The more I play CS, the more I feel like they intentionally went with the character archetypes right off the bat to lure in the modern crowd - you know, the ones who will buy a game because they saw a character archetype in it (like a tsundere or whatever) and then did a bait and switch and actually gave them the personalities of normal people once you spend more time with them, there are way less MISUNDERSTANDINGS than you'd think since generally things get resolved pretty quickly except for a few conflicts, et cetera.
I feel like Falcom is acutely aware that they needed to appeal to the crowd that buys games these days in Japan, but at the same time wanted to show them a damn good RPG as well as a well-written story to back it up, as well as surprise them with multi-faceted in-depth characters instead of what they probably expected, which was 'generic tsundere' and 'apathetic loli' and 'class president.'
I'm in Chapter 4 and essentially this feels a hell of a lot like the Trails I know and love. There are a couple rough spots but so far I have been convinced that this takes place in the same world as FC/SC. Hell, there were less-developed character archetypes in FC/SC too that got way less character background than the people in Cold Steel.