SatelliteOfLove
Member
Good tropey characters use tropes, bad tropey characters are used BY tropes.
Is this what I think it is? Has the end half hour of a Trails game scored another Thirster?
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel |OT| Class Warfare
- Thread starter Dandy Crocodile
- Start date
Good tropey characters use tropes, bad tropey characters are used BY tropes.
Is this what I think it is? Has the end half hour of a Trails game scored another Thirster?
It says estimated delivery is Sept 8. I should just ignore that?
Mind expanding on that? Examples? I'm sure this sounded great in your head, but it doesn't really say anything to me.
I wanted to use a new payment method and did 2 day with Prime and it still said Sept 8 for me too. I'm gonna play it safe with my original order. Perhaps they are running low on copies and are awaiting another shipment? I don't know, but I'm gonna play it safe. It could be updated, but Amazon has rarely lied to me about the delivery, even when it's not ideal.
Cornbread78
Member
Umm, yeah.. to say the least..
Yes, I'm not completely done yet and I have to wait a little bit before,I can play again.
This is nuts.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Que?
Scrooge McDuck
Member
Every time a friend of mine reached that last stretch of the story, I'd always be the annoying friend who go "GIVE ME PLAY-BY-PLAY UPDATES OF YOUR FEELINGS".
This and the fact that
were really a one-two punch combo of disappointments.
This and the fact that
his duet with Machias has no voice
BBPunjabi816
Member
Well, just got this from the PSN sale this week. Let's see how this goes!
It took me ~95 hours.
Good characters have their tropes explained, as such the tropes are constituents to define who they are. Meanwhile bad characters usually used tropes for its own sake, reducing them into their tropes and defined by it instead the other way around.
To put it simply:
Good character is happened to be tsundere
Bad character is tsundere
Looking at CS cast and the usual Falcom handling of their Trails characters, they must've intentionally make their character looked tropey as possible only later to fleshed them out more.
Basically, I think he means that all characters are tropes. But a good character is developed and fleshed out past the characteristics of their defining trope at the beginning, while bad characters simply embody that trope and little else. It's why it's easy to write off Alisa as a tsundere if you play 2 hours of the game, but she's far more than that as you play the game.
Edit: and beaten by the original poster, oh well.
Dandy Crocodile
Member
Better than probably any other JRPGs right now.
Not very grindy, no backtracking. In fact for the most part when you finish a field study/area you don't return for the rest of the game.
Barring technically going back to the old schoolhouse of course, but even then it's new each time.
Cornbread78
Member
It's not grindy at all and they don't really backtrack at all. Characters are prety damn good if you ask me.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
The story and characters are excellent. They're generally considered the main point of interest in all of the Trails titles. And I don't just mean the main cast. Every NPC in the various towns are interesting characters themselves, with dialogue that changes after every story event.
The game is not grindy at all. In fact, the experience system is specifically set up to discourage grinding. Characters will gain experience points based on their level, so underleveled characters will catch up quickly (which is handy if the story requires you to use a character who you had neglected before), and overleveled characters will get virtually no experience points at all.
There's also not much backtracking at all. You're usually confined to a single region (a city and a few highways, with maybe one or two other points of interest) for a period of the game, and you're just exploring that region. Once that chapter is over, you're out of that region and aren't going back.
I'll just preface this by saying that if we want to enter the world of tropes, there probably even isn't such a thing as non-tropey character or they are extremely rare. All characters represent one trope or another (and can probably be argued to fall under several different tropes). And on the other hand reducing characters to their most dominating trope(s) is often kind of... Well, reductivist and doesn't really do much good for more indepth discussions & analyzes. It's about classification. People love to classify things, even if those classifications can often simplify things a bit too much. It can help in describing things quickly, but usually there's more to everything than that.
That said, in general, I feel a good tropeish character is one that isn't completely one-noted and ruled by the trope that he/she represents. The story either studies the tropey character from different angles & in different situations and/or good tropeish characters can and do develop beyond their trope and even initially have more going to them than their most dominating trope traits would suggest. Complexity & history/context is the key. Humans are complex beings. The class clown usually has more going in his/her life and inside his/her head no matter if he acts like a clown most of the time. The trope needs to make sense.
Bad tropey characters... Well, often it's just a very one-sided character who never really evolves during the story. Some are ones that can represent some deplorable character type while the story treats that as ok or doesn't treat it with the skill & subtlety required or doesn't give context to such characters. Stuff like racist or sexist characters are bad if the story acts as if it's totally fun and super and doesn't really have any connection to the themes & overall story.
That's not to say all racist characters are bad, but racist characters need to be portrayed with some realism, depth and/or insight and make sense in the context of the world/story. Otherwise those characters are there to say racist stuff just because and don't bring anything worthwhile to the narrative/message of the story/whatever. Why is that character a racist, what does that racist say about the world of the story, how does the society in the story respond to racism, what kind of issues might racism cause to the protagonists of the story and how do they overcome it or respond to it etc. The answers to those kinds question are what makes it interesting.
It's really not about liking or not liking characters. People can like a bad racist tropey character but that doesn't make that character a good tropey character. For example, a certain pervy grandpa from Trails of Cold Steel. Some people might find his sexist antics funny, but sexism is objectively bad and so them liking that does not affect the fact that it's a bad character trope.
I'd personally say Angelica falls under a similar-ish bad character type. If someone acted like she does towards my soon to be 14 year old godson, I'd seriously have to fight the urge to kick their ass (and I'm a pacifist). No one in their right mind would say those kinds of things to a 13-14 year old IRL and in no scenario would everyone just laugh it off. Yet Trails of Cold Steel treats that as if it was a hoot. Haha! Look at this borderline paedophile say she'd fuck a 14 year old! How cool is that!?
Of course actual comedy can have a bit of leeway with playing around with some outrageously racist & sexist tropes IF there is something meaningful behind it (usually pointing out the absurdity, hypocricy and/or silly contradictions of some racists or sexist ideologies).
This is extremely unlikely, given just how arduous making any English version of a Trails game is. Honestly, given how sizable and extensive the work involved is, if we didn't have XSeed to do it for us, I rather doubt that anyone else would have bothered.
Fortunately, I'm feeling reasonably optimistic that Zero and Azure could happen (at the very least, we would likely see the former far sooner than Cold Steel III).
SolVanderlyn
Thanos acquires the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet in The Avengers: Infinity War, but loses when all the superheroes team up together to stop him.
Actually, a fan translation for Zero is apparently being released within the next few months. The quality of the translation remains to be seen, however. There's also subtitled videos of the first few hours of Zero on Youtube right now.
Oh? Hm, I suppose I underestimated just how much time and sheer dedication some would have to taking on something so massive for free then. I stand corrected. Should be interesting to see just how their work compares to XSeed's, if nothing else.
Considering they didn't consider consulting with someone familiar with the other games to be a high priority, I'm not hopeful.
Very unfortunate, then. Trails deserves much better than that, especially given how highly the Crossbell games in particular seem to be regarded.
~100 hours, nightmare playthrough though, so I had to grind here and there a bit, but not too much. Game is really easy.
I mean, no offense, but your reply is the definition of "look how clever I am by distilling a long reply into one short sentence that doesn't actually explain what I mean but sounds very clever" lol.
I figured it would probably be something like this, In which case I'm going to have to agree to disagree.
Semantics, but when a character that's mainly built around one, two or three easily recognizable tropes is tropey, and other that starts out the same way but gets fleshed out through character development is also tropey, the word loses all meaning. You can take out the word tropey and nothing changes. Like Shengar's reply shows:
He doesn't even say 'good tropey characters' or 'bad tropey characters'. Drops the tropey part right off.
You're all replying to the question "what's the difference between good and bad characters", not the one I posted. I know the difference between good characters and bad characters, I was specifically asking what the difference between good "tropey" characters and bad "tropey" characters is from the people who use the word tropey as criticism. Because it makes no sense.
I think Korigama on the last page put it pretty eloquently (so eloquently, in fact, that I had to read it twice or thrice to understand what he meant lol)
See FAQ: https://gu4n.github.io/cs2/
Cold Steel II has no major framedrops during gameplay segments unlike it's predecessors.
Yu Narukami
Member
You got a review copy right? Where will your review be posted?
Stronginthearm
Member
The price for Trails in the Sky SC is 26.99 on the eu psn, is that its normal price? I'd like to play it, but I don't want to buy it only for it to go on sale (knowing my luck).
SatelliteOfLove
Member
You didnt ask for my Stumpakapow-level deep thought answer. I didnt ask for inexplicable tone problems.
I mean, would you elaborate after that post? C'mon.
DrROBschiz
Member
The difference between good and bad characters?
Growth, writing, logic, surprises, satisfying interactions
Estelle gets these in spades... Rean does not
Feels like a structural issue
Growth, writing, logic, surprises, satisfying interactions
Estelle gets these in spades... Rean does not
Feels like a structural issue
All I'm doing is calling out your weird 'all style, no substance' one-liner that added nothing but confusion to the discussion. I'm not sure what sort of a reply you expected after posting something as vague and easily misunderstood/misconstrued as that.
And of course I would've and I'm sure you'll find examples in my post history if you really want to seek for them, but you're right, I was too hostile.
Dandy Crocodile
Member
No, you would need the US version of the second.
UNLESS you are getting both copies on the PS3 (US CS1, EU CS2) in which case you could edit the region of your save.
skLaFarebear
Member
Not entirely sure of the conversion, but Trails SC did launch for $30, so I believe so. It has gone on sale a few times recently and i wouldn't be surprised if it did again soon, so if you wanna wait for a sale you should probably hold off for a bit.
For reference, i personally believe the game is easily worth the pricetag it launched at and more.
Cornbread78
Member
I have to redo the entire ending battle again since I forgot to change up my quartz and replentish my CP before going into battle. Rookie mistake despite
reminding me before I left dammit. Gonna have to wait until tonight now, lol.
Towa
Scrooge McDuck
Member
Just out of curiousity, how many DLCs this game has they didn't get to the West? The official site lists these store-exclusive uniform recolors. Are there any more?
Just out of curiousity, how many DLCs this game has they didn't get to the West? The official site lists these store-exclusive uniform recolors. Are there any more?
Damn I didn't even know about these! They look awesome, shame we didn't get them.
Novel Mike
Member
Just out of curiousity, how many DLCs this game has they didn't get to the West? The official site lists these store-exclusive uniform recolors. Are there any more?
Oh damn those are awesome, would have easily bought the black/yellow set.
Edit: Also my Emma CS2 key chain I won from the XSEED twitter content came today!
Hikami
Member
anyone doing this https://twitter.com/XSEEDGames/status/771891711186305024
Is it actually going to be released in the first few months? I thought they were absolutely nowhere near finished, and the game is huge.
Dandy Crocodile
Member
Planning on it!
Hikami
Member
Planning on it!
I haven't drawn in like 2+ years
This just got me to go dig out my tablet out of the closet. Probably lost my touch but oh well, I gotta try to get these keychains.
edit: Pen is kinda broken/not responding. RIP keychain dreams maybe
Just out of curiousity, how many DLCs this game has they didn't get to the West? The official site lists these store-exclusive uniform recolors. Are there any more?
The top ones look hilarious
Would've loved to have everyone wear tacky stripes during the more dramatic moments of the story
Crimsonsky
Member
Besides the referee uniforms they look like pallet swaps to me. Kinda glad we didn't get them.
Pretty good video on Trails series world-building
Shut out to Endless History for bringing it to my attention. Contains some spoilers for Cold Steel 1 endgame, so watch at your own risk if you haven't completed it yet.
The 'indie' thing is already dealt with in the comments, no need to bring it up here.
Shut out to Endless History for bringing it to my attention. Contains some spoilers for Cold Steel 1 endgame, so watch at your own risk if you haven't completed it yet.
The 'indie' thing is already dealt with in the comments, no need to bring it up here.
Clerk uniforms, actually. A collaboration with a convenience store chain called Lawson. Either way, I would agree that not getting any of those isn't a big deal.
Ultimadrago
Member
I wouldn't mind if CS2 had better DLC outfits than CS1. I was actually looking forward to picking up the Casual Outfits when I read about them, but then I saw them...