Trails in the Sky (PSP RPG)

I still haven’t gotten it. If I had read Matt’s summary, I would have by now, but somehow I missed it. I keep seeing it on Amazon, but I have too many things to play right now. But I LOVE a really charming JRPG, so this might have to get bumped up.

It was a lightning deal on Amazon last week for like $14. I bought it at full price and still consider it well worth it.

They did this game a huge disservice by burdening it with the Legend of Heroes name. The first three titles sucked.

So, I just finished the end of the prologue, as I’m currently busy with agarest zero on the PS 3 and frozen synapse on the PC and I have a question.

How many missables (quests, items, etc.) are there? Can I play the game without a FAQ with a clear conscience or will I (easily) miss significant parts of the game?

My single gripe with this game are the missables. Some quests are only available for very specific timeframes, and certain items are only available at certain points in the game, and missing those can cause you to lose out on some of the most powerful items in the game. My paranoia about losing out on content means I refuse to play this game without a FAQ in hand, but it’s not strictly necessary and I can’t say that the parts you would miss would be “significant,” per se.

The first three games, in their original PC format, are among my favorite games. Their PSP ports are poorly made (which is part of the reason behind Falcom porting the Trails in the Sky series by themselves), and the English versions are so bad they may as well be machine-translated.

Alright, thanks. I guess that rules out this game for an imminent (partially) internetless roadtrip then, as I suffer from a similar “paranoia”, though it’s very possible that I already missed out on tons of stuff in the prologue.

There’s a book that you (mercifully) can buy a copy of early in Chapter 1 that you’ll need for a late game quest, you can never buy old copies of the newspaper after a new issue is released (so you’re SOL if you want to collect them all and didn’t buy an extra copy of the one from the early prologue), and you may have missed one or two quests that are only available for very specific timeframes. It’s nothing crippling, but the fact that content can be so easily missed is one of the things I’ve always found troubling about JRPGs.

Hah, I already missed the newspaper, I’m pretty sure I did all the quests on the notice board. And it seems I made a bad choice or two during missions.

FAQs from now on for me.

Joystiq did a brief feature on this game. He is right. BUY IT.

Thread necro? (I think there was a much longer thread about the game, but can’t find it)

NOPE!

This is coming to Steam next week. You might remember this: http://store.steampowered.com/app/237890/

THAT was a rather bad JRPG, but one of the first to come to Steam.

Instead this one is a Windows port of a VERY GOOD classic JRPG that came out a few years ago on PSP. The most interesting series beside Final Fantasy and “Tales of”. Translation has been improved a bit.

This is a series (known as Sora no Kiseki) that is gaining quite a bit of momentum in Japan, and what has been considered as the best chapter in the series follows directly this first game (it’s basically a sequel) and is currently being translated. It should be out around the end of the year on Steam, but probably will be delayed by a few months.

So, very good JRPG on Steam, comes out next week, costs about $16.99 for the time being.

Give them money so we get the excellent sequel(s).

Nice write up. I’ve got a tingling sensation, my jrpg Spidey sense, that this might be the first jrpg since Lost Odyssey that I might connect with for the long haul and enjoy.

Now the question is: PSVita or Steam? (Since it is a PSP game, I assume it’s also available for the Vita).

GOG will also be an option.

It is available for Vita. And if you were living in Europe, the answer would be easy, as the game’s price has never been reduced on the PS store - I wouldn’t expect the PC release to cost €30 or more. In the US, the situation may be more consumer-friendly.
Other than that, PSP games on Vita look sort of awful; I’m currently playing through Persona 3, and even 50 hours in I’m still annoyed by the blocky image. So unless you’ve got better access to a Vita than to a laptop for this, it’s PC all the way.
I’m kind of annoyed at myself now, because this simple list of pros and cons still leads me to the conclusion that the Vita is my best option.

Update: Kotaku (yes, I’ve seen the Kotaku front page today, and I’m not afraid to admit it) claims that (a) it’s coming to GOG as well on the 29th, and (b) it will be priced at $20 (which should force a Steam price significantly below €20 - yay competition between online stores).
Kotaku also claims that one of the improvements will be widescreen support - I suppose someone forgot what kind of screen the PSP has.

It’s $16.99 on Steam, I said that already above.

It’s $19.99 on PSN for the PSP/Vita here in the U.S.

Around $50 on the Au PSN.

$16.99 on both Steam and GoG. Anyone know if GoG has cloud saves or just local?

For people interested in JRPGs it might be worthwhile to know that you can find an undub for this game on PSP. I’ve never heard of a single undub for any game on PC, thus - PSP is still the better choice.

What is an undub? It goes back to Japanese? But would that mean it is subtitled?