Yeah, the CS games were definitely harder than what I've played of Crossbell I think. I'm ashamed to say that even on normal there were times where I just picked weaken enemies and retry. Maybe sometime I'll replay them and try to play them properly lol. I see you've already beaten it though, I hope you liked the the evil cliffhanger which is probably far worse than even CS1's lolz.

Yeah it's really cool Fie became a bracer. Yeah Randy is pretty great in CS. And there's Juna which kind ties Crossbell to the group, she's one of the characters that are in revised versions of Azure, though I'm not sure I've actually seen her yet. As far as the female characters that aren't Altina go I definitely prefer Musse though, she's just amazing lol.

Hopefully I get back to Azure properly soon, my gaming is all over the place lately and I keep getting distracted with other stuff. I see you must have taken a liking to Altina, definitely my favorite member of New Class VII! I have to say Fie is my favorite out of all though, especially in CS3/4, her new design is so good. I always pick her for Rean's romance options, I feel like she deserves him the most especially with her backstory.

I'm the one that should be apologizing, I'm giving way later replies than you lately haha. No worries.

Yep all good tracks, CS III and IV improve upon them even further I'd say. I guess I'll have to replay them eventually to really appreciate the connections to the older tracks. Yeah the Osborne being Rean's father was indeed pretty mindblowing to me. I imagine getting to play as Lloyd and Rixia again was a treat as well. Funny, for the longest time I always thought Rixia was going to be the main girl of Crossbell because of that. How wrong I was lol. Looking forward to finally seeing what her deal actually is when I get further in Azure though, she's so awesome.

I guess I don't have too much else to say because it's hard to comment further without spoilers. You're in for a treat when you play CSIII though, the graphics are a HUGE upgrade lol.

Good to hear you enjoyed it. That's indeed a really awesome theme, definitely seems like CS series has the best OST by far since it only really gets better from there. I see you already started CSII. It's such a massive improvement over CS1, like just getting them out of school into the world and giving them unique clothes instead of a school uniform the whole game makes it feel so much better lol.

I hope you enjoyed CS1. I know the whole school thing is pretty hit or miss for some people though the characters definitely grew on me over time, if not the 1st game then definitely by the 3rd. Guessing you'll be moving right onto CSII after that evil cliffhanger, omg

Nice to see it was one of the best games you've ever played. Yeah I hope to be able to get the full context of them and Renne eventually, I like her. Funny it sort of goes both ways though because there's references to Cold Steel they added in later versions of the game. There's a couple random NPCs with portraits that must have been confusing to you lol. Though I know a lot of it was always there, this series is really well planned out which is pretty impressive. They're lucky the series has been successful enough that they've been able to realize the full scope of their ambitions, a lot of series get canned before then, like Xenosaga.

You're already further than me on Azure haha, unfortunately I've had some gaming struggles lately but hopefully I'll pick up the pace again soon. I was pretty stoked to see Noel join the SSS, I love her.

Good to hear about YS. I'll definitely have to check it at some point, probably whenever I'm done with Trails. I suppose the order isn't something to stress too much about since I'm playing Trails in a weird order too. I actually haven't played Sky so all the Estelle and Joshua stuff in Zero kinda went over my head. I saw a article the other day about Falcom wanting to make them more available though, so if they come to Switch or something I'll grab them in a heartbeat.

Didn't really mean to be away from the BL for this long... But yeah I guess that and he mentioned about how we get into similar conversations on Fire Emblem and stuff over Discord lol

I've actually already played through all the Cold Steel games so we might not technically be in the same spot, but yeah. Definitely had to go back and play Crossbell since it's very important for Reverie, even the localization acknowledged that since they went back and used the fan translations for these instead of moving straight to Reverie. Cold Steel 4 probably ended up being my favorite JRPG ever so you're in for a treat. Azure has definitely had some nice surprises coming from Zero as well. I'm guessing you're taking a break to play some Ys. I should probably get into that series as well but seems like I would be missing too many of the games since I don't really like playing on PC anymore. I don't know how strict the chronology is and if they're as connected as the Trails games are.

We're both friends with SirLink and he is always mentioning how similar we are so seemed appropriate to add you. Looks like we're both on the same Trail.

Sounds good to me! I'm only in chapter 8 but so far I'm not finding it too difficult. The exception are the paralogues, which kind of force you to make use of gambits to get out of some situations... and that's what I'm not liking of this playthrough. They throw so many strong enemies at you at once that fixing some into place for a turn becomes a necessity, and the difference between using gambits and not is huge. I think gambits were a nice addition to the game to shake things up but I certainly don't like them being so impactful.
So I'll try doing my next playthrough on hard without batallions, probably with an additional restriction like not forging weapons or something.

Also, I'm glad you enjoyed Azure Moon! That's the first and only route I've finished and I had a great time with it. Dimitri is actually a much deeper character than it seems at first. And I found the Blue Lions to be a cohesive but diverse group, they were quite endearing as a group.