September 25, 2016

In Kiseki hell

Posted in video games tagged , , at 7:44 pm by riulyn

I thought I might start playing something else after I finished Trails in the Sky the 3rd, but nope my brain wanted to continue in the Kiseki universe so I am currently in Chapter 2 of Zero no Kiseki. Zero feels a bit episodic right now and is also giving me Trails in the Sky FC vibes. I don’t think Ao will be as crazy as SC was, or will it? (Don’t tell me.)

In short, the 3rd is nice for all the expansion on the FC & SC characters. You get to use a lot of characters. Kevin has a pretty dark backstory. Ultimately a few things happened in the 3rd which has continued into Zero, but nothing major so far? The gameplay is much more dungeon crawler-ish than the first 2 games, and there is a difficulty spike starting in Chapter 6. If I say more it’s probably a spoiler.

I didn’t end up doing all the character side-stuff because I got a bit mentally fried (some of them are really, really long text cutscenes, thank goodness for Evolution’s voice-acting) and just wanted to finish off Kevin’s story. But most of them are enjoyable, albeit with the notorious Kiseki-length dialogue. Nothing is ever concise in a Kiseki game, right?

I did grab a copy of Trails of Cold Steel 2 in English. Since I have stayed in Kiseki hell instead of actually playing other games (I was supposed to be working on Atelier Totori now or finishing Shadow Hearts 3 or like playing Ikenie to yuki no setsuna…whoops), I probably will get to Cold Steel last this year/early next year. The 3rd isn’t a long game, but I still managed 60 hours and I didn’t even do all the character stories. I’m expecting 60+ for Zero and I’m at about 20 right now. If this was a few months ago, I’d probably finish Zero next month and Ao by December. However, other things like work and rekindled interest in volleyball will probably mean Zero will finish October/November and Ao will finish maybe January? Well, I’ll be playing Persona 5 when it releases in North America, so there will at least be a pause in Kiseki then, if not earlier.