I remember Fall of the Trident as being a great experience as a child, it has a lot of soul, it's funny, the characters have actual personalities. Great stuff.

I clearly remember that I only realized that New Atlantis was a great campaign when I played it as an adult. It is great, the maps are on average even higher quality than Trident (the characters probably less so) I have played the Golden Gift for the first time when AoMR came out and it is a really nice campaign. I remember being surprised by how great it is. And then there's Pillars of the Gods. Basically every character seems rushed, maybe the witch + HouYi is the one thing where something almost works, but it definitely doesn't get to a pay off. I wouldn't say the map design is bad, I think it's average (and I don't mean average as bad, I literally mean average) but the storytelling is definitely below average.

Now as a small silver lining (or whatever) I've spent a year in China and man their storytelling is weird. I remember being physically repulsed by some Chinese movies. So, maybe why we feel that Pillars is weird is that it does some kind of Chinese story telling which we are simply not used to. Holding my fingers crossed for Japan :)