"Thank you so much, for allowing me to grow to the point where I can feel this way about myself."
The Trails series, on the whole, has always exceeded other JRPGs for me in terms of its character writing. Crimson Sin puts its characters to the forefront so that the overarching narrative from the previous games can take a break, and Falcom knocked it out of the park.
I was already a really big fan of the Solutions Office after Kuro 1, but they just ramped up my love of these guys. Falcom finally fucking remembered that a bigger cast like this needs attention to their relationships and development so that's what Crimson Sin sets out to do. So many characters get scenes where they can just be themselves. I'm still really confused as to why connect events are still limited. I'd highly recommend save scumming and seeing all of them because they are fantastic. I felt a lot of the "lesser" members gained so much through the events of this game as well. Quatre felt like he needed to be elaborated on and the wait most definitely paid off. His struggle to come to terms with his past and his "identity" was extremely mature given the genre's track record with these types of things. Swin and Nadia were two unexpected additions that honestly rounded the cast off super nicely. Nadia gets a lot of time to shine and is especially fantastic with Swin to play off of. While their portion of the story ends up leading to the weakest part of the game (Act 3), their character arcs come to an extremely satisfying conclusion after their introduction in Reverie.
As previously mentioned, Act 3 is the weakest part of the game. It's bloated (still not as bad as Cold Steel) and some of those routes could have been condensed. It may ultimately feel pointless while playing through it, but ends up serving an interesting purpose. This leads to the finale which has THE best boss fight in the series thus far. I hope they can execute something similar to this in the future because it was awesome.
OST is peak as usual, but some tracks feel a bit too similar to the last game. I guess this is to be expected when you're getting the same people to compose tracks for a lot of the same locations, but I feel like they could have mixed it up more. They stepped it up in terms of the placement of some tracks because MAN the first time they played this... shit hit.
I don't give a shit if it doesn't contribute to the overarching narrative. I WANT TO SEE VAN ARKRIDE GUIDE THESE YOUNG PEOPLE THROUGH LIFE WHILE BUILDING CONNECTIONS AND BETTERING HIMSELF BECAUSE THAT IS HIS STYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
"Thank you, Van... For completing my 4spg."
The Trails series, on the whole, has always exceeded other JRPGs for me in terms of its character writing. Crimson Sin puts its characters to the forefront so that the overarching narrative from the previous games can take a break, and Falcom knocked it out of the park.
I was already a really big fan of the Solutions Office after Kuro 1, but they just ramped up my love of these guys. Falcom finally fucking remembered that a bigger cast like this needs attention to their relationships and development so that's what Crimson Sin sets out to do. So many characters get scenes where they can just be themselves. I'm still really confused as to why connect events are still limited. I'd highly recommend save scumming and seeing all of them because they are fantastic. I felt a lot of the "lesser" members gained so much through the events of this game as well. Quatre felt like he needed to be elaborated on and the wait most definitely paid off. His struggle to come to terms with his past and his "identity" was extremely mature given the genre's track record with these types of things. Swin and Nadia were two unexpected additions that honestly rounded the cast off super nicely. Nadia gets a lot of time to shine and is especially fantastic with Swin to play off of. While their portion of the story ends up leading to the weakest part of the game (Act 3), their character arcs come to an extremely satisfying conclusion after their introduction in Reverie.
As previously mentioned, Act 3 is the weakest part of the game. It's bloated (still not as bad as Cold Steel) and some of those routes could have been condensed. It may ultimately feel pointless while playing through it, but ends up serving an interesting purpose. This leads to the finale which has THE best boss fight in the series thus far. I hope they can execute something similar to this in the future because it was awesome.
OST is peak as usual, but some tracks feel a bit too similar to the last game. I guess this is to be expected when you're getting the same people to compose tracks for a lot of the same locations, but I feel like they could have mixed it up more. They stepped it up in terms of the placement of some tracks because MAN the first time they played this... shit hit.
I don't give a shit if it doesn't contribute to the overarching narrative. I WANT TO SEE VAN ARKRIDE GUIDE THESE YOUNG PEOPLE THROUGH LIFE WHILE BUILDING CONNECTIONS AND BETTERING HIMSELF BECAUSE THAT IS HIS STYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
"Thank you, Van... For completing my 4spg."