Trails in the Sky SC:
OK, I'm gonna cover the negatives first, mostly because there aren't very many, and I want to make sure I remember them before I go all glurgy and weird over this game. My two biggest beefs with the game are that the Society, in general, are stupid villains. Their whole concept is bonkers, under-explained, and generally not great. A lot of what goes on in this game feels almost like it's completely no-selling the story and drama of the first game, and there's way too much "Nuh-UH" crap going on with these idiots just popping in, getting their butts whooped, saying they didn't really get their butts whooped, and then running off.
You have too many characters and not enough options to use them. This is kind of a mild complaint, given that part of why you WANT to use them is the characters tend to be cool and good. Especially in the last chapter where you have so many options, and can't really make proper use of them all. And then Zin goes and says "Naw, it'd be dumb to split up". Screw you, Zin. Give me my multi-parties.
Third drawback is the last 3-4 chapters feel completely different, on like, a conceptual level than the rest of the two games.
As for the good: uh.... everything else? Goddamn these games get you emotionally invested in seeing it out, and they're just overwhelmingly positive and full of good vibes and my heart grew three sizes that day and so on. This game went a giant step forward in rebalancing the characters, to the point where no one feels really bad, nor does any one person like Zin/Joshua in the first game stick out as obviously better than everyone else.
Estelle:
Let's remove any qualifiers that were left over after game one. Estelle Bright is the best JRPG lead of all time. Fuck you. Fight me. From the little details making her a bit more realistic than most depictions of characters her age, to the memetic Estelle Stare (....which she is aware of...) to a level of self-honesty that just is lacking in most protagonists in any media. Estelle Bright is a fantastic fucking character. The society wants to recruit her? Yeah, I buy that. This is a character that believably balances a huge, personal goal with her ongoing responsibilities. She very rightly evaluates her skills as "not enough" until you get to the end of the game and then rightly evaluates herself as "definitely more than enough". She has an unshakable, exceptional world-view, and the iron goddamn will to imprint that belief onto others. If the game, for some reason, let me, I would never remove Estelle from my party.
In battle, I again assume she sets the average, and assume she's supposed to be average, but given that she's the forced character, I gave her all the best stuff, so I think I'm probably skewing battle-power a bit high. That said, True Hurricane is objectively the correct way to start 90% of all fights in this game.
Analace:
Sure is a temp. Or is she? .....yeah, she's a temp.
Joshua:
Well, Joshua's characterization takes a firm nose-dive here, because that pitfall they avoided with him in game 1 is... uh... roughly the entire plot of the first half of game 2. So for most of the game (thankfully he's not in your party), Joshua is just a big, mopey doofus that god damn, I'm glad Estelle slapped sense into a few times. Once he uh... stops this... he's largely back to Joshua of game 1, only... not quite as good, because there's no time for a more light-hearted Joshua. Sorry, buddy. You were the ritual sacrifice to make everything/one else in this game really good. No hard feelings.
In combat, Joshua is more or less exactly the same as he was in the first game, only with better-than-average stats across the board. You'd think that this would keep him as game best, but... uh... everything got re-balanced, which is another giant positive for this game.
Agate:
Agate, in general, continues to be the goddamn man. At a couple of points in this game, he was even wrong about things, and also almost died from it at one point, which ought to be a big character negative, but once again, Trails' excellent writing comes to the rescue, and he just comes off fairly believably, and also, you can see for pretty much all of the early game where Estelle (...and yes, Tita)'s influence just generally makes him a better, more well-adjusted person. He's a lot more laid-back in this game, and is perfectly fine with giving Estelle a little bit of the reigns, and honestly, that's the mark of a decent teacher. Also, also? Agate's end-portrait states he's training the other Ravens to be Bracers. Good for them.
In combat, Agate takes a big jump from "Like Zin, only worse", to his own man. He's just, like, really strong, guys, and his one ability where he gives himself a full CP bar in exchange for his health is straight busted. I didn't abuse this nearly as much as I could have, but holy hell, Agate can basically just S-break any time he wants, and that's insanely good. I also got quite a bit of use out of Draguna edge being a long distance attack. (Same with Estelle's ...True Comet...? I just forgot to mention)
Scherazade:
Story wise, Schera seems even less interesting than she did in game one, which seems like it ought to be impossible. I'm not going to hold that too much against her, because I chose Agate as my partner for the first half of the game, and a lot of the little beats I liked for Agate were in those parts he was optional, so it seems pretty reasonable to assume Schera's characterization during those parts might be about as good. She also got the least interesting of the Society goons to be paired with, and honestly, EH to their whole story. In Schera's favor, however, when she was split with Analace, and Campenella blows up the dolls, her keeping cool while Analace melts down is an excellent story moment for both. Little details like this make me more confident that she's probably just fine, if you actually take her instead of Agate.
In combat, now, holy shit Schera took an upgrade in this game. Rather than being slightly below average at everything, she's suddenly slightly above average at everything, and also really above average at arts, which combine to make her really damn good. As far as crafts go, her one craft basically makes the rest of the team act immediately, and that is stupidly good. Schera has gone from bottom tier to someone I gave more than a moment's consideration as possibly the best in the game (and eventually placed as third, which is still pretty great in a cast this size).
Olivier:
Continues to be endlessly amusing, and just competent enough to not be campy on top of it. I liked the reveal and every distinct party member's reaction to it (particularly Agate's during, and Zin's after). I was miffed when he vanished before the first four fights with the enforcers, and that... that hurt me, man.
In combat..... Olivier is really weird. Early on, he's just as great as he was in the first game, but after he comes back, he's sort of nose-dived, and simply re-leveling him doesn't make up for it. By the time Olivier comes back, enemy defense has been re-balanced to where some of what made him exceptional in the first game and the first half of this game is negated. Sure, he can hit everything all the time, but can he actually damage it? Not really. Between being excellent at arts and early-game crafts though, he's just top of the heap while you have him, and then, ....god help me, I think he might be the worst character in the game (yes, I am counting Josette and Tita) when he comes back. That also hurts. Why do you hurt me, Olivier?
Tita:
I'll stick by what I said in the first game, in that Tita would be fine if she were a non-combat NPC like Dorothy. Despite disliking Tita on principle, like, her individual story beats are pretty good. I enjoyed everything with her and Agate. I enjoy her childish crush on Agate (so long as this is never reciprocated. Agate's what? 24 right now? Even if Tita is in her 20s in a later game, that'd be seriously fuckin' weird). I liked her being willing to stand in front of Loewe for Agate. It takes some balls to protect someone with nothing more than your body and your life and your hope that the guy isn't cold-blooded enough to cut a twelve year old in half to cut down someone else who is no longer a threat. It's still ridiculous and stupid that she has an Orbal Cannon.
In combat, Tita is quite a bit better in game one, just because her upgraded Vital Cannon is quite a lot of healing that runs off of renewable energy. It's nice to see the tech girl so environmentally friendly. It's still perfectly viable to give her a Death Orbment and use her multitarget physical to potentially deathblow chaff enemies. Some of her equips give her good defense, but her HP is still hot garbage.
Zin:
Zin... man. I'm irrationally mad at Zin being the guy that told me I wouldn't be able to split my party. Beyond that.... He's pretty much the same guy. Solid. Friendly. Kind of a goody-goody. Drinking buddies with Olivier. There's less "eye for the ladies" in this game than the first one, which, depending on point of view is either a positive (since this type can grate), or a negative (for taking away characterization). His interactions with Walter, while OK, mostly made me wish Kilika was a playable character. Maybe I like Chakram, OK?
Weirdly, while Zin is a much better duelist in this game (True Distend is stupidly good), he's probably gone down in use considerably given how much better various members of the cast have gotten (and the introduction of at least one newbie. Hi, Kevin). True Composure is a great skill that I got a lot of mileage out of, since most status-curing things cure a trivial amount of HP. True Distend, as said, is stupidly good, making his attacks do... ...not quite the damage you'd think, but more-or-less completely nullifying enemy physical damage. I'm vaguely curious how much Loewe could hit him for after using it. Loewe was smacking Agate and Joshua around for like, 4.5k damage a pop. I also wonder how much better I'd think Zin was if I'd given him an Action orbment. Like, a lot of my problem with him arises from being so goddamn slow, but as near as I can tell, speed is almost entirely determined by orbments and shoes (and one-or-two rare armors).
Kloe:
Still doesn't have much of a personality, really. Maybe even less of one than in the first game, which, again, is kind of impressive for the wrong reasons. Her interactions with Dunan were OK. It's nice to see her try to light a fire under her butt, but... man. It feels like they could have made her... Iunno. DO things. But any section I took her on, she was just sort of there. 90% of what she has to contribute to any conversation is a mild "Oh my!" ....................about partway thru the game, I decided that every time she said this, she was obviously and inappropriately turned on. Sexual Deviant Princess Kloe is much more interesting than what we got.
In battle, Kloe still shines, her S-craft remains insanely good (actually, it's way better, since it's like 15,000 healing and also a revive and it doesn't say on the tin, but it heals status, too.) Bird is still really good, but got nerfed, since it no longer does damage, too. Her arts are high, albeit sort of limited thanks to all the forced water (which largely doesn't benefit from a high stat). Nonetheless, she's one of the best characters in the game strictly because of her really amazing S craft. (....thinking on it, though, her having all the forced water kind of makes this whole thing redundant. She's already a great healer without it. She's basically forced into a box for her role. Imagine how good she'd be if she had more flexibility in her attack magic)
Kevin Graham:
Despite plot hints that he's a big deal, and despite knowing he's the protagonist of game 3, I still didn't see his last scene coming. Was badass as hell. Everything else Kevin does is pretty good. I could definitely see fans of the first game coming into this one and thinking of Kevin kind of as a Scrappy Doo character, and I can see being annoyed by his drawl. I like Kevin, though. I like that he seems to actually like Estelle, like, as a person. He starts out hitting on her, decides she's a lost cause because of how obviously in love she is with Joshua, decides to help, and makes a mental note to whoop Joshua's ass if he continues to be dumb. Kevin is a good friend. Kevin's VA is bad.
Kevin is probably the best character in the game. It was easy to manipulate what I thought was really bad STR into "quite decent" without making his oddly high defense suffer too badly. His ATS is really good. His actual crafts are disgustingly good. Kevin basically gives you a choice with his crafts, of either completely shutting down an enemy's offense, if you aim for his S-craft, or, if there's a lot of multi-target enemies or whatever, he can just give his CP to everyone else, and it's a trade that nets CP, assuming you hit at least two party members. This is somehow more broken than it sounds. I didn't use Kevin very much, but he completely locked down every major fight he was in.
Julia Schwarz:
JOIN ME EARLIER GOD DAMN YOU. I like Julia. She's fine. She had a random fight scene with Cassius for no reason. Her Temp abilities are not anywhere the same as her actual abilities when she joins. She looks like an anime version of a girl I have a crush on.
In battle..... Julia's disappointing. Her STR is a lot lower than it seems like it ought to be. Her crafts don't seem to be particularly useful, and.... well, that's kind of it, really. For as much as the first game hyped her, she needed to be something really special, and just wasn't.
Vander Mueller (....Mueller Vander? I swear it says both at one point):
Has a few fun moments, because he pairs with Olivier. Has a surprisingly intense fight with Joshua, which probably makes Joshua look better more than it makes him. I like that Olivier teases him about his immediate and obvious crush on Julia Schwarz, because of course this happened.
For super characters that join late, Vander actually feels more like what you'd expect. Nonetheless, he's... merely OK. His STR is notably higher than Schwarz's, but his individual crafts seem not so shit-hot. His Impede ability does zero damage and costs 40 CP, holy shit. I took all my swordsmen to fight Loewe, and didn't realize that was a point of no return, so Mueller was in my final party! He was just good enough to not lag behind the obviously better characters in battle. He was sadly kind of bland in regards to his interactions with Weissman and Loewe.
Josette Capua:
Join me earlier god damn you. Josette is fine. I like and feel bad for her. Her crush on Joshua is super-doomed from the start, and she and her brothers can't really hang with the rest of the cast and seemingly know it. She seems to exist to be heartbroken at every turn during the brief period you have her. Maybe she'll get some love in Game 3.
In battle, Josette made me furious by not having an S-craft, and then said S-craft not being very good once it's actually unlocked. (It needed to do a lot more damage. Or.... ...literally anything other than straight damage) Josette would be really valuable if you got her earlier, because Stampede is actually a good skill, albeit not as good as Bird. Her Anchor ability is a 100% faint on things that can be fainted, and holy shit, she'd be busted if you got access to her before essentially everything was immune to faint. God damn it.
Characterization ranks:
Estelle > (literally every JRPG Protagonist, fucking fight me)
Estelle >> Agate > Olivier >= Kevin > Josette >> Mueller > Tita >> Zin > Schera >> Joshua >> Kloe >= Julia
Battle ranks:
Kevin > Kloe > Schera > Agate >>> Olivier (early) > Joshua > Estelle > Zin > Mueller > Josette > Tita > Julia > Olivier (late)
