[5] The Emm-VP; Barehardships the Sequel - Trails of Cold Steel 2 Funny Moments 

she will actually just kill you

​@@ganon1028The best part tbh

I'd let her kill me...

No shame in simping for Le Guin 24/7 and twice on Sunday. 👍

No even on easy mode Evade SUCKS for Rean and he almost NEVER counters just go full str and watch his s craft by games END even on EASY mode do like 500,000 IN 1 use and really only on easy mode ONLY the Final boss has MORE HP THEN THAT.

I love this game post Intermission... its so fun from that toy.

Nightmare REQUIRES a lv 200 party in order to KILL that Monkey lord instantly with 1 use of a s craft on a first run its still brutal On EASY mode to kill at lv 70.

Aurelia is the goddamn best.

Oh a fellow Le Guin fan. 👍👍👍 That she is.

Ah to be among my people as Aurelia enjoyers. She really shines in CS3 tho

Lmao

It's good to note that his real name's Leonhardt (meaning Lion Hard), and Loewe is his nickname that everyone uses.

It's only now that everyone is speaking fully voiced English that I'm realizing how wrong I was pronouncing some character's names

@@weaponsci it’s cool that’s how it sounded in my head before I played CS2 as well. At lease it’s a really cool execution of the German language. To this day I still don’t understand how Zidane from FF9 is pronounced in English as “Zidawn.”

I still can't believe Tidus' name is pronounced Tee-dus and not Tide-us Damn you Dissidia!

It's habit. I've been pronouncing it like that since Crossbell and that was in Japanese so I didn't pick up on the correct pronunciation

- The Juggernaut fight is quite an anomaly, because for some reason, he's a big difficulty spike, his move are simple yet effective, a self buff and an AoE attack, that's it, that's all he need to fuck you up royally; here, the S-crafts seems to be reasonably balanced weirdly enough. You managed to win by taking advantage of an AI brainfart because it kept trying to reach you but couldn't because of the dead party member, you literally created a flesh b a r r i e r , personally I'm not a fan of winning that way, it's like taking advantage of the fact that a player is lagging to kill him in a PvP: I don't feel proud of myself for doing so, it's the same feeling I have for evasion tank strategies but worse; but it's the rules of the game, so who am I to judge people for exploiting loopholes ?🤷 Anyway, for my part, I used every assets at my disposal, having Sharon in the back able to use teatime anytime I switch her in was a godsend, same for Alisa (yeah, I basically had the same team as you except I replaced Machias by Millium), and having stat down crafts and breaker type quartzs helped greatly in order to cancel his buffs and range atof attack, but all in all, it was still a brutal boss fight. - now for the Aqua shrine, same as the rest of them, though interesting that you catched the fact that they're all tied to an element: the Terra shrine for Earth, placed on Garrelia byroad, a rocky roadway; the Aria shrine for Wind, placed in the Nord Highlands, a place known for its strong wind; and the Aqua shrine for Water, place in the Ebel Highway, a road with a river flowing through it and fog covering it most of the time; so yeah, next time we need a Fire shrine in a place where there's fire around.... But I don't remember seeing that anywhere so I wonder what they're gonna do 🤔. For the trial chests, yes that's correct, but for your exemple to work, Emma would need to be out of the party, and that's impossible in the first act because as I've noticed, all the trial chests so far have pairings with the group you went to search for; in Celdic, the 3 chests were Elliot/Machias, Fie/Elliot, Machias/Fie; the 3 chests in Nord were Alisa/Millium, Millium/Gaius, Gaius/Alisa; and the only chest in Legram is this one, Laura/Emma, since doesn't join until the end; so you can't have one without the other in the party, you'd need to wait for when you'll revisit the places in order to see them, fortunately, that's what I'm currently doing, so I'll update on them once they're available to you. Oh and yeah, the vision at the end, I know you've been quite fervant on your theory regarding Arianrhod, but there's still the million mira question that you have yet to answer and is a bit too important to ignore: how the hell is that possible ? - okay, your next part is a bit weird, from the scene where you joke about disguises until the monster chest, you have a long uncut part showing you roaming around the part and battling some monsters; it's not bad per se, it's just so jarring compared to the rest of the video where there's cuts and it's dynamic, here, you have a long passage where it's just gameplay footage with almost no commentary on your part; again, it's not bad, just surprising coming from you who accustomed us to see the "funny moments" of your playthroughs. - I was about to say that you forgot about Vita getting the Jaegers out of Ymir with a similar method as the one Emma just did, but it seems you realized it yourself in addition to the game reminding you of it XD; So I'll also add that Vita almost assuredly used it as well on Rean in CS1 back when when she was disguised in Misty, during their meeting in Chapter 5, she removed her glasses and said a bunch of stuff to Rean; though it's still up for debate why she did that, my guess is that she was testing to see if her spell worked by delibately getting some perfume onto him and have Emma noticing it, and it seem so because Emma didn't catch on even then and wasn't discovered until she deliberately did so during the broadcast. - What ? I never said anything regarding Duke albarea's voice actor, you must confusing another comment with mine XD. But this scene is great in showing how Duke Albarea is just concerned about getting the upper hand on Duke Cayenne, that he doesn't care about interfering with neutral powers as long as it fit his agenda, and most of all, how his view completely differs from his two sons, Jusis from a moral standpoint, and Rufus from a strategic standpoint. -I'll talk more about Bareahard as well as the two hidden quest in the other comment; for now let's skip to Jusis, who made a big telephone game in order to meet us...... And the method he used was a bit similar to Machias...... Huh, what do you know, even for contacting someone in Jusis they had the same ideas, they're made for each other (although Jusis, If I may, when Machias did his thing, he wasn't followed, him, but I'll let it slide, because Ouroboros is just that good). And he wanted to see us to that to say that the Ashen Knight is becoming famous around here (while it's true we used him 3 times so far, only 2 of them were public and can be used for his notoriety, the one in Ymir wasn't really witnessed by anyone, and I doubt we can use the one from the first game since it was at the start of the war and it disappeared for a whole month afterwards) and so that he can explain that they parted ways and that's that......or at least that's what he want us to think; in reality, he feels terrible guilt over his dad sending Jaegers to Ymir and grieviously wounding Rean's father, and he thought he could've prevented it had he came home sooner (though as we saw in the earlier scene with him and his dad, even if he had been here, it would've happened regardless since he doesn't listen to him), he's someone who feels responsible for his family's actions, that was shown even back in CS1; but Rean call him out on it, saying that he doesn't want him to use his dad as an excuse to do something he doesn't want to do as a form of punishment, and that if he feels like the can't join them because he doesn't deserve to, than he's just a coward and doesn't act like a noble should be (I think Emma comment on it, because she basically did the exact same thing earlier XD) ; they would do they believe is the right thing, with confidence and conviction, THAT'S what true Nobles would do (I like Rean's counterpoint here, but I'd say, his description can also apply to Duke Albarea and Cayenne as well as other greedy Nobles, is he saying that they're true Nobles as well ? XD). And that it's by coming back as a class again that they'll have chance at finding a solution to this conflict, be it this war or the problems that started it (that was the original goal of Olivier when he created Class VII: creating a third way in order to make both factions reconcile with each other). - Despite all of this, Jusis is too stubborn to accept it outright and decide to settle this with A DD-D-D-D-DDD-DDD-DUEL!!! him on horseback, us on the bike (which he took from the academy) the first to reach the plateau wins..... And you managed to lose XD. Oh well. - The duel with Jusis isn't particularly hard, and you still manage to lose it for some reason XD, but he still has all the crafts he had in CS1, and he can heal too, it's what he was about to do when you killed him

- But we couldn't just leave with a happy note of course; introducing...... Probably the funniest antagonist duo so far: Duvalie and McBurn. As you've guessed, Duvalie the Swift is the same character as the one in Azure, the head knight of the Stahlritter, but this time she's an actual character instead of just being a knight of Arianrhod, while she can be polite and quite serious about work (to her dismay because Enforcers have the exact opposite mindset regarding work, especially the one she's paired with this time XD), she can also be really childish and petty as we saw her rubbing at Laura's face the fact that she doesn't know if the Stahlritter and the Eisenritter have a correlation and that she's not gonna tell her about it (she had some traces of personality in Azure, but it's way more fleshed out here, it also helps that she has more screentime). McBurn, the Almighty Conflagration, is the Enforcer No. I of Ouroboros, he's a lazy bum who doesn't want to do anything that's not interesting to him (which exasperated a certain someone who takes the jobs seriously and creates Comedy Gold moments XD); as Sharon said, an enforcer's number is not indicative of their battle prowess, and although it's confirmed here, it's something we could've guessed back in Sky with the Enforcers over there, it'd mean that Luciola would be the second strongest behind Loewe in that group, or that Joshua is stronger than Renne, but most of all, the combat style of all the Enforcers are so different from one another that it's hard to determine the right criterias to determine who's "stronger", especially since they all have their specialty (Joshua for exemple was Covert ops and assassination, for Luciola it's Illusions, for Bleublanc it's Heists, etc...) no, their numbers are actually a reference to the major arcanas, Bleublanc is X, so he's the Wheel of Fortune; Sharon is IX, so she's the Hermit; and so McBurn is I, which means the Magician; the arcanas actually tells a lot about the personnality of the Enforcers or their possible evolution, in both their upright and reversed position (Joshua's story for exemple is osely related to the themes of the Death arcana; same for Renne with the devil and Loeve with the High Priestess, Luciola with the Lovers and Walter with the Strength), so it can lead into a multitude of theories regarding current enforcers and even posible evolution of enforcers we haven't even met yet. But back to Mcburn, while the numbers aren't for showing an enforcer's strength, his by coincidence actually is, as he easily among the strongest in Ouroboros, how powerful is he ? Well according to what he said just after, he never tried to fight Steel to determine who gets the top spot, Steel referring of course to the Steel Maiden.......... Yep, the guy is actually Arianrhod-tier, how terrifying! - This fight also has an AP requirement, but it's probably the easiest to get, you just need to beat Duvalie and there's no time limit, which makes things easier; one look at the levels of everyone tells you all you need to know, McBurn is 15 levels above everyone, so obviously you aren't taking him out, thankfully he'll just stay in the background doing some normal attacks while you focus on the other ennemy; Duvalie is much more affordable, but she still has all the crafts he had in Azure: Flame, Ice, Lightning, Shadow and Illusory Brand are back and can inflict you with a bunch of status ailments, something you feared just beforehand actually, but thanks to you using this little technique to chew most of the work needed to be done for a boss called "use all S-crafts", you managed to avoid the brunt of it. - After Duvalie is taken care of, McBurn finally decides to get up his ass and use some of his crafts, two actually, either Hellhounds or Flames of Judgement, it's the latter you saw and it has All Cancel on it, what's All Cancel you ask ? It's an effect that was officially introduced in this game but was already present somewhat in Azure and CS1, it's just that they finally decided to make it into an effect in its own right; what does it do ? Removing all your positive buffs from your party........... Not kidding, that includes stats up like Strength, Defense and Speed, but also immunity ones like Craft Guard and Art Reflect, nothing can protect against it aside from your regular Defense without buffs, which makes it kinda overpowered in this game, my guess is that this effect was introduced to hard counter Earth Wall like strategies like the one you used against C in the last game, thankfully the crafts having that effect are rare in this game, and the later ones will tweak it to make it a real effect, but it's still the first game to implement it and that's something that can change how you approach combat. - So after the forgone conclusion that was this fight, we learned more about what Duvalie meant when she said she beated Loewe, in reality, she just won one time out of a hundred battles.....yeah, not really that impressive all of a sudden; and just the fact that she asks Loewe to duel her a hundred times shows again that she's really a child, and I'll agree with you that Loewe probably let her win just so that she can leave him alone XD; meanwhile, NcBurnnotice something about Rean and ask if he's "mixed", whatever the hell that means 🤷, though it could be related to his power, since as you've noticed, McBurn's aura is kinda similar to the mean form; and that's moment Sara come swooping in to save the day........ Or not. - Just when things were heating up, Duke Albarea comes in to put a damper of things, especially McBurn who actually pisses off because of it, much to the chagrin of her partner XD; that's where we learn that Jusis left a letter at the mention saying that he intend to walk his own path with his classmates, I feel like this scene isn't talked about enough, this letter proves that Jusis already knew he was going to lose his duel with Rean and would be swayed by him to leave, the trust he has on him is beautiful🥺. But of course, the Duke won't stand for this and calls upon the knights of Kreuzen, including a new model: after the Drakken and the Spiegel, meet the Hector (which I don't think was invented specifically for Divine Knight, it was just a model that came late in production, probably due to being more heavily armored). I won't talk about the mech battle for now because they kinda follows the same pattern, though I'll follow you on the fact that they're more fleshed out now; in the last game, it was introduced in the last minutes, and while it was really surprising, it felt more like a Beta than anything else, here they added some stuffs and retweaked a few things and it feels like a proper battle system now (though the rock paper scissors is still here, it's just that you have more option to recover if you've guessed wrong). - Rean wins and we get outta here fast while we can...... Yeah, despite the win, we mustn't forget that they were spotted in one of the stronghold of the alliance and were surronded on all sides by soldat, Rean can't fight all of them by himself so they need to retreat immediately back in Ymir, and the bike came along too why not XD. - The Millium bit was funny, though fun fact: if you brought her to the Legram section, she'll try to do the hug at the airship instead at Ymir, same for Machias, if you didn't bring brought him, he would have his exchange with Jusis at Ymir instead of the airship; these events happen regardless of whether you brought them or not, which is nice because that way, you don't miss them and you can focus on bringing other character that can have special dialogue like Fie and Alisa with their respective Thors students (I'll talk about them in the other comment). - And that's it, pfiou, retyping for a third time the last part of this pavement was exhausting, especially since there's A LOT to talk about, but I'm done finally...or not, I'll still talk about the other stuff, but I need to catch up first, it will be done before the week-end is over.

The juggernaut saga comes to a close, fitting that a barrier was his downfall considering those monkeys had been causing issues since Zero. The 11 or so minutes of silence was an editing mistake on my part. I guess I just forgot to cut it lol. Yeah McBurn is absolutely terrifying, albeit it a kind of cool way. Guess we should count our lucky stars that he's lazy. I can only assume that McBurn might indeed have a similar power to Rean's "mean" transformation? Possibly his own, though I can imagine it might be a more pure version of it since he called Rean "mixed."

And now, for the world-building/events comment. - Not much to say for the second Ymir tour except some interesting point: now that the baron woke up, the village is relieved and continues to recover from the attack, the cable car might even resume operations, and as the village gets better, rumors comes in as well, like that the Reinford Chairman is missing (much like how Sharon said that she didn't have any news of her since she departed from Roer) and also how there's a famous alliance general in the west who keeps winning their battles, I'll let you guess who that could possibly be after what you saw in this episode. But the most important one ifs of course the one with Claire, where we follow up on whether she has infos on the Black Millium-- I mean Altina Orion, and it turns out that she does but she can't say anything as that information is Intelligence Division's property, and even if she could, it would only confuse us..... Okay, now I'm REALLY curious about this 🤔. Now for the events: - Toval's is once again a BIG reference to Carnelia (obligatory mention to read the book and manga, they're good) and make him act like Rean's mentor again, it was nice (and for once, Rean was the one who got Headpatted XD) - Gaius's builds up on the fact that he left behind his siblings to help end the war so that they would be a peace, and is about the things that made him love Erebonia like his second home and that he really would like to show it to his family one day once it's over.... Nice, but nothing too special imo. - Sharon's has her training Rean to learn more about Ouroboros and their methods, with Rean asking what you were wondering back then: why is she supporting us instead of fighting us like the other enforcers ? And she answered just like me and others, that Ouroboros grant Enforcers quite the freedom, and reiterates that she'll be supporting us at least for the duration of this war; while nothing really new was stated here for veterans of the series, it answered the question about why Sharon is helping us for those who started with Cold Steel. - Alisa's is more about cheering her up and reassuring her because she's worried about her mother (despite how she usually acted around her) and also the fact that she came here before back when her father was still alive, and she lament on how much can things change in that span of time, oh and Rean giving her a snow hare is kinda adorable 🥺 -Millium's is...... Snowboard racing, literally XD, where you compete with Millium on Airgetlam; but there's also the part about Altina, who Millium doesn't actually know despite the fact that they have the same surname (which pose even more questions about Millium's background that we don't know anything about), but it doesn't matter because she kidnapped Elise and Princess Alfin, so she'll help us taking them back because that's what classmates are for.😁 - And Machias's is..... Not studying this time, but Chess.......goddammit XD. But here, he's worried about the chess club, including Stefan, the club captain, as well as the nobles from the upper chess club, who he managed to make friends with during CS1, he also shows that he's grown because he recognizes that not all Nobles are responsible for this war and there's just as much perpetrators as there are victims, whereas if he was still like his old self, he would've accused every Nobles of this treachery; and that just like chess, there will always be a move that can turn things around. Good stuff. - a new edition of the newspaper came out, the noble propaganda is rolling again, with the Pentagruel (the big ass airship) touring the skies of Erebonia to "reassure the people" and raising the morale of troops and calling the rebel forces to surrender; and there's apparently also members of the imperial family on board as well; in other news, they say the economy is stabilizing but that there's a possibilitu of additional wartime taxes..... So nothing's stabilized then 😅; that like I said, the western half of the country is a hotbed of conflict with another large-scale battle arriving soon on the coast of the Lamare Province; and the rumors of the Ashen Knight's appearance in Garrelia have spread, even if they're just calling it a pale imitation of the Azure Knight. - now for Legram, so far, it's probably the region the least affected by the war beside Ymir (until what happened in the Prologue of course), the town doesn't have much benefit for the noble alliance besides the Viscount, and even then, he made a point that he would remain neutral in this, in addition of the fog present in the region which impede visibility and movements (oh btw, speaking of the fog, something I that I forgot to mention last time: the higher elements are now active in the area due to the presence of the Spirit Shrine as we learn later), coming over here is more trouble than it's worth, so they've been left alone, and thanks to them being a rural area, they're not dependant on trains unlike the big cities, so they can hold out like this for a while; which of course lead to be a good spot for refugees to go to, especially from the Sutherland province on the other side of the lale, there's several NPCs that are in this situation, including a member of the house of representative who's been stranded here since the occupation, he sees it a bad luck, but honestly in these circumstances, it was good luck, if he managed to to get back to Heimdallr back then, he probably would've been arrested alongside other members of the imperial government; Laura's groupies at still going strong as always XD, and there's also 2 Thors Students here: Vivi, the younger twin who likes to play pranks, she was able to get all the way here thanks to the others, but she was separated from Linde in the process and she's not okay, she forces herself to be jovial but everyone can see that she's not herself (Fie also has additional dialogue with her if you being her, which make sense, they were in the same club); and Casper, a member of the Swimming Club just like Laura, he escaped with her and for now he help at the training hall of the Arseid school, but he eventually wants to go to West to check if his family is alright, they live around the coast, and according to the newspaper, it's around here that the battles takes place, so yeah there's reasons to be concerned😬. But the most important thing in Legram is that you can actually see Duvalie here before the arrival of the generals..... Yep, you can find her in her civil clothes at the inn criticizing the Arseids but complimenting the rest, as well as lamenting the fact that she's paired up with HIM (Sharon will have a reaction upon seeing her), but that's not all, during this period, several NPCs will say that they feel like they're being watched, meaning yes, she did go around the town spying on their activities and get a look around, it's the kind of details you can miss on a first playthrough that makes revisiting it so much fun. - Now unto Bareahard, the economy and business is booming over there..... Mainly for the noble unfortunately; while it is peaceful, the Commoners over there suffers from the extra wartime taxes and from the soldiers being violent and parading around the place, while the Nobles are celebrating everywhere and doing parties, they're even coming from Lamare and Heimdallr to participate (apparently the atmosphere in Heimdallr is not great, as there's many protests occuring, while here, the Nobles can just let loose), even picking beef with Nobles form other territories, yeah, you can almost forget that there's a war going on; in any case, if there's a feeling that both parties can agree with, is that they want this war to be over soon, you can find Norton over at the general store, who's a war correspondant at the moment, and tells a bit more about the situation with the imperial chronicle, the noble does have hold it, but the journalists over there try to keep things as noncommittal when they can; he went out to find the truth about what's happening and he'll get it to be printed one day, he follows a path, just like us. Of course you have the Thors Students here, like Colette, who was a shophacolic back in Trista, she somehow escaped here and has taken a part-time job at the inn, her presence actually made a difference in artisans' street due to her cheerfulness and she gained quite the popularity, she also have some rumors about Jusis saying he controls the provincial army here to keep the two safe his father and Rufus are more focused on the war, (although I feel like only the latter cares about the war XD) which is in character for him; And Theresia, one of Alisa's senpai from the Lacrosse club (which means of course that you have optional dialogue if you brought her), she escaped alongside the others at the Lacrosse club but got separated, and she's quite worried about Emily (her friend and the other Senpai), her father tried to appease her using the noble way.... It didn't worked too well and she ran off (you can actually find him at the restaurant and he's quite displeased that she associated with a Commoner), she doesn't have anything new to share though so she return to speak to her father in order to squeeze some infos out of him and mention that she's jealous of us because not everyone can do whatever they want and wish us well and to do everything they can in the stead of the ones who can't do anything (you can go see the squabble afterwards, and it's a bit ugly, but we can't meddle with family affairs😔).

- Now for the Sidequests, the cat search isn't that interesting, except seeing Celine talking to the cat and nearly blowing her cover XD, and also giving you the opportunity to visit the Northern highway for more chest and battles. Now the one about the tears however, is quite interesting because of all the implication and effect on the NPCs, the statue of St Veronica started shedding black tears, that in addition to the legend of "when a crisis befalls the world, she shall cry tears black as night" cause great anxiety on the believers about the war going on, as if that's an omen, freeky right?....well actually the reason for the black tears is just mundane: the acidic water of the fountain started eroding the statue made of marble, causing it to turn black, but what's causing the water to become more acidics: a monster with the higher elements active.... Less mundane all of a sudden XD; Céline suggest that this monster could've appeared due to the same loss of balance that cause the cryptids to show, but if that's true, it means that the legend regarding the black tears have some truth to it, because if the loss of balance happens when there's a crisis and that a monster that shows up, it then polluted the water which erodes the statue; we found the origin of the legend y'all, and the tales were not so far off the mark. - Oh, a minus detail I forgot that I remembered during the fight against McBurn, I said that he can sometimes cast arts right ? Well the art in question is the HIGHEST LEVEL FIRE ART OF THE GAME, which is a one-shot since it does around 15k of damage, but yeah, just a small detail 😉. But yeah, now that's done; next time...... Ooohhhhh, next time, it's gonna be fun😏.

Well with what mcburn has shown so far Arianrhod is absolutely stronger

Unless you buying the JPN spec eds, only Sky 1 has a spec ed for PSP in the west. SC was digital only on every platform it released on.

@@RaifSeverence Yeah, I figured that was the case for Sky. Maybe one day.

Editing blunder x_x

​@@weaponscitbh it was a fun blunder then but this is speaking from someone who enjoys LPs. I didn't mind and enjoyed it.

That to Mcburn can't be killed here even at max lv 200 on EASY mode but on a NG+ run do NOT use Emma her master quartz when FULLY mastered makes its impossible for Mcburn to even HIT her and the entire party even at lv 200 on easy mode must still die but only after Duvale is beaten first. Theirs another boss shortly AFTER Mcburn kills you here that can't be killed on Easy mode AT lv 200 either.

I believe Kondo confirmed the Enforcer numbers show their order of joining the Society, hence why the new members always have the highest. He's actually hinted the Enforcers may outnumber the Arcanas/Tarots by the end. (Don't think this is a spoiler since it's not mentioned in-game).

@@giuseppeparry1365 wow i don't know about that. Thanks for the insight. As far as i know there are also minor arcana in tarot so it might be very possible to have more enforcer

That's why lv 200 party members for Nightmare is a must by having Rean Laura and Millium's s crafts top 500,000 damage each that boss will DIE in 1 turn on Nightmare mode IN UNDER 30 seconds its still a brutal boss on EASY mode at lv 70 if you don't kill it in 1 turn.

I did the same on EASY mode in ONLY 15 hours with all the optional quests done save for 1 since the game does have a NG+ only boss.

I guess. Everyone else seems to love them though

@@weaponsci Oh don’t get me wrong I do like them but when it’s spammed multiple times in a video I just find myself skipping 5 to 10 seconds ahead