My general impression is that damage output is far too focused on s-crafts in the back half of the game. I have some broader problems with the design too, but I can't speak quite as authoritatively on that. It feels like an optional dungeon crammed into the game as mandatory, with no meaningful loot or story beats. It absolutely brutalises the pacing and sucks almost all of the emotional buildup out of the story, down to the point the entire dungeon and final boss is admitted to be pointless by both the game and the Class. This is before the Reverie Corridor, which is one of the most baffling story and design decisions in the entire series. The final stretch at Thors feels confused and overly maudlin, never tackling the more challenging ideas the story has presented so far. Now, these are all incredibly interesting themes, but unfortunately the game seems unwilling to let its dour final note sustain out. Nothing was accomplished other than to allow Osborne to wield even greater power, and all of their actions were fundamentally in vain, even down to Rean becoming another dog of the military. The game lulls you into a false sense of camaraderie and youthful positivity, before dropping the ground beneath Class VII with the death of Crow and the sheer meaninglessness of the war.

The Trails games have always been very back heavy in terms of meaningful plot and resolution, but CS2 almost falls into the opposite problem. I know some people consider CS2 the most disappointing game in the series, and while I don't disagree, that label is less because it's inherently a bad game and more that it struggles to balance its overall design with its story structure.

I'm not sure how likely this is just because there wasn't a crossbell summary on the JP version of CS3, but that's something that might be added with the localization. While a summary isn't really a good alternative to actually playing the games, there is the possibility that a summary of Crossbell is on the CS3 disk. I know you said you want to play an official localization, but the Geofront translation which is probably releasing early next year looks pretty good from all the screenshots they've shown, and the translation for Ao, while not perfect, is ok. If you do decide to just play Sky, and not play CS1/2, I'd recommend you stop at SC, unless you don't mind playing 3rd which heavily focuses on adding new lore, and forshadowing future arcs. I imagine whatever Falcom is planning for Crossbell will likely happen in Japan before they release the first game in the Calvard arc, which is at least 3 years away. With CS4 likely coming next year in the west, I wouldn't expect Crossbell until after CS4. Keep in mind that the hope is, Falcom re-releases Crossbell in Japan and hopefully either NISA or someone else picks them up to localize. While Falcom has expressed that they want to bring Crossbell to the west, and Kondo himself has said in the Easy Allies interview that the studio is currently in the very early stages on planning to bring Crossbell to modern consoles you are likely still going to be waiting a long time. You could play Sky, and then from there play CS1/2 and then wait for Crossbell, just be aware that you are likely going to be waiting a good while.

Think of CS3/4 as the Infinity War of the series. Click to shrink.For CS1/2 and Crossbell it's largely references to the events of Sky, but from what I've heard from everyone who has played CS3/4 you absolutely need to know everything that has happened in Sky and Crossbell.

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