空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 33

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Week 33 17th February 2025
Last Week Week 32
Next Week Week 34
Home Thread 空の軌跡

This week we are finishing shortly after sharing the information we found with the army. Your notebook will have 7 bullet points on the main quest page.

Side Quests
  • リッター街道の手配魔獣２
    If playing the steam version of the game, you might want to turn high-res fonts off before handing in this quest. The “2” used has been known to crash the game.

At the end of this week, you’ll be able to finish the library quest. It will expire next week, I’ll throw up a more specific warning there too.

Screenshot

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Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet , thank you to everyone who has been helping with this.

We also have an arts sheet if you’re struggling with the in-game version.

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example

For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!

OR

Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!

Discussion Questions

  1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

  4. Do you like penguins?

  5. What theories do you have with the new information we found?

  6. Who do you trust and who do you not?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

  • I’m playing along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m playing this game after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer playing the game
0 voters

If you’ve already played this game but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

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I like penguins, but they probably don't like me

Show up, bare-handed brawl with the local wildlife at a moment’s notice, then fly away the next day. This guy is the coolest bracer by far, and I love how comically large he is next to everyone else.

They don’t want to let us have 4 members because it’s too powerful! I was just narrowly short of stopping giant penguin’s big shockwave attack and that hurt people a lot (nearly one-shot poor Tita), but otherwise, beyond getting a little lost, the cave was no threat. Joshua and Estelle’s new S-breaks are so good :heart_eyes:

By the end of the week’s assignment I managed to report the shoe quest and get the last books. Honestly, I shamelessly looked up book locations. Hiding them across an entire region with vague clues might work for someone being VERY thorough but that’s not me with this game. I like it a lot, hugely positive things to say about the aspects I’m into, but I do find traveling across the areas repeatedly starts to wear on me. Making things a little more quick and efficient keeps me happy.

I like the direction we’re headed in, taking direct action in conflict with the military is potentially very dicey. I love our group and all that, in one way I want good things for them… but I’d also be most interested to see this go VERY south, honestly. Loads of potential coming out of this plot thread. I think we’ve all been kind of skeptical of some of them so it’s possibly heading where we anticipated, to some degree.

Agate speaking out that name while delirious with fever makes me feel even better about my read on his character!

I was just thinking we haven’t heard from Scheherazade and Olivier in AGES. I expected them to play a bigger role sooner since I didn’t know the structure at the time, the way we’d cycle through party members so frequently. Maybe they’ll be at the royal ceremony we hear so much about later on? That’s shaping up to be a big reunion with the people we already know are planning to go; I’m expecting something dramatic there.

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Quests

Prof still doesn’t accept my shoes. I must have forgotten to walk somewhere. No idea how simias managed to complete it with > 50% less time.

Estelle has a very strong break now. Tita spread is getting bigger. I also haven’t seen Niles for ages.

Fort gate is half open, but they won’t allow me.

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Response

I like the idea that you were just like, nah, I don’t need a plan. I’m storming the gates; let me in there.

The journalist guy? Yeah surely he intends to be at the queen’s big royal birthday event I was talking about; no way we don’t see him there. Didn’t mention it but I KNEW he would be mad about Dorothy giving up the photo; if he was here he’d surely have had some trick in mind.

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Shoes

I’m not sure what’s up with that, as you should be able to return the shoes even if you haven’t been everywhere. Just to double check, you remembered to equip them? I cannot think of anything else.

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Shoes

What? I need to wear them to have them worn?

Luckily, I haven’t sold them, or have party leavers hold them. I’ll wear them now during finding the last two books.

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:joy: oh dear. At least we know your game isn’t glitched

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Week 33

The giant penguin made me laugh. I thought a fish monster was going to jump out of the water and had a dead dove moment like well, I don’t know what I expected… It’s a penguin cave :joy:

Joshua’s in particular took care of every treasure box penguin like they were nothing. One and done. It’s soooo good!

Seconding this! Whether it’s just this small part of the army that’s turned traitor or a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top, I want that drama. We don’t know a lot about the queen yet but I have my doubts about her if she’s chosen that 公爵 guy as her successor, ya know?

That 少佐 was definitely up to no good, and I sort of think the 情報部 people will turn out to be in league with the baddies. We’ve seen them repeatedly so far without much narrative payoff and since the 大佐 in particular has been framed as a Very Reasonable Authority Figure™ who comes to the rescue at convenient moments, I’m suspicious that it’s all been setup for a shocking betrayal. That’s just a gut feeling, though. I would normally say no wait they already did that with the mayor of ルーアン, but we’ve also already snuck into a base by hiding on an airship, too :woman_shrugging:

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Response

I agree with pretty much everything you said about potential suspects.

This game honestly has me pretty interested to see tension between the governing forces and the guild as a whole, should it move in that direction. We got a glimpse of some within the military already not liking the cooperation as it stands now. Organizational politics probably wouldn’t usually be where my attention is drawn, but I think because this game is always keeping itself very centered on the position of being a bracer and doing jobs for them, my mind is always wondering about the details of how this all works and what could come of it. The fallout from a bracer-sanctioned infiltration of a fort seems catastrophic. Is allowing this at the discretion of the head of this one branch? If so, will it get passed off as the rogue actions of someone the bracers at large don’t support, or will they be behind it?

I think these kind of questions especially make me really curious to see them push for maximum drama. Though I wonder if they’ll have something in mind to more neatly tie it up and move on so the series can, like, move forward with the guild operating as they have without anything terribly drastic happening.

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The way JRPGs handle in combat versus out of combat wounds is often jarring to me. During the fight on the tower my entire party got hit by dozens of bullets, but a grazing wound during a cutscene turns into a whole thing.

Also, I kind of broke the sequence by exploring the cave the other week, turns out I didn’t need a team of 4 veterans…

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Clearly in the tower they were using normal, nuisance bullets, and the guy only decided to load his super special poison bullet when he saw a child he could aim it at.

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The encounter design in this game is sometimes really annoying. "Let’s have a boss with a trillion HP, and also he can heal and boost defence. Also he has an AoE skill that prevents you from using physical attacks. Have fun!

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Yeah, other than taking quite a while to get through, this boss didn’t give me too many specific issues, but I agree with you in general for sure; it’s kind of what I was talking about weeks ago when something was aggravating me. It may be possible to build for them ok when you know what’s coming (and IIRC I have null all status effects on Joshua now so that’s helping a ton) , but a lot of fights are built around doing something kinda maddening to you if you aren’t built to counter it or don’t just wipe them out immediately.

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Yeah It wasn’t really hard, with AoE heals I managed to beat him first try, but it felt more tedious than it should have. By the end I was just chipping at his HP slowly while he kept using regen/def boost almost every turn…

Also his AoE breath attack was odd, I purposefully put my team all around him so that he couldn’t hit everybody at once (and I could still use heals) but for some reason the hitbox of this attack hits in front and to the sides.

It just felt like a weirdly designed boss, especially since there was no particular reason for a battle to be there besides “you finished the dungeon, here’s a big bad guy”.

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I wouldn’t call it not tedious in a sense but also it honestly sounds like it was healing itself WAY more for you than me. Bad luck? Or my good luck, heh. I don’t think the heal happened more than once or twice that I can recall…

I definitely agree it’s kinda just a boss for the sake of a boss – given the way the game paces itself with long story segments I don’t mind it capping itself off this way even if it’s a little arbitrary, the cave was notably dangerous if we need to dig for explanations, but yeah obviously you want the bosses to be fun and it’s even easier to get tired of a boss if it’s unfun AND feels tangential.

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Totally tangentially, looking into differences between the Vita and other versions on a whim, today I learned you all just walk into the enemies and get advantage if it’s at their back? Like other versions don’t have a field attack button at all if what I was reading was true. In my version that exists as kind of soft advantage, but also the characters all have their own unique attack on the field depending on who is the leader. Hitting an enemy in the front just sort of stops it for a second, but if you land a hit in the back they’re briefly stunned and starting the fight that way gives a higher advantage where everyone crits and stuff.

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I actually wonder how complex the AI combat scripts are in this game, he started using that heal move a lot as he got low on HP (and not at all at first) so I assumed that he was scripted to do so, but as you say it could be my bad luck.

Yeah, it was the same in the OG PC version I played ages ago. There’s nothing else to it, you just get a message at the start of the fight telling you that you got a preemptive attack and the enemy effectively loses a turn.

If the enemy attacks you from behind it’s the other way around.

Since you can always flee these encounters with 100% reliability, it means that the safest strat if you want to avoid fights is to barge into the enemies, then immediately flee. If you attempt to dodge you risk getting caught and attacked before you have a chance to flee. It’s a bit odd but why not…

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Yeah it was fairly late in the fight for me too I’m pretty sure. IIRC I had a pretty good chance to dump damage late in the fight with s-breaks and stuff, so I’m wondering if I instead just hit the breakpoints well to stop the end from dragging out hard. If that’s the case it’s something that you can plan around, but only when you’ve already fought this boss before.

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Yeah, that mechanic was introduced in game 4 and has continued since. Another of the difference I can tell you’ve got more face portraits. Like Josette in the prologue, you mentioned a girl in the inn who had a face. She was there for us but no face portrait until after the formal introduction at the mayor’s office.

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I could be wrong but I think I had it in my PSP version? At least I recall when @Daisoujou mentioned the portrait and I saw it too, although maybe I’m thinking of Dorothy in the orbment shop.

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