I'm also not really convinced the combat system is all that interesting, having finished Trails in the sky. This school should have 100+ students, but I see only 3 in one room at any time. This is especially notable in dungeons (old school more so than the fields), but also in the real world you will see that there aren't a lot of people around in the same area. The game's rooms do feel somewhat empty, and I have a serious impression that this is due to technical limitations. If I look at the game with objective eyes, I have to state that the game does feel like a PS Vita port. My HD replay of FF12 is indefinitely on pause as a result, this game is far superior in just about every way. This is exactly the game I have been craving, without even knowing about it. That's a quality in JRPGs that I haven't seen beyond Persona 5 in recent years. Then all of a sudden it was 3 AM and I was remembering that I was about supposed to make an early dinner that day. I found out about Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel yesterday, and it was an instant buy. If you want a quality, anime-esque JRPG to invest sixty hours into (possibly 200 hours if you play the entire Cold Steel trilogy), then pick this up. I love how Jusis is a pretty friendly and humble noble, but he plays up the arrogant-entitled-prince stereotype just to mess with Machias. I've found THE ONE TRUE WAIFUof Thor's Military Academy: student-council-president-kun! I'm absolutely serious folks FIGHT ME! Sara Veilstein has got to be one of my most favorite fictional teachers ever, and I mean she's up there with Kakashi! Darn woman, she's amazing! Impressive! The new dialogue made the game even more immersive.
Turbo mode is a god-send, and the game looks pretty good! Running on max settings (including Durante's new graphical additions for the PC port), and haven't encounter ANY framerate drops or crashes during my five hours so far. I haven't played a game that made me genuinely laugh out loud as much as I did today since Valkyria Chronicles.
Trails of Cold Steel focuses on just the lighthearted build up part, with the sequel going full adventure/serious story). The story is pretty interesting (Cold Steel is a trilogy of games that basically follows your typical shounen story path: starts off light hearted with the young heroes meeting each other and training their superpowers/magic/mecha piloting skills/whatever while the big evil plot slowly builds in the background before eventually something really big happens and our heroes embark on massive adventure to save the world. I'm fifteen hours in, and I'm absolutely loving Trails of Cold Steel! I haven't enjoyed a singleplayer game this much since. I've been playing Cold Steel since it came out on Wednesday (I've been eyeing it since 2013 but I don't have a playstation, and got absolutely HYPED when the PC port was announced), and I can already confidently say that this is one of the best JRPG's I've ever played it's up there with Xenoblade Chronicles in my book. Luckily unlike the Trails in the Sky games these seem to be coming to the West pretty fast considering they are only couple years old, and the 3rd Cold Steel game still being under development. Now waiting my copy of Trails of Cold Steel to arrive, EU release day being this Friday. Both the first and second chapter entered my top 10 RPGs of all times immediately. Having played them now they have some of the most likeable characters, extremely detailed world and lore, great combat system, interesting equipment/"orb" system, etc. These games seem to have flown somewhat under the radar for many due to the fact they are being released about 10 years late compared to Japan.
After starting to play Trails in the Sky though I couldn't stop until 100+ hours later when I finally finished the Second Chapter! Anyone else here been playing The Legend of Heroes games? I myself only first heard about these games first in 2014, and thought they sounded kinda interesting adding them to my mental backlog, but didn't actually start playing them until late last year.