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The Legend of Heroes Series - Possibly The Most Underrated JRPG Series
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I agree that in 4 he's at his worst, though I also think 2 is where things start going south. The Harem starts going HARD there, where it stops being the 3 "obvious" picks plus Fie and suddenly starts going into overdrive with Sara now suddenly giving a shit about a snot nosed runt, Claire looking at Rean a bit too much and so on. And yes, a cannon romance would have alleviated a lot of crap from Rean. Wouldn't have fixed him mind you, but would have at least allowed the secondary characters from the harem to breath. And maybe having a consistent character that he could be "vulnerable" with would have helped his characterization. Closest to that was Towa in the first couple of games.
Agreed that the idea was to make him a self insert. It's also why he has no traits outside of his siscomplex and the obsession with baths. Those are the only 2 traits that he has outside of "innofensive (yet tormented) nice guy that happens to be god with a blade even if he's a dropout". I also agree that teacher Rean in 3 was his best period of time. Mentor Rean was a nice third trait. Too bad the harem made it instantly go from wholesome to creepy in 4.
True, but to be honest, I'm perfectly happy being able to break the game in half by putting in a bit of effort. It was also more fun to break that way. In Kuro I'm basically just going full SCraft spam with suboptimal orbments and accessories and still am not giving a damn. This is the entry I've felt most detached from combat by far.
I was more of a "reduced delay break order" and give Altina or whoever the equivalent of a machine gun spamming the base level spell which was still doing insane damage on top of being able to throw out like 4-5 before anybody else got to act. Loved my witch council setup with Emma doing the giga nukes, and the 2 other spellcasters taking care of spamming smaller spells while keeping the high speed brave order up and Rean just evasion tanking in the front.
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God DAMN dawg. I beat Sky SC on Sunday and havent been able to think about anything else for 5 days. What a fuckin ride. That one scene at the end is legitimately the best shit ive ever seen in a JRPG.
absolute Chefs kiss its the best scene ive ever seen in a JRPG and ive played a lot of them. FC and SC go alongside Final Fantasy Tactics (original) as the only 3 JRPGs i consider S-tier. Unfortunately without Olivier in the party I dont know if its worth going forward in the series.
When Kevin shows up to give Weissmann what he deserves it has:
*While the whole team tends to Loewe, Kevin sneaks off at the bottom of the screen
*the same music as when Weissmann showed up to ruin Joshua's day in the first game
*you see a new portrait for Kevin that reveals his true nature just like you saw for Weissmann in the first game. "But now, you dont have a prayer. Not that you do that anymore, you filthy heretic."
*Second reveal to really hit home where Joshua learned that Evil Eye move from
*Reveals that Kevin played Weissmann for 90 hours just like he played you in the first game
*Reveals that Kevin didnt really want to do it until he saw exactly how much of a piece of shit Weissmann is
*Reveals that Kevin is actually a foil for Joshua except in a way where he has no hope of escape
*Reveals that Campanella actually outranks Weissmann, which is super meaningful because Campanella was who they sent to delay Cassius in the first game
*Reveals there is actually a Petrify 9 quartz Kevin has been keeping in his pocket
*"Are the Gralsritter really so different, I wonder?"
*While the whole team tends to Loewe, Kevin sneaks off at the bottom of the screen
*the same music as when Weissmann showed up to ruin Joshua's day in the first game
*you see a new portrait for Kevin that reveals his true nature just like you saw for Weissmann in the first game. "But now, you dont have a prayer. Not that you do that anymore, you filthy heretic."
*Second reveal to really hit home where Joshua learned that Evil Eye move from
*Reveals that Kevin played Weissmann for 90 hours just like he played you in the first game
*Reveals that Kevin didnt really want to do it until he saw exactly how much of a piece of shit Weissmann is
*Reveals that Kevin is actually a foil for Joshua except in a way where he has no hope of escape
*Reveals that Campanella actually outranks Weissmann, which is super meaningful because Campanella was who they sent to delay Cassius in the first game
*Reveals there is actually a Petrify 9 quartz Kevin has been keeping in his pocket
*"Are the Gralsritter really so different, I wonder?"
absolute Chefs kiss its the best scene ive ever seen in a JRPG and ive played a lot of them. FC and SC go alongside Final Fantasy Tactics (original) as the only 3 JRPGs i consider S-tier. Unfortunately without Olivier in the party I dont know if its worth going forward in the series.
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To be specific, Campanella is still an enforcer and below an anguis in the hierarchy. Campanella just happens to be a special enforcer who reports directly to the Grandmaster.
Now, go play 3rd. It's so fucking peak.
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wtfNeedSignUp
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If we're on the topic of Rean hate, Crow deserves even more hatred. Dude basically kickstarted a civil war that (offscreen) killed a ton of people, but his crimes are constantly ignored because he was a friend of Rean so he can't be judged for whoopsies.
Even a more infamous case of shitty character getting sympathy like Akechi from Persona 5 is still objectively more moral than Crow, as he had actual reason to hate his father and somewhat of a plan to get to the point he could kill him.
Also the royal family in Cold Steel are retarded case of being portrayed entirely as dindus because... their daughter is a good person so her parents can't be evil? They had the say in every dick behaviour Erebonia did but somehow were forced to cooperate with it.
Even a more infamous case of shitty character getting sympathy like Akechi from Persona 5 is still objectively more moral than Crow, as he had actual reason to hate his father and somewhat of a plan to get to the point he could kill him.
Also the royal family in Cold Steel are retarded case of being portrayed entirely as dindus because... their daughter is a good person so her parents can't be evil? They had the say in every dick behaviour Erebonia did but somehow were forced to cooperate with it.
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It's a mixture of a case of the good people in Trails being super forgiving, only the most heinous of people (like Weissmann) get the evil villain treatment, a lot of the villain characters aren't allowed to be evil, or are being controlled by something or someone. Crow essentially played a part in rescuing the crown prince, and died immediately after his allegiance-switching. I dunno, how do you charge someone of crimes after they come back to life in the middle of this world chaos bullshit happening? If anything, the retarded thing would be Rean's naïve ass wanting to drag Crow back to school and "force him to graduate".
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The royal family have reasons for what they do, but I think this also just the Japanese culture of the devs bleeding coming through. Their own monarchy failed to stop similar events, but yet they remain revered.
I dunno, Erebonia has a weird sense of honor that pervades all of their games. It leads to irrational decisions, but it also kinda works towards better world building. They genuinely care far more about your intentions more than your actions and you do not see that as much in the countries.
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I don't hate Crow because of what he did, a villain doesn't need to be redeemable or relatable to be engaging or interesting. I hate the writers for having the thought of trying to redeem him at all, and because this fucker has cheated death TWICE two games in a row. Him staying dead after Coldsteel 2 and having him die peacefully under the lie that he settled the score with Osborne, when in reality he failed and his life's work was effectively meaningless would have been a fantastic tragedy that a character like Crow frankly deserves.
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- Dec 17, 2019
Like Flopper said, go into 3rd, you'll love that shit. For me the biggest is still the Weisman reveal, but yeah, my jaw fucking dropped in that moment as well. Rest of this post will be about later entries.
I love shitting on Rean, but leaving that aside. Crow... their whole bromance just feels so damn half cooked. why is Rean so ride and die for Crow? Because the plot demands it. As for the crown being super nice... well, Trails cannot have evil people anymore, I'm going to dump my takes on Kuro in the next paragraphs, but I continue to feel disappointed with Ouroboros, I like the characters, but I want them to FEEL dangerous, it's been ages since an Agnis or Enforcer has felt like an honest to god threat that you cannot bargain with.
Anywho
So, finally finished Kuro.
I finally did 2+2 and understood that Van is basically the same thing as McBurn, though I assume the later just embraced it and the former was not aware of anything and denied it anyway. So that was a nice twist, though all of the godslaying is really killing my immersion... Having an x dominion super badass in the same party as Quatro who constantly feels overwhelmed by everything and a 13 year old runt already was killing that. Would have been an awesome ending if it had just finished with Van doing his self exile and Kuro 2 was all about getting him back and linking it to the 8th genesis... which is another thing I missed. The patented Kiseki "ending with a twist". Except for the 8th genesis, everything was all happiness, sunshine and puppies. You would expect the church to be very fucking keen on now being aware that Van is a literal demon lord. Or the society would get a fucking kick out of this new information. But seems like everybody is just chilling. Go them I guess. Then again the whole "oh no, you guys are all over my office!" gag, I'm fine with the jokes about sweets and Aaron calling him old man, but the whole "I'm a loner!" schitk got tiresome.
The ending was rushed to high hell as well. Or at least it felt like it. In the middle of the Gerard fight we get the reveal that Van was a D;G guinea pig, ok great, but suddenly we have Quatro saying "OH, YOU AS WELL?!" and we got NOTHING before or after about this. I can only imagine Quatro was in a similar situation as Renne or Tio being fucked with by the cult, lost her parents, got adopted and for some random reason I'm still fucking waiting for why she started acting like a guy "for cover". And speaking of unresolved shit, I still really want to know what Rissete actually is, is she just a brain in a jar if not in her synthetic body? What absolutely destroyed her? And why the hell does Marduk let her do whatever she wants? Another thing that pissed me off was Elaine not being allowed to be in the ending. She's the character that most needed to see and address the whole Van situation, well, her and Kincaid, they are the 2 that should have been there pleading to him to not just fuck off like a coward again, that it was not his fault. Linking all of this to what is basically "friendly work mates" rubs me the wrong way.
Going into more theories. I just assume that all of the genesis are a fractured Septerrion of time that was made by Epstien. He did some similar bullshit to what Reverie did to get super advanced tech, but he managed to get it to stick which is basically the orbal revolution. Mare I'm thinking is the holy beast of Time. That Van is basically called the high demon lord of time also tells me that stuff is related. Also makes me think that Van being in Zemuria is not a recent event. Like I said before, I believe Van is like McBurn, probably got blasted into Zemuria at a much younger age, though being related to time, may have been frozen for god knows how long under the supervision of Mare till something happened, he stopped being frozen, ended in the orphanage of Oracion and the rest goes as it goes. Also, during the end credits, found it neat that Joerg was in the background during the ending slideshow around the Marduk people.
The game itself is... fine, very middle of the pack. Combat is the worst it's ever been in the series. Never bothered to engage with it. I still had people with lvl 1 orbments and gave 0 shits. I also noticed that either the game was VERY stingy with cash and sepith or I'm a dumbass, because I was barely able to keep up with equipment upgrades half the time. There was no loot in the form of weapons and armor either which hurt. I fucked up and sold all of my mirage sepith at one point thinking it was Mass, but even with that, I would have barely had enough sepith to open all slots and I never really bought any orbments. I fought everything in my way except during pandemonium since I was honestly done at the halfway point of that. Last boss nuked me with it's bullshit vanish mechanic and I just accepted the "retry and lower difficulty" for once since I just could care less about the mechanics of the game at that point. The only mildly fun thing in the game is Grendel, having a combo system for all of the characters could be something fresh and since arts are mostly ass outside of recovery now anyway (equipping everybody with Celestial and taking advantage of every instance of free spell was my clever little trick) would be a way to give some engagement. Really dislike what they did with orbments in general in this one.
Between what everyone says about Kuro 2 just being a nothing burger and how there wasn't much of a hook to anything with the ending of 1, it's the first real time in the series I'm not thinking "holy shit, I want to go to the next one".
I'm also very done with the kiseki thropes. Every single fucking time during pandemonium "oh shit, what a pickle, so much random trash came out of nowhere, oh X came and saved the moment!". Yes, I get it, these people are there and they will be doing shit, but just... skip it and let them instantly meet up, or something. And the society is so damn defanged "I'll talk even to the society, but not nutty fucks like you Melchior!". The fucking Oathbreaker just doesn't feel nearly as dangerous as Weisman or Novartis, yet he's supposed to feel wild and unpredictable.
Anywho... I've invested too much time in the series to just stop now and the global narrative is still engaging me, but the beat by beat is getting really tedious. I will definitely not touch Crimson Sin for at least half a year. This probably came off more bitter than I intended. I did enjoy the game, but there is also the reason why I took so long to play through Daybreak. Cold Steel may have been absolutely retarded for the most part, but it gave you more hooks to want to keep at it. Or maybe it's me just having less patience.
I finally did 2+2 and understood that Van is basically the same thing as McBurn, though I assume the later just embraced it and the former was not aware of anything and denied it anyway. So that was a nice twist, though all of the godslaying is really killing my immersion... Having an x dominion super badass in the same party as Quatro who constantly feels overwhelmed by everything and a 13 year old runt already was killing that. Would have been an awesome ending if it had just finished with Van doing his self exile and Kuro 2 was all about getting him back and linking it to the 8th genesis... which is another thing I missed. The patented Kiseki "ending with a twist". Except for the 8th genesis, everything was all happiness, sunshine and puppies. You would expect the church to be very fucking keen on now being aware that Van is a literal demon lord. Or the society would get a fucking kick out of this new information. But seems like everybody is just chilling. Go them I guess. Then again the whole "oh no, you guys are all over my office!" gag, I'm fine with the jokes about sweets and Aaron calling him old man, but the whole "I'm a loner!" schitk got tiresome.
The ending was rushed to high hell as well. Or at least it felt like it. In the middle of the Gerard fight we get the reveal that Van was a D;G guinea pig, ok great, but suddenly we have Quatro saying "OH, YOU AS WELL?!" and we got NOTHING before or after about this. I can only imagine Quatro was in a similar situation as Renne or Tio being fucked with by the cult, lost her parents, got adopted and for some random reason I'm still fucking waiting for why she started acting like a guy "for cover". And speaking of unresolved shit, I still really want to know what Rissete actually is, is she just a brain in a jar if not in her synthetic body? What absolutely destroyed her? And why the hell does Marduk let her do whatever she wants? Another thing that pissed me off was Elaine not being allowed to be in the ending. She's the character that most needed to see and address the whole Van situation, well, her and Kincaid, they are the 2 that should have been there pleading to him to not just fuck off like a coward again, that it was not his fault. Linking all of this to what is basically "friendly work mates" rubs me the wrong way.
Going into more theories. I just assume that all of the genesis are a fractured Septerrion of time that was made by Epstien. He did some similar bullshit to what Reverie did to get super advanced tech, but he managed to get it to stick which is basically the orbal revolution. Mare I'm thinking is the holy beast of Time. That Van is basically called the high demon lord of time also tells me that stuff is related. Also makes me think that Van being in Zemuria is not a recent event. Like I said before, I believe Van is like McBurn, probably got blasted into Zemuria at a much younger age, though being related to time, may have been frozen for god knows how long under the supervision of Mare till something happened, he stopped being frozen, ended in the orphanage of Oracion and the rest goes as it goes. Also, during the end credits, found it neat that Joerg was in the background during the ending slideshow around the Marduk people.
The game itself is... fine, very middle of the pack. Combat is the worst it's ever been in the series. Never bothered to engage with it. I still had people with lvl 1 orbments and gave 0 shits. I also noticed that either the game was VERY stingy with cash and sepith or I'm a dumbass, because I was barely able to keep up with equipment upgrades half the time. There was no loot in the form of weapons and armor either which hurt. I fucked up and sold all of my mirage sepith at one point thinking it was Mass, but even with that, I would have barely had enough sepith to open all slots and I never really bought any orbments. I fought everything in my way except during pandemonium since I was honestly done at the halfway point of that. Last boss nuked me with it's bullshit vanish mechanic and I just accepted the "retry and lower difficulty" for once since I just could care less about the mechanics of the game at that point. The only mildly fun thing in the game is Grendel, having a combo system for all of the characters could be something fresh and since arts are mostly ass outside of recovery now anyway (equipping everybody with Celestial and taking advantage of every instance of free spell was my clever little trick) would be a way to give some engagement. Really dislike what they did with orbments in general in this one.
Between what everyone says about Kuro 2 just being a nothing burger and how there wasn't much of a hook to anything with the ending of 1, it's the first real time in the series I'm not thinking "holy shit, I want to go to the next one".
I'm also very done with the kiseki thropes. Every single fucking time during pandemonium "oh shit, what a pickle, so much random trash came out of nowhere, oh X came and saved the moment!". Yes, I get it, these people are there and they will be doing shit, but just... skip it and let them instantly meet up, or something. And the society is so damn defanged "I'll talk even to the society, but not nutty fucks like you Melchior!". The fucking Oathbreaker just doesn't feel nearly as dangerous as Weisman or Novartis, yet he's supposed to feel wild and unpredictable.
Anywho... I've invested too much time in the series to just stop now and the global narrative is still engaging me, but the beat by beat is getting really tedious. I will definitely not touch Crimson Sin for at least half a year. This probably came off more bitter than I intended. I did enjoy the game, but there is also the reason why I took so long to play through Daybreak. Cold Steel may have been absolutely retarded for the most part, but it gave you more hooks to want to keep at it. Or maybe it's me just having less patience.
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wtfNeedSignUp
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At best it's them writing Osborne as defacto Shogun that makes all the big decisions while the imperial family are entirely figureheads. The issue is that they use Russian imagery where the royal family had the full control of the country. Osborne in general is a weirdass character because you'd think every non noble will adore him for managing to shut down the aristocracy, but it's never really brought up seriously.
That's a great observation. It's sad that Trails turned into a Reddit edgy series, you can't have tension from plot climax when boss encounters have the emotional gravitas of a stern talking to and no one ever gets hurt for his ideals. You can have villain characters (or god forbid, hero characters) be evil but still have a humanising side. Needing to brainwash them or have them intentionally lose makes you feel like nothing fucking matters in the plot besides making the heroes look good without any real opposing view.
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This is especially bad in Kuro 2/Daybreak 2 - It's like Falcom went "Okay, we can't have friends and allies fight each other as a test of strength, we've done that a bit too many times, I know, let's come up with a lazy, shitty, contrived reason for them to fight each other, just to mix things up. That's content, ship it."
Poop A Loop
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Totally agree. Trails is my favorite series ever but after seeing that we have at least 3 more games to go (Kuro 2, Kai, and whatever ties up Kai) I just can't handle anymore cliffhangers...
Kuro's also been my least favorite Trails game. It's still a solid 8/10 but I'd rank it below any and all of the previous Trails games so I'm not even that hyped for Kuro 2 anymore.
And because I think I was spoiled on the cliffhanger for Kai I can't bring myself to get excited for that game even though seeing all the cameos and plot devices I'd otherwise be hyped as fuck.
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- Feb 4, 2018
The transition from Zero/Azure to Cold Steel is also very jarring.
I get that Crossbell is the no-mans-land where the countries do nefarious things and that people do die in Cold Steel, but Crossbell outright just has people get brutally massacred and it actually means something because of how restrained people usually are with killing. Erebonia is hyped up as a place where life is cheaper and rules are more arbitrary, and that just does not pan out as much. Its still the case, but not really.
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- Dec 17, 2019
Haven't spoiled myself about Kai, only thing I know is that it's "big". I'll remain optimistic for now, but Kuro really drained me and I'm in no hurry to go into Kuro 2 knowing that it's such a slog. It took me like half a year to go through Kuro while all other games I'd say took me half the time (and I'm one of the autists that talks to every NPC except when playing Sky, so it's long playthroughs). Yes, there is also real life, but I just did not have that desire to pick it up and keep going. Azure on the other hand I played emulated on PSP since I wasn't aware of other options to do it and devoured it and Sky 2 I jump on like a fat man in a cake factory. Even Cold Steel I managed to keep a steady flow with all 4 games.
Don't know if it's just me being tired of the formula at this point, but even though I prefer Van and friends over Rean (and some of his friends), it felt like a bit of a chore. I really have to insist the combat system just feels worse. in this one compared to all of the other iterations and that really doesn't help.
I do kind of "disagree" on the cliffhanger part when it came to Kuro though. It just... ends. The rest for the most part gave me something to be interested going into the next one. Azure closed off Crossbell but the ending was such a "haha eat shit!" that I wanted to get into Cold Steel then and there to see how things eventually panned out. But at the end of Kuro I'm not thinking "whoa, I really want to figure out what's the deal with that final Genesis!".
Assuming it's really the same writer, I kind of get the impression that between Crossbell and Cold Steel, he overdosed on LN type works and really wanted to add a lot of the sloppy tropes found in the medium. We mostly identify it with Isekai, but I see so much of the self insert power fantasy in LN, be it Isekai or not. The world building itself is still great for the most part (though fuck the curse, it's a goddamn copout, Erebonia had legitimate reasons to go full Balkans yet there needed to be a narrative excuse to avoid it) but the beat by beat really took a hit in Cold Steel. It kind of recovered in some sense with Kuro, but it leans too much on the tropes that have been the staples of the franchise. And the whole "I'm neither good nor bad, I'm threading the line!" is kind of bullshit when the baddest people in the franchise feel like they would cry if they kicked a puppy by mistake. After a while Aaron had me rolling my eyes with his "x is a bitch, but a damn reliable ally!" or "x is a bitch, but got to respect their dedication!" and similar sort of dialogue, this is coming from our edgy youth. And well, I've bitched enough about how the Society feels very different now than in the first games and not exactly because I know what it's real deal is.
Anyway, it seems like I'm just bitching to bitch, I still very much enjoy the franchise, but I'm now in camp that they really should start closing it off and if Cold Steel could have been a duology, with Calvard being another one and then an additional game to close off the global plot would have been welcome. It's not like they can't do spinoff games of sorts once they close the main plot. I would love to see a game set fully in Arteria and full church shenanigans, but I don't need it linked to the core plot. Hell, the 3rd was basically already a spinoff if you ignore all of the setup from the doors.
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wtfNeedSignUp
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It's like with the better graphical fidelity the devs were far less willing to actually have violence in their games. I wouldn't be surprised if the remake of Sky is just as much censored. And yeah Steel should have been a lot more gritty considering what we were told about Erebonia, but it turns out to be as friendly as Liberal which is pretty bullshit.
The whole concept of needing to write a regional Satan figure to justify people there being pro war is absolutely bonkers. That plot point is just so lazy and non committing, taking away multiple characters motivations so to not make anyone look bad.
It was written before isekai took into effect, when battle harems were still the main genre of shlock, Rie Kugimiya appeared in fucking everything and the main consumers of anime were optimistic young adult rather than depressed 30+ year olds.
Those were the good days.
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But weren't Light Novels already a thing like 10 years ago? They seem like pure chuuni from the little I've seen and my god if Rean is not pure distilled chuuni.
wtfNeedSignUp
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There are isekai Light Novels (and a lot of other genres, it's basically YA novellas). And Rean is actually bordering on an Isekai protagonist levels of mary sue than the somewhat more balanced LNs battle couples (that at least had a group of protagonists and villains at around the same strength).
Reminds me, watching old video game OPs on a flight I forgot how Rean is so generic he looks the same as the Tears to Tiara 2 protagonist (recommended game):
Poop A Loop
kiwifarms.net
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I liked every cold steel game (outside of changing the harem to an actual set in stone romance) and don't have a problem with rean so I know my opinion is slop.
The Sky trilogy is still objectively the best of the series so my opinions aren't all bad at least.