空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 46

Week 46 19th May 2025
Last Week Week 45
Next Week Week 47
Home Thread 空の軌跡

This week’s stopping point is a little after the next time you can save. You can safely click this after said save. Welcome to the epilogue. Feel free to wander around the festival and talk to everyone. The plot will continue when we rest at the benches, so let’s not do that until next week..

If using them, turn high-res fonts off or the shouting will crash it and you’ll have to do the boss fight all over again.

Side Quests

There is a hidden quest available after the boss fight. First, find and talk to Olivier in the castle. Then, go to the guild and a quest will be on the board.

Upcoming fights:

All segments Enemies are immune to everything, including delay.
Status thingies the enemies can cause: Faint, Mute, Freeze, Deathblow, Petrify, Confuse, (EVO) burn

1 Boss has five moves. An S-Craft (single target), two single target crafts (one causes faint), two aoe crafts (one impedes, one faints). Backup enemies can cause mute and impede your arts. Enemies in this segment can have their stats lowered. The game will heal you before the next battle.

2 The red one has high arts defence while the blue one has high physical defence. The red one has four aoe arts. The blue one can heal. The main enemy does not move. It has a single target attack, an aoe if you’re within melee range, a ranged aoe, and a line attack. The game will NOT heal you before the next battle, which will be more difficult than this one.

3 The boss has 8 “basic” moves and 2 S-Crafts. These are: 2 arm attacks (aoe causes faint), 2 backup summons (A and B below), a line attack, an aoe that delays, an arts impede (lost when hp medium), a laser (lost when hp low). One S-Craft is triggered when the summons are destroyed, it is single target. The other is available once it loses the laser, it hits everyone.

A The red one. Can heal, has two line attacks, 5 arts (earth, water, fire, air, time), explodes when defeated. B The blue one. Same as A but stronger. Also has two guard moves (one for magic one for physical) and the confusing mirage art.

If you have low enough BP (via not doing side quests / choosing wrong answers), there is no fourth segment.

4 If you want a steam achievement, don’t use your S-Crafts.

Whatever level your characters are at by the end of this can be carried over to SC. If I’ve missed anything, or different versions of the game have different abilities, let me know and I’ll edit this.

Screenshot

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.

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

Posting Advice
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  • 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. Which stage of the boss fight did you have the most difficulty with?

  5. Was the resolution of the coup d’état satisfying?

  6. Did you find anything interesting during the festival?

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!

4 Likes
boss

I can feel that the combat system is running out of steam here, I keep cycling through the same few spells/abilities. The vast majority of my skills are now effectively useless. If that stuff carries to SC I wonder how they’re going to rebalance it.

The 大佐 is quickly dispatched and the game embraces one of the JRPG tropes that’s always a bit disappointing for me: the final (?) boss is just some guy that’s pops up for the occasion instead of being a well established antagonist. At least it looks cool I guess.

Anyway I had to finally use some of those heading items I hoarded throughout the game but I eventually prevailed!

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Boss things:

Breezed through the 1st fight. Gotta say 剣聖より受け継ぎし技 wasn’t as impressive as it was hyped up to be. 2nd fight wasn’t bad at all, either.

Overall I didn’t have too hard a time on the 3rd fight, though it took some time; Olivier kept healing and アースワール up, Joshua took care of the adds with his special, and the other two alternated between wearing down the big guy and utility as needed. Looking under the spoiler tags Reb posted, I’m so glad I prioritized defense because those status effects would have been annoying to deal with.

Final bosses coming out of nowhere is not great, though whenever one pops up I remember what FF9 (infamous example) did and think ok this could be worse :joy: I don’t see this boss as the ‘real’ final boss since it’s clear the story continues, anyway. What bothers me is bosses/adds being immune to all status change. Why give us these tools if we can’t use them when it’s most important!? Ayyy.

Narrative things up until the saving point:

The 大佐 was drugged/brainwashed all along, I shouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know if I could call the conclusion satisfying if the one(s) who put him up to it are still at large, and it sounds like it was Laurence or someone Laurence is working for. Or maybe he/they’ll end up being brainwashed, too!? Well I’m going to hope that the writers know they’ve exhausted the trope by this point :upside_down_face:

Finally, Cassius appears. It really must be the end. He told Olivier that he’d like to talk to him later-- he knows about him being a spy (or something)! But of course he does, Cassius is one of those characters that knows everything and can do anything and if he doesn’t, it’s because it was all a test.

Also didn’t miss that the pirates escaped the army. Go pirates go~

4 Likes

That popped to mind immediately, although it’s far from the only offender. And I agree that in the case of Trails it’s not nearly as bad given that the story is meant to be very open-ended. I still think that a proper fight against some kind of boosted army folks, maybe the 大佐 and キツネ with some help of the special forces using those artifacts would have been more interesting and relevant.

I also thought it a bit bizarre that we were fighting the mech in the first place. After all it seems to do exactly what we want: protect the ancient civilization nuke. It seems like it would have made sense at this point to flee and let it deal with the 大佐, then seal the ruins forever.

Admittedly I just stopped after beating the boss, so I don’t know what’s going to happen after that.

3 Likes
this week

大佐 isn’t really up to his name. 死にたまえ may hit hard, but not enough to kill for most part.

Second boss problem might be along stun. I got through with a few drugs, though. Healing arts work, but too slow in my party. I might not buff SPD enough. (Only Joshua is fast with arts.)

Third boss makes problem with one hit kill, psychokinesis? It’s the reason I redo to buy enough drugs from Russell’s.

Fourth boss is, oops, SS craft hits too hard to see what it is capable of. I should wait and see more.

This and last weeks, I missed what other 4 would be saying to commanders. Anyway, I forgot who 少佐 is. Probably the person who let escape to the harbor.


If the game ends here, I would be happy the play the sequel (club?). Obviously it doesn’t end, and doesn’t look like to truly end in a few weeks yet. Even daddy can’t really solve yet.

Or maybe all is a test.

4 Likes

I can absolutely agree with that!

Yeah that’s an excellent point. I can kinda rationalize it as either 1) self-defense, because they were right there when the robot came out or 2) maybe not just the underground base would have been destroyed. The former seems more likely but they did leave it pretty unclear.

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Oooh, right. I couldn’t remember who that was either.

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弓引く is a fun word (spoken by the bartender in the castle )

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First boss

I don’t think it seems this has been changed in my version? But I’m very confused how it seems to be easy for you all. Arts are literally unusable because they are guaranteed to be cancelled, so I’m down to only physical type attacks and S-crafts. Nothing does more than like 100-200 damage at best because they seem to have ridiculously boosted defense which doesn’t even visibly move the health bar. I’m exclusively healing people and waiting to hit an S-craft so that I can do ~1000 damage and watch the health bars move like 1/10 if even that. I have been here like half an hour and finally chipped one single robot down. The game has given them a 50% heal turn twice now which I can’t stop because the boss is randomly inserting his own turns everywhere.

Oh actually actually, edit, with some bad luck with everyone catching on fire and the boss using his S-craft to one shot someone whose max HP is lower than the damage he does, who is also apparently too far for me to use an item to rez, I think I just lose lol.

Well, it was nice playing with you all, have fun. Like yes this is too hard but it’s also INCREDIBLY boring because almost every single combat option has been turned off and I’m just waiting for meters to let me play the game a little bit.

Also there’s no way this helps cause Tita’s craft that heals is really nice but I figured I’d give it one shot with Kroze like I planned, and they didn’t even put the option to change party members here with the boss in the one place you’d want to do it? Lmao

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Might be a bit underleveled? My people were Lvs 34,35,37,37 when I was trying on Sunday, then succeeded Monday morning with Lvs 36,36,38,39.

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Straight 40s lol

If your attacks actually do damage then there is definitely a change to the Evo version or something. It doesn’t seem like information on it is compiled well online at all.

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Oh well ignore me then XD, uh I’m sorry your version of the game hates you?

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So, I was using more magical attacks. They do get cancelled a lot, but if you choose weaker ones your turn isn’t delayed too much, and keeping the enemies busy cancelling arts stops them doing stronger spells. If you keep a close eye on the turn order, you can kinda judge when to go.

For 大佐 I was having Kloe use her debuff on him, made attacks go down to 0. For the next one, mix of earth guard to prevent harm and strategically letting people die.

This shouldn’t happen. I’m guessing it’s an EVO thing.

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The weird luck variance in this game is crazy too. After trying multiple fights I’m having one here that would have been kind of promising ruined by the boss choosing to just permanently stun lock someone over and over. I have gone through like 3 whole fights with him before this where that attack never stunned one time and I didn’t even know it could do that :upside_down_face: Only one or MAYBE 2 of us resist cause now in this fight he did it to two people, lol.

Appreciate the advice, might be cool to try that if I didn’t have to run back through half the dungeon to find her :melting_face:

Sometimes he goes twice, sometimes 3 times in a row, or skips just one person, but all the later ones show up after he moves and aren’t really consistent.

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Ok I finally rolled the right luck. That fight was really awful but the ones that followed actually let me use the game mechanics and I beat them first try.

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Hooray! ばんざい!

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As I said in a comment above, I really feel that the game mechanics are stressed to the extreme in those fights, and not always in a fun, challenging way. The vast majority of your arsenal is rendered useless either because of the various immunities or because it doesn’t do enough damage at this point. As such I can readily imagine that it could easily become a frustrating fight with a slightly different loadout.

I literally just spammed White Gehena, that big tornado spell and Joshua’s S-craft in a loop with the occasional healing.

The cancel stuff is annoying but it does little damage and if everybody is spamming spells at least some will go through.

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I rarely even saw the chances to force spells through. I wonder if the AI is totally the same? Like there’s no randomness element at all, if someone is casting they will hit the cancel 100% of the time automatically. I’d need 3 active casts at once to let ANYONE get through and that’s hard to maintain with how often the guy attacks making us start needing to heal. It ended up feeling unreasonable to even try.

Meant to make this a reply, oops @simias

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Yeah same.

But you have 4 party members!

Although frankly the biggest damage dealer was Joshua’s S-craft. With the orbments and accessories that boosted CP and strength (at the cost of defense) plus the thing that gained you CP passively every single turn, I could really trigger it every 3 turns or so. All I had to do is wait for a critical turn and deal immense damage to everybody (except that one pod immune to physical, but that was easily dealt with spells).

4 Likes

Wow, it does sound like that fight might have been harder in your version. In mine Rishall was quick and would get arts off as soon as he cast them, but didn’t take 3 turns in a row. The robots each had 6200 hp and I was able to take one out in an opening salvo of s-crafts, too. No Kuroze. I don’t remember getting art cancelled even once. That’s too big a difference in outcome, isn’t it?

Congrats on making it through all that! RNG is cruel :confused:

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