[Kuro no Kiseki] 8 Characters in Battle at Once & Guest AI Behavior

Channel:

Zeke Belforma

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Published on May 21, 2024 6:00:17 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieP9wJNf7aE

Game:

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak (2021)

Duration: 5:48

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► Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTHjrn7t5Ah_FEmnQF28j6WwLDT2oG8YD

Aside from map-related stuff, I've also been messing around with how Kuro handles its playable characters and party.

Under normal circumstances, the maximum number of characters that can participate in battle at the same time is 6 (4 controllable characters and 2 guests), as seen during the Bracer and Ouroboros Routes of Chapter 5 and some sections of the Final Chapter, but the game actually supports up to 8! These two extra characters can't move in the overworld and will simply appear somewhere in the battlefield every time a new fight starts, but they can participate in battle without any issue. It's also possible to add a 9th character and while he/she will appear in the battlefield, that character will never act.

Next, there's a byte near the one that represents a character's ID that denotes their playable status:
- 00: Main party members.
- 01: Guest characters. Their icon appears on the upper right of the character HUD and you can check their status in the main menu.
- 02: Guest characters, mostly reserved for NPCs that join for certain story segments or sidequests. Their icon appears below the character HUD/S Boost Gauge and you can't check their status in the main menu.
Interestingly enough, this is the only playable status that gives Sherid and Naje access to their Crafts, otherwise they have an empty Craft list and can only use regular attacks or cast Arts during battle.
- 03 is identical to the previous type. Sometimes "02" doesn't work, no idea why, and you have to use this one instead. Even then, it's not used by anyone.
- 04 to 07 are duplicates of the above statuses, although they aren't used anywhere or by anyone as far as I'm aware... with one exception. Yumé actually uses status "06" during the Interlude.
- 08: Temporary party members that join during certain sections of the game.

With this information in mind it's possible to customize your party and manually control characters that were previously AI-only before, or vice versa!
Let's see some examples:

🠚 Arkride Solutions Office as guest characters: 0:00
Unfortunately, not as interesting as it sounds.

My assumption is that the main party members don't have a specific AI to act as guests since they were never intended to participate in battle like this in the first place, so instead they default to using normal attacks and moving around if necessary. They can still provide SCLM Chain/Support and use their Shard Skills (Impacts, Breakers, Fatal Lancer, Cover Shield...) when they activate, but will never attack with Crafts, cast Arts or defend.

🠚 Temporary party members and guests characters: 1:59
Characters that weren't intended to join as guests —Elaine, Kincaid and Rixia in this case— behave exactly like the Solutions Office members in the previous segment: the only thing they do is using normal attacks.
Note that I didn't mention Shizuna as she can use her Crafts without issue, maybe she was intended to join as a guest instead of being a controllable character at some point in development?

The actual guest characters —Lucrezia, Walter and Naje— act as intended.

🠚 Full party as guests: 5:18
And what happens if all characters are set as guests? Well, it's an instant Game Over as soon as the battle starts! At least one character needs to be controlled manually but it would have been interesting to set everyone up in "Auto Mode" to see how they perform.
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#KuroNoKiseki, #TrailsThroughDaybreak, #黎の軌跡

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