I alwasy wanted to open a thread about one of Falcom's big series, but where to start? Both Ys and Legend Of Heroes series have a pretty hefty baggage associated to them, and the latter is very story heavy, with multiple connection between sequels, prequels, and sub-series within the Legend Of Heroes saga.
But Falcom themselves came to help, with a brand new start for a new Legend Of Heroes sub-series, after completing Trails In The Sky, Trails Of Cold Steel, and Crossbell: the yet-to-be-announced-in-the-west Kuro No Kiseki, featuring new characters, a new location, a new battle system, and even a new engine powering the game. It doesn't take long to understand that all these things are technically new but draw a lot from previous Legend Of Heroes games and Falcom titles in general, so if you find yourself lost in reading this post, you just have to play seven 40+ hours RPGs with intertwining storylines, a cast the size of a small city, and enough text (in one game) to make The Dark Tower look like an advertisment pamphlet.
For those in the known, Kuro No Kiseki takes place in the same continent as Trails Of Cold Steel, but moves to the Calvard republic, a state east of the Erebonian Empire in which Trails Of Cold Steel took place. Events start some years after Hajimari No Kiseki (scheduled for release in the west in 2023), and within the first hour you'll meet at least one familiar face. The Japanese edition came with an artbook detailing some characters, and if you are on the edge whether or not starting a new LOH series...
adult Fie.
That should be enough. So yeah, you cannot really start Kuro No Kiseki thinking it would be a completely new thing, but at least story-relevant characters and previous events are introduced with a few explanatory lines that also bridge the past with the present. The in-game technology base hasn't changed much, characters still used ARCUS devices to cast magic and for communication, and you still have the usual quartz and orbment system to improve your abilities. Even the battle system is remarkably similar, with random effects popping up on the turn sequence bar, S-Crafts, CPs for special actions, EPs for magic, and of course HPs for health.
So, where is the new combat system? Well, as said before the combat system is not really "new", it's an evolution of what Falcom did before: rather than using weapons to just break objects and stun enemies before entering the usual turn-based battle sequences with opening loading wipe and closing recap screen, in Kuro No Kiseki you can actively attack enemies and dodge their attacks in real time; all standard enemies can be defeated this way, while bosses and scripted encounters will force you into turn-based combat. The real-time combat is a rather basic affair, with one attack button and a short combo that can be cancelled out by the (directional) dodge (and there's even a small bonus for a perfect dodge); hit enemies enough times and you charge up the heavy attack bar that will stun enemies. You can enter turn-based battles whenever you want by pressing square, and if done after a stun attack, enemies will receive further damage and will be stunned for a few turns.
This is actually a very fun system that deals away with a lot of the tedium associated with JRPG combat, and those who played previous LOH games very well know that combat was at times painfully boring with HP sponges that you had to defeat for that precious experience. The downside of going action-only for battles is that you cannot use restorative items or special attacks, and the after-battle multiplier seems limited to 1.2.
Due to this new addition, Kuro No Kiseki pulls a FFXII with its turn based battles and they happen directly on the ground you're stading on, with no introductory or closing scene, further smoothing dungeon exploration. I must say that this...is good. I quite like what Falcom did here, and in general I also feel enemies have received less HPs than in previous games, making for faster encounters no matter the system used.
Turn-based battles did receive a facelift as well, now during your turn you can move freely within the character's reach and all attacks have a clearly defined area of effect, with some spells even having a minimum range; gone are Brave Points, replaced with a Boost bar to enhance a single character's actions; some characters require a Boost bar to S-Craft, and doing so will also add one temporary Boost bar to bring down the toughest enemies...and bosses still retain their HP sponge status.
Gone are formation tactics, replaced by how characters will behave during action battles (get close, long-range fire, stay back and heal...the usual stuff). Links are gone too, replaced by the SCLM system (or "scram", as characters call it), where close-by characters will follow up your actions with an extra attack.
Other than that, it's your typical LOH battle system.
Outside dungeons, the system is (once again) very similar to Trails games: you have a main objective to progress the story and a series of sidequests to increase your rank, that is awarded in the same way as end-of-chapter grades as in Cold Steel. The new twist is that competing quests will modify your alignment between law, grey, or chaos; I'm probably too early in the game to see any change in any aspect though. You can also steer the kind of aligment you get in some quests, though from what I've seen a quest that will increase (for example) law and grey will always increase law and grey, you just select which one of the two will get more points.
The game is powered by a new engine...which isn't really new, like everything else it's an update to what Falcom did before. The plus side is that the engine has been thougth with the PS4 in mind, so areas are larger, there is no loading getting into stores/houses/buildings, there are more NPCs sprinkled around, and of course dungeon have no loading within a single floor. The downside are longish loading times and NPCs are very similar to each other; I still have to encounter multi-area locations (like the school in Cold Steel), so right now locations are prettier, livier, and more pleasant to go around than before, but strangely enough feel smaller.
Kuro No Kiseki received a modest bump in presentation, with even better textures than before (and textures always were Falcom's strenght), some moderate environmental lighting (think Ys IX, only more pronounced and with more variety), and more moving parts on character models...that will never stop moving and just go back and forth. For some strange reason I find this incredibly distracting and I'm always drawn to them when there are closeups.
It's not an incredible jump in quality and nowhere near what some other JRPGs are doing, but it's nice to see Falcom slowly pushing their technical expertise.
One thing I don't like is how small the interface is. I like that there's a lot of screen estate, but I'm playing on a 27" monitor not too far from me (imagine a normal office desk) and the interface could use some more pixels. The turn bar during battles has been moved on the upper side of the screen and greatly reduced in size, and at times it's hard to notice random effects associated with someone's turn. Spell elements would be near impossible to read if it wasn't for the color associated to them, and even talk icons during exploration segments are a tad too small for my liking. Even equip and ARCUS menus feel too tiny to optimal reading.
I appreciate that now you can directly talk with shopkeepers or access their wares rather than talking to them and then the correct menu entry though; in a verbose game such as this, any interface shortcut is very well appreciated.
Kuro No Kiseki looks like another solid JRPG by Falcom. The game is available only in Japan for now, and it's on the PS4. Being a late PS4 game it will run on PS5s, but I hope that there will be a proper PS5 release when this gets ported to the west, which will happen...eventually.
Let me explain: the Trails Of Cold Steel series is well established in the west, with the first four chapters available. The fifth chapter, Hajimari No Kiseki, not only closes the Cold Steel but also the Crossbell saga, consisting of two games on the PSP. The Crossbell games never received an official translation until Nippon Ichi America announced they'd be porting their Kai version (the PS4 ports Falcom released in Japan) using a fan translation as basis sometime in 2022. Thus Hajimari No Kiseki will receive its western port in 2023 (this has already been confirmed by Nippon Ichi), and Kuro will slip to 2024, when hopefully PS5s are readily available and more casual fans could pass on a PS4-only Kuro No Kiseki.
By 2024 we'll probably also have the third game in the Kuro No Kiseki saga...an no, I don't know if Kuro No Kiseki ends with a cliffhanger, but...just call it a hunch.
But Falcom themselves came to help, with a brand new start for a new Legend Of Heroes sub-series, after completing Trails In The Sky, Trails Of Cold Steel, and Crossbell: the yet-to-be-announced-in-the-west Kuro No Kiseki, featuring new characters, a new location, a new battle system, and even a new engine powering the game. It doesn't take long to understand that all these things are technically new but draw a lot from previous Legend Of Heroes games and Falcom titles in general, so if you find yourself lost in reading this post, you just have to play seven 40+ hours RPGs with intertwining storylines, a cast the size of a small city, and enough text (in one game) to make The Dark Tower look like an advertisment pamphlet.
For those in the known, Kuro No Kiseki takes place in the same continent as Trails Of Cold Steel, but moves to the Calvard republic, a state east of the Erebonian Empire in which Trails Of Cold Steel took place. Events start some years after Hajimari No Kiseki (scheduled for release in the west in 2023), and within the first hour you'll meet at least one familiar face. The Japanese edition came with an artbook detailing some characters, and if you are on the edge whether or not starting a new LOH series...
adult Fie.
That should be enough. So yeah, you cannot really start Kuro No Kiseki thinking it would be a completely new thing, but at least story-relevant characters and previous events are introduced with a few explanatory lines that also bridge the past with the present. The in-game technology base hasn't changed much, characters still used ARCUS devices to cast magic and for communication, and you still have the usual quartz and orbment system to improve your abilities. Even the battle system is remarkably similar, with random effects popping up on the turn sequence bar, S-Crafts, CPs for special actions, EPs for magic, and of course HPs for health.
So, where is the new combat system? Well, as said before the combat system is not really "new", it's an evolution of what Falcom did before: rather than using weapons to just break objects and stun enemies before entering the usual turn-based battle sequences with opening loading wipe and closing recap screen, in Kuro No Kiseki you can actively attack enemies and dodge their attacks in real time; all standard enemies can be defeated this way, while bosses and scripted encounters will force you into turn-based combat. The real-time combat is a rather basic affair, with one attack button and a short combo that can be cancelled out by the (directional) dodge (and there's even a small bonus for a perfect dodge); hit enemies enough times and you charge up the heavy attack bar that will stun enemies. You can enter turn-based battles whenever you want by pressing square, and if done after a stun attack, enemies will receive further damage and will be stunned for a few turns.
This is actually a very fun system that deals away with a lot of the tedium associated with JRPG combat, and those who played previous LOH games very well know that combat was at times painfully boring with HP sponges that you had to defeat for that precious experience. The downside of going action-only for battles is that you cannot use restorative items or special attacks, and the after-battle multiplier seems limited to 1.2.
Due to this new addition, Kuro No Kiseki pulls a FFXII with its turn based battles and they happen directly on the ground you're stading on, with no introductory or closing scene, further smoothing dungeon exploration. I must say that this...is good. I quite like what Falcom did here, and in general I also feel enemies have received less HPs than in previous games, making for faster encounters no matter the system used.
Turn-based battles did receive a facelift as well, now during your turn you can move freely within the character's reach and all attacks have a clearly defined area of effect, with some spells even having a minimum range; gone are Brave Points, replaced with a Boost bar to enhance a single character's actions; some characters require a Boost bar to S-Craft, and doing so will also add one temporary Boost bar to bring down the toughest enemies...and bosses still retain their HP sponge status.
Gone are formation tactics, replaced by how characters will behave during action battles (get close, long-range fire, stay back and heal...the usual stuff). Links are gone too, replaced by the SCLM system (or "scram", as characters call it), where close-by characters will follow up your actions with an extra attack.
Other than that, it's your typical LOH battle system.
Outside dungeons, the system is (once again) very similar to Trails games: you have a main objective to progress the story and a series of sidequests to increase your rank, that is awarded in the same way as end-of-chapter grades as in Cold Steel. The new twist is that competing quests will modify your alignment between law, grey, or chaos; I'm probably too early in the game to see any change in any aspect though. You can also steer the kind of aligment you get in some quests, though from what I've seen a quest that will increase (for example) law and grey will always increase law and grey, you just select which one of the two will get more points.
The game is powered by a new engine...which isn't really new, like everything else it's an update to what Falcom did before. The plus side is that the engine has been thougth with the PS4 in mind, so areas are larger, there is no loading getting into stores/houses/buildings, there are more NPCs sprinkled around, and of course dungeon have no loading within a single floor. The downside are longish loading times and NPCs are very similar to each other; I still have to encounter multi-area locations (like the school in Cold Steel), so right now locations are prettier, livier, and more pleasant to go around than before, but strangely enough feel smaller.
Kuro No Kiseki received a modest bump in presentation, with even better textures than before (and textures always were Falcom's strenght), some moderate environmental lighting (think Ys IX, only more pronounced and with more variety), and more moving parts on character models...that will never stop moving and just go back and forth. For some strange reason I find this incredibly distracting and I'm always drawn to them when there are closeups.
It's not an incredible jump in quality and nowhere near what some other JRPGs are doing, but it's nice to see Falcom slowly pushing their technical expertise.
One thing I don't like is how small the interface is. I like that there's a lot of screen estate, but I'm playing on a 27" monitor not too far from me (imagine a normal office desk) and the interface could use some more pixels. The turn bar during battles has been moved on the upper side of the screen and greatly reduced in size, and at times it's hard to notice random effects associated with someone's turn. Spell elements would be near impossible to read if it wasn't for the color associated to them, and even talk icons during exploration segments are a tad too small for my liking. Even equip and ARCUS menus feel too tiny to optimal reading.
I appreciate that now you can directly talk with shopkeepers or access their wares rather than talking to them and then the correct menu entry though; in a verbose game such as this, any interface shortcut is very well appreciated.
Kuro No Kiseki looks like another solid JRPG by Falcom. The game is available only in Japan for now, and it's on the PS4. Being a late PS4 game it will run on PS5s, but I hope that there will be a proper PS5 release when this gets ported to the west, which will happen...eventually.
Let me explain: the Trails Of Cold Steel series is well established in the west, with the first four chapters available. The fifth chapter, Hajimari No Kiseki, not only closes the Cold Steel but also the Crossbell saga, consisting of two games on the PSP. The Crossbell games never received an official translation until Nippon Ichi America announced they'd be porting their Kai version (the PS4 ports Falcom released in Japan) using a fan translation as basis sometime in 2022. Thus Hajimari No Kiseki will receive its western port in 2023 (this has already been confirmed by Nippon Ichi), and Kuro will slip to 2024, when hopefully PS5s are readily available and more casual fans could pass on a PS4-only Kuro No Kiseki.
By 2024 we'll probably also have the third game in the Kuro No Kiseki saga...an no, I don't know if Kuro No Kiseki ends with a cliffhanger, but...just call it a hunch.
Comment