I'm stuck trying to decide between getting this and Xenoblade. The first thing I noticed with this was how trope-y it looked, like it was another Tales game or something, but now I hear the writing makes up for it?
Let me put it this way.
If you're expecting this game to be some sort of non-trope revelation of a writing masterpiece, it's absolutely not.
Falcom games, be it Trails or Ys are still plenty "anime" for the lack of a better word. Slice it whatever you want, everything that happens in Sky all the way till Cold Steel has elements of what a lot of people would describe as being pretty anime-ish, and honestly, Falcom doesn't shy away from that.
But despite that, Trails manages to have its own identity. Character conflicts, reasons, motivations are by and large rather well-written, and even when they're tropey, doesn't feel like they're gutter trash. People feel... more believable, even within the context of their tropes.
And it has an extremely rich world that is built through extensive history, multi-country economic & socio-politic outlook that despite being extremely wordy, are largely told from the perspective of the characters that inhibit the world, making it feel very realised and strong.
In terms of writing, storytelling and world-building, Trails easily blow most Tales out of the water. With that being said, whether or not you'll like the writing still has a degree of trope-tolerance needed. And not everything is superb either. The pros far outweigh the cons imo, but it's really up to the individual.
Cold Steel I/II was conceptually designed to be one game though, wasn't it? Like FC/SC. I recall hearing that East/West Erebonia were going to be separate games from the beginning, but East got split into two games. Then again, I also heard they wanted to move on to Calvard after CSII. I don't know. This is probably pretty tough to talk about without delving into spoiler territory.
I don't really put too much faith in Kondo/Falcom's "we're 60% done with Trails talk"
I'm sure they have a relative outline and broad plot points of the entire saga mapped out, but I can also see them continue be overambitious and have to either split up games... again, or somehow add in more stories to tell in the Zemuria saga.