JRPGs |OT| The Grind to Level 99 is Paved With Good Intentions

Should be able to finally beat Kuro no Kiseki II tonight. On the final dungeon now.

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Lol! Nice combination

Should have gotten some aquafresh to really stay true to the meme lol.

Final boss fight of Kuro 2! That was a great fight and definitely in the top Trails final bosses!

The battle suddenly switches to real time here. It caught me off guard lol. Thankfully he’s actually easy to dodge.

What follows the first phase is a boss rush of many major bosses from Kuro 1 and 2. This is REALLY fucking hard on Nightmare difficulty, glad I got through it.

To finish it off we got the OP theme of the game playing for the final phase and then Van actually REVERSING the boss’s S-craft and finishing him off!

Anyway, one ending and credits sequence later…

(I think she ate Van’s sweets or something, lol)

THE END!!! And it only took ~230 hours to get here :sweat_smile:

The game actually isn’t over though. Now there’s a postgame story to do that was added in an update. Some classic characters join the party to help out here

I will give a final verdict on this game after finishing this postgame story. For now, I’ll just say I did not like it as much as Kuro 1 for various reasons. Still a great game but left a little to be desired.

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From the Xbox era podcast rumourmill: Nick said ys8 is coming to gamepass.

Hopefully this is the start of more falcom games coming to Xbox.

Maybe the trails series next.

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HE SAID THAT?

I’LL GO FUCKING INSANE (IN A POSTIVE WAY) IF THAT HAPPENS

DOUBLY SO IF THIS MEANS THE KURO NO KISEKI GAMES ARE COMING TO XBOX WHEN THEY GET THEIR WESTERN RELEASE

deep breaths

Anyway…

With the Post-Game story done… I. Am. DONE OF KURO NO KISEKI 2! Semi-big story bomb dropped at the end there and I’m extremely interested to see where that’s going.

With that done, I give this game a 8/10 (I gave Kuro 1 9/10 for comparison)

Let’s start with the negatives: The variety of locations you visit compared to Kuro 1 is SEVERELY lacking. 70% of the game takes place in the capital of Calvard, Edith (which is also in Kuro 1 so it isn’t that special). In Kuro 1 you go on many trips all around Calvard and see lots of locations, I was hoping to see even more in Kuro 2, but you only get to see like, one new city.

The story was also great up until Act 3… Then it hit a hard wall for a long while. There’s a certain gimmick in the story that is quite interesting until this point… Act 3 takes the gimmick and overuses it to hell and just grinds the story to a halt to use it, the story stops until the end of Act 3, basically. It was pure padding, and usually I don’t mind Trails padding as it’s basically a series staple, but this one was just bad.

But again, there was MANY great moments in this game (especially if you’re a Renne fan), and the “animated” cutscenes are some of the best work I’ve seen in a JRPG, I seriously cannot believe the animation in those comes from the same Falcom that made the robotic, stiff Trails of Cold Steel series.

The overall narrative of the series basically did not move either, which is quite disappointing considering this game takes place in the year that Falcom has been building up to since 2018’s Cold Steel IV, which gave big impressions during the prerelease. I suppose Kuro Final Chapter will also take place in this year.

Another complaint is that we didn’t learn anything else about Van’s backstory. Kuro 1 ends with a massive revelation about him and then Kuro 2 just did not elaborate at all. While I do really like his character, in Kuro 2 he -kind of- just felt like some tough guy who was leading the party and that was it.

Soundtrack is actually quite a bit stronger than Kuro 1, which is a game that I felt had the weakest Trails soundtrack. Final boss theme is very strong.

The gameplay is on point as usual, I played through on Nightmare and had a great time. I really like Kuro’s Action/Turn-Based hybrid gameplay, and Kuro 2 basically just refined it. There is of course, also a decent postgame to play where you can grind to your heart’s content. There are also tons of minigames to play (Kuro 1 had no postgame and no minigames which made it feel like a barebones game) and there are quite a few interesting NPC stories to follow here.

To conclude, I LOVE the Kuro no Kiseki party cast, it’s gotta be one of my favorite JRPG casts ever. With strong characters and great gameplay and music, I was very pleased as usual with this game. But the story left a bit to be desired, and I say it as someone who likes the stories in the Trails of Cold Steel arc. Again, 8/10.

I assume Kuro no Kiseki Final Chapter will be Falcom’s 2024 game… I’ll be waiting patiently. This is the first time since starting Trails in the Sky FC in 2020 where there is no currently announced (it’s basically not announced anyway) Trails game to look forward to for me. If they start bringing the games to Xbox then it looks like I’ll have something to do with Trails to hold me over till then lol.

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Yeh he said that. Still a rumour, but hopefully it’s true. Falcom takes too long bringing its games to the west. They are missing out in ez money.

While that is great news

Its kind of sad its taken this long. Ys 8 has had so many ports and has skipped xbox systems constantly.

It got a ps5 native port 2 months ago which would have made sense for an xbox port too.

If this means we get a bunch of other Ys games on gamepass in short time span…great. otherwise its just more annoying how its being drip fed.

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I really hope this is true, but thread, even if it is, please keep in mind that it’ll probably take a while to port and release them. Unless they’ve been secretly working on this and they get shadowdropped or something.

I would buy these games to support their release regardless of Game Pass inclusion!

Edit: Also, I just want to say that I appreciate your big posts and thoughts, saintsflow :smiley:

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Sadly falcom is a small studio and takes long enough porting their game to the west.

Having way too much fun with Fire Emblem Engage right now.

Can someone please tell me how Shin Megami Tensei 5 compares to Persona 5 Royal and P4 Golden? I know that the persona series is more causal where smt is hardcore. Been thinking about picking up Smt 5 on Switch.

SMT in general is much less…bright? You’re right, they’re hardcore games. SMTV is solid and perhaps the most approachable in the series, but make no mistake - it’s still quite hard even on lower difficulty levels. It’s not a breezy fun experience like P4-5.

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Some NIS America news! Well not for Xbox… :sweat_smile:, this thread is not just for Xbox though.

I’ll get D7, though Nick said something last week on the podcast that they’re also trying to get Disgaea on GP… I don’t really like the idea of that if it’s old titles while all the other platforms enjoy the new game, because we know how that relationship will end up.

It’s strange that the second title here is a compilation of old titles but is not coming to PS4, only PS5 (+Switch and PC).

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I vaguely remember playing the Rhapsody remake on DS some fifteen years ago, didn’t even realize there were sequels… I think I beat it but I can’t remember anything about it :sweat_smile: Do you have any thoughts on this series

. Ive tried to play many disagaea games in the past and fall off every one of them. Its just one of those series not for me. Same with Fire Emblem.

I asked on the other forum, but wanted to see if I might get a faster answer here:

I have Kakarot on Xbox and want to play the Series X version. It’s my understanding that there’s some issues with that update, maybe related to transferring saves? I haven’t started yet so it would be fresh, the game is downloaded and had the X/S badge. Am I safe to start?

I beat the game before this update came out. I’ll check it out in a little bit and see if I have any issues.

Edit: Yup, error. I don’t really understand the message but there’s no update available for the game or any alternate version on the store or anything. I see a lot of 1-star reviews saying it’s been broken for weeks, too. Best to hold off imo.

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How is the game? I kind of bought it on a whim.

I think you have to update the game on a Xbox One console and create a new save. After that it should load on your Xbox Series console.

@anon98342452 I could be wrong, but you shouldn’t have any issues when start a new game.

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