Agreed that the density and hangoutitude of the Trails series is the biggest strength. Every little no name npc has their own arc for the most part if you care enough to talk to them often. (This can also lead to extremely easily missable side content if you’re the type to fret over that fwiw). I’m very charmed by the setting and love the idea of each series of games happening in a different country but following/sharing the same timeline. The music is great too.
The continuing narrative is a strength but might also be its biggest weakness in a way and this might be broadly spoilery, but from what feels like interesting stakes in the first few games quickly devolves into standard shounen-y power of friendship We Can Redeem the Bad Guy junk which is a big eye roller. That’s mainly from the Trails of Cold Steel stuff which, as luck would have it has more games than any other in the series. They’re fine though, I mean at this point I’m pretty much all in.
I don’t think you can go wrong with Trails in the Sky 1-3 to start. 1 is pleasantly down to earth and low stakes til the end and has a great sequel hook although it does start very very slowly, which may or may not turn you off. A lot of people at this point look back on it as the best partially for that reason. For my money 2 takes off with the schtick that the rest of the series kinda sticks to and might do the best job of it so I prefer it to 1.
The recently fantranslated Ao no Denseki and Zero no Denski (Trails of Azure and Trail to Zero i think) turned into my favorites, even playing them with a weaker machine translated version than what’s currently available. Crossbell is my favorite setting and tech level (cars, skyscrapers!) and as much as I hate cops irl, I always get a kick out of playing an anime one. Cold Steel 4 comes out in a couple of weeks here although I believe the sequel to that one is already out in Japan as well (it has it’s own name, I assume new protagonist, etc, I don’t know anything about it since I imagine finding out would spoil Cold Steel 4).
I could stream of consciousnessly ramble on about this series and the battle systems, setting, etc but I don’t think it’d be super interesting. Needless to say I’m a big fan even if I do feel like it’s a little diluted after 8 games.
including emulation, what is the absolute best way to play both wizardry I and ultima I in 2020?
specifically from the angle of wanting to be more “literate” with regards to important/influential games and understanding their historical context, etc. so I’m not necessarily looking for quality of life improvements but also not ruling them out
someone may push back on this but I think later entries have considerably more to say in historical terms (and really anything that touched looking glass in any way is worthy of study), I would point you more towards ultima 4 and 7 and wizardry 6-ish
if you need any comfort you should play the translated snes version. however keep in mind there are quite a few quality of life improvements and some of the spells work differently. in particular the older versions expect you to be doing your own mapping on graph paper whilst the snes/ps1/saturn versions have options that allow you to see in-game maps - not without a bit of effort, mind you, but still. there are no options to see in-game maps in the original versions, so turn that option off if you want to stay pure.
Wizardry feels much more influential on jrpgs, but I understand that Ultima III overhauled the combat system in response to Wizardry. The first Ultima has a wild turn at the end. It’s one of those things that made me fall in love with this period of computer games.
I also want to add that Wizardry is unusually polished for this era. The dungeon design is really inventive. I think the developers actually had testers who gave feedback during development so there are a lot of neat tricks and surprises.
Why are Sundays so weird and depressing? All of the collective misery we suppress during the week seems to spill out in dangerous proportions on Sunday. I just can’t stand Sundays but so many people seem to find them pleasant.
floor two