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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   716 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 26, 2026

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I’m 100 hours in to Trails of Cold Steel III with SoftBrilliants Difficulty Mod. Probably another 400 hours to go to finish Cold Steel IV.

One of my all time fav genres is turn based command battle in jrpg. People usually dunk on this gameplay as being retardedly simple and boring. The issue is that almost all developers fail to tune their difficulty high enough - often or requires a mod or romhack to fully shine.

On max hacked difficulty. Every single battle is a puzzle. An inexperienced player will probably wipe on the first 2 turns of any given fight. There is always a certain combination of builds and commands that can clear the fight, sometimes in an extremely elegant manner. Finding that sequence is the fun.

Another great series/run like this is Xenoblade 2 on Max Custom Difficulty. That game has DLC that gives you difficulty sliders. Put them all to max. I reckon most people will find the first boss 5 min into the game unwinnable. But it’s not.

When there are actual stakes in these fights, it’s quite fun. And makes the narrative shine.

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