What Games are you playing 2016?

[Fenrir]

Bummet. I expected the gameplay to be shallow but the writing to be worth it.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Scar: I'm pretty sure there's only three Trails games available in English: Trails in the Sky 1 and 2 (FC and SC respectively), both two parts of a single story and available on Steam (probably the preferred way to play them since only FC is available on PSP).

The third game is Trails of Cold Steel, which is basically unrelated, but has shiny 3D graphics. It has a sequel coming out in English sometime this year.

The other Trails games are unlikely to come out in English, and only one of them, the third Trails in the Sky game, really has anything to do with the others, sharing the same world and a few characters, though it's not nearly as interconnected as Trails in the Sky 1 & 2 are.

The "Trails series" itself is actually a spinoff of a larger series, "The Legend of Heroes" series, which are all basically unrelated (also crappy), and the 3 least-crappy entries of that 6-game series are available on PSP in English.

[Scar]

Guessing you aren't a fan. Heh

[Cmdr_King]

Djinn's someone inaccurate here.

All of the games are parts of the Legends of Heroes series, but are unrelated beyond token elements to previous entries.

Trails in the Sky and Trails in the Sky SC are as noted directly related, SC (short for Second Chapter) directly follows the first part.  There is another one, The Third, which is somewhere between sequel and spinoff that hasn't been translated, and may well never be unless XSeed just feels like eating financial loss.

There's a second set of games, Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki, which are set in the same world and most closely related to The Third from casual observation.  Like the Trails in the Sky games, they're PC/PSP titles so their likelihood of coming over is questionable at best.

The third set, Trails of Cold Steel, is set in the big bad empire during at least some portion of Trails in the Sky SC, about a group of nobles under the tutelage of one of TitS' party members.  It has two direct sequels, which based on some notes in the packaging of the first game are already under development over at XSeed.

[Niu]

I need to play these trails games.

The Internet is not providing me enough info of the ones we did not receive.

I need back stories!

You need spoilers? I am right here.

Trails series is a spin off of a spin off.
Legend of Heroes is a sub series that came out of Dragon Slayers series, and then Trail of Sky is really the Legend of Heroes 6.
Trail of Zero is LoH 7. They no longer use LoH title after that.

Sky 1-3 is the Gospel Project plot arc of Orpheus Final Project. Concerning the "Space" Septentrion.
1-2 is the main story. 3 handled the after math as well as setting up a lot of stuff for Zero/Ao and Sen (Cold Steel).

Ao/Zero is the "Phantom" portion of the Phantasmal Flame Project plot ark of Orpehus Final Project, dealing with the "Phantom" Septentrion, as well as the political dispute in Cross Bell state.

Sen (Cold Steel) 1-3 (3 is in development) deals with the Erebonia Empire Civil War and the "Flame" portion of Phantasmal Flame Project, which occurred at the same time with the events in Zero/Ao, thus making them tightly connected.

Civil War concluded in Sen 2, but the dispute in Cross Bell is still on going, as well as Phantasmal Flame Project.

I must add, the plot writing in Trails series is very infuriating in that the writer love to use the same truck againa and again. It is also worse than Xenosaga in the "I'll open alot of plot thread and throw difficult words at you but explain nothing" department.
It is almost a decade now, and we STILL don't have a proper explanation on Phantasmal Flame Project.
Serious, when ever the Apostles are going "Our plan worked!", the players are like "I don't get it, what happened!?"

[Scar]

I saw that sword of vermillion is part of this series?

Aren't all the games set in the same world Ala suikoden?

I guess I can just start with tits on my vita?

[AndrewRogue]

Pony Island: That was a game.

[Cmdr_King]

All the the Trails/Kiseki games are set in the same world.  The other Legends of Heroes games... some might be, but if so Falcom is somewhat coy about the matter.

[Niu]

I saw that sword of vermillion is part of this series?

Aren't all the games set in the same world Ala suikoden?

I guess I can just start with tits on my vita?

LoH1-2 is one world.
LoH 3-5 known as the Gagharv Triology, is another.
trials sereis are their own world too.

LoH1-2 are your super old school RPG. If you don't play them, you didn't miss much.
On the otherhand LoH3-5 are the one of the most praised series from Falcom. But do note the English localisation on PSP has known to be terrible.
LoH 4 Tears of Vermillion is the most controversial one, as all its later remakes has a different writer than the original DOS version. The new writter happens to be the same person who did Trails, aka all later version of LoH 4 suffers similiar problems in writing as Trials series.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

FF13-2 - Two years later, I decided to give this a whirl. The very first thing you get to see is Lightning in glorified chainmail bikini battle armor. I can tell this is off to a gloriously stupid journey.

[Hunter Sopko]

I saw that sword of vermillion is part of this series?

Aren't all the games set in the same world Ala suikoden?

I guess I can just start with tits on my vita?

LoH1-2 is one world.
LoH 3-5 known as the Gagharv Triology, is another.
trials sereis are their own world too.

LoH1-2 are your super old school RPG. If you don't play them, you didn't miss much.
On the otherhand LoH3-5 are the one of the most praised series from Falcom. But do note the English localisation on PSP has known to be terrible.
LoH 4 Tears of Vermillion is the most controversial one, as all its later remakes has a different writer than the original DOS version. The new writter happens to be the same person who did Trails, aka all later version of LoH 4 suffers similiar problems in writing as Trials series.

Wasn't there also a whole thing that for the Garghav Trilogy they released the third game as LoH2 here? And the second as LoH3?

[Niu]

I saw that sword of vermillion is part of this series?

Aren't all the games set in the same world Ala suikoden?

I guess I can just start with tits on my vita?

LoH1-2 is one world.
LoH 3-5 known as the Gagharv Triology, is another.
trials sereis are their own world too.

LoH1-2 are your super old school RPG. If you don't play them, you didn't miss much.
On the otherhand LoH3-5 are the one of the most praised series from Falcom. But do note the English localisation on PSP has known to be terrible.
LoH 4 Tears of Vermillion is the most controversial one, as all its later remakes has a different writer than the original DOS version. The new writter happens to be the same person who did Trails, aka all later version of LoH 4 suffers similiar problems in writing as Trials series.

Wasn't there also a whole thing that for the Garghav Trilogy they released the third game as LoH2 here? And the second as LoH3?

Original order is this:
LoH3 The White Hair Witch (chronoloigcaly the last)
LoH4 The Tear of Vermillion (chronoloigcaly the first)
LoH5 The Cage Song of Ocean (chronoloigcaly the second)

Then they change the order to this:

LoH3->LoH2
LoH4->LoH1
LoH5->LoH3

[DjinnAndTonic]

Guessing you aren't a fan. Heh

Actually, I am a huge fan of XSeeD's translations of Trails in the Sky 1 and 2. It's LoH that I'm not recommending to anyone.

Trails of Cold Steel I have no idea about. I had originally heard that it wasn't even connected to Sky, but Niu/CK have corrected me.

[Hunter Sopko]

Original order is this:
LoH3 The White Hair Witch (chronoloigcaly the last)
LoH4 The Tear of Vermillion (chronoloigcaly the first)
LoH5 The Cage Song of Ocean (chronoloigcaly the second)

Then they change the order to this:

LoH3->LoH2
LoH4->LoH1
LoH5->LoH3

That... sure is a thing.

[Fenrir]

I started Pocket Mortys and it seems really bland so far, and the dialogue isn't very clever either. It's rock paper scissors but when there are multiple Mortys to fight and you take one out, you get the option to switch and you don't see what type the next one is. Maybe there is a logic to it but that seems like a bit of an oversight. I have only gotten two badges and none of the skillsets are interesting right now so thus far it is aping the beginning part of Pokemon where all you have is tackle and a few shitty stat buffs. It might get better but I'm not so sure. I do think the designs of the different Ricks and Mortys are at least evocative of the show.

I got a bit farther and I largely agree. It stays Earlygame Pokemon forever, and there are only three attack animations: the buff one, the debuff one, and the attack one. Yes every damage attack has the same animation.

I think the writing is actually good, but the show hugely benefits from voice acting and pace and visuals which are absent here. The game should really have been fully voice acted? They did a Dota2 Rick and Morty announcer pack with one whole hour of voice acting. It would have been neat!

i like the changes out of battle compared to Pokemon (rare pokeballs, rng dungeons, fusion) but the battles stay boring.

The best part of the game was the first fusion I did: I fused a Morty with one cat with another Morty with one cat, and got a Morty with two cats. Amazing.

[The Duck]

I didn't see very much good writing so far, but again I am only like an hour in. I don't think a turned based RPG like this can duplicate the breakneck pace of the show and it certainly would require voice acting to have a similar impact. Maybe a crazy adventure game would work better?

[Fenrir]

There's not a whole lot of writing left afterwards. It's just dungeons.
Imagining Rick and Morty's reciting the lines in my head helped, I guess.


Friendly reminder that Dragon's Dogma PC has come out.
It is hugely flawed and amazing, probably my favourite non Souls big game of last gen. The worst thing about it was the 20 fps on console, it's gone now. I wish I had a good enough PC to run it / it came out on ps4.

[The Duck]

Definitely grabbing Dragon's Dogma again at some point. It is so badly or weirdly designed in some ways but I don't care. Playing it smoothly should be great and it does look really good on PC. The game has some of the best large enemy battles I've seen.

[Captain K]

Blade and Soul is live!  I'm gonna play for 48 hours straight and die like a Korean in an internet café.

[Meeplelard]

FF13-2 - Two years later, I decided to give this a whirl. The very first thing you get to see is Lightning in glorified chainmail bikini battle armor. I can tell this is off to a gloriously stupid journey.

To be fair, Lightning at least looks half decent when dressed as a Valkyrie, unlike whatever the heck that Not-Future-Armor-BUt-It-is-except-it-isn't-OHLOOKATALLTHE CLOTHTHATLOOKSGOODRIGHT!? outfit she wears in Lightning Returns.

And while it's gloriously stupid, at least FF13-2 had something resembling a budget when it comes to cutscenes...as in, characters do things other than stand around talking.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

It's entertaining so far regardless. I'm not sure how I feel about the less transparent Crystarium mechanics (in fact, FF13-2 being generally more opaque than its predecessor feels like a trend), but the gameplay bases set by FF13 are definitely enough to carry a second game, at least.

[AndrewRogue]

Played Heroes of the Storm with Ash a bunch last night. Us two vs AI only.

Pretty much confirms what I thought: I like MOBAs and League is my peak for complexity. Actually had quite a bit of fun. Reduction of overhead (talents only) isn't too big a deal, though I do miss some things. Champ pool is definitely shallower. Map agendas being largely different is nice. Also playing with Ash is fun.

Not a League killer for me, but still fun.

[Fudozukushi]

It's a Titan Killer at least.

[Fenrir]

Invisible Inc: Finished on Expert mode. It's hard!! I don't think I'm ready for Expert +. Maybe with an OP team like Xu + Internationale?

My team this time was Archive Banks + Regular Prism.
Archive Banks comes with a chip that gives $$$ instead of PWR from PWR computers. Prism compensates by passively giving more PWR. I invested all my money into Banks' sweet hacking skills and got super rich super quick. This works really well! I could buy a lot of items (My best items were a 2AP / 2 bullets gun, a Flurry gun, a door trap, a cloak, and an implant that stuns nearby enemies when you use a cloak) and I could raise everybody's speed stat to 4 or 5.

I rescued Internationale and Sharp. Sharp died to robots in the second to last mission. They were everywhere.

I got immensely lucky in the last mission, I got a door trap to hit the 7 or so guards that were blocking the way. (1 enemy = easy if you have ranged amage, tricky if not. 2 is difficult to handle, 3 is almost impossible. There were 7)
Every character was running like mad, triggering all the alerts. It was a terrible plan. I really didn't think I'd win.

[Captain K]

Have you tried Prime World Andrew?  It's a neat twist on the MOBA genre.  Problem is servers are in Russia and so is 90% of the playerbase.