This is a great video. In the final segment you say that it's your first attempt at putting together an essay-style video like this, but honestly you could have fooled me. It's entertaining even if you're already familiar with all the nightmare strats for Azure. This video could be wonderful for newcomers to the series if not for the spoilers, because the Kiseki community really has a shortage of easy to watch content dedicated to the gameplay and not the story. Looking forward to your next essay if/when there will be one.
Thanks for the kind words! I'm currently putting together another similar one - because I don't listen to my own advice when I said making things like this is taxing of my little bits of free time, lol, so I'll probably be done by the year 3046 or something. I'm not a youtuber or depend on this for income, so progress is slow, but I also don't have to worry about how "well" videos do, I just make these because I really like Trails and making content for it is a worthy past-time for me. Regardless, thank you for finding it and I hope it entertained you
Incredible video, really, really great. I've been following your channel for a while, since the second ever video you made (Nightmare Mode Loewe on the Balcony of Grancel Castle) is one of my all-time favorite play videos, but you've really outdone yourself with this one. I would encourage you to keep at it, this video was both highly educational (I learned how to use Bells in Trails games, a tactic I never felt the need to use in CS, since the games aren't hard enough to need to milk every edge out of) and highly entertaining. You've earned my sub with this.
I'm currently working on something else. It's probably going to end up being like 5 hours long, I bit off way more than I can chew, probably won't be done this year. Thanks for your kind words, though!
The crossbell arc is not really hard on nightmare difficult, but on the final chapter some enemies are challenging, but you got a lot of tools to beat them so it not really hard hard. 🤔😊
@kyschoo3075 I do like making video format essays. Other than this one and the 8 hour Gagharv marathon video, I once had a Vantage Master one (talking about the card game in CS3+ and the original VM game in 1997, and how the Natials from the grid game were translated into the card game) cooking but eventually scrapped when there just weren't enough interesting things to talk about for my liking. I occasionally get the itch to make one or two, I might put one out for Reverie whenever I finish it, but no hard promises. I definitely won't make something like this for every Trails game, especially since later CS Nightmare modes are basically "it's about 10% harder than Normal difficulty" and don't make for a lot of content.
This was a good video. I recently figured out another way to sort of just 'beat' nightmare difficulty, with the only potential elusive prerequisite being a level 5 time master quartz, in my case it was crow. All you do is give Elie the gladiator headband, you give someone with high base EP like Tio the lvl 5 crow, someone else has impassion and just create and infinite loop casting rune of transience and strike bell. the only thing that gets in ur way is the longer the fight Tio will run out of EP but you can easily just give her an EP charge to keep it going. You literally can't get hit and can just go forever, elie and tio keeping u going and then two damage dealers. It's arguably not as good as the strat you mention in this game because yours can break the game a fair bit earlier, i didn't get a lvl 5 master quartz until i think endgame.
Most forms of AT Manipulation is just game breaking, as early as Legend of Heroes 4. It's a lesson that we just have to keep teaching the old man that is Falcom.
blessed video, I have been through the same journey, but agate one in 3rd is still so rare lol After playing so much trails, we can still see something new in this game, that's why I love this series (story and gameplay wise, even if you talk to everyone/fight every monster, I believe you still can miss things, a lot of things)
The moment you mentioned Noel in Azure I was repeating "Heavy smash. Heavy smash. Heavy smash." over and over lmao; as you said, that shit really trivializes some early battles to an obscene degree. Also yea you really hit my feelings on sky nightmare on the head too. As a whole it was great, but so many individual moments just felt awful.
Honestly this video was very informative for me. I played all of Cold Steel first and learned some powerful builds from that. Oneshot Laura with Domination, evasion Tank Fie, Machias having insane speed and accelerating allies, delay spam Rean, Juna and Sara's brave order combos, Musse arts spam (honestly just an evolution of the bells here), the glory of Emblem. So when I got to Crossbell, admittedly wasn't too used to the quartz system, preferring Cold Steels, but I made it work. Zero wasn't too bad. The only thing that worries me on my replay(s) is getting the achievement for beating the game under level 40, which I might just do on a 3rd run after Nightmare to have 2+ ultimate weapons and oneshot everything story and quest related (Skipping quests is a crime for Trails I concur) As for Azure though, there was a few fights that were rough. Lynn and Aeoulia I don't recall being rough on normal but the heads up is appreciated. Evasion tank Lloyd and Spark Dyne Elie wasn't something I did until I ran into Sigmund and struggled. I wasn't properly geared but I made the most of what I had available and it worked out. I then fully invested in those for the rest of my run, making Randy, Tio, or Rixia support characters as needed. I'm glad to see that still works though I definitely need to optimize builds. I will say that the final boss for me was very rough, but I imagine investing better into speed to help boost cast times to reapply buffs will be key. Seeing your thoughts on it helped alleviate some fears of that fight I had. I also didn't use Noel too much my first run, mainly as a Sepith farmer with her and Wazy's combo craft. But realizing she has a 50% strength down craft and how few enemies resist it, on top of stacking ailments with her sleep grenade, she will be very useful in future runs. So yeah, a very insightful video that has given me some hope and ideas on how to tackle my future Azure nightmare run. Thank you!
interesting, i never realized the gagharv triloogy I played on PSP was so different from the original, it was turn based, with a movement range and led into the trails in the sky style of fighting.
Believe me, I know, and I hated it. It felt to me like it was an afterthought to make the port work, the system itself seemed rushed, incomplete, and really unbalanced, sadly.
Mate, I just found your channel through neomatter, and your firggen hilarious. I don't play trails games on nightmare (because Im not a psychopath) but it funny to hear about it
It's nice to see you around! In Neo's discord I've been pretty regularly complai- talking about my current video I'm working in, so look forward to it!
Great Video! I Highly recommend playing softbrilliants difficulty mods if you ever want to replay the coldsteel games(specifically cs3/4). Especially the cs4 mod was probably the most fun ive ever had with trails combat.
I don't have recent plans to, too busy with current video projects on this channel. I did, however, go over the changelists for that mod just to get an idea of what it looks like, and it was a nice read!
I felt the Josette bit so hard. And it hurts even more convinced my partner to play the Trails series finally and they're enjoying it on Hard difficulty and hope Josette is playable. The disappointment they're going to be feeling once they find out... also it seems to me that the reason the SSS is so good is cuz yeah they're the only characters you get for most of your play through so they kind of have to be super overpowered. but Crossbell feels like it was made with the higher difficulties in mind
Sky's balance was really wack and honestly prioritized utility above all else. I made a point in claiming that Kevin could literally be healing enemies and he'd still be one of the best characters in Nightmare, since if you play on NG Nightmare, it's more or less balanced around Grail Sphere uptime. To the point where both his stigmas' crafts that supposedly bear superhuman powers just outright lose to a B A L L. Josette is kind of in the unfortunate DPS camp, one of the three ALL-Area S-Crafters but is held back by some abysmal crafts, Stampede being the only good utility for its knockback and even that doesn't work against most devils. In comparison, I like to think Zero/Azure just had more tolerance for BS because it in addition offered the player chances to be equally broken through better-streamlined stat-stacking, as well as just giving each character insanely powerful utility kits, so everyone at least has a shot of providing outs to most situations.
@@GaleStream Kevin: I am literally an angel and demon and could annihilate all who stand before me Also Kevin: B A L L Legit when I played 3rd I mostly kept Grail Sphere as Kevin's main S-Break since it was too valuable to not have on demand and trying to cast Earth Wall or Geo Atlas (if I'm remembering the name right) just takes way too long. But yes, exactly that. Zero and Azure has so many exploitable mechanics and crafts but it never feels unfair because bosses also have very busted mechanics. and to talk about Cold Steel I think it's the larger emphasis on crafts and combat links that contribute to the easier gameplay. Arts also take a back seat in these titles since I feel the cast time of arts is a lot longer than previous games. I'm playing Cold Steel 3 on Switch atm and I've just found whaling with Crafts to be the superior to waiting for arts and opening yourself to some BS damage
@@jerbear8884 You know what else also made Cold Steel Nightmare easy? The stat inflation! CS's Nightmare has lesser stat inflation than Sky Hard. It's no more than a 1.1x or 1.2x multiplier to stats on CS Nightmare in CS3/4, whereas Sky Nightmare is a 1.45x multiplier to Speed and 1.3x to most of the other stats. A lot of Sky's unfairness comes from the enemies just having a free Action 4 on you. So Cold Steel is not even that different from just playing on normal difficulty.
@@GaleStream If I had to make a guess why it's probably because they want the games to be more accessible than previous installments so people can use Cold Steel as a springboard of sorts
@@jerbear8884 No complaints from me, honestly. The game became really easy even on Nightmare, which made me turn to increasingly stupid challenge ideas and that in itself provided me some fun :)
I think my greatest moment was when I used evasion tio to beat the sigmund fight. I tried many times with evasion lloyd, and just never was able to deal enough damage to kill him in time. Then, I realized that Sigmund has much lower ADF than DEF and figured I'd try out evasion tio instead since her normal attacks check enemy ADF instead of enemy DEF, and it actually worked (it also allowed me to equip some tonfas on lloyd that actually let his S-craft do some damage lol)
Just gotta say how much I love the progression in Trails games. Monsters are always a threat (well bosses are at least) but you always have several ways to beat any enemy and different foes force you to use different strategies (but evasion Lloyd breaks the game)
In every Trails game, there's at least one gamebreaking strat that rips the game in two. It just got more blatantly obvious as time went on, Azure is a fine example of a turning point in terms of how combat works in the series, you can see Falcom detouring from "let's grossly inflate stats for no reason" to "ehh whatever, just make everyone OP". It's not to say I like one over the other, I'm the Trails guy / Falcom shill, I love whatever they do with this series, just an interesting observation!
Tbf most things in CS4 are just comatose if you play the game while kinda keeping your stats around the expected level. Add in early access to powerful quartz via the trade function and its easily broken without even interacting with the broken mechanics like Orders, Chrono Burst loops, Arts bell loops, gungnir crits.
Great vid, I've swept Azure on normal because zero field is fair and balanced, now time to try nightmare ng+ with the most whack ass build I can think of
agreed with 15 playable characters... i'm playing a nightmare new game sky trilogy run i tried to have No Deaths/Downs, but got stained because of Josette from my 2v1 joshua, josette vs mueller in SC... i managed to have only 1 death/down in SC so yeah josette is that bad... currently doing new game nightmare Sky the 3rd, as soon as josette arrives i immediately benched her butt... until i need her to leveled up later on endgame bosses.... liked the video BTW...
Regarding the difficulty of the Trails games on Nightmare difficulty, I must say that Cold Steel Nightmare is an absolute joke. Once you've got your setup correctly, nothing is a challenge. Granted I Cold Steel is my first Trails game, I was surprised that Normal Difficulty of Sky is no joke and challenging. I like it. Make me rethink and save every so often.
Very true, CS Nightmare is a cakewalk. Like I mentioned though, there exists community mods to make Nightmare... Well, Nightmare again, if you are so inclined!
I haven’t watched the video yet but I see ppl talking about the games being kind of easy a few times. This is why I beat the crossbell and cold steel 3/4 with no upgrades whatsoever lol. Cold steel 1/2 I didn’t cuz that shit tough fr and it was my first time playing the series lol
@@GaleStream the story is really the greatest thing yeah lol. I only have to finish reverie and I’ll be caught up with everything besides the sky games cuz I can’t play them on pc lol. I could if I really wanted but I don’t wanna and it’s my bros computer lol
@@GaleStream the story is really the greatest thing yeah lol. I only have to finish reverie and I’ll be caught up with everything besides the sky games cuz I can’t play them on pc lol. I could if I really wanted but I don’t wanna and it’s my bros computer lol
I did the arhianrhod fight when playing trough the game, and I even have my own video on aeolia and lynn lol But I didn't beat neither seigmund nor arios on my first playtrough, I should've tried more strats (yes I was playing with nightmare)
Sigmund took me about 30 minutes from start to finish (that video is buried in my channel somewhere), but the first five were filled with despair for sure lol, a lot of "I don't think I can do this one". Eventually figured out how to do it rather quickly, luckily. Arios is another story, that was one hell of a slog, I've since learned the targeting logic of Arcane Gale, but trying to play around the unknown during the moment was intense!
21:24 That timer was so dumb. This was the only boss I didn't bother with on nightmare (I got raging spin and beat everyone else though). Why doesn't the timer pause when in the menu or using crafts? Why should turning up the combat speed in the out of game settings make the fight easier? Why does the game suddenly reward you for being fast at navigating menus? Why is spamming the start button to skip animations optimal? The timer is just a terribly designed boss mechanic.
@co8wei It definitely feels like one of those ideas that one guy pitched at a design meeting and they decided to do it for the lulz. I'm a sucker for unique stuff like that, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. It's a daring idea and they had the balls to actually put it in. But as I said in the video itself, this mechanic frankly does not belong in this game. Points for trying, now Falcom, please never do it again.
