Despite this game starting many infuriating trends in this series that persist to this day, I find myself strangely fond of it. While the overarching story was slow and uneventful, the individual characters were mostly very charming and fleshed out. The school setting also lends itself well to a series known for its cast of lovable NPCs. The other students at Thor's felt just as memorable to me as the inhabitants of Crossbell or Liberl, maybe even more so. While this game marks the start of a significant downward trend in the series, there's still enough to enjoy here for me to consider it a good entry in the franchise.

This was a return to form for the trails series I really didn't think was possible after the absolute dumpster fire that was Cold Steel 4. I had absolutely no faith in them to make a good game, much less a good game with such a heavy focus on the Cold Steel cast, but they managed to pull it off. There are a lot of small issues with the writing that I think are just going to be permanent fixtures of the series going forward: things like the constant joking about Tita and Agate being a couple and the bizarre apologetics for every single villain. On the whole, though, this was a great way to send off this era of the series that felt like they actually got someone competent in the writer's room.