Game:

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter (2006)

Duration: 3:25:49

3 views

0

Originally recorded: August 12, 2022 (not a typo)
---
I have to admit, I was a little worried after Thursday night's session. My throat was feeling a bit ragged -- not necessarily sore, rather just sort of "tense" -- but all it took was a good night's sleep to bring my voice back up to 100%. So, in the end, the "three-session week" experiment was a total success. Granted, it won't be that easy to plan for them, but if I can manage to line them up just right, it'll make getting through the remaining Trails in the Sky games a breeze. Hell, I was originally only expecting to hit Chapter 5 by the end of the month, but considering that I'm already on the fourth chapter not even halfway through August, I'm already considering moving up my timetable to expect hitting Chapter 6 before we get to September. That should give me more than enough time to reach my goal of finishing before Zero's release date.

Having said that, I think three's my limit. I doubt I'd be able to squeeze in four sessions and still have much of a voice left. Maybe if I didn't rely on my voice for work... but there's no use in wondering "what if", right?

It's funny. Despite the fact that I was basically messing around at the start of this session, it didn't really feel like I was wasting any time. Maybe it's because I didn't actually reach the proper ending of Chapter 3 last time... and so, just seeing the end card and achievement pop for the third chapter and the title card for the fourth made things feel just that much more productive? It's kind of sobering to think that my perspective could be manipulated so easily.

Anyway, in the last journal entry, I discussed how the perception of Crossbell essentially shifted from an amazing pair of games that were being unfairly withheld from Western audiences to a massive roadblock preventing us from catching up to more contemporary releases. The most interesting bit is that there were other releases of the Crossbell games that would've made for viable Western releases. The most commonly requested versions were the ones for the PlayStation Vita and PS3. Referred to as the "Evolution" versions, these versions had additional voice acting and rearranged soundtracks. Best of all, they included not only the Crossbell games, but the entire Sora no Kiseki trilogy as well!

But for whatever reason, XSEED just wasn't able to license them. For years, it was believed that the reason for that was due to the tricky nature of Falcom's various partners being able to collaborate with one another. But recently, I heard a new theory: that there's some bad blood between Marvelous Entertainment (XSEED's parent company) and Kadokawa Games, who provided the additional material present in the Evolution versions of the older Kiseki games. Supposedly, the Kai versions of the Crossbell games -- which NISA are bringing over -- contain the additional materials only found in the EVO versions. I can't really confirm or deny that though, but it would make sense that Falcom would want to use that extra content.

Still, this theory relies on the presence of that extra material... so I've come up with my own theory. Basically, I believe that XSEED only bothered with Falcom games that were exclusively developed by the company themselves because it afforded them the largest possible share of the profits. After all, licensing games from a single company is always going to be far less expensive than having to negotiate with multiple ones. It would also explain XSEED's excuse for not licensing those PC ports from Joyoland. Still think it was hilarious how they threw them under the bus by essentially claiming their ports were so bad, they'd have to reprogram them from scratch! Considering how many of Falcom's own PC games they had to essentially rebuild, I have to wonder if they could've done it.

As for the game's story itself, I guess I'm not really surprised that we ended up back in Rolent, rather than going straight to Bose. It seems like SC is following the same cycle as FC in terms of its locale. We just had a different starting point this time. I'm just kind of surprised that the podunk little town is suddenly packing way better equipment than the nation's capital of all places!

Other Statistics