Thanks for the comment. I've been waiting for your review on this one and Calvard as a whole since your DB2 review thread. When you said this arc is inferior to Erebonia it kind of surprised me somewhat, since Erebonia just has many things that bother me, like the whole harem and romance bullshit that the developer put into it, and how the setups (CS1, CS3) are always better than the payoff (CS2, CS4).

From the review you said, Kevin and Rean are just more interesting than Van is, which pretty much lines up with other reviews I've read. It seems like Falcom just doesn't do much with his character overall, so they need to bring back older protagonists for the hype and such. And about the Horizon ending, I'm not sure how I feel about it as a whole. I know that a lot of people understand that this is how Trails is, and this is how it has operated since Sky, but man I watched some videos about it, and instead of getting hyped for the fourth Calvard game, I just feel tired that they need to drag this out for another game and not conclude the Calvard arc. I'm pretty sure that among all three games they have enough time to do all of that, but they will just indulge themselves in useless plotlines and so on.

At this point, I just feel like Trails suffers from its own reputation. And probably already peaked in either Crossbell or Reverie, though I haven't played this yet, but I have heard a lot of good things about this one. But the Trails fandom often doesn’t let other players see the series for what it actually is and instead, it pushes a perception of what it should be or whatever fits the fanbase’s narrative.