Game:

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd (2007)

Duration: 3:04:04

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Originally recorded: October 14, 2022
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Naming this episode was a real pain, honestly. I had three themes I considered touching upon -- given what took place during this session -- and I'm happy to announce that two of them ended up getting a nod. Better still, despite being on the long side, the whole thing managed to fit within YouTube's somewhat draconian character limits for titles.

Honestly, after all that talk of games and the fact that my roster of party members has literally ballooned so high, I'm a little disappointed that the fifth realm didn't culminate in some kind of chess game between devils and our motley crew. Oh well, at least the dungeon design itself was pretty interesting, with the twists and terms I came to expect from SC's late game. Getting Estelle back was pretty fun too... and the game's default layout for her wasn't that far removed from my own set-up for her back in the first two games: a Jack of all Orbal trades, with a slightly higher emphasis on healing magic to offset her various partners' greater aptitude for either physical or magical offense.

Those Arch Devils were no joke though... and the fact that only Space magic -- the type costs the most EP to cast spells for in the whole game -- could actually put a dent in it meants that I'd regularly have to escape from it just to survive. And don't get me started on that boss fight for the chapter. The fact that I had to reassess my strategy twice in order to beat those damned Arachne sisters (and their even more terrible mother) may be a good example of what I appreciate the most about battles in the Sky trilogy, but man, not being able to fall back on power-grinding to curbstomp enemies that give you trouble can be a bit of a pain sometimes. Oh well, still beats relying on RNG.

With Alan Richard and Renne added to the playable roster, I think we've got our full cast of characters at this point. While I would've liked to see Kurt make the jump as well, it's still pretty cool that we're getting even more characters that weren't ever playable in previous games. Better yet, they're both quite major antagonists from FC and SC, respectively -- albeit, going through some extent of a heel-face turn. While I've been trying to avoid spoilers from future games, I am at least aware that Renne becomes a pretty major character in later games. Fortunately, since I liked her in the first place, that does serve as a motivator to keep me going... despite all of the negative things I've heard about Cold Steel.

Since I had some extra time after finishing Chapter 5 -- I still wonder when this pattern will break -- I decided to do a little more side content. I originally considered doing some of the Star Doors I've had piling up, but when I found the fourth Sun Door, I absolutely knew that it was going to take precedent -- if SC proved anything, I'm clearly a sucker for video poker. I was surprised to see Gambler Jack and Halle show up though. I was perplexed at first when I noticed that the mini-game counter in the Steam achievements jumped from 2 to 4... until I realized that it likely didn't count the Arena as a battle, but Blackjack and Poker? Definitely counted as two different games. I'm planning on doing another filler session soon, but I think I wanna see if I can pick up some more Doors in Chapter 6 before committing to that. 5 Star Doors just isn't enough content for an entire recording, I'm afraid.

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