The final part of the Crossbell Community Ranking is here! Massive thank you to LadyVirgilia for helping me out with this one! Keep an eye/ear out for an important announcement during the video! We don’t want you missing the next vote… If you missed any of the previous parts, check them out here! Part 1 - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sE-orQwlAhY.html Part 2 - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-55KSC9mFUEA.html Part 3 - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-E-FJUcMa7v0.html
Thanks so much for the opportunity to join you in this wrap-up video TKN! Love what you did with the editing lol! I also remember having a great discussion about Arios with Tyler from Kiseki Cast. Really interesting hearing his perspective on "fan favorite" characters. Agreed on Elie (and Noel). Unfortunate that some characters got shafted. ...and Rixia and Wazy's backstories getting locked behind final bonding events. Kitsune must be beyond elated that Tio has taken 1st place :P Awesome job as always TKN!
Thank you very much for taking part, Lady. We'll have to sort another collab out in the future! Yeah, I saw Kitsune showing his love, so that's always nice. :) Like I say, you gave my plenty of opportunity to edit around your script, I couldn't have wished for better material!
What I love so much about Randy is that while, just like Virgilia I was keeping my eye on him, (and there was more than meets the eye); there's still something very special about him, even more so than other characters who use their goofiness as a ruse (Olivier, Lechter, Wazy). While I think all of these aforementioned characters are quirky, Randy seems the most organically so. I don't think Randy is necessarily trying to distract anyone with jovial jokes or flirtiness, I think he's generally being true to himself. He wants nothing more than to be the Randy we all know and love. That's man he has spent years growing into. My favorite Randy scene was way too easy to miss and I'm so glad I caught it: In Ao, I implore anyone to take anyone take Randy into the Castle of Mirrors at Mishelam Wonderland. Randy gives Lloyd the usual complaints "You're supposed to take chicks to events like this, bro" and they make their wishes in front of the mirror together. Lloyd tells Randy something like he hoped for the future of Crossbell, Randy tells Lloyd he hoped for a hot harem sort of like Lloyd's. Lloyd scoffs at him and walks off, and Randy stays in the camera with a thought bubble that said something to the effect of "I just want to stay with you and the SSS forever." -- suggesting that was his real wish, even though at that time he was planning to leave them and fight the Red Constellation on his own. Very tear-jerky. Absolute beast of a character. Randy was my favorite, but I can live with #2. And if anyone was going to beat him for that top spot; it may as well have been Tio.
Agree - Tio is one of my favorites too. She has a good story, and a fine character growth. I was happy to see her again in Cold Steel III. That said - One of my other favorites, Rixia, does not get much screen time in the Cold Steel arc (apart from a relatively short intermezzo in Cold Steel II, where she plays, together with Lloyd, the role as a kind of antagonist against Rean.). That makes me a bit sad.
@@Ghalion666 I like Renne too, as I tend to favor casters. She probably would be #1, but she really is a character from the Sky arc more than Crossbell. Of course there is so much crossover between characters at this point, but I would still exclude Renne from this list for that reason.
@@acidwizard6528 Renne was a much more important character to the Crossbell arc than Sky imo. Zero was basically about finding closure for Renne and Tio. She may even have more dialogue and screen time in Crossbell. I rank her 2nd. I think I had her at 5th in Sky.
I think the reason so many people voted Ellie that highly (certainly why I did) is because the real best development in the game is that of the SSS as a unit. They go from relative strangers to friends to family in a very natural seeming way and I don't think it would have anywhere near the same success without Ellie or any of the other three. Ellie might not have the same level of character development or badass moments like the other protagonists, but she's an integral part of why the game and SSS feels so good and without her I don't think Lloyd, Randy and Tio would be quite as strong as they are. In Azure where she's out of the party for quite some time the party dynamic feels off and I was eager to see the SSS complete again. It's for that reason there's no way I could put any of the four core SSS members outside of the top 6 at least, all of them together and the way they interact inside and outside the group is why I personally think Zero/Ao are the best Trails games. Ellie being below the other 3 core members is definitely right though.
That's a good shout, the group dynamic is there, and it's why I consider the SSS to be my favourite cast of characters in the series. Despite that though, I would still place her lower personally. The other 3 members visibly change by the end of Ao, they're a far cry from what they were at the beginning, either overcoming trauma or pushing on to some new ideal. Elie just stays the same, I never got the impression that she 'grew' compared to the others, which is a shame because she helps the others to grow (that scene with Tio in the hospital comes to mind), but she doesn't really get the same love. She had the basis to have a great story arc, and more than enough time to see it materialise. I'm just hoping she will get some attention in the future.
Totally agree with you. If we except Renne which is help by Sora, the only character not from the 4 SSS principal members that I like more than Elie is Rixia. SSS is unity.
I have to say that I really love the dedicated Trails community that has developed over the last year or so. There's now multiple youtube channels and a podcast solely dedicated to one amazing series and there's no lack of content and things for the community to talk about. I think a lot of it has to do with how expansive the game lore is and how the community is relatively new as most of us discovered the series only within the last few years. Thanks for putting this together, great video!
Elie at 5 is a pretty good spot for her. Maybe a little higher than she should be, but she's a key part of the SSS and her emotional support helps the SSS so much more than first appearances suggest.
Yay, amazing videos with the perfect end. Of course I'm happy to see Tio at #1. She has been one of the most tragic videogame characters I've seen yet, and she had the strength despite her young age to overcome it. Of course her personality was robbed due to its fate, but it's only natural. Though she accepted it and fouught for the SSS with all the power she has. Furthermore she has so many sweet sides and her spells hit like a truck. She's my favorite Trails character besides Kevin. Anyways these videos were great, not only because of making the work of evaluating the rankings, but also adding the commentary which I can get totally behind.
Wow thanks for the unexpected podcast shout out! This final top ten is fantastic and really hard to argue with. I promise to be more open minded about Arios in the future, despite my current reservations. You're absolutely right that he knows and accepts his "sins" for his actions to save Crossbell, and I don't think I was giving him credit for that before. If we can forgive Richard, Arios deserves a chance too! Beyond that, a great point with Elie. I thought she deserved more, but she really would have had the perfect setup for more development with her parents! Easy to forget about them since we never see them and barely hear about them. Can't wait to join in the Erebonian voting. (Also great job Lady!)
Thanks for watching as always mate, and no worries, the podcast deserves a shout out or two! And no, you don't need to change your mind on Arios, it's the beauty of opinions. You have your reasons for disliking him, which I agree with, but I looked at it from another angle, hence why I love the character. I think the issue is that with Richard we see his repentance in Sky SC and Sky the Third. He's actively working to repay his wrongdoings, and we see it in game. With Arios however we see him in the epilogue snapshots of Ao, and that's about it. We don't see his 'redemption' arc so to speak, which is what I'm hoping Hajimari will be to an extent.
The videos are worth the wait! I myself have participated in that poll and I am glad to say that I was very pleased with the result (so proud of mah boi Randy ❤️) that you for a very GREAT vid TKN and LadyVirgilia of course (I am a fan if her yt channel as well! :> )
That was quite the series of videos. Can’t wait to provide my input on the erebonia arc. I’m very appreciative of the work you put into these videos! Thank you
Can’t wait for your cold steel rankings. Those games are where I stepped into the land of Zemuria for the first time and fell in love with the series, so those will be the polls I participate in. Still really enjoyed the other polls and the vignettes you gave for each character. I learned a lot more about the series.
I'd like to think with the individual polls I'll be sending out, everyone will be able to get involved in some capacity, plus the weighted parameters are just a much fairer reflection of a 'good' character. Not to mention, it's easier to vote with and compile. It makes sense to split it in to 2 halves though, of which I'm glad a subscriber mentioned to me when I first started to contemplate the idea.
Lloyd is the obvious 1st pick to me. He's got such an inspiring character arc, going from this ordinary guy with a big brother complex, to managing to manifest the seemingly impossible to reach ideals of his dead brother, and defeating his brother's rival, who was kind of responsible for his death. And he's super classy and impressively intuitive. It's so rare to find lead characters who can carry the group intellectually. And yet he also has the traditional main character qualities, like assertiveness, conviction and a strong sense of justice. Tio and Randy deserves to be up there though. I think Tio was written really poorly in Ao though. I agree with the points made about Elie, but I think Tio's character progression was even weaker than hers in Ao. Her stealing the spotlight in Zero along with Renne is enough to warrant a top 3 position though.
Thanks for the work you put in making those community rankings, always good to have for the loremongers out there ;) For Cold Steel series, I fear there will be way too much characters to go through (I have to admit I had a rough time with the Zero/Ao ranking since I did'nt remember most of the sub characters that have little to no impact on the game). All in all, the top 10 deserve their ranks, can't wait to see what happens for Cold Steel rankings, I'm sure you'll have some surprises there too!
Thanks for watching mate! The amount of characters in Cold Steel is why the ranking will be split in two, Cold Steel 1 and 2, and Cold Steel 3 and 4, since the roles of characters in each half take some drastic turns. Plus, it won't be a simple list this time, each character poll will be released individually with various metrics against them, so I think it will be a better reflection of each character, and not to mention it will be a lot easier to vote. I'm sure you'll be able to take part in some capacity!
Awesome vid as always. I finally finished replaying Ao last month. So I agree with this completely. Playing it again honestlty made me appreciate Randy and Tio even more. Randy is an amazing character. I always love it when he gets jealous of Lloyd for his luck with the ladies and Tio is just *cries* amazing. When I first played Zero I cried during her backstory and during Ao she honestly became one of my favorite characters in gaming because I picked her as my romance partner. And lets just say I gotten really emotional on some parts where Tio was in
(Spoilers for Azure) Kiseki Nut, First of all, I can't believe how late I am to finally seeing this part of the rankings. Must have been the algorithm again...Anyway, I've been meaning to leave a comment on one of your videos at some point, and since I've been looking forward to this video in particular for a while, I thought I may as well do so here. I am currently 6 games into this franchise, with my playthrough of the 3rd drawing close to its end. So this video has been a very nice nostalgic throwback to the Crossbell arc, the very first arc I played in this amazing series. I played those two games before the Geofront translations finished, so they were great practice for my N1 studies. The scene with Lloyd and Guy in the World of Zero is without a doubt one of the best scenes I have ever witnessed in a video game. I absolutely related to and empathized with Lloyd in every single way during that scene, from the relationship he has with his brother (especially loved the little touch with how he stopped with the rough "aniki" and switched to using the more affectionate "nii-chan" for that conversation), to his understandable longing for a world where Guy was still alive. But Lloyd's resolve to keep going in a world without his brother resonated with me in several ways. We all have those moments where we think "I could have done this better", or "I wish I still had this or that". However, to see someone like this fictional character acknowledging and accepting such somber thoughts while also making the optimistic step to also say "but I have these things in the here and now to cherish, to face tomorrow" is absolutely powerful and inspiring to those who struggle to embrace the present. Not only that, but I feel that resolution of Lloyd is possibly the single greatest way this duology could have ended. Several characters and events point explicitly point out a dark future for Crossbell without the miracles that KeA is capable of bringing. Heck, the SSS even being alive and arguably Renne finding a family of her own were thanks to her power. But the fact that Lloyd, the SSS, and all of their allies willingly chose to save KeA in spite of that showed to me that they all gained the strength to move towards tomorrow, whatever regrets or tragedy come their way. Though the narration in the ending depicted the people of Crossbell gravely losing a battle, the resolve they formed through their trials and tribulations showed the potential to win a war. Probably the most realistic yet optimistic and uplifting way to close out a game if I've ever seen one. I discovered both your channel and Ms. Virgillia's channel this year, right around the start of everything currently going on throughout the world. So watching the content of both your channels have been some of the biggest sources of joy and fun I've had in these current times. My love of Nihon Falcom's games have no doubt been amplified thanks to you both. I cannot wait to finish 3rd so I can finally start Cold Steel 3. And I'm definitely excited to play Ys 8 once I finish my current playthrough of my first game in that series, Monstrum Nox. So for all the incredible content you both put out, Kiseki Nut, Ms. Virgillia, thank you both so much!
It's for people like yourself and a love of this amazing series that I make content mate, I dare say Lady is exactly the same! Comments like this make us realise all the time we put in to content is worthwhile, because not only does give a greater experience to those who are already in the fandom, but it potentially brings newcomers in as well. It's always rewarding to know it means something! I agree completely on Lloyd as well, he's arguably the most determined individual in the series. I won't spoil anything since I know you've yet to go beyond the first 6 games, but it really starts to ramp up in Cold Steel 3, and if you're a fan of the interconnection of the series, I think the final half of CS will be an enjoyable ride. I'm currently playing the Cold Steel arc through 1 more time before CS4 releases (which will be my second playthrough, this time in English though), and picking up on all the added nuance is something I'll never get tired of. I hope you'll be able to get involved with the Cold Steel ranking, I'll be splitting it in to two halves, and it'll be polls on individual characters which I'll compile over time, so i dare say you'll at least be able to get involved in one if you intend to. Hope you enjoy the rest of your journey, and see you for Cold Steel 4 this fall!
Shizuku should have been in the top ten... She's the sweetest girl ever who doesn't complain no matter what messes she gets wrapped up in. She's always looking out for others, and even when she gets her vision back in Azure she says it's 'all wrong,' and rather than celebrating that she can finally see, she is concerned about KeA and what her father is doing... She is even mature enough to say firmly that her father is wrong...
Great list by the community. If this was a personal list of my Elle wouldn’t be in the top 10 not because I don’t like her but because she gets very little development outside of chapter 1 of Zero. PS Renne is my favorite Trails character
WHO DARED PUT WAZY AS WORST?!?!?!?! I don't care what that person's view of him is, he is one of the most fun characters in the series as a whole, on par with Olivert, the two are similar, yet the differences between them are very apparent. EDIT: WHAT DO YOU MEAN 2 VOTES FOR WORST FOR Lloyd?!?!??!?!?!?! These 3 people weren't playing the same games as I was obviously, because I can understand maybe not liking them and not rating them highly, I can see that, but being worst for either of these 2 is just straight up wrong.
I'm surprised to see Ellie 5th, it's kind of expected given she's a Main Character, but so many people say she's bland and gets very little development.
As a main character I guess it makes sense, but 5th position was a bit higher than I expected when compared to the sheer amount of stellar characters in this arc.
Wasn't around to vote on this but I'm glad to see my favorite characters end up being #1, #2 and #4. And of course my SSS car is always painted with Tio decals.
Spoiler warnings I guess I have some qualms about that might be triggering haha. First, they murdered our boi wald SO BAD. He stooped sooooo low. Taking the same suspicious drug that affected his gang (dino). Then instead of destroying his 'weakness' (the gang), he included the entirety of his hometown. I always assume he had some semblance of self-respect... Also confused by Noel's actions. I thought her family was the most important thing. So when she sided with the mayor, the same guy that indirectly endangered her sister, friends, and coworkers, I was shocked. Not to mention the other red flags(authoritarian tendencies, cult links). Not sure how I felt about her after. She should have doubts but I can't understand her going out of her way to stop Lloyd and co. Shame Mariabell remains a mystery. I wonder if she felt anything when Ellie 'died'. She was a good villain though, pretty despicable. Finally, people gonna hate me for it, but Arianrhod felt pretty hypocritical to me. She acts all noble and stuff but still sides with questionable characters and helps cause terrorism. Ian Grimwood felt like an asspull IMO, you can remove his involvement and it won't change a thing. He's basically lawyer Maclaine. The twist of the original timeline though was absolutely GENIUS and gives so much context for KeA characters. Gave me a mindfuck.
I felt the same way about Elie that you do. I loved her (and chose her as the romantic partner because it felt right); but she didn't enter the spotlight the way she needed to; and just felt bland by comparison. Part of Zero/Ao's problem (Cold Steel has this too) is in the optional bonding / romance. For such story rich games, those facts make way too many extremely important details missable, and they diminish the clear canon love interests (like Elie) because they need to be restrained based on what the players *might* choose.
Totally agree mate. I'm personally not too big on the bonding events when they lock such important plot elements behind them. Ao is arguably one of the most guilty in this regard. But Elie just needed way more in my book. Compared to the other 3 main characters, her arc is just straight up lacking. The others are visibly different people by the end of Crossbell, Elie just stays the same, which is unfortunate really.
I very much agree with all that you said, making the ability to bond with more than one character also means less refinement compared to writing just the single love interest. But I thought that No Romance was the canon for these games, and anyone (even Ellie) was just there for player satisfaction of going with who they liked?
@@azeemotron I think officially Elie is considered the canon. There is always one member who is the 'true choice' - Alisa has the same role in Cold Steel. I'm personally more of a fan of the canon relationships, as it feel it lends more to the characters and their interactions, Joshua and Estelle come to mind immediately for me. I felt Class VII would benefit massively from canon relationships, as I feel the games are mostly focused around Rean as the centre, and then Class VII as the periphery around him. If some canon relationships bloomed through Class VII members rather than having the choices, I felt it would steer the series in to developing those members even further. But that's my personal opinion after playing all the games, I know a lot of players prefer choosing their relationship.
@@TheKisekiNut I think you have a point here. The relation between Joshua and Estelle worked very well, because there was no doubt they where canon. I do feel a bit sorry for Kloe and the little sky bandit though.. If they had done same thing for Lloyd and Elie in the Crossbell arc, and Rean and Alisa in the Cold Steel arc, I think there could have been a stronger story. That's because in that case the writers did not have to fit in all those bonding events. These bonding events practically destroys the kind of relation growth between characters that worked so well in the Sky arc, because the writers now have to write the rest of the story with minimal interaction between love interests. You cold not have the same interaction between Lloyd and "chosen person" as there is between Joshua and Estelle, because (especially early on) it's unknown who that "chosen person" will be. So they have to tone down all interaction, and limit the stronger ones only to those bonding moments. That feels far less natural than using a fixed relationship.
I think the bonding scene complaints are so overstated. I feel like Sky was supposed to be a love story, while the other arcs shifted the focus to the bigger picture and politics. Rean having a love interest would feel so out of character with everything that is going on, and as for Lloyd, I think he's supposed to be weighing between Elie and Rixia, or maybe Noel, but he needs time to make up his mind. I do think that they should have given more attention to Elie + Lloyd in Ao though. It feels weird that they didn't, since the game opened with that awkward reunite scene, and there were tons of suggestive scenes in Zero. But overall I felt like they got lazy in Ao with the interpersonal dialogues. I would have liked more development, especially between Lloyd and Tio and Elie, and between Randy and Tio.
Hmmm, for once community agrees with my personal rankings. Both Tio and Randy got the spots they deserve. (it wont be as good for cold steel i am sure since Alisa have quite a bit of popularity - and i am personally want to burn her. Also Closet Laura Fanboy. With them as last and first respectfully can judge the rest without personal bias i guess - if i'll ever catch the polls)
Yes, Tío and Randy are the best, Elie is disappointing, Renne and Rixia deserve to be top 5... and the cast of crosbell is really cool, but for me i really love the sky cast, especially Khloe, Agate & Tita, Estelle, Olivier, Schera, Joshua, Lowe..but what i like the most is the banter between them all which is especially visible in Sky the 3rd, However, i only just started CS3 but i have to say, i Absolutely LOVE every single character in CS3 so far, which is not something i could say about CS1 or CS2
Kiseki fanbase: “elie too bland, boring, disappointing, no spotlight, no arc, wasted potential, other SSS members shine more, etc etc etc” Also kiseki fanbase: “#5 best character in Crossbell. out of like 40.” … (My top 5 are Lloyd, Randy, Ilya, Rixia, and either Tio/Wazy/Dudley)
