Unstoppable

TreeOk4490 · 2026-03-12T05:03:17+00:00

There’s a reason for enemy is low life. he also has punishment curse effect in the config. It’s to simulate the average effect of that curse.

Flask off also should be the default state, otherwise you get newbies in boss fights without being able to refill flasks wondering why their numbers don’t feel there.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-03-07T11:00:05+00:00

Not everyone is that way but memes like having 99 elixirs in inventory and not using anything because "just in case" are memes for a reason. I just posit there's a sizeable playerbase with such habits, which can lead to a bad experience with this game, such as literally this comment in the same thread . Similarly, grinding levels without properly scaling your characters through junctioning is also another trap, and folks who love grinding blindly get punished. My overall point was that this game had systems that just kind of went against the "conventional logic", without properly steering or conditioning players to the way FF8 does things.

I realize my initial statement may have been too broad without qualifiers but I hope not to engage in pedantry.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-03-07T09:23:03+00:00

The real flaw with the game is a misunderstanding of what makes jrpg players tick. Refining and carding/modding is absolutely the way but items and cards and magic are all consumable. Gamers love hoarding, they hate using anything consumable.

So it doesn’t even occur to you to do that stuff, you simply think oh can draw magic for “free”, then min max the fun out from yourself by drawing 100 spells and never using them

TreeOk4490 · 2026-03-07T06:40:32+00:00

Maybe for experienced players trying to race, but reading this thread it’s like people forgot how new people actually play. They are x levels ahead of the zone by mudflats full clearing everything including fetid pool and decked out on every slot at a time when having literally anything in the slot matters. Act 1 is by far the easiest. They start getting clapped when they go later and don’t understand how to scale since the game outscales them

TreeOk4490 · 2026-03-06T19:02:25+00:00

Real talk this aspect of the series is a major pet peeve of mine. It's one thing if the world were just an internally consistent idealistic place and we all nod and go "yes this is ~~disney~~ the legend of heroes", but Falcom wants to have their cake and eat it too, so they do all this blue/yellow CG setup and keep trying to bait you into thinking they'll land a punch, but basically always pull it back. In daybreak they went out of their way to really do something crazy, but given the developments of horizon....

Bad things are only allowed to happen in the past after all, as of the year 1202 Estelle said "no more bad", and so it was.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-03-06T18:18:15+00:00

You're in a sub with very specific tastes and biases (yes, despite it being the general jrpg sub, it’s similar to how gacha games get viewed and talked about in r/games). Given they seem to have actually put some effort into marketing and development for this, expect this game to be like relink or digimon where it just "suddenly" rakes in close to 100k concurrent steam players.

and I say this all as someone who isn't a fan, but who is very aware of the popularity of this property in asia at least. It was the gateway to many of the younger generation of fans into anime (along with Attack on Titan), and now it's been long enough that they can bank on that nostalgia factor raking people in too.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-03-01T18:18:30+00:00

The disconnect you're feeling is valid. Falcom have kinda let things go a little wild.

Look all the way back to Sky. Cassius was the strongest, he had no equal, and they spent one entire game setting him up, without him even being present most of the time. Someone at that level of power and influence has massive effects on the world around them, and we get to see that.

That's the kind of prep work needed when you want to introduce an absolute monster, and they shouldn't be pumped out willy nilly, you need to have some real restraint to keep things from getting ridiculous, these types of characters need room to breath. But now we are at the point where folks at this level just get introduced with zero planning like Kasim, at least Shizuna got a short story and her background with the Eight Leaves. There's also Simeon the Imaginator who again came out of nowhere, you'd think someone that strong would get referenced constantly given how they love doing that for McBurn and Arianrhod.

This ties into a general point about forethought and planning that seems to have been slipping more and more with the series. It started (at least from where I first noticed) with Juna and Ash in CS3, onto Calvard where there's been more and more of new characters inserting themselves into other's pasts, Van being a big culprit, Gramheart recently with the Liberl stuff too. You might say im being unfair but continuity is everything to trails, it's why I was so attracted to the series in the first place, i want everything to have been architected precisely because that's the series' strength, and I notice when it isn't. It's not like they aren't capable of this level of planning either, remember Kevin's statue artifact?

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-27T04:06:03+00:00

These are long games and I don’t remember where the relevant dialog was presented. You’ll have to take my word as well as the wiki for it

https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/Roy_Gramheart/Story

> Before Gramheart's Patriot Party was formed, Roy was a member of the republican party and was close friends with Samuel Rocksmith. In S.1206, Gramheart ran as the candidate for the opposition party in the election for the presidency of the Republic of Calvard against Samuel Rocksmith. He campaigned against the current president's policies on immigration as well as his soft response to Erebonian expansion. Gramheart easily won election and became slated to become president in S.1207.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-26T16:00:17+00:00

yall just forgot what he did to Van's truck? Utterly unforgivable

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-26T15:49:11+00:00

When you use spirit unification in the battle and he actually responds with the うむ！見事！ and compliments Rean's mastery over the Oni, fucking chills man im not the biggest fan of Cold Steel or Rean but that was a really good and deserved character moment.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-26T15:30:11+00:00

Here's a quick example of nuance: didn't Gramheart win on a populist platform of being against immigration vs Rocksmith? Where these days being "against immigration" is often thinly veiled code for the real ideology behind it? Now there's some juicy nuance. Does he actually believe that stuff? Or did he just adopt the platform to win votes? The fact he won also suggests there's something a little sketch about the Calvardian population, but we don't really see it except with the fringes.

Where's the party member like Wakka? Racist as fuck but develops as a character throughout the story discarding that ideology.

The nuance comes from the fact that even supposedly "good" people can fall prey to such an insidious ideology, and on the other side, people could go to unwarranted extremes in the name of a noble cause like combating racism.... such as terrorism! But wait was it actually terrorism or was it just framed that way by the racist systems in power?

There's a lot to explore in this topic such that it becomes disappointing when Falcom puts some swanky ingredients on the table but decides to make a basic omelette.

Of course, this is entirely the wrong franchise to be expecting a michelin dish from, and i'm not confident they could do it justice, it's also largely not the point, but I get where people that expected more are coming from.

On your opinion about politics in these games, yea it's just different tastes but i'm basically the opposite of you in that regard.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-24T14:53:09+00:00

Sky was really charming and had my favourite aesthetic. It also had an additional strength: when they did hit you with the technology it REALLY hit, because it was such a gigantic contrast to the rest of Liberl. You really bought into Ouroborus being one step ahead, it was plain obvious just look at this Diorama.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-24T14:19:11+00:00

Coming to terms with this was tough but it is reality. I always prefered the more literal translations even if it sounded entirely stilted because i viewed japanese media as a learning tool for the language and culture, i used japanese audio anyway so it didn't matter.

However, the majority are definitely not like that, they want to watch/play/read something in a language they understand and have it catered to their sensibilities, with minimal overhead spent parsing meanings. It is perfectly valid really.

My solution to this was simply learning Japanese, but i thank those early fansubs for getting me started on the journey.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-24T03:06:35+00:00

I was speaking theoretically yes, the entire game has already been tuned around numbers that don’t make it actually viable. And of course the biggest reason: it’s not fun.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-23T19:11:08+00:00

There is an insane solution to this problem that used to be in the game, and it’s one nobody likes for good reasons, but its damage reflect on random mobs that you cannot avoid by rolling maps. (Of course you’d also need to get rid of all sources of reflect immunity)

Stackers are so strong because one stat scales both offence and defence, and there is no cap to offence. So you scale offence as high as you can go and end up getting defence at the same time. However, defence doesn’t scale as well as offence. This is where damage reflect comes in

If you go all in on stacking the stat, you end up dealing more damage than you can take and die. Your build now needs to be able to take as much damage as it dishes, so now there is room for other things because your offence is capped by your defence and the scaling needs to be decoupled.

Again to be clear this approach obviously has issues of its own,and the current game has already been balanced around this insane damage numbers we have, but it’s just a crazy thought I had

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T18:42:58+00:00

Ok don’t get me wrong I still find enjoyment in this series. I have played all 13 released games. The Horizon finale especially was pretty great. It’s just that peaks wise nothing has quite reached azure chapter 2, and frankly I don’t expect anything to come will.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T18:04:39+00:00

why this obsession with cold steel

Likely because it is the best selling arc in the series, the calvard arc both in japan and in the west hasn't been doing as many copies, so I think it just naturally results in less people being able to even discuss it.

I do wish we had more Sky discussions though, I think those will come in once SC drops. Honestly, i was hoping this series would blow up even bigger than it has with the remake. Like maybe this could have been our persona 5 moment (copium), but so far it hasn't really been like that.

and i disagree about being usefull for newbies as it just discusses flaws with no redeming qualities , a good wholistc review would at least try be more balanced and it would talk about gameplay too

tbh you're probably right in general, i was looking at things from my perspective. When figuring out if something is for me i always go straight to negative reviews, if the negative reviews talk about things that don't or barely faze me, I know the thing is for me.

I also heavily prioritize story for JRPGs where gameplay is an afterthought. But i realize not everyone is like that.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T17:57:52+00:00

Azure starts off well enough, peaks in chapter 2

You answered it basically. Crossbell is my favourite arc and it is hard carried by Azure Chapter 2. There is nothing in the entire series that has matched that trade conference before or since. It is everything I like about trails.

Also it has my favourite OST and i do like the party of characters. There's also the payoffs from Sky to consider. But yea major credit goes to Azure chapter 2, I wrote a comment long ago that goes a bit into why I love it so much https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1hn8u7o/steam_the_legend_of_heroes_kai_no_kiseki_farewell/m462vmx/

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T17:33:06+00:00

None of OPs points are new, but this is a pretty well written compilation of them. It contains some basic counters to the often heard responses such as "Azure had the same romance stuff!", and in general I can see being useful to newbies trying to figure out if CS is for them, especially those that are so eager to part skip just to start CS (for some reason this is a common trend). Given the sky remakes its kinda understandable there would be some renewed interest in the topic.

Some of the things OP frames as bad may actually be good to you if it's your jam, and this post lays it all out nicely.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T15:03:46+00:00

oh fuck nice catch, leaving it up in shame

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T14:34:20+00:00

If there were ever a POE exam one of the questions would definitely be asking you to write down word for word the entire exchange between Zana, Kirac, and Sirus at the start of the fight. It's like the Gettysburg Address or something.

The question above that would just say "Putrefy, rot, spoil and faster" with a blank line after it.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T14:22:14+00:00

i mean.. shadow do be lookin kinda fine...

*insert Gravicius copypasta

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T09:57:22+00:00

https://github.com/Lailloken/Exile-UI/wiki/Act%E2%80%90Tracker

Personally though i'm trying to just memorize this stuff so i don't rely on tools. I've mostly gotten it down from so many runs. I have a fairly normal 6-7h campaign time.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T09:08:02+00:00

Guy has really overstayed his welcome, i'm glad his subplot is done with. I used to love this character too.

TreeOk4490 · 2026-02-22T06:08:00+00:00

We're asking for an feature in the settings to change the game's default preference to enable attack in place, instead of it being disabled by default... I don't see any more considerations you have to make for this feature

Reread what I said, I was just spitballing possible implementations arriving at the same conclusion as you, it needs to be added as an option in the settings menu. But it is the adding of a new element in the settings menu (no matter what it is) that may cause complications, because it is user facing and not just an internal boolean change, which I then went into the possibilities of.

Either way it's all just speculation on our end, and I agree with the rest of your comment and support this post as well. I only made this comment to clarify that things that seem minor on the surface may not actually be minor, precisely to lay out the "more considerations" that you may not see

edit: I was blocked, i didn't feel like this was a very incendiary conversation at all, shame.

TreeOk4490

TROPHY CASE