Me and my friend often joke one of the biggest joys of Trails is busywork. CS1 does not seem to understand that this is a joke.
There is some truth to it (saying it as a completionist who is unreasonably upset about missing one enemy scan), but it's certainly not what most people come to the series for - they want a compelling, multi-layered character cast, tight worldbuilding, and an awesome soundtrack. This game only delivers on one of those at the absolute best.
The music in this game is leagues better than most of Sky, but still doesn't match the Crossbell games in overall quality (aside from standouts like Investigation and Path of Spirits.). However, the atmosphere it creates is refreshing.

learn to embrace and love the cringe y'all, cause behind it is something incredible. perfect? no. incredible? yes.

it takes something special to make you persevere through the most inane gameplay and design flaws (to clarify: i don't mean the combat, i mean the menuing, merc missions and field skills) and feel like you came out on top, and this game is really it. sure, there are tons of little things i would have loved to see fixed, and maybe if they were, people would not feel so encouraged to sh*t on this experience... but the fact that this game put itself out there as it is, and was already so good, and so widely accepted, and so much better than the first Xenoblade (dead serious.)... it is something worth celebrating

apparently, me and farm\life sims don't quite mix. this is far less convenient than SDV and the tediousness finally got to me after a couple months of playing on-and-off. Stella, I'm sure you can finish your duties without me. (but the fishing was great, don't listen to those that say otherwise. if this game was much more streamlined than it currently is, it would have been one of my GOTYs because of how pretty and touching it can be, too, but it is FAR too slow and tedious! i'm gonna go watch how it ends instead <3)

-case 3 dragged on quite a bit, but 4 and 5 are some of the most fun i had in the series, with 4 comfortably taking the spot as my fav individual case ever
-nahyuta is a victim of the game's poor at times pacing and repetitiveness, if they used their playing field to give his character development more ground instead of messing around, people would not have been upset
-music fucks unlike dual destinies
-gameplay feels like it has substance unlike dual destinies
-this should have been athena and apollo's game with no phoenix
-hell of tickling amirite