The Legend of Heroes Series - Possibly The Most Underrated JRPG Series

[Scarlett Johansson]

I am delighted to see the speech bubbles are back for the Sky remake! I missed them. Felt odd not having them for Calvard arc.

 

[Poyo Sato]

50+

I assume only few of them viable, and most of them are duds, no?

Either way, it's sounds like pain in the ass. Managing that number of characters, equipments, orbments, etc. isn't fun.

Time travel bullshit is involved.

Have yet to play it, but modern RPGs involving time travel tend to miss more than they hit.

On another note, thank you for the input regarding whether I can skip Cold Steel or not. After looking at your answers, maybe I'll put my adventure through this series on hold for awhile. Looking at the summary of Cold Steel is already confusing enough for me and the cast bloat certainly didn't help. Maybe sometime in the future, when I have time to waste and no game to play, I'd do Cold Steel and beyond.

Still eagerly waiting for the Sky remake, though.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

I assume only few of them viable, and most of them are duds, no?

Either way, it's sounds like pain in the ass. Managing that number of characters, equipments, orbments, etc. isn't fun.

There's a game later on where you have to manage 3 different squads. Realistically, a character can only fit one of a few roles. So, just pick your favorite 4-6 for each squad and leave the rest on the bench.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

Focus on Zero and Azure which I think are the best in the series and enjoy the ride.

Just finished Azure. Definitely enjoyed the arc a bit more than Sky. I've really enjoyed how the battle system has progressed, with each game building on it a little bit. Won't be able to go back to Sky FC for a bit.

Onto Cold Steel. Not sure how I feel about the changes to how quartz works, but w'll see. Also, thank god for internet autists fixing the forced animation skip with the turbo mode in battle. The base speed is way too slow, but all the skipping was a bit disorientating.

 

[ShitLurker]

Just finished Azure. Definitely enjoyed the arc a bit more than Sky. I've really enjoyed how the battle system has progressed, with each game building on it a little bit. Won't be able to go back to Sky FC for a bit.

Onto Cold Steel. Not sure how I feel about the changes to how quartz works, but w'll see. Also, thank god for internet autists fixing the forced animation skip with the turbo mode in battle. The base speed is way too slow, but all the skipping was a bit disorientating.

Glad you enjoyed it. The duology is a pretty tight little treasure. I prefer Estelle and Kevin over Lloyd, but he's close behind and the core 4 of the group bounce great on each other. Lots of twist and turns and some solid foreshadowing. I still remember Kea having a bit of an unenthusiastic reaction to Mariabelle in Zero making me suspect there was something dodgy about her and my god was that sensation right. And Renne in general getting some closure was also very welcome.

As for Cold Steel... I also prefered how quartz worked in older games, but you get used to it, each game will add extra stuff on top though. So expect it to bloat. It is easy to break though, evasion is king on this one and in later parts of the game, arts are just nukes with the big spells or machineguns with the small spells if you have enough delay reduction.

The story also is a step down as a whole compared to Sky or Crossbell. Not saying you shouldn't play it, far from it, but it's when the series really goes hard on being more "anime", so just trying to temper expectations. Also, losing the handrawn portraits for speech bubbles is a crime...

Finally, friendly suggestion. Try and play all cold steel games with a NG+ save file (you should be able to easilly find those with a bit of searching). Playing from NG+ opens up a series of extra options including infinite Bonding Points. This means you can do all the social vignette things without having to pick and choose or save scum to see them all. It also opens a few extra scenes in Cold Steel 2 by the end. Cold Steel 3 will address it anyway, but it's cooler to stumble into it in 2.

 

[Flopper]

Azure's story and writing kind of shits the bed towards the last third or so of the game imo.
As for Cold Steel 2, if you don't care about Bonding Events, I would personally advise against playing on a NG+ file, since the game will presume you've played the game already and spoil you on the upcoming gameplay sections - Just look up the NG+ exclusive scene, it's a retarded decision on Falcom's part, locking a canonical scene behind NG+.

 

[ShitLurker]

Azure's story and writing kind of shits the bed towards the last third or so of the game imo.

It certainly goes hard off it's rocker and all of national security being based on a 10 year old was asking for shit to go south. But I don't have any nagging memories about it.

As for Cold Steel 2, if you don't care about Bonding Events, I would personally advise against playing on a NG+ file, since the game will presume you've played the game already and spoil you on the upcoming gameplay sections - Just look up the NG+ exclusive scene, it's a retarded decision on Falcom's part, locking a canonical scene behind NG+.

... Oh yeah... I remember reading something about that. Though don't have any particular memory of this fucking me over/ruining my experience... so either I'm a dumbass and failed to notice, or whatever it was showing me wasn't catching me off guard.

But yeah, they love to do these stupid random decisions about locking important story motivations in bonding events or NG+ for little gain. You never get any proper motivation for Rixia or origin for Wazzy in azure unless you do their final bonding moment for example. Having to savescum or be expected to do multiple playthroughs for like 5 minutes of extra content drives me up a wall.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

The story also is a step down as a whole compared to Sky or Crossbell.

So I finished Cold Steel 1. I thought the story was fine? I think it helps that my expectations were set pretty low by people complaining about the story. The final bosses being basically mech combat tutorials was kind strange, and were pretty disappointing because of it. I wonder if 1 and 2 were originally one game before being split up like Sky FC and SC.

I also keep seeing people complain about the games being really slow, and then saying things like "I'm 70 hours in and 3/4ths of the way through the game". What are these people doing to take this much time? I've been averaging a pretty consistent 40 hours for each full game, while doing all of the side-quests. Is it because I don't autisticly talk with every NPC after every main story beat?

 

[ShitLurker]

So I finished Cold Steel 1. I thought the story was fine?

My god, you sure are going through them at a good rate! Try not to burn yourself out. Though after the cliffhanger ending I imagine you are going straight into 2.

And the Cold Steel "hate" comes from the slow burn. 4 games with Rean as the main character adds up. And there is a lot of the story turning into a pretzel to justify things as well as the more Gary Stu aspects of Rean being more and more present each game (and the harem starts getting nuttier with each game). But that comes much later. Cold Steel 1 is perfectly fine and a great cliffhanger ending.

The final bosses being basically mech combat tutorials was kind strange, and were pretty disappointing because of it.

Definitely. I played on hard and suddenly all of my orbment setup meant dick vs Ordine. Ended up having to use a hex file editor to lower the fucking dificulty to normal to finally win the last fight.

I wonder if 1 and 2 were originally one game before being split up like Sky FC and SC.

I believe that was confirmed but I may be misremembering.

I also keep seeing people complain about the games being really slow, and then saying things like "I'm 70 hours in and 3/4ths of the way through the game". What are these people doing to take this much time? I've been averaging a pretty consistent 40 hours for each full game, while doing all of the side-quests. Is it because I don't autisticly talk with every NPC after every main story beat?

It's exactly what you say. Since Zero I've been one of those autists and times bloat doing the npc rounds. I do enjoy the little vignettes from the NPCs for the most part but with maps getting bigger and more regions... well, it's a lot of fucking text.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

Try not to burn yourself out. Though after the cliffhanger ending I imagine you are going straight into 2.

It really hasn't been too bad. Each game has mixed combat up enough to keep things fresh, this plus the change in locations and new characters. The turbo function is also a godsend and has saved me probably dozens of hours at this point. It makes running around the maps much better and the base in-combat speed is frankly unbearable to the point I'm not sure if I'd be able to put up with it.

Gary Stu aspects of Rean

I can see it, whose super saiyan thing is a bit much, but I'll wait and see what it actually is to cast any judgement on it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

4 games with Rean

More like 5....
Rean being such a bad protagonist really shows how good everything else to warrant people to keep playing the games.

 

[Flopper]

More like 5....
Rean being such a bad protagonist really shows how good everything else to warrant people to keep playing the games.

But don't you want to see Rean:
1. Doubt his abilities as a swordsman.
2. Selflessly put others before himself.
3. Question whether or not he deserves his accomplishments/to be happy at all.
4. Have everyone around him, villains including, riding his dick.
For 5 games straight?

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Is it because I don't autisticly talk with every NPC after every main story beat?

I hate that I do this in games, I'll revisit the entire fucking world sometimes after an event to see what's changed. Burns me out after a while, I felt like I was going insane doing this in Tokyo Xanadu

 

[ShitLurker]

I hate that I do this in games, I'll revisit the entire fucking world sometimes after an event to see what's changed. Burns me out after a while, I felt like I was going insane doing this in Tokyo Xanadu

I believe it was during one of those "independence festivals" that Crossbell loves to do that always devolve in chaos. Such a stupid amount of NPCs, took hours to do the round.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I hate that I do this in games, I'll revisit the entire fucking world sometimes after an event to see what's changed. Burns me out after a while, I felt like I was going insane doing this in Tokyo Xanadu

At least in later games they just label important NPCs so you wouldn't miss unique gear or side quests. Even if you do go everywhere you can easily skip a place and fuck the whole progression.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

I've put off playing the first (?) game, however much I enjoyed the awfully modern writing/translation/gameplay, solely because of the remake. However, having seen the reception of the DRAGON QUEST III remake, I fear it'll suffer from re-translation bitchery. I only read one review touching on this, but it basically said they rewrote entire characters to fit new stereotypes in western media, completely ruining entire characters through text rewriting alone.

At this point, sticking to the source material would be considered as "based" as stellar blade's big boobs.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

But don't you want to see Rean:
1. Doubt his abilities as a swordsman.
2. Selflessly put others before himself.
3. Question whether or not he deserves his accomplishments/to be happy at all.
4. Have everyone around him, villains including, riding his dick.
For 5 games straight?

I think the real problems with rean surface in CS4. Before that, he'd still be my least favorite protagonist, but I'd consider him inoffensive. The first half of that game is just everyone going on and on about him, and the second half doesn't see him go anywhere as a character. His friend magics himself back to life with no fanfare, he gets the run back with whoever you chose in CS2 (honestly a retarded decision, did anybody change their decision between CS2 and 4? I sure as hell didn't. Whole series would have been better if Rean was just dating someone in 3 and 4). Kill a demon, and credits roll.

 

[Freelance Police]

Not sure how I feel about the changes to how quartz works, but w'll see.

There's a funny bug in CS1 and CS2 with impede quartz. While it adds delay to your attacks, it also adds a separate chance of inflicting delay per impede quartz on the orbment, so if you have like 3 impede quartz and use arc slash you'll reroll the delay proc 4 times. It's fixed in CS3/4/Reverie but there's other ways of giving yourself infinite turns in those games. The first time I played CS1 I never found out what Loa Erebonius actually did because the poor fucker only got one attack in and never got to move again.

I think the real problems with rean surface in CS4. Before that, he'd still be my least favorite protagonist, but I'd consider him inoffensive.

He was definitely still a problem in CS1 and CS2. The devs clearly wanted him to be self-insert while still having him be an actual character, but you can't really self-insert when the guy you're controlling is talking outside your prompt and has his own pre-determined backstory and memories that the player doesn't know about, which creates a lot of weird shifts of him being a generic nice guy to being a complete buffoon when outside your control. He'll end up doing retarded things like ogling Emma's tits while every other character praises him as being the second coming of christ. He worked a lot better when he grew up and became a teacher in CS3 honestly, instructor Rean was a lot more endearing than gods chosen pussy slayer mech rider devil trigger Rean, all of which were exacerbated the second you rescue him in CS4 and he becomes the all consuming black hole that vacuums the plot into himself.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

There's a funny bug in CS1 and CS2 with impede quartz. While it adds delay to your attacks, it also adds a separate chance of inflicting delay per impede quartz on the orbment, so if you have like 3 impede quartz and use arc slash you'll reroll the delay proc 4 times. It's fixed in CS3/4/Reverie but there's other ways of giving yourself infinite turns in those games. The first time I played CS1 I never found out what Loa Erebonius actually did because the poor fucker only got one attack in and never got to move again.


He was definitely still a problem in CS1 and CS2. The devs clearly wanted him to be self-insert while still having him be an actual character, but you can't really self-insert when the guy you're controlling is talking outside your prompt and has his own pre-determined backstory and memories that the player doesn't know about, which creates a lot of weird shifts of him being a generic nice guy to being a complete buffoon when outside your control. He'll end up doing retarded things like ogling Emma's tits while every other character praises him as being the second coming of christ. He worked a lot better when he grew up and became a teacher in CS3 honestly, instructor Rean was a lot more endearing than gods chosen pussy slayer mech rider devil trigger Rean, all of which were exacerbated the second you rescue him in CS4 and he becomes the all consuming black hole that vacuums the plot into himself.

Yeah, I think that's a pretty reasonable way to look at it. Faclom loves the mid-2000s. Randy is just a legally distinct version of Lockon Stratos from Gundam 00. Lloyd and Guy are just Simon and Kamina from gurren lagann, down to their voice actors; and CS has so many blatant references to Code Geass that it boggles the mind. So, Rean, to me, reads as them trying to write a Tomoya type character, where he's still a pretty normal dude overall, but there's some real grit defining his character. But... Tomoya has about 2 entire Lord of the Rings Trilogies worth of text to define him, and all of it is raw character interaction. Rean, doesn't exactly have that luxury.

 

[Flopper]

The first time I played CS1 I never found out what Loa Erebonius actually did because the poor fucker only got one attack in and never got to move again.

Falcom does a piss poor job at balancing its game mechanics; AT Delay was busted as fuck in CS1-2, so they toned it down after that... only to introduce the break mechanic, AND Brave Orders. After some points halfway through CS3, I don't think a single enemy ever got a turn, because of how busted my setup was.