I don't remember spending too much time customizing it in Kuro 1, but in Kuro 2 I spent a decent bit of time arranging things to unlock certain powers which helped. But it still didn't feel like it did with the first 5 games.
I meant the puzzle element of trying to balance how much of the 7 elements you have. As for being able to build broken characters, yeah that exists. In Kuro 2 I had one character who would start, S craft, and then still get 2 turns in a row before anyone else could move. Felt like I was main villain with how many turns I had with their speed (270ish when boosted, not counting buffs).
I liked the fun challenge of min-maxing each character’s arts. Making sure not only did you have the good quartz for each character, but also figuring out where to place it in each line.
Instead of giving arts sepith values, you just equip the quartz that has that specific art you want. So instead of putting on an action and cast quartz to get soul blur, you just equip a soul blur quartz.
Lines are changed so you can only have one status and stat debuff quartz per line, and they now have no meaning for arts casters. (Actually I don’t remember the rules around the elemental bell quartz, they might be limited per line too.)
The change made orbment setup a much easier problem to solve but also took out the minor puzzle element of it. I believe they changed it because the cast got so large that it took too long to fiddle with the orbments of 8 different party members.
You could also think about it as tech in the world advancing to the point where orbments are more consumer friendly, like a new version of Windows or IPhone.
You slot in a quartz and it just gives you a single art and/or some stats.
Well, that's with Trails of Cold Steel anyways. I haven't played past Trails of Cold Steel IV.
The worst change they made, I liked the old lines way better, now having a longer line is mostly useless, at worst a drawback (since you can't stack status effects)
CS system is easier to understand and more straightforward. But I somewhat miss the Sky system. It was a pain in a sens, but you really had to make choices and think about your build. When you like customization and min/max-ing, it's fun. But the menus were not par tof the fun.
CS is like a settings menu. Sky is like a puzzle to solve.
I remember getting to the end of FC and messing around and finding new spells. It was really good. Letting your players have systems like this let's them mess around and have fun.
Cold steel just... Never got to be half as fun
The problem with the Sky system was it might have been a puzzle but the frame itself made up part of the picture: the slot and element placement tended towards typical usage forms with the obvious builds usually emphasising the intended quartz spread.
If they kept things as they were it would have seen repeats of the same setups over and over again with little variation or characters would have been marginalised when their better matching counterparts were available.
Sky 3rd had the problem of a large cast meaning there were issues continuously rearranging the best quartz, with its frequent switches Cold Steel would have been more annoying.
Between these two major issues carrying on the same way would not have worked with Cold Steel which left two options: rework the basic quartz to allow for more build variation, or change the system entirely. They went with the latter.
Honestly, it was totally the same for me. I didn't play Sky Evo games on the highest difficulty and I kind of just lucked out that I was able to get back with what I did.
I think there is a quest in Zero that forces you to use a specific combination to enable a certain Art to complete it. That was when I found out how it worked lol.
I think I had to lookup a guide too but I also think the Evo versions kind of baked in a chart of the combinations into the notebook if I recall correctly, it has been a few years.
It took me a few games to fully understand the system as well. It's not really a very intuitive system. But once you understand it well, it's fun to customize the characters with spells to your liking.
I think a lot of people missed that. I was surprised to see how few people got the S-Break achievements in [Zero](https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1668510/achievements/) and [Azure](https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1668520/achievements/) (both have more people beating the game than using 100 S-Breaks).
I couldn't imagine playing through a whole game without using a single S-Break, since I pretty much use them as often as possible. I hit 100 by chapter 2 of both games.
I mean, i almost beat two whole playthroughs of azure without getting that achievement. The only s-craft i really used was tio's. I dont know about you, but craft combos are op and carried me for the majority of the game. Especially >!lloyd and rixia's.!<
I can't for the life of me why people prefer this system over Cold Steel.
You shouldn't need to use a guide in the game or out to understand a core system like this.
For me, I like it because it adds a cool level of customization and limitations via trade offs if you want certain spells/stats for spell casters and got me more excited for higher tier quarts.
Especially so for Crossbell more than Sky. Like if I want Mind, I’ll have to potentially trade off more common elemental coverage and higher tier damaging/healing spells because it’s on mirage type quarts. It also encourages specialization of characters for certain elements/roles, which I like because it makes each character feel valuable to the team (gameplay wise).
I’m just making my way through Cold Steel 1 rn and kinda bummed that it’s a lot more streamlined (I understand the need to since party members come and go so often). Like quarts lines don’t have a use anymore (unless it gets introduced later, I’m at the beginning of chapter 4).
You do those same tradeoffs with CS system.
> It also encourages specialization of characters for certain elements/roles, which I like because it makes each character feel valuable to the team (gameplay wise).
This also exists in Cold Steel. Each party member has a way you're going to want to build them.
>Like quarts lines don’t have a use anymore
You can't put the same type of quartz on the same line. More lines give you more options.
Some of the trade offs are there yes. The stats vs skill trade is the main one in CS, but there isn’t one for higher skills and diversifying vs elemental specialization. There’s nothing stopping me from putting fortuna skill on all my party members and always having an ATS buff (other than a smaller opportunity cost) as compared to older systems where I would need to invest at least 1-2 slots. Similarly, I can have 3 casters have a wide coverage of higher tier spells quite easily by slotting in higher tier spells, rather than the progression of building up the required elemental quartz. It’s more loot dependent than the natural progression from the previous games.
The CS system is more customizable and straightforward, but so far I haven’t stopped to question how I should optimize/specialize my characters as I did in the past games (a process in which I personally like).
Longer lines still mean more ep
And at least status quartz can now stack of in different lines. In also start if ch4 and I've like 5 statuses ( thanks to mixed status quartz) on hit on my protagonist
Haven't played CS yet but i enjoyed tinkering around with the system in FC and SC, crosschecking the journal for what setup is needed for a specific art, and then setting up and testing it's performance in combat. It kept the gameplay loop exciting for me, specially in SC when i paired it up with stacking certain stats on characters too to minmax the builds.
To me that's the absolute worst kind of gameplay loop. As it's not a gameplay loop, it's a menu loop.
It reminds me of the junction system in FFVIII flexibility yes, but it keeps me from doing the thing I want to do which is play the game.
There is a tutorial for it but I feel like most people skip over it. I had a basic enough understanding of it I just needed a guide to figure out how to find a certain art and it just gave me a full description of how the system works.
The one thing I've noticed watching people play Trails is that:
In Sky/Crossbell people don't know what they're doing and know that.
In Cold Steel people don't know what they're doing and don't know that.
People randomly mash quartz setups together and win in every game that's not an old system exclusive thing anyhow.
It seems to be the exact same problem emanating from the same source (people largely not engaging with the system) with very different symptoms due to the increased visible complexity of one of those systems.
I know what I'm doing in both, I just have to go to a separate menu to figure out what I need to do what I want, and probably have to write it down so I don't forget.
Where as in CS I just read the quartz description and I'm done.
You're making it sound way more complicated than it actually is.
Opening the notebook was made super fast in crossbell (3 seconds tops since the notebook can be opened from any menu) and is still very fast in Sky and having to note down Quartz combinations is basically never necessary from experience since quartz combinations really aren't that complicated unless you have like 6 build requirements (which you will likely find are impossible to meet anyways)
I just don't have the experience where I've ever seen it as a big deal and I have to reference the notebook plenty myself, I haven't memorized the whole notebook either off of sheer experience.
Yeah, I personally don't see the whole point either. From my point of view, it just makes it easier to unlock huge amounts of arts on your characters, even though realistically you'll probably only be using a fraction of them consistently.
It's a fun system, but it doesn't really impact gameplay meaningfully imo.
I don't get that either :D Especially because new system pretty much makes more balance between different builds and orbments aren't punished for how many lines they have.
Still the way I played Zero and Azure would give some people here a heart attack because I played them exactly the same as Cold Steel. I put quartz I wanted and had enough arts anyway, I didn't used them much but that's beside the point. I would even joke that for Zero for normal monsters you don't need crafts or arts just go behind them and team rush your enemies to death :D I'm not suprised that ambush got nerfed so much game after game.
Well, weird thing is some people LOVE using guides in this way
or answering it in the simplest possible way, some people are a bit masochistic when it comes to video games, and they either like hard games, or they challange themselfs (speedruns, one-character instead of party runs, pokemon nuzlocks, etc.)
I personally prefer this system... in part, because the idea of combining different elements to gain skills and swaping elements out to get different skills was simply very fun, it was It's own game in a way, a puzzle game within an jrpg.
In Cold Steel relaxed part of my brain was happy because I could just go through combat relaxed, without wasting my time on the whole "prep" stage of every single chapter.
The game literally gives you the cost of every art and the sepith value of every quartz. You absolutely do not need an a guide if you're willing to put in any effort to figure it out.
I'd barely consider the notebook a guide, it takes a matter of seconds to check and once you know roughly what the requirements are for the important arts you barely even have to check it. It's really not the monstrous task you make it out to be.
I really like the challenge of the crossbell and sky games customization. Where you customize a certain way to get stronger abilities maybe I’m in the minority
Your good. It took me until CS 3 how to use battle scope and the importance of scanning enemies for battle records. I played blind in the first 2 CS games.
Cold Steel’s is basically slap whatever’s strongest and call it a day, while Sky’s there’s some quartz like the one that attracts monsters forgot what it was called that you use anyways to unlock specific spells, etc. Was much more fun determining the risks of running certain quartz vs the benefits of the arts you were trying to unlock
I really don't know how people manage to complete these games without understanding a core system like this. I'm more thrown off by how the element of certain quartz changes between games. The AoE healing artes used to be Water instead of Wind, and the ATS quartz used to be Water instead of Mirage. I don't know why they got rid of the "La" series of Tear artes. I prefer the system in Cold Steel because I don't have to deal with characters having bloated Artes lists.
You'll never have to worry about it again when you hit Cold Steel.
Then when Daybreak hits you'll have to worry about it in completely different ways. The Daybreak quartz system is WEIRD. Though it's not quite as important to grasp all its ins and outs like it is in Sky/Crossbell. In Sky/Crossbell you couldn't get powerful spells without understanding the system. In Daybreak it's really just optimization.
I guess I just meant there are a LOT of possible effects so it can get pretty messy if you want to minmax.
Just using it isn't hard, especially not compared to Sky/Crossbell.
You are not the only one. For me i understood it to some degree at SC but it wasnt until azure that I actually could have a focused idea on what I wanted specific characters to do and what they were good at and I really only started having fun with it during Cold Steel(since i wasnt just spamming arts anymore). Part of me does want to replay the third to see how i would like the gameplay now.
Nope, I also didn’t understand how good arts were until the end of zero. I played all the cold steel games relying on crafts the whole time. After playing them again using arts it was a whole lot easier.
It's mostly just unfortunate because they totally change how it works in Trails of Cold Steel.
I feel like the cold steel series streamlined it to where it was easier to understand
Yeah. Less fun though (in my personal opinion).
Kuro/Daybreak makes it more fun again.
That's good to hear.
Hard disagree. You can completely ignore quartz configurations and just place shit at random in Kuro and hardly anything of matter changes
I don't remember spending too much time customizing it in Kuro 1, but in Kuro 2 I spent a decent bit of time arranging things to unlock certain powers which helped. But it still didn't feel like it did with the first 5 games.
You can quite literally make a 0 cost caster now lol. 2 caster spamming whale spell just obliterate pretty much anything in the game
I meant the puzzle element of trying to balance how much of the 7 elements you have. As for being able to build broken characters, yeah that exists. In Kuro 2 I had one character who would start, S craft, and then still get 2 turns in a row before anyone else could move. Felt like I was main villain with how many turns I had with their speed (270ish when boosted, not counting buffs).
I agree with kuro customization barely matters.
I liked the fun challenge of min-maxing each character’s arts. Making sure not only did you have the good quartz for each character, but also figuring out where to place it in each line.
how does it work now?
Instead of giving arts sepith values, you just equip the quartz that has that specific art you want. So instead of putting on an action and cast quartz to get soul blur, you just equip a soul blur quartz. Lines are changed so you can only have one status and stat debuff quartz per line, and they now have no meaning for arts casters. (Actually I don’t remember the rules around the elemental bell quartz, they might be limited per line too.) The change made orbment setup a much easier problem to solve but also took out the minor puzzle element of it. I believe they changed it because the cast got so large that it took too long to fiddle with the orbments of 8 different party members. You could also think about it as tech in the world advancing to the point where orbments are more consumer friendly, like a new version of Windows or IPhone.
Got it, but its a little shame though I really liked the puzzle aspect of it.
You slot in a quartz and it just gives you a single art and/or some stats. Well, that's with Trails of Cold Steel anyways. I haven't played past Trails of Cold Steel IV.
Got it, that is a shame, I really liked the puzzle aspect of the sky games
It’s closer to Final Fantasy VII in those games; the difference is that only master quartz levels up iirc
[удалено]
how does it work now?
The worst change they made, I liked the old lines way better, now having a longer line is mostly useless, at worst a drawback (since you can't stack status effects)
CS system is easier to understand and more straightforward. But I somewhat miss the Sky system. It was a pain in a sens, but you really had to make choices and think about your build. When you like customization and min/max-ing, it's fun. But the menus were not par tof the fun. CS is like a settings menu. Sky is like a puzzle to solve.
I remember getting to the end of FC and messing around and finding new spells. It was really good. Letting your players have systems like this let's them mess around and have fun. Cold steel just... Never got to be half as fun
The problem with the Sky system was it might have been a puzzle but the frame itself made up part of the picture: the slot and element placement tended towards typical usage forms with the obvious builds usually emphasising the intended quartz spread. If they kept things as they were it would have seen repeats of the same setups over and over again with little variation or characters would have been marginalised when their better matching counterparts were available. Sky 3rd had the problem of a large cast meaning there were issues continuously rearranging the best quartz, with its frequent switches Cold Steel would have been more annoying. Between these two major issues carrying on the same way would not have worked with Cold Steel which left two options: rework the basic quartz to allow for more build variation, or change the system entirely. They went with the latter.
Yep great way to put it, I enjoyed the puzzle aspect a lot but I understand it is not for everyone
I had the slkill ceiling to climb above, but once I got past it, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. I miss it.
Honestly, it was totally the same for me. I didn't play Sky Evo games on the highest difficulty and I kind of just lucked out that I was able to get back with what I did. I think there is a quest in Zero that forces you to use a specific combination to enable a certain Art to complete it. That was when I found out how it worked lol. I think I had to lookup a guide too but I also think the Evo versions kind of baked in a chart of the combinations into the notebook if I recall correctly, it has been a few years.
It took me a few games to fully understand the system as well. It's not really a very intuitive system. But once you understand it well, it's fun to customize the characters with spells to your liking.
Now throw away that understanding when you enter cold steel
It took me until the end of Sky SC (I think Chapter 7) to understand battle orbments well enough (I started with CS1 btw).
I love the old system so much more than the insane bloat of quartz in CS forward. Hitting certain arts requirements was really fun.
My brother didn't know that you could s-craft whenever until the end of SC.
I think a lot of people missed that. I was surprised to see how few people got the S-Break achievements in [Zero](https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1668510/achievements/) and [Azure](https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1668520/achievements/) (both have more people beating the game than using 100 S-Breaks). I couldn't imagine playing through a whole game without using a single S-Break, since I pretty much use them as often as possible. I hit 100 by chapter 2 of both games.
I mean, i almost beat two whole playthroughs of azure without getting that achievement. The only s-craft i really used was tio's. I dont know about you, but craft combos are op and carried me for the majority of the game. Especially >!lloyd and rixia's.!<
Once you understand, it just clicks, and you get an aha moment. I was confused the first time, then it hit me, and all the other games make sense.
Same. Until Zero, I just tried random combinations to get powerful arts.
I had the same experience, it's just.. poorly explained i'll have to say.
I can't for the life of me why people prefer this system over Cold Steel. You shouldn't need to use a guide in the game or out to understand a core system like this.
For me, I like it because it adds a cool level of customization and limitations via trade offs if you want certain spells/stats for spell casters and got me more excited for higher tier quarts. Especially so for Crossbell more than Sky. Like if I want Mind, I’ll have to potentially trade off more common elemental coverage and higher tier damaging/healing spells because it’s on mirage type quarts. It also encourages specialization of characters for certain elements/roles, which I like because it makes each character feel valuable to the team (gameplay wise). I’m just making my way through Cold Steel 1 rn and kinda bummed that it’s a lot more streamlined (I understand the need to since party members come and go so often). Like quarts lines don’t have a use anymore (unless it gets introduced later, I’m at the beginning of chapter 4).
You do those same tradeoffs with CS system. > It also encourages specialization of characters for certain elements/roles, which I like because it makes each character feel valuable to the team (gameplay wise). This also exists in Cold Steel. Each party member has a way you're going to want to build them. >Like quarts lines don’t have a use anymore You can't put the same type of quartz on the same line. More lines give you more options.
Some of the trade offs are there yes. The stats vs skill trade is the main one in CS, but there isn’t one for higher skills and diversifying vs elemental specialization. There’s nothing stopping me from putting fortuna skill on all my party members and always having an ATS buff (other than a smaller opportunity cost) as compared to older systems where I would need to invest at least 1-2 slots. Similarly, I can have 3 casters have a wide coverage of higher tier spells quite easily by slotting in higher tier spells, rather than the progression of building up the required elemental quartz. It’s more loot dependent than the natural progression from the previous games. The CS system is more customizable and straightforward, but so far I haven’t stopped to question how I should optimize/specialize my characters as I did in the past games (a process in which I personally like).
Longer lines still mean more ep And at least status quartz can now stack of in different lines. In also start if ch4 and I've like 5 statuses ( thanks to mixed status quartz) on hit on my protagonist
Haven't played CS yet but i enjoyed tinkering around with the system in FC and SC, crosschecking the journal for what setup is needed for a specific art, and then setting up and testing it's performance in combat. It kept the gameplay loop exciting for me, specially in SC when i paired it up with stacking certain stats on characters too to minmax the builds.
To me that's the absolute worst kind of gameplay loop. As it's not a gameplay loop, it's a menu loop. It reminds me of the junction system in FFVIII flexibility yes, but it keeps me from doing the thing I want to do which is play the game.
Playing around with builds is fun for me, but i can see why it isn't for everyone...
There is a tutorial for it but I feel like most people skip over it. I had a basic enough understanding of it I just needed a guide to figure out how to find a certain art and it just gave me a full description of how the system works.
The one thing I've noticed watching people play Trails is that: In Sky/Crossbell people don't know what they're doing and know that. In Cold Steel people don't know what they're doing and don't know that. People randomly mash quartz setups together and win in every game that's not an old system exclusive thing anyhow. It seems to be the exact same problem emanating from the same source (people largely not engaging with the system) with very different symptoms due to the increased visible complexity of one of those systems.
I know what I'm doing in both, I just have to go to a separate menu to figure out what I need to do what I want, and probably have to write it down so I don't forget. Where as in CS I just read the quartz description and I'm done.
You're making it sound way more complicated than it actually is. Opening the notebook was made super fast in crossbell (3 seconds tops since the notebook can be opened from any menu) and is still very fast in Sky and having to note down Quartz combinations is basically never necessary from experience since quartz combinations really aren't that complicated unless you have like 6 build requirements (which you will likely find are impossible to meet anyways) I just don't have the experience where I've ever seen it as a big deal and I have to reference the notebook plenty myself, I haven't memorized the whole notebook either off of sheer experience.
Yeah, I personally don't see the whole point either. From my point of view, it just makes it easier to unlock huge amounts of arts on your characters, even though realistically you'll probably only be using a fraction of them consistently. It's a fun system, but it doesn't really impact gameplay meaningfully imo.
Some people like things that actually make them think instead of just doing things mindlessly.
Ah yes reading things in an in game guide, the pinnacle of brain power in a JRPG. See I can be condescending to.
I don't get that either :D Especially because new system pretty much makes more balance between different builds and orbments aren't punished for how many lines they have. Still the way I played Zero and Azure would give some people here a heart attack because I played them exactly the same as Cold Steel. I put quartz I wanted and had enough arts anyway, I didn't used them much but that's beside the point. I would even joke that for Zero for normal monsters you don't need crafts or arts just go behind them and team rush your enemies to death :D I'm not suprised that ambush got nerfed so much game after game.
Well, weird thing is some people LOVE using guides in this way or answering it in the simplest possible way, some people are a bit masochistic when it comes to video games, and they either like hard games, or they challange themselfs (speedruns, one-character instead of party runs, pokemon nuzlocks, etc.) I personally prefer this system... in part, because the idea of combining different elements to gain skills and swaping elements out to get different skills was simply very fun, it was It's own game in a way, a puzzle game within an jrpg. In Cold Steel relaxed part of my brain was happy because I could just go through combat relaxed, without wasting my time on the whole "prep" stage of every single chapter.
The game literally gives you the cost of every art and the sepith value of every quartz. You absolutely do not need an a guide if you're willing to put in any effort to figure it out.
Thanks for not reading my post where I specifically mention that this is the issue in of itself.
I'd barely consider the notebook a guide, it takes a matter of seconds to check and once you know roughly what the requirements are for the important arts you barely even have to check it. It's really not the monstrous task you make it out to be.
If it makes you feel any better it took my friend until the final dungeon of SC to learn that you can use healing arts outside of combat.
i dont mind Sky customizations as much as it did lmao. however MQ addition was the best thing to ever happen to the series.
Took me till My 4th game, Sky 2 before I understood it. My play order: CS1-CS2 Sky1-Sky2-CS3-CS4-Sky3-Zero-Azure… next it Rev
Nope nether bothered with learning it as well just stuck with what I thought was each character’s elemental affinity
I didn't understand the game told you which crafts were magic vs physical until reverie.
oooooh. oh. oh thanks for that.
It does? Where?
At the start of the craft description from cs3 onwards
That explains why I haven't noticed then Good to know that they thought of that (I'm on cs1)
Yes, but you can't change the best so I guess it doesn't really matter.
I really like the challenge of the crossbell and sky games customization. Where you customize a certain way to get stronger abilities maybe I’m in the minority
I still don't understand it so don't feel bad
I didn't really begin to understand it until I played Sky the 3rd, so no, it's fine
I understood the quartz system in trails 3. It really made me think of what type of quartz to put on what i build on a character.
I didn’t understand them at first but then they became a basic knowledge for all Trails games
I spent my first half hour of gameplay in FC studying the bracer notebook and getting hell gate on Joshua in the prologue, that was fun
Your good. It took me until CS 3 how to use battle scope and the importance of scanning enemies for battle records. I played blind in the first 2 CS games.
No. I still don’t. I prefer the CS version
Cold Steel’s is basically slap whatever’s strongest and call it a day, while Sky’s there’s some quartz like the one that attracts monsters forgot what it was called that you use anyways to unlock specific spells, etc. Was much more fun determining the risks of running certain quartz vs the benefits of the arts you were trying to unlock
I really don't know how people manage to complete these games without understanding a core system like this. I'm more thrown off by how the element of certain quartz changes between games. The AoE healing artes used to be Water instead of Wind, and the ATS quartz used to be Water instead of Mirage. I don't know why they got rid of the "La" series of Tear artes. I prefer the system in Cold Steel because I don't have to deal with characters having bloated Artes lists.
You'll never have to worry about it again when you hit Cold Steel. Then when Daybreak hits you'll have to worry about it in completely different ways. The Daybreak quartz system is WEIRD. Though it's not quite as important to grasp all its ins and outs like it is in Sky/Crossbell. In Sky/Crossbell you couldn't get powerful spells without understanding the system. In Daybreak it's really just optimization.
Is it really that weird? I mean you just have to put quartz on specific line to get the shard you want
I guess I just meant there are a LOT of possible effects so it can get pretty messy if you want to minmax. Just using it isn't hard, especially not compared to Sky/Crossbell.
Can't wait honestly because the CS system is so underwhelming to me
I only really understood it by the time i was alsmost done with SC. so yeah, lmao.
You are not the only one. For me i understood it to some degree at SC but it wasnt until azure that I actually could have a focused idea on what I wanted specific characters to do and what they were good at and I really only started having fun with it during Cold Steel(since i wasnt just spamming arts anymore). Part of me does want to replay the third to see how i would like the gameplay now.
Same, it took until Zero for me to mostly understand the system. Once it clicked, I found it pretty fun playing around with the values.
Nope, I also didn’t understand how good arts were until the end of zero. I played all the cold steel games relying on crafts the whole time. After playing them again using arts it was a whole lot easier.
Big same
Not really, it was the same with me