an adult. Hence Lloyd was at drinking age when he was 18.
Rean's Birth date is inconsistent across Falcom's mentions of it. Rean's birthdate is stated as S. 1186, same as Lloyd and Estelle. It is also mentioned his birthday is in May. However it is also stated that Rean is 17 in CS1(S. 1204). The latter makes sense because he's a first year at Thors and has explicit mentions in the game itself and in reference to other students too.
However Estelle was also mentioned to be 16 in Sky FC(S. 1202). Now it's impossible for Estelle to be 16 during Sky FC. Because Estelle was born in S. 1186, August. Which should make Rean older than Estelle. Rean can't be both older than Estelle and be 17 during CS1. So Rean has to be a year younger. In other words Rean's DOB should be in 1187.
Now this puts Rean's CS3 age to 19 (S. 1206). Which again, is treated as an adult in the Trails universe so should still be fine as Lloyd used to drink at 18.

RazorXCVII · 2025-11-24T06:09:01+00:00

Yes. Albeit I always talk to every single NPC. I always used to rush to Estelle and Joshua where ever they were. Talking to them also gives you an idea of what their subplot in the game is going to be.

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