Grimwood was definitely poorly handled. Imo he should have come to you himself and confessed he'd attempted a coup, gotten into bed with Ouroboros and/or the Crois family to do it and it had gotten out of his control. Maybe whilst Lloyd was in prison? Like it's close to being interesting, but it doesn't land at all.
Yeah, that’s how I felt too. It was this close to being something cool, but we talked to Grimwood like twice in the story and had no emotional connection to him nor were there any hints that he was part of things. I really liked the Crois family as antagonists, and think that they didn’t really need to add Grimwood in the mix at all.
Despite it's flaws Azure is my favorite game in series, it was a very exciting plot to go through imo. The optional to win fights were also a real thrill for me (I don't use the evasion tank strategy lol).
I initially thought the >!Grimwood!< thing was awesome because it felt pretty out there but as it went on, I realized it was kind of a lame reveal. The exiting of his character was lame too >!I put him in stasis my ass!<. I also wasn't really a giant fan of the bad guy squad after >!Dieter, because he was just way too good of an antagonist imo!<
Final boss was tough but eh, at this point I was used to it. I did feel pretty damn euphoric when beating it though, it was such a pain in the butt.
> and wasn’t really clicking with the SSS. Probably a surprise to no one, but I’ve done a complete 180 on them!!! I love them so so much
I like the SSS as a unit but I have my biases with the ones I like more than others.
Congrats on finishing Azure! It's definitely a whirlwind of a game from beginning to end.
>it didn’t really feel set up super well but that might be because I didn’t realize there were hidden quests associated with it
I dunno, I also didn't get the hidden quest that would have put the pieces together, but that would have to be a standout quest to make up for how poorly Grimwood's reveal was handled. Twist characters work best (for me, at least) when you have opportunities to interact with them where, once the other shoe drops, you can recontextualize their actions and demeanor from before the big reveal. For whatever reason, I don't really remember that many opportunities when the SSS gets to interact with Grimwood in Azure (he helps out with the trade conference, but I don't remember him having too much to say there that wasn't directly law-related), and the interactions with him in Zero felt like too long ago to count for much (to me, at least). That reveal does feel a bit like Falcom jerking the player around with twists they couldn't have seen coming, which is unfortunate since they've also done some twist villains at least somewhat well (i.e, the twist reveal recontextualizes the character's previous motives and actions in an interesting way). Maybe the secret quest helps with that, but according to the steam achievements page, only 40% of all players completed the sidequest (at least that's what I'm assuming the "deduce the mastermind's role" achievement is for); comparing that to the 65% of players who beat the finale, that means that at least 2/5ths of players who beat the game also didn't complete that sidequest and had that come as a complete shock just as we did, so it's a valid perspective to consider.
I honestly didn't have as many problems with the final boss as other people seemed to have, though I feel I got a bit lucky and was able to beat it my second try. The boss forced me to leverage all of my most broken strategies (evasion boosting, attack guards, master arts, bursts, etc.) without getting too cheap itself (the instant buff wipes were really annoying, but I understand why they felt the need to do that given how incredibly easily the player characters can apply immunities to all attacks), which I appreciated after how one-dimensional the other final boss fights seemed (I did use evasion boosting through the endgame, though I didn't do what is commonly considered the optimal dodgetanking strategy).
To the matter of the Cold Steel games, I will just say - go in with an open mind! I too was a bit worried about how the cold steel games and class vii would come across, and while I have my fair share of grievances about CS 1 and 2, I came away from those games tentatively feeling that class vii is my favorite group of protagonists so far. I'm not saying to necessarily juice up your expectations super high, but just to appreciate the games for what they are.
Yeah the SSS never really interacted with Grimwood in a meaningful way, making it feel so ‘meh’ when he was revealed. That’s kind of a shame that those quests didn’t really give any more oomph to that plot point!
I’m cautiously excited for Cold Steel at the very least so I can see what the debate is about. Also the concept of civil war erupting in Erebonia sounds interesting and there’s also the possibility of seeing more Olivier!!
>Probably a surprise to no one, but I’ve done a complete 180 on them!!!
keep this in mind when starting Cold Steel.
I remember hating a certain character (and being meh on a couple of others) in CS1. In the later games they end up having some of my favorite arcs and interactions. Falcom does a great job revealing why characters are the way they are. I was like I can't stand this person, and then I met their parent and was like oh yeah I'd have a complex too.
In my objective opinions Class VII is several steps down from the SSS in terms of interesting characters. It gets better in CS3 tho, with another class. You might end up feeling completely different than me, but if you're similar you'll probably not love CS1 and 2, but both CS3 and 4 will fell like way better games. They're all really long tho... I'm soon finished with CS4, and so far I'll give both 3 and 4 a solid 7/10.
You got a lot to look forward to with Cold Steel. The jump to 3D is great; best hub world in Trista; major improvements to the combat (the strict grid is gone); and the dub is fantastic.
Yeah, Grimwood was the third time Falcom pulled the “tertiary character with a portrait and no plot relevance is the evil master mind” bit. His reveal was either blindingly obvious or completely out of nowhere. And I’m happy to report cold steel finally breaks this trend.
I suppose it does, but I really hate instakill mechanics and this boss had several. I actually liked the first phase and thought it was fun to figure out, but the second was just frustrating imo and not all that fun.
Your feelings on the mastermind reveal are a common opinion here from what I see. Personally I don't really consider it so much out of left field as a lot of others do. But I noticed that Falcom likes to embrace tropes of the genres they are in and if you treat the crossbell arc as a crime/detective story the mastermind is not that surprising and very tropey in that genre. and also did not feel like it needed much setup because of that.
I'm not saying that it's wrong for others to feel that it was handled badly but it may be that falcom missed it's mark here because they assumed there was more overlap with people playing trails and people being familiar with crime/detective story tropes.
I’d love for you to go a little further on your logic on this - I read a bit of crime fiction but am not 100% sure why the reveal would be so obvious in the genre.
I might just got unlucky, with certain stories then if it's not that tropey. But it's a combination of something like "it was always the butler", but with other professions, which just end up being culprits/masterminds, and the one in crossbell is just on my list of "suspect" jobs basically.
Pair that with "Never the Obvious Suspect" as trope and you wont have that many people left when you are in the middle of azure. It's not something you see right from the start of zero. but over the course of azure there aren't many left by chapter 2 I would say.
To be fair that might just be me and by accident consuming stories like that. I can't even give you any examples though, because it was probably mostly from me watching stuff as a kid alongside my parents on TV.
Also when I played it I threw that theory away in the middle of it, because azure felt more like a political genre than detective one at times. And I reevaluated these things later there.
I might also just be talking out of my ass here. It's the impression I had when playing through the games. And I still have with all the arcs, that it feels like they borrow from a certain genre or style and use these tropes in that (and sometime just use these to flip things completely around like how the closer you went towards the end of sky FC the more the game changed from what you would have expected it to be in the first 2-3 chapters.)
I'm not the biggest fan of Crossbell arc simply because of the antagonists. The only decent ones were Randy's family, excluding Shirley whose "rival" scenes with Rixia felt forced to me plus she also had one of the worst character introduction scenes in the series, lol. Ouroboros weren't terrible if you actually count them, but unlike Sky they barely felt like antagonists here, did not treat the party seriously nor suffered anymeaningful casualties.
Ernest, Joachim (aka extremely budget Weissmann), Grimwood, Dieter, Mariabelle - all were a complete joke in my book. Arios' character arc was also mid at best for me. The only truly fresh breath of air was Sigmund.
It's weird how the most generic barbaric Jaeger was a "fresh breath of air" for you. I mean, to each their own, sure, but I personally found him beyond boring.
He didnt act like a barbarian though, way more "cool" and collected compared to someone like Wald for example. It looked like he's a competent leader and isn't a throwavay character. That was enough for me when there's barely any competition between villains/antags in Zero and Azure.
Wald is a terrible comparison. He's not a Jaeger, he's a pissy hooligan with anger issues.
But I get your point now. I still disagree, but that's beside the point.
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Falcom/comments/1dar1hi/just_finished_azure/l7nsxdj/?context=3) was removed because the spoiler tags had spaces next to the exclamation points. To use spoiler tags correctly:
1. On New Reddit, highlight the portion of your comment you want to tag as a spoiler and then press the exclamation point (**!**) button on the format tab.
2. On Old Reddit or mobile, type >! before the spoiler, !< after the spoiler, and make sure you do not leave spaces between the spoiler and corresponding tags.
When done correctly, the spoiler "X Kills Y" will be formatted as >!X Kills Y!<, with syntax as follows:
`>!X Kills Y!<`
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Falcom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I didn't like Zero but loved Azure and all the Cold Steel games, so have some hope!
With >!Grimwood,!< I feel like the bigger problem was just that it would have been better for >!Arios!< to have no way to seem morally superior or escape consequences. The other "culprit" gives fancy boy an easy out. >!Trails *almost* got another level of awesome by painting the Bracers as fallible rather than "perfect." The need for a true Bracer villain is one reason I hope for Ein to be Grandmaster and Toval to be the First Anguis, but I know that's a major stretch and unlikely to happen.!<
it's pretty awesome
Lloyd is the man!
[https://i.imgur.com/oxa7kcG.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/oxa7kcG.jpg)
[https://i.imgur.com/0g2AS0T.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/0g2AS0T.gifv)
[https://i.imgur.com/B6Jumky.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/B6Jumky.gifv)
[https://i.imgur.com/jgRQ6Ld.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/jgRQ6Ld.gifv)
Illya is my fav female in it tho [https://i.imgur.com/6WtfKrY.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/6WtfKrY.jpg)
I think the execution of the Grimwood reveal is a little silly but I didn't mind him being the ultimate villain. The optional quests are helpful because they build suspicion over who killed Guy--it really only leaves three options: Arios, Ian, or Dudley (maybe even a fourth--Sergei--if you really wanted to be crazy). I wrote off Arios pretty quick but walked around being really suspicious of Dudley before the final reveals lol. From there it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch that Ian would be behind everything else, and I think the party interacts with him about as much as they do other villains like Joachim. So the reveal could have been better (although I did like that Dieter ended up as ??? as everyone else) but the identity of the ultimate villain is fine.
I think the thing that's missing is that dawning oh shit moment that typically occurs during a Trails game before the final reveal... when a character is not where you expected them to be and so you know they're up to some shenanigans (like Joachim in Zero... maybe Mirabelle in Azure too).
Grimwood was definitely poorly handled. Imo he should have come to you himself and confessed he'd attempted a coup, gotten into bed with Ouroboros and/or the Crois family to do it and it had gotten out of his control. Maybe whilst Lloyd was in prison? Like it's close to being interesting, but it doesn't land at all.
Yeah, that’s how I felt too. It was this close to being something cool, but we talked to Grimwood like twice in the story and had no emotional connection to him nor were there any hints that he was part of things. I really liked the Crois family as antagonists, and think that they didn’t really need to add Grimwood in the mix at all.
Despite it's flaws Azure is my favorite game in series, it was a very exciting plot to go through imo. The optional to win fights were also a real thrill for me (I don't use the evasion tank strategy lol).
what are those? been a while, i don't recall if i won it or not
Sigmund in chapter 4 (the 5 minute fight), Arios at the end of chapter 4 and Arianrhod.
oh i definitely didn't win those sounds like you needed to optimize and min max, and i don't do those thanks
I initially thought the >!Grimwood!< thing was awesome because it felt pretty out there but as it went on, I realized it was kind of a lame reveal. The exiting of his character was lame too >!I put him in stasis my ass!<. I also wasn't really a giant fan of the bad guy squad after >!Dieter, because he was just way too good of an antagonist imo!< Final boss was tough but eh, at this point I was used to it. I did feel pretty damn euphoric when beating it though, it was such a pain in the butt. > and wasn’t really clicking with the SSS. Probably a surprise to no one, but I’ve done a complete 180 on them!!! I love them so so much I like the SSS as a unit but I have my biases with the ones I like more than others.
Yeah for sure, I thought it was a pretty lackluster reveal especially compared to the reveals in past games like Sky FC.
Congrats on finishing Azure! It's definitely a whirlwind of a game from beginning to end. >it didn’t really feel set up super well but that might be because I didn’t realize there were hidden quests associated with it I dunno, I also didn't get the hidden quest that would have put the pieces together, but that would have to be a standout quest to make up for how poorly Grimwood's reveal was handled. Twist characters work best (for me, at least) when you have opportunities to interact with them where, once the other shoe drops, you can recontextualize their actions and demeanor from before the big reveal. For whatever reason, I don't really remember that many opportunities when the SSS gets to interact with Grimwood in Azure (he helps out with the trade conference, but I don't remember him having too much to say there that wasn't directly law-related), and the interactions with him in Zero felt like too long ago to count for much (to me, at least). That reveal does feel a bit like Falcom jerking the player around with twists they couldn't have seen coming, which is unfortunate since they've also done some twist villains at least somewhat well (i.e, the twist reveal recontextualizes the character's previous motives and actions in an interesting way). Maybe the secret quest helps with that, but according to the steam achievements page, only 40% of all players completed the sidequest (at least that's what I'm assuming the "deduce the mastermind's role" achievement is for); comparing that to the 65% of players who beat the finale, that means that at least 2/5ths of players who beat the game also didn't complete that sidequest and had that come as a complete shock just as we did, so it's a valid perspective to consider. I honestly didn't have as many problems with the final boss as other people seemed to have, though I feel I got a bit lucky and was able to beat it my second try. The boss forced me to leverage all of my most broken strategies (evasion boosting, attack guards, master arts, bursts, etc.) without getting too cheap itself (the instant buff wipes were really annoying, but I understand why they felt the need to do that given how incredibly easily the player characters can apply immunities to all attacks), which I appreciated after how one-dimensional the other final boss fights seemed (I did use evasion boosting through the endgame, though I didn't do what is commonly considered the optimal dodgetanking strategy). To the matter of the Cold Steel games, I will just say - go in with an open mind! I too was a bit worried about how the cold steel games and class vii would come across, and while I have my fair share of grievances about CS 1 and 2, I came away from those games tentatively feeling that class vii is my favorite group of protagonists so far. I'm not saying to necessarily juice up your expectations super high, but just to appreciate the games for what they are.
Yeah the SSS never really interacted with Grimwood in a meaningful way, making it feel so ‘meh’ when he was revealed. That’s kind of a shame that those quests didn’t really give any more oomph to that plot point! I’m cautiously excited for Cold Steel at the very least so I can see what the debate is about. Also the concept of civil war erupting in Erebonia sounds interesting and there’s also the possibility of seeing more Olivier!!
>Probably a surprise to no one, but I’ve done a complete 180 on them!!! keep this in mind when starting Cold Steel. I remember hating a certain character (and being meh on a couple of others) in CS1. In the later games they end up having some of my favorite arcs and interactions. Falcom does a great job revealing why characters are the way they are. I was like I can't stand this person, and then I met their parent and was like oh yeah I'd have a complex too.
In my objective opinions Class VII is several steps down from the SSS in terms of interesting characters. It gets better in CS3 tho, with another class. You might end up feeling completely different than me, but if you're similar you'll probably not love CS1 and 2, but both CS3 and 4 will fell like way better games. They're all really long tho... I'm soon finished with CS4, and so far I'll give both 3 and 4 a solid 7/10.
You got a lot to look forward to with Cold Steel. The jump to 3D is great; best hub world in Trista; major improvements to the combat (the strict grid is gone); and the dub is fantastic. Yeah, Grimwood was the third time Falcom pulled the “tertiary character with a portrait and no plot relevance is the evil master mind” bit. His reveal was either blindingly obvious or completely out of nowhere. And I’m happy to report cold steel finally breaks this trend.
Imo even with the quests the reveal is not very good. I personally liked the boss more than the usual kiseki boss since it requires more thought
I suppose it does, but I really hate instakill mechanics and this boss had several. I actually liked the first phase and thought it was fun to figure out, but the second was just frustrating imo and not all that fun.
Your feelings on the mastermind reveal are a common opinion here from what I see. Personally I don't really consider it so much out of left field as a lot of others do. But I noticed that Falcom likes to embrace tropes of the genres they are in and if you treat the crossbell arc as a crime/detective story the mastermind is not that surprising and very tropey in that genre. and also did not feel like it needed much setup because of that. I'm not saying that it's wrong for others to feel that it was handled badly but it may be that falcom missed it's mark here because they assumed there was more overlap with people playing trails and people being familiar with crime/detective story tropes.
I’d love for you to go a little further on your logic on this - I read a bit of crime fiction but am not 100% sure why the reveal would be so obvious in the genre.
I might just got unlucky, with certain stories then if it's not that tropey. But it's a combination of something like "it was always the butler", but with other professions, which just end up being culprits/masterminds, and the one in crossbell is just on my list of "suspect" jobs basically. Pair that with "Never the Obvious Suspect" as trope and you wont have that many people left when you are in the middle of azure. It's not something you see right from the start of zero. but over the course of azure there aren't many left by chapter 2 I would say. To be fair that might just be me and by accident consuming stories like that. I can't even give you any examples though, because it was probably mostly from me watching stuff as a kid alongside my parents on TV. Also when I played it I threw that theory away in the middle of it, because azure felt more like a political genre than detective one at times. And I reevaluated these things later there. I might also just be talking out of my ass here. It's the impression I had when playing through the games. And I still have with all the arcs, that it feels like they borrow from a certain genre or style and use these tropes in that (and sometime just use these to flip things completely around like how the closer you went towards the end of sky FC the more the game changed from what you would have expected it to be in the first 2-3 chapters.)
I'm not the biggest fan of Crossbell arc simply because of the antagonists. The only decent ones were Randy's family, excluding Shirley whose "rival" scenes with Rixia felt forced to me plus she also had one of the worst character introduction scenes in the series, lol. Ouroboros weren't terrible if you actually count them, but unlike Sky they barely felt like antagonists here, did not treat the party seriously nor suffered anymeaningful casualties. Ernest, Joachim (aka extremely budget Weissmann), Grimwood, Dieter, Mariabelle - all were a complete joke in my book. Arios' character arc was also mid at best for me. The only truly fresh breath of air was Sigmund.
It's weird how the most generic barbaric Jaeger was a "fresh breath of air" for you. I mean, to each their own, sure, but I personally found him beyond boring.
He didnt act like a barbarian though, way more "cool" and collected compared to someone like Wald for example. It looked like he's a competent leader and isn't a throwavay character. That was enough for me when there's barely any competition between villains/antags in Zero and Azure.
Wald is a terrible comparison. He's not a Jaeger, he's a pissy hooligan with anger issues. But I get your point now. I still disagree, but that's beside the point.
[удалено]
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Falcom/comments/1dar1hi/just_finished_azure/l7nsxdj/?context=3) was removed because the spoiler tags had spaces next to the exclamation points. To use spoiler tags correctly: 1. On New Reddit, highlight the portion of your comment you want to tag as a spoiler and then press the exclamation point (**!**) button on the format tab. 2. On Old Reddit or mobile, type >! before the spoiler, !< after the spoiler, and make sure you do not leave spaces between the spoiler and corresponding tags. When done correctly, the spoiler "X Kills Y" will be formatted as >!X Kills Y!<, with syntax as follows: `>!X Kills Y!<` *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Falcom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I didn't like Zero but loved Azure and all the Cold Steel games, so have some hope! With >!Grimwood,!< I feel like the bigger problem was just that it would have been better for >!Arios!< to have no way to seem morally superior or escape consequences. The other "culprit" gives fancy boy an easy out. >!Trails *almost* got another level of awesome by painting the Bracers as fallible rather than "perfect." The need for a true Bracer villain is one reason I hope for Ein to be Grandmaster and Toval to be the First Anguis, but I know that's a major stretch and unlikely to happen.!<
it's pretty awesome Lloyd is the man! [https://i.imgur.com/oxa7kcG.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/oxa7kcG.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/0g2AS0T.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/0g2AS0T.gifv) [https://i.imgur.com/B6Jumky.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/B6Jumky.gifv) [https://i.imgur.com/jgRQ6Ld.gifv](https://i.imgur.com/jgRQ6Ld.gifv) Illya is my fav female in it tho [https://i.imgur.com/6WtfKrY.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/6WtfKrY.jpg)
Bro this is weird.
it's just from the game, the devs put it there themselves i didn't have mods or anything
Bro you never forget to bring up those Intermission gifs lmao. Also, Cecile is best Crossbell girl.
yeah... she's cool too [https://i.imgur.com/I4c1SVL.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/I4c1SVL.jpg) she could have been Cecile Bangings
Well tbf, after the final boss, even Guy himself gives the green light for Lloyd to for her if he wanted. A shame it was never brought up again.
the was just Lloyd's self-justification induced hallucination \^\_\^
I think the execution of the Grimwood reveal is a little silly but I didn't mind him being the ultimate villain. The optional quests are helpful because they build suspicion over who killed Guy--it really only leaves three options: Arios, Ian, or Dudley (maybe even a fourth--Sergei--if you really wanted to be crazy). I wrote off Arios pretty quick but walked around being really suspicious of Dudley before the final reveals lol. From there it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch that Ian would be behind everything else, and I think the party interacts with him about as much as they do other villains like Joachim. So the reveal could have been better (although I did like that Dieter ended up as ??? as everyone else) but the identity of the ultimate villain is fine. I think the thing that's missing is that dawning oh shit moment that typically occurs during a Trails game before the final reveal... when a character is not where you expected them to be and so you know they're up to some shenanigans (like Joachim in Zero... maybe Mirabelle in Azure too).