Trails of Cold Steel II
Still good, but still not quite as cold in its steel as I'd prefer. Example: A major villain does a very bad thing with a personal touch to Rean and his family early in CS2. (Duke Albarea sending Jaegers to randomly shoot up Ymir and try to capture Alfin & Elise, injuring Baron & Lady Schwarzer, and indirectly still leading to their capture.) Rean reacts furiously at the time, hulking out and going into a murderous rage until he can be calmed down. So... the game clearly expects us to acknowledge that this was a *serious* affront, and it's still a quest that needs fixing. I recently ran into said villain, and... Rean... didn't have much to say? Charitably, Rean was busy with other problems like enemy giant robots, and we can pretend that said villain was much better guarded than it appeared so that Weltall couldn't just lean over and kidnap *him*, but still. I'd want to f*&k him up! Even if Rean has regained restraint and is cooly rational about the problem now, aren't you interested in at least trying to mess with said villain solely as a means to an end to get your kidnapped sister back? There's proper, non-revenge related reasons to want to threaten / coerce this dude.
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Gameplay notes:
Nord Shrine randobosses:
The Donald Trump strategy of spamming "Speak Lies." Only a 5-7HKO, so no big deal, right? Well... except it's full MT and applies Sleep at a good rate and there's 3 of them. If they keep it up, Elliot can't outheal them. Luckily, they eventually stop the spam, and they're not SUPER tanky, but that was still exciting and close.
Bleublanc & Black Rabbit:
First and only boss battle I didn't deploy Rean for. There's a forced-ambush right before by soldiers who are frail but with reasonably badass offense, and Rean had to blow his S-Craft before dying to win, and 0 CP Rean didn't seem a super-inspiring choice for the fight. I'm not sure he'd have been the best fit anyway, amusingly enough. Ran Gaius / Alisa / Claire / Elliot instead, with Gaius having the Gladiator Headband. While physicals are still meh in CS2, Gaius can troll by front-lining with Insight while building CP for ults, and spam CHrono Drive to keep everyone nicely sped up. Alisa helps fuel everyone up with CP and Insight for dodginess with Heavenly Gift, Fortuna, and occasional offense/healing. Elliot has buffs but is mostly about actually killing shit with magic. Claire just uses Inspiring Leadershp on cooldown for speed-ups and buffs. Done right, the buff parade is way too much to handle. Bleublanc at least *tries*, having status attached to his attacks, debuffs, and can summon more crap to force an S-Craft out of me. Black Rabbit just spams physicals at Gaius who dodges most of them? I kept getting worried about S-Crafts after I brought them low, but they seem to have forgot how to do that, or are "holding back" or some crap. Tsk, Reno & Rude used 'em. After Rabbit falls, it's all over. Don't get close to getting the AP bonus for winning fast, though.
Legram / Bareahard randoms:
You know, they could at least *pretend* to try since they give you super-meido for this part. Maybe double the number of enemies, or more HP? I stuck Gladiator Belt & Headband on Sharon and speed-boosting Orbments, so yeah, repeat "This won't take long, Shadow Stitch!" a lot. For those that haven't played, it's a 2x hit craft to a huge area that has a huge speed and movement debuff attached, and each hit has a 30% chance of Nightmare, a 30% chance of a random status, and all the status Orbments for another 10 or 20% chance per (I think I had Sleep & Burn). This is pretty much gg. On the off chance a crippled, no movement, slowed enemy isn't horribly statused, she can just use it again next turn. Which will be fast because she's a speedster. Yeah. This goes for the treasure chest randoms too, who stand no better chance of surviving unstatused.
Superbadass ape near Legram:
And... random uber-badass boss despite having an Enforcer on the team that's more of a threat than anything else?! wut. Anyway this ape is extremely tanky (like ~120K HP), has a move that heals himself for quite a bit (~17k) *and* buffs Str, Def, and Spd. FOr 5 turns. If he does it again before it runs out, the buffs refresh and stack, so we're talking +50% Spd and +50%Atk for utter SMASH. His physicals hurt a ton and can inflict Faint, and he has a charge-up supermove, Knockout, which hits an area for massive damage (OHKO if he's buffed) and guaranteed Faint if you don't immune it. Very monodimensional, but he has what a Trails boss needs to succeed: enough bulk to withstand an S-Craft blitz, healing to require me to set up a sustained, buffed offense, and strong offense of his own. In fact... he was TOO badass. He wiped me like 3 times until I went back with some more Faint-resistance gear (only enough for 2 characters, although I suppose I could go to the shop to buy more if I really needed to), and even then, his offense was too much. I got him low, and it was then clear that all hope was lost. Except... except... huh?
That's right, I accidentally cheesed the boss with a strategy perhaps better known from Lunar 2: the CORPSE BLOCKADE. Because he's short-range only, Alisa hid behind Rean & Emma's cooling bodies. It'd obviously be ridiculous and disrespectful to step over the dead, so Mr. Ape could only watch in frustration as Alisa buffed up then threw fire magic at him constantly, and solo'd the fight. If he'd spammed healing harder, that would outrace my damage, but he doesn't, and he can't hurt Alisa anymore, so... gg.
Legram shrine boss:
Haha HP sucks too much, die to S-Crafts suckers. (Taken in TOTAL, their HP is fine, but splitting it across 3 of them, well. Most S-Crafts have enough range to hit 'em all at once.)
Stahlritter & Pyro:
MT Insight from Alisa once more saves the day. Along with Jusis shouting at everyone as usual, Noble COmmand kinda broke. Pyro's fire blasts count as physical attacks, and while they're pretty good (area-3HKO off great speed), they get evaded a lot once Insight is up. Stahlritter is a bit frailer than Ape (~90K HP) and doesn't have healing, so Noble-Command buffed S-Crafts finish her off pretty decisively. I even survive Pyro's All-Cancel cheaty 20K damage attacks phase for a bit thanks to Alisa's Angel.
Divine Knight battles:
Are still lame. In Cold Steel I, the one relevant DK battle was insanely difficult, so clearly they overreacted. You can't possibly lose them unless you are truly asleep at the switch. Not sure how these could be sanely balanced though anyway, forcing your co-pilot to spam healing would be lame too as then all co-pilots would be identical. Oh well. Giant robots just not quite my thing I guess.
