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

Just found out that there is a Front Mission mobile game out there. currently in beta. I don’t really care if SE really bailed out on the collaboration with the dev of the game or something. fact is they barely cared enough with the ip itself and gameplay (minus the gacha stuff) looks promising. the 3d graphic is great too. can’t wait to try the ENG version.

Yup, looking forward to it!

Arise for me falls flat hard storywise later on but the combat saves it

Does anyone know if persona 3 4 and MH rise will be on cloud for gamepass? On gamepass app it says console only for now. It would make p3p unplsyable for me if it wasnt as i have a new born so setting up and playing the home console is difficult for me right now. My time playing games past 2 months has been 99 percent xcloud and persona 5. Would be a shame if i cant play p3p via xcloud.

Good news for me, it was releasing too close to other stuff like Octopath 2

Koei’s about to dominate March with Wo Long, Fatal Frame, and Ryza 3.

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Finally finished Tales of Arise. The main story at least. I did intend to do all sidequests originally, but I have had enough of this game for now. Was quite fun, but it did become a bit of a slog towards the end.

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I’m very close to being done with Kuro no Kiseki 2. Just hit 220 hours played (keep in mind I’ve been playing since September, and the majority of the time played is because of language barrier reasons lol)

But anyway, on the finale act now. In typical Trails fashion there’s a festival with minigames to do and some final bonding events to take care of (all of which have been fantastic so far, reveals so much about the characters)

But the best so far is Renne’s which once again got me emotional

“We’re sorry we couldn’t be there, but we wanted to give you a very special surprise for your 18th birthday”

"This is the first reboot since the year 1204 of the Septian Calendar. I look forward to meeting with you soon, Renne.

“Estelle, Joshua, Tita…”

For Renne’s 18th birthday, she gets a phone call from Estelle and the others… The surprise is that they have finally been able to restore Renne’s long lost robot partner Pater-Mater who was destroyed in 1204 near the end of Trails to Azure.

This game is being very nice to Renne. So many closures to struggles from her life here. Once again, one of my favorite characters in fiction.

Also enjoyed Shizuna’s. She has a battle with Van’s Grendel form. Unfortunately they are doing this in a virtual space and their overwhelming power overloads the space and the connection is cut lol

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I’m at lenegis and have stopped playing. It’s a drag at this point. Was gonna 100%this. But I’m getting burnt out ol.

Another great bonding event! Well I guess this bonding event killed any thought of romance choices in Kuro 3 :joy:

Van helps Elaine out with a Bracer request to stop a wedding crasher. At the end they stay for the wedding and Elaine catches the flower bouquet. Hmm… :thinking:

RIP my Shizuna romance path dream :stuck_out_tongue:. Kuro 3 ending with marriage would be awesome though lol! Elaine is essentially the “main girl” of Kuro and is actually Van’s ex from high school.

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How much time do I need to beat Persona 3 and 4? I probably have 30-40 hrs of game time before Ill be glued to Hogwarts Legacy.

60-70 hours each according to hltb, for just the main story.

Gamer fuel acquired, all set for Fire Emblem Engage!!!

(Ironically these two things are basically rivals to each other… Deep…)

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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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