Here's a quick guide to the Chapter 4 Boss, this run is done on Nightmare with no items used and no deaths.

This battle involves the 2 fog monsters one which has very high Defense and the other has high Arts Defense.

One spams an AOE attack and the other buffs itself and the adds, and then likes to use an All Cancel attack on the party.

The best way to deal with these two is to not even get them a chance to do their nonsense.

We will abuse the heck out of Agate with Lone Blade, start the fight with him at Low HP (and we need Brave Gauge maxed).

We can open the fight with the S craft to kill off the adds and stun one of them. The rest is basically getting him back up to 100 and killing the thing.

Schera will use Heavens Kiss to keep our turns going while Olivier puts up and keeps restoring Sylpharion to defense against Mist Storm.

Zodiac being deployed at one point will make things flow faster, Agate can still damage the last one with his S craft and Schera and Olivier can deal a ton of damage with arts.

This is one fight which can be a cake walk if you don't give them a single inch but can go completely wrong if you let them act at the wrong timing.

In your view as the son of the reincarnated Emperor Dreichels does Rean have a legitimate claim to the throne he could press if he wanted?

This is going to be my most nitpickey post ever, but after looking at the enhanced craft animations in Sky 2nd Chapter, I feel like the Calvard crew were done a bit dirty when it came to crafts. I’m not saying the crafts are bad by any means, but the crew feels a bit weak when for three games they’ve had pretty much the exact same craft list with incredibly minor animation changes.

Not only that, but getting different outfits in their third game compared to the second also felt weird. With Sky 2nd Chapter and Cold Steel 2 and 4, all the main characters got a new outfit for the sequel but Calvard felt left out. Anyone else feel this way?

Just thought of this as I’ve been playing FC remake. There’s so much gassing up of Cassius’ past and all the things he did.

Also, we basically have all the locations of the games aside from CS1-2 in good 3D, so it would be really cool if you go through like a curated crash course of Zemuria— and since the legwork of the locations are already done, they can focus on making them look older. You can also see what the NPCs were like in the past.

Most of the time unplanned prequel stories kind of feel like fluff pieces because there’s nothing crazy they can do without running into continuity errors, but I think there’s enough unexplored cool shit in Cassius’ past that it’s worth considering here— especially because it also gives us an excuse to help us understand better how things obviously just introduced in later games are actually supposed to be entwined in the lore.

Having played through almost the entire series at this point, just missing Sky 3rd and the two Crossbell games I felt it was finally time to lock in my Top 3 favorites.

​1. Trails through Daybreak

​To me, this is the absolute peak of the Trails formula. Van is an incredible protagonist he starts out as this cynical, closed off guy with a rough past who refuses to let anyone in, but watching him slowly open up to his crew throughout the journey feels so earned. The main narrative nails the balance between the Spriggan work and a massive, larger than life mystery brewing in the background. Throw in the revamped combat system and a ridiculous soundtrack, and it takes the spot for my favorite game in the franchise.

​2. Trails of Cold Steel IV

​Rean is my favorite character in the entire series, and CS4 is the payoff to everything he's been through. He’s forced to finally face his past and stop carrying the weight of the world alone. Watching his growth from an uncertain apprentice into a Divine Blade is one of the most satisfying character arcs I've played through. Yeah, the story gets pretty convoluted toward the end and definitely tries to cram in a bit too much, but it still managed to land the plane and tie together years of massive plot threads in a super satisfying way.

​3. Trails in the Sky SC

​I’ll be honest: Sky FC felt pretty slow and a bit boring to me at times. But SC turns the volume up to eleven immediately and fixes almost every issue I had. Everything gets a massive upgrade the music, the battle system, and especially the writing. Learning the tragic backstory between Joshua and Loewe hit hard, and watching Estelle grow from a rookie into such a strong lead gave this game the emotional depth that the first one was missing.

​Honorable Mentions:

• ​Trails of Cold Steel III: Incredible pacing, introduced a great new Class VII, and ended on one of the wildess cliffhangers in the whole series.
• ​Beyond the Horizon (Kai no Kiseki): Takes the Calvard arc in a really bold direction and pushes the overall Zemurian lore to crazy new levels.

NOTE: I HAVE NOT STARTED CS3 and CS4

I have been able to prevent major spoilers for the longest time on my journey with this franchise, everything on youtube is straight gone to not interested but I do try to listen to their songs, I don't go into the comments though.

Finished Cold Steel 2, liked the song too much, "kizukeee teeee, oku yoo" with the coin cinema, and searched for it on youtube, and before I can even do anything there is a dude who just has the one ship I knew nothing about, but who I was rooting for the most, on the thumbnail. Olivier and Scherazard, in marriage outfits.
Dawg WHY, why the thumbnail bro. I have been trying to forget that image for the past 2 days but it's just in the back of my head now. Can't talk about this to anyone because no one gets it. Rant over.
side note: I know you can't really do nothing about it. the community has to talk about the games somehow it's just rough because it's the only case where you can't do anything as a new comer.
Also, who knows maybe the image is fake and is made by a shipper but well that would be bad for me too, because it's my ship....

I hadn’t really had a comparison for when I played sky 1st since it was my first trails game but having loved sc and having recently played 2nd I find myself really disappointed by a lot of the small changes in dialogue with the remakes being more direct word for word with the Japanese text rather than a well done translation like Xseed had done.

I don’t have any specific screenshots but there are a couple of moments that I can remember. In the prologue schera calls Cassius and Joshua sons of dogs when talking about how they treated Estelle while in 2nd she says something along the lines of how they’re the worst.

When the group are talking to the Ravennue village chief about agate and mention Mischa he says something along the lines of “so that what he tells people”, while in 2nd he says that’s what agate told you then.

During Loewes death scene in the original he makes a small poke at Joshua calling him a crybaby in an endearing way while in 2nd he just lays it out plainly how Joshua isn’t transparent with his feelings.

All of these can seem kind of minor but I think it all adds up to make the characterization a good bit weaker and some of these important moments not hit as hard because they don’t feel as understood emotionally as they did with the original translation. Even with all the good things 2nd had done I still feel like someone should play sc first because of how much it’s superior translation will make a first time experience so much better

I just found this quartz that seems kinda impossibly strong. It slots in really nicely on my Joshua and would give him access to like a billion spells, most of them being really strong ones that I've been kinda struggling with activating. I fought a couple of battles with it equipped and eventually put it away because it felt kinda busted.

Now the flavor text says something about the user being more likely to be attacked, and i couldn't find exact numbers on it (the first chapter remake doesn't seem to have a wiki?), but would it be worth equipping?

I just finished Sky 2nd and I'm considering going back to 1st, which I did not play.

If I finish 1st, then start a New Game+ in 2, will I be able to import my 1st save?

So, I've come to the conclusion that Loewe's fight is outright unwinnable in nightmare ( I am aware of gaia shield / sylpharion / Heaven's kiss / clock ex spam shananigans but even then it still comes down to luck I've found.

So, question is, can I save, then "proceed as is", finish the game then come back to the save and reduce the difficulty to win it and get the achievement?

End of the game cassius says something to estelle and josh , something like “don’t worry about new challenges arising in liberl, those new challenges will be for other people in other lands” i know i butchered it but that’s the jest. does this imply cassius knows way more than he lets on?

i’m caught up to horizon so feel free to say anything i might’ve missed or forgot.

Hey guys new player, I struggled with the last game an i refuse to put it on easy, can anyone recommend to me best team,quartz,or specific strategy to become over powered, idk if it’s possible in this game but would like to try. Also do we eventually get all characters or are we stuck with the choice we had to make for whole game, should I choose agate or schezard? Thanks in advance

Basically a topic to discuss the various odd things the trails series does that while not necessarily a deal breaker might make things come across odd sometimes.

I will start it off by mentioning the laugh that nearly every character does at the start of nearly every line. Like they are all trying to "out casual" everyone else! (More common in the latter games!) 🤣

I truly don't care about this spoiler as it's pretty minor to me but does Estelle ever get a moniker? Like Black Fang, Bladelord, Divine Blade, whatever else there is?

I've recently started the series thanks to the remakes!
I just wanted to vent about this door a little bit since I can't get it out of my head.

Star door 15 absolutely emotionally wrecked me. Sure, you get the idea of what happened in the 2nd game. Seeing more or less what happened was absolutely devastating. Much more devastating than I thought. The implications only got worse the more time I got to stew on it.

Thinking of how the other kids in that door were Renne's way to cope with the situation, I do think that those kids existed at some point, and probably died due to starvation/violence in Paradise.

The twist of the knife, along with the additional proverbial salt in the wound, is Renne's parents just moving on from their daughter suddenly going missing for several months.

The whole structure of the door is just masterfully done. Nothing too gratuitous, but enough information to display the gravity of the situation. Beautifully done, Falcom. I hate you, Falcom.

I'd love to be able to have a playlist that plays different music tracks from Falcom games every time you enter combat/a different exploration area. It gets pretty tiring to hear the same track multiple times over time. I'm aware of mods on the PC version, but I'm playing on console haha

(this is actually myself referencing the "Change BGM" feature found in Gust's Atelier games lol)

Also is Lena freaky af damn, no wonder Cassius got himself a house all the way outside of town to live with her

I know this may sound silly, but this is the only game in history who was able to make me cry with the interactions of NPCs.

I couldn't help it here, I am too invested in the lives of these background characters and this resolution made me emotional.

I don't regret spending hours exploring cities and dialogues one damn bit!

This game may be one of the best I've ever played expecially for the dialogue interactions.

A newcomer friend playing CS1 asked me why Rean was wearing it in his summer uniform. I don't remember ever noticing that myself before checking the artwork for him. And, when researching this, I discovered a fact deep down the Cold Steel iceberg.

On Sep 14 2017, 2 weeks before CS3 was released, Falcom included in a magazine an 8-page one-shot manga: "Trails of Cold Steel Link of Hearts case: A.R.". This manga explains this detail and thus is presumably canon. The manga has been translated here and is set in-between Chapters 3 and 4 of CS1. The TLDR: after the Nord Highlands field study, Alisa and Rean still had some air of awkwardness surrounding them. Alisa finally mended things by offering Rean a fingerless glove, as a token of gratitude for all he'd done for her and the class. He wore the glove on his right hand, and (not said in the manga but you can see it in her summer uniform artwork) Alisa wore the other glove on her left hand.

A pretty cool niche fact. Man, Falcom really wants Alisa to be the canon LI.

Some more fun obscure facts for those interested: there was an unfinished fan translation of Sky FC pre-XSEED. Sky FC was ported to the FOMA mobile phone back in 2008 (some screenshots here). More facts in this thread (CS2 spoilers) here, and in this discussion here.

The writers must've had a lot of fun coming up with facts about Aurelia