The GWJ JRPG Club - Q3 2020 - The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II

I am going a bit slow... but making progress nonetheless. Without much spoilers.. i just made it to the "north part" and reunited with a friend.

Malkroth wrote:

Wrapped up chapter 1 last night and all I have to say is (just in case anyone would consider this a spoiler):

Spoiler:

They sure do love their unwinnable fights in this one. Really trying to hammer home the point that Class VII is way out of their depth here. I am a little concerned on how they are going to bridge that power gap satisfyingly...

Yes, that is one thing I haven't loved, so far.

Spoiler:

Actually, I don't love that trope of unwinnable battles. It's a staple of some JRPGs but sometimes it seems like it undercuts dramatic tension by removing player agency.

They did convey through dialogue that the fight would be very hard and maybe unwinnable, but I wish they actually explicitly stated goals. A pop-up that said "survive for 40 turns," or the optional "reduce one enemy to HP critical" would have clarified what I was trying to do, and I think I would have enjoyed the fight more for it. Doing this would have been similar to CS1, which gave you optional goals during all those schoolhouse exam battles.

Continuing with LastSurprise.

Spoiler:

I agree. When you have one or two, it makes them iconic and unique, and can really make an enemy seem important. When the entire enemy side is introduced with basically an unwinnable fight, it instead makes me wonder how there is even a war going on. With this many super powered people on your side, why have you not just crushed all opposition?

As to your mechanics point, I agree that they should give you an explicit goal to work towards. I finally got my first S at the end of Part 3 because I completed an unknown battle objective. I thought I had been missing really hidden sidequests up to that point, but now realize I probably just missed a combat objective in each chapter that I was not told about.

Still stuck on that same unwinnable boss battle LastSurprise mentioned above in Act I. I tried a few times, and failed miserably. I think the problem is that I don't focus enough on healing, mostly on attacking. I'll give it a few more tries. If that doesn't work, well, I'll just kiss those 3APs goodbye and move on.

This morning, I made it to the end of Act 1, Part 2. Back in Ymir again, now with 6 of the 9 classmates, and about to head out for the last 3. Also, clearing this part of the game puts me on the pace I set for myself, to break the game down across 4 months -- because I remember 3 months not being enough, last time. So I think I'm going to take a break for a bit, try to play some shorter things, and come back in a week or two.

This time, I missed out on the AP from my fight against the two super-powered enemies. I think I was supposed to beat them both in 40 turns or less, but just beating them, period, was good enough for me.

Checking in @ 15 hours. Riding around on a horse and found 2 more classmates.

I'm taking this one a bit slow. I don't have a burning desire to go back to it each day, but I've been having a pleasant time playing for 30-60 minutes before bed each night. It still feels a bit slow, but the pacing is definitely better than the first game. The slow and relaxing pace can be frustrating, but treating it like a "winding down" activity has helped.

Few dotpoints:

  • I really like Claire. Not for any mechanical reason (though her freeze ability is quite nice), I just like her! Maybe it's because she's a bit older than the rest of the students, or maybe it's because she's just a badass military woman, but I've been using her in every battle
  • Millium's master quartz is teaching me the importance of positioning. I usually have her in my party at the front, she can soak up a lot of damage and reflect a spell if I'm lucky!
  • I'm not really using arts. They take so long to charge and don't seem as effective as crafts. I'm starting to wonder if I'm overlooking a powerful tool, or they really just aren't as good.

Anyway, hoping to breach 20 hours by next week. Should be easy enough!

Like Unicycle, I'm taking it slow. In fact I haven't played for a week. When I left our heroes they had just touched down in Legram, so I think that's the start of Ch 1 Act 3(?).

Unicycle - I use arts quite a bit, but only with some characters (Elliot, Alicia, Towal). They are really powerful once you install some quartz that support them. Outside of that, I also use arts to add another entry into the combat timeline when I need to bump a +50%HP bonus or something. It does feel a bit unbalanced though, having almost no use for the EP pool of the other party members.

I tried the boss battle at the end of A1P1 last night and, while I managed to keep all my characters alive, I failed to reach the 30% remaining HP target, and therefore missed out on the 3AP. I briefly considered restarting, but then the thought of having to go through that cutscene again, and doing the fight again, convinced me not to.

Since there is no data transfer between this and Cold Steel III, I have no regret. Even if there was data transfer, I don't know that I would care all that much (especially since, if I ever play III, it'll be on PC).

I should be able to reach the end of A1P1 either tonight or tomorrow. I'm a bit behind everyone else, but that's fine.

bobbywatson wrote:

I tried the boss battle at the end of A1P1 last night and, while I managed to keep all my characters alive, I failed to reach the 30% remaining HP target, and therefore missed out on the 3AP. I briefly considered restarting, but then the thought of having to go through that cutscene again, and doing the fight again, convinced me not to.

Since there is no data transfer between this and Cold Steel III, I have no regret. Even if there was data transfer, I don't know that I would care all that much (especially since, if I ever play III, it'll be on PC).

I should be able to reach the end of A1P1 either tonight or tomorrow. I'm a bit behind everyone else, but that's fine.

And, for what it's worth, I've read that you don't need all the AP to max out your rank.

LastSurprise wrote:
bobbywatson wrote:

I tried the boss battle at the end of A1P1 last night and, while I managed to keep all my characters alive, I failed to reach the 30% remaining HP target, and therefore missed out on the 3AP. I briefly considered restarting, but then the thought of having to go through that cutscene again, and doing the fight again, convinced me not to.

Since there is no data transfer between this and Cold Steel III, I have no regret. Even if there was data transfer, I don't know that I would care all that much (especially since, if I ever play III, it'll be on PC).

I should be able to reach the end of A1P1 either tonight or tomorrow. I'm a bit behind everyone else, but that's fine.

And, for what it's worth, I've read that you don't need all the AP to max out your rank.

I don't think you did in the first Cold Steel either. But if someone is going for the max rank, the amount of APs they can miss is pretty low.

I hope to make some good and decent progess on this week. I just found and reunited with 2 more classmates. And well had an interesting fight.

bobbywatson wrote:

I don't think you did in the first Cold Steel either. But if someone is going for the max rank, the amount of APs they can miss is pretty low.

Yeah, it definitely was low in the first game. In this game, I think I read that you can miss 15 or so, which is not a lot -- but maybe enough to allow for not kicking butt in those boss battles?

I haven't yet seen quests that award a variable amount of AP based on whether you complete it the "right" way or not. So, if that holds, that's different from CS1.

ComfortZone wrote:

Unicycle - I use arts quite a bit, but only with some characters (Elliot, Alicia, Towal). They are really powerful once you install some quartz that support them. Outside of that, I also use arts to add another entry into the combat timeline when I need to bump a +50%HP bonus or something. It does feel a bit unbalanced though, having almost no use for the EP pool of the other party members.

I found Arts really useful in the Act 1, Part 2 boss fight, where one of the bosses was able to throw up a physical barrier. I kept Elliot and Claire back, away from the fray, and just had them use arts on the two bosses. They did a good bit of damage. It also helped to use Arts that buffed my casting power (Fortuna, I think).

I definitely use Arts a lot less than Crafts, but I think that's in part because I almost never need Arts in random encounters. Between bonuses for initiating "advantage" encounters, Rean's Motivate, Rush & Burst attacks, and Overdrive, I have enough CP to use crafts almost all the time. So by the time I get to boss battles or major encounters, I think I'm primed not to be thinking of Arts as much. And I think that gets at some of what A_Unicycle points out: they seem less useful simply because the game almost trains me out of using them.

Arts are incredibly powerful on the characters designed to use them (Emma, Elliot, Alisa, and Jusis of Class VII and all the support characters also have really high ATS). Characters like Fie, Laura, and Gaius have such low ATS compared to their STR, that their crafts far out-perform any Arts they can use unless they are targeting a 200 weakness. Later in the game you get stronger arts with better targeting or status effects as well which really bumps their utility. As LastSuprise mentions, you rarely need arts for normal fights, basically just bosses and the "tough" enemies.

I think I mentioned earlier, but my STR based characters tend to have one or two attack arts then mostly support arts for buffing stats as those can really turn a boss fight.

Started up chapter 2 this weekend and got some new mechanics opened up to me. I am interested to see what everyone else's take on the mechanical nature of chapter 2 will be. Also Rean got a new craft that will either break the game or has me very worried about their balance intentions...

Forgot to report it on Monday, but I finished the first part of act I, and have now set foot in the Nord area. And since I have about 30 minutes available, I will go and play some right now! Probably won't progress all that much, but if I can get a chest or two, and maybe reach a destination, that's a good start.

Holy moly I am getting my butt kicked by the boss fight at the watchtower with the following two characters (not really spoiler but being careful).

Spoiler:

Bleublanc & Altina Orion

The latter is the one giving me trouble, they constantly apply a physical reflect buff and silence my casters. This makes it difficult to use my S-Crafts as they often hit both bosses and thus damage the user. The other guy isn't too much of an issue, but has a nasty habit of disabling my characters, requiring me to spend a turn curing them rather than healing.

I'm sure I'm just missing a few little bits of information. There are a *lot* of buffs/debuffs and different ways to approach fights. I'm loving the combat system, and rather than getting frustrated here, I'm excited to learn a little bit more. It's a genuinely great system!

I hear you! I think that fight was made even more difficult by the ambush encounter right before it; I had to drain CP from a couple characters to trigger S-Crafts and survive the ambush.

Overdrive will help if you can swing it. Not only does it allow you to use S-Crafts without incurring a big delay -- a benefit it took me a while to appreciate! -- but 3 back-to-back hits can help your S-Crafts bypass that physical reflect.

If you are having trouble with getting muted, consider switching one of the accessories on your casters to the one that prevents mute. That way they won't be prevented from casting arts when their turn comes around. I usually try and slap faint resist on my up close characters because being fainted means all attacks against you are crits which can quickly kill a character.

For that fight I believe I took the non-physical immune character out first since he applies so many status effects. Once he is out of the picture, your arts users can focus on the other one and use your physical characters to keep her buffing herself or healing with items/arts.

Ok, some progress made. I have no idea about many things. I never fully understood what Sepith is. I mostly suse crafts and have not used that much of arts.

I got a "maid" to join our team and we are back at Ymir. I am playing on easy mode to enjoy the story and be able to learn the ropes of the game So far so good but still very confused about the mechanics. I know I am playing totally wrong. I almost never "move" during battles and I just attack what I fell will do the most damage given the area.

Should I keep characters to a certain element? If so, how am I supposed to know this? For example they call someone the Ice mistress (or something along those lines) and well do I keep her with ice attacks? Can everyone be a healer?

I know, silly questions but still

Darkhaund, the only thing that matters is a character's STR or ATS. Characters with higher STR will do more damage with attacks and crafts, those with more ATS will deal more damage with Arts. In terms of elements, each enemy has different elemental weaknesses dealing anywhere from 0-200% damage. If you inspect an enemy you can see which elements are effective or not against them (and if it's not listed, which yellow, black, and white typically are not listed they do 100% damage).

Typically for STR characters I give them one or two attack arts then either buffs or stat enhancements. My ATS characters tend to try and cover as many elements as possible, so if a boss has a certain weakness, they can all hit it. On easy, you can probably just run 3 STR characters and focus purely on using crafts with a single arts user for buffing/healing.

I made it up to the "final mission" of Act 2 Part 2 over the weekend.

Spoiler:

This time we got contacted by Angelica and got a lead on Irina Reinford! Sounds like trouble is brewing in Roer, but since it's an Alliance stronghold, we can't just go in guns blazing like we did at the Twin Dragons Bridge, so we are going in secretly. Time to float down a river! I assume something will go terribly wrong and Valimar will be called in anyway, but I am excited to see where the story decides to go.

Ran into a blue chest for Alisa and Emma, I died before I could even act because the enemies have such high speed they got to take two turns before I got my first one. I may have to start it and immediately use the S-break jump-in function to have Emma wipe out the little guys.

Malkroth wrote:

Ran into a blue chest for Alisa and Emma, I died before I could even act because the enemies have such high speed they got to take two turns before I got my first one. I may have to start it and immediately use the S-break jump-in function to have Emma wipe out the little guys.

That has been my typical approach to those blue boxes (and also for the monsters-in-a-box chests): Just trigger and S-Craft right away to clean as many of the easy monsters as possible.

Also: I appreciate the fact that chests with monsters have a different design, that way I know what to expect when I see one.

As for a progress update: I finished the second part of act 1 this weekend. Haven't touched the game after that, but expect to play some more this week and hopefully finish Act I next weekend (since Monday is a holiday, otherwise I would push that to the next weekend). I missed the extra AP on the boss at the end of part II, but that's fine with me, since I gave up on reaching the maximum rank anyway.

Well, after about a week off, I jumped back in yesterday. I was right around where A_Unicycle, bobbywatson, and Darkhaund were, when they last posted: the beginning of Act 1, Part 3. I was on my way to Legram, and to be honest, with all the names thrown around in the first game, I didn't actually remember where Legram was. But when I got there, I was pleased to see it again -- it was one of the high points of CS1, for me.

Spoiler:

It's Laura's home, and now I've been reunited with Laura and Emma! By the way, I love their new outfits.

It felt really good to pick up the game again. A week off was just right, but I'm definitely excited to keep playing. A few random impressions from yesterday:

  • When reuniting with members of your class, it seems like the game goes all in on having a heartfelt connection between the new party members and Rean. But I've also noticed that your other party members don't say much in that moment, which feels weird. After all, they're all best friends, too -- and the game is not shy about giving everyone dialogue, elsewhere! I also noticed this in Act 1, Part 2 -- both in the field, and then when making it back to base camp at Ymir.
  • I really enjoyed the fog effect in Legram, which set the mood very well.
  • After the reunion, I encountered some new, high-ranking officials with the Noble Alliance. And man, more and more, I'm noticing how much this game (and maybe all of Cold Steel) goes in on the Authority Equals Asskicking trope.
  • I've noticed that the social links seem, at least a little bit, to track character relationships in the story, which is pretty cool:
    Spoiler:

    Emma is the only character to have started at link level 3 with Rean, and she's the one I picked to spend time with at the end of CS1. I also just noticed that Claire and Millium have link level 4 together, which makes sense because they worked together before Millium joined Class VII.

Won't post much since I'm battling a phone keyboard here, but I'm glad we are roughly at the same point. I was feeling quite behind as I resubbed to WoW and ALL of my time has been sucked into that!

Anyway, I visisted that same location and recruited some more of the gang. The stronger and more ~melee~ of which was my favourite character from CS1. Nice.

At this point I've just accepted that I don't remember any of the details of CS1. Factions? Locations? Relationships? Very few references to the first game are hitting home for me. I'm just enjoying the interactions between classmates and cruisy story at the moment. Maybe I'll re-read the wonderful summaries posted earlier, but at this point I'm just cruising through with a smile on my face.

Little update for me... I juts got into Legram.... still figuring out the game. I still have no clear idea who my healers should be. I guess it does not matter since I am playing in easy mode. The game has been interesting and i am sure I will finish it. Will try to make decent progress today! Btw.. there are ALOT of characters and NPCs hard to keep up with

There sure are! By the way, for anyone who was asking "what's the point of Arts?" I can tell you that the more ~wizardy~ of my two new characters hits exceptionally hard, and heals exceptionally well, with them. In a few random encounters, where (unbuffed) physical attackers could hit for around 1,000 per hit, this (unbuffed) caster could hit for around 6,000 per spell. Some of that was the result of elemental weaknesses, but still. And, her master quarts lets her recover a small amount of EP (MP) each turn. Her party-wide healing is pretty good, too.

I think I'll be using Arts more often.

I wonder if the lack of extra character interaction at the reunions is they do not know who you will be bringing to each part. In Part 1, they know it's only Rean and Torval. In Part 2, you are leaving 2-3 characters behind, and Part 3 only one party member is guaranteed to be there. They seem to have been more willing than other developers to write and record dialogue and it not end up being seen by players, but it may have been cut due to time and budget. I am not sure what it is, but the Japanese release has another drama CD for this game that the west never got.

Intermission! Act 1 is in the books.

I'll definitely have more to say here, soon, but I think I'm going to press on through the intermission tomorrow before writing up my thoughts.

Intermission thoughts:

Spoiler:

For being called an intermission, this chapter is actually quite packed with content. A lot of character development happens and story events that set the stage for the rest of the game happen here. I think it took me a few hours to play through, but none of that is filler. There is a very short Dungeon section, only like 3 screens and a handful of fights. We also get a couple more mysteries thrown in with the "mixed" and the Black Armory.

And I finished up the intermission, too! 2-3 hours sounds about right.

Nice work! I'm going to have to catch up this week!

Currently finding what I think is the last classmate, he's hiding within a very fancy city

Guess which idiot started a fight with a side quest monster and forgot to save just before, only to find he couldn't beat said monster, and now has to replay a solid hour?

<--- This idiot.

Oh well. At least I get to buy anti-faint accessories, hopefully.