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

[Slap47]

1 hit every boss with Laura. Simple as.

 

[00R-Gundam]

1 hit every boss with Laura. Simple as.

funny enough the idea crossed my mind with her, just make her full dps and install the quartz that double damage for the first atk/craft in the battle. Sadly the idea was late into the game that i wasnt gonna deviate. Will prob do it for a nightmare run. Also something i noticed is that they have attempted to "nerf" earth wall only to said remedy end up being redundant with all the funny quartz the game throws at you that allows you to circumvent the downsides.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I remember the final mech fight in 1 taking multiple tries. Either I was unlucky, or the mech stats depends on Rean's level.

 

[Golfing on the Moon 1971]

One of the main glaring flaws of the game is cast bloat, not only that but everything is just centred around Rean, everyone is too busy riding his dick to get any proper development and interactions on their own; The SSS having its compact cast of four distinct characters was a perfect number of characters to get the player settled in and comfortable with, as opposed to whatever the fuck the Cold Steel arc tried to attempt.

CS having a larger main cast is a boon. It's Suikoden lite where there larger cast means that there are more characters that might be your favorites that you can fill a full party with. Whereas with the SSS if you only like 1 of the four characters then you're screwed.

Trista is fortunately much smaller than Crossbell, so you spend less than half of Crossbell's padded playtime having to hunt down NPCs and catch up with them. Making most of the NPCs fellow Thors characters who are being trained as adventurers and will go out into the world on adventurers or being a part of your resource network is much better expenditure of NPC time than Crossbell where all of these civilians without portraits don't matter. It was great bumping into familiar faces and then they help you out. I was more invested in the Ferris-Hugo-Becky subplot unfolding over the games than any Crossbell NPC.

I absolutely despise the way the story is told in CS as well; go on field trip, end on big event, go back to school and they talk about it... It starts this really bizarre storytelling trend where instead of going from sequences A to B to C... they go from A to C, and then in C, they flash back to B and deliver clunky exposition about it. It's weird as fuck and it doesn't get better.

The scene arrangement improved my play sessions. When I am nearing the big showdown of a chapter, I will try to push onwards even though I am already 2 or 3 or maybe even 4 hours into a play session and really should stop. With the way Cold Steel does it, you finally beat the boss, get a few important cutscenes that hype up the next chapter where the bad guys stand around fufuing, and then the chapter ends and you are released. I can be done for that session, turn off the computer and either decompress for a bit before starting another one, or go to bed. And then at the start of my next play session, I can then get the long flashback infodumps where the characters contemplate what happened and speculate about what this means going forward. Erebonia has many more subplots than prior arcs with each character and their family, the Reinford Company, government overreach, technological advancements threatening to make swordsmen irrelevant (this subplot gets dropped), etc. I don't want those less exciting roadblocks placed at the end of a chapter when I have beaten a boss, I am tired, and I am pressing A to get to the save screen so I close the game.

 

[Flopper]

CS having a larger main cast is a boon. It's Suikoden lite where there larger cast means that there are more characters that might be your favorites that you can fill a full party with. Whereas with the SSS if you only like 1 of the four characters then you're screwed.

While it does give players a larger selection of characters to get attached to, this doesn't mean shit because you can't give them equal amounts of screen time and writing quality. These fuckers have had five games worth of screen time and I still don't know what some of them think of each other besides simply being classmates. Laura solely exists for Rean to have someone to have a sword boner over about with, Gaius is there to be the guy from Nord and to deliver exposition speeches on magical shit in 3 and 4, which is useless because Emma already fulfils that role, and Alisa is just there to be an annoying cunt who constantly whines about her cunt family.

 

[Golfing on the Moon 1971]

While it does give players a larger selection of characters to get attached to, this doesn't mean shit because you can't give them equal amounts of screen time and writing quality. These fuckers have had five games worth of screen time and I still don't know what some of them think of each other besides simply being classmates. Laura solely exists for Rean to have someone to have a sword boner over about with, Gaius is there to be the guy from Nord and to deliver exposition speeches on magical shit in 3 and 4, which is useless because Emma already fulfils that role, and Alisa is just there to be an annoying cunt who constantly whines about her cunt family.

I liked Gaius as the a guy you can count on. He has no hangups, and has wilderness survival skills and knows how to fight. You could toss him into a JRPG party and get him to work no problem. Almost everyone else is some sort of sheltered city dweller who is not very skilled at this world trotting adventuring stuff, and a lot of them seem to have some sort of emotional trouble that pops up at inconvenient times during business. Maybe it's the school setting which babies people and makes them look more incompetent than they should be.

If falcom's writers were actually planning ahead, then making him into a Gralsritter and giving him a cloaked airship mainly serves to give Rean and friends a way to get involved in stuff to the East of Erebonia without needing to rely on borrowing or requisitioning the Erebonian prince's prolific bright red airship, who has no business messing around in foreign lands that far away from home. I think Kuro introduced Olivier 2.0 and his airship and has been trying to insert him into the friends network for a similar reason, so more characters can get moved around. After Ao and CS, I don't trust Falcom to make well structured plans like that and stick with them.

 

[00R-Gundam]

The mech fights, although simple, they are fun for me. Noted that while in mech fights, is pretty hard to die since you jave the link arts and those can range from filling ep or life. Basically unkillable if you know what youre doing.

So far looking for the others have been fun but damm if the start isnt slow as fuck. Although kudos to the madlad that convinced the developers to have a fucking snowboarding mini game.

 

[Flopper]

Yes, the mech fights aren't hard since you have access to infinite healing. Some of the boss fights have hidden turn limit requirements for full AP, I think 40 turns. Kind of a dick move on Falcom's part to not tell you. Also, CS2 gives a lot of minibosses and bosses the ability to buff and self-heal, which they will just sometimes do multiple times in a row, it's shit.

 

[00R-Gundam]

Yes, the mech fights aren't hard since you have access to infinite healing. Some of the boss fights have hidden turn limit requirements for full AP, I think 40 turns. Kind of a dick move on Falcom's part to not tell you. Also, CS2 gives a lot of minibosses and bosses the ability to buff and self-heal, which they will just sometimes do multiple times in a row, it's shit.

Noticed something similar with the "Black Rabbit" fight where she did "earth wall" alot. So far i havent encountered any difficulty and the Overdrive mechanic, i get the feeling that it will be abusable in the end game, but i have barely use it since i havent found the need. Something ive started to missed is the whole quartz system where combination of quartz gave you access to arts. In CS feels super limiting, more so early to mid game.

 

[Flopper]

Noticed something similar with the "Black Rabbit" fight where she did "earth wall" alot. So far i havent encountered any difficulty and the Overdrive mechanic, i get the feeling that it will be abusable in the end game, but i have barely use it since i havent found the need. Something ive started to missed is the whole quartz system where combination of quartz gave you access to arts. In CS feels super limiting, more so early to mid game.

Yes, Cold Steel does away with the elemental values system in favour of a much more dumbed down system with its quartz, which really defeats the purpose of having lines in the orbment in the first place. You'll also notice that status quartz no longer gives you percentage boosts, but just a flat value instead.

 

[00R-Gundam]

Yes, Cold Steel does away with the elemental values system in favour of a much more dumbed down system with its quartz, which really defeats the purpose of having lines in the orbment in the first place. You'll also notice that status quartz no longer gives you percentage boosts, but just a flat value instead.

Yes, which kinda takes away from the planning and sort of brain power required to find the combination that would give you what you wanted in stats + the arts. Now it feels like a very numbers game where you just wanna jam the highest numbered quart and just add the broken arts by the end instead of planning and mix and matching quartz. Like i get why they dumbed it down because its confusing at first glance but at the same time niggas had a whole game to learn the system. Is it gonna be the same into daybreak?

 

[Flopper]

Yes, which kinda takes away from the planning and sort of brain power required to find the combination that would give you what you wanted in stats + the arts. Now it feels like a very numbers game where you just wanna jam the highest numbered quart and just add the broken arts by the end instead of planning and mix and matching quartz. Like i get why they dumbed it down because its confusing at first glance but at the same time niggas had a whole game to learn the system. Is it gonna be the same into daybreak?

I think they feel it was justified because a majority of your arts now comes from Master Quartz and they give you more free slots to work with, but still, meh.
In the three Daybreak games, they give you 15-16 slots, there are four "categories" with three-four slots in each of them, the quartz has elemental value, and instead of arts they give you unique skills, so for example, if you put fire quartz in the attack category, you get fire elemental attacks, and putting them in defence gives you defences against fire and burn status ailment - It's not too dissimilar to Junctioning magic to stats from FF8. Arts are gained from a completely separate mechanic called Arts Drivers.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I really like how the orb system worked in Sky. Trying to minmax both stats and spells just brings the inner autist in me

 

[ShitLurker]

Wait, only 35 hours? Holy shit.

I really am wondering what I'm getting by doing the NPC rounds when I read this...

I remember the final mech fight in 1 taking multiple tries. Either I was unlucky, or the mech stats depends on Rean's level.

I ended up having to update my save to lower the dificulty (and was not a trivial thing, involved fucking with HEX editors) from hard to normal because I was constantly getting wrecked with little recourse.

 

[00R-Gundam]

I think the mech, atleast at the end of CS has fixed stats for the fight.


Idk if its just me but the whole divine knights thing feels arthurian to me. I do wonder how many divine knight there are and what were their roles in the past, hopefully it will be explained.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

It took me roughly 50 hours from what I remember. Also, arts are a complete joke in CS1, I pretty much just ended up spamming crafts and abusing AT delay considering how much CP the game shits out in your direction. This does ended up getting rectified in 2, arts get a huge boost in that game.

My favorite thing about 1 & 2 specifically are the NPC's. The other students. They all get their own little plotlines that you won't find unless you actively talk to them. Margarita, Monica, Becky, Rosine, Vincent, Mint, even the faculty members.

Ray Chase replaced Keith Silverstein as Kevin in Trails Beyond The Horizon.

 

[00R-Gundam]

Hows the english dub for CS in general? Been playing the games in Japanese, but was wondering if the english isnt complete shit.

 

[Flopper]

It's fine, but starting that game, there are many moments in each of the game where the voice-acting is very selective. For example, a cutscene will start to introduce a new character, and of the five characters talking in the cutscene, only the new chaacter will be voiced, etc.

 

[00R-Gundam]

So i have reach the final stretch in CS2. I want to complete as much as i can before heading into the final operation. Feeling pretty confident and my characters so far have been doin exceptional in their assigned roles. Things are going too smoothly and joyful which tells me they will do some 180 and everything will go to shit story wise. Still have 2 more games to go.

 

[ShitLurker]

So i have reach the final stretch in CS2. I want to complete as much as i can before heading into the final operation. Feeling pretty confident and my characters so far have been doin exceptional in their assigned roles. Things are going too smoothly and joyful which tells me they will do some 180 and everything will go to shit story wise. Still have 2 more games to go.

Enjoy the final stretch. It's a ride. What's your core team this time and how much are you abusing the orders system?