Zero No Kiseki Isosolofasr

I've been playing through the Legend of Heroes franchise (you can see my previous thread that has impressions of Cold Steel 1, 2, and the Sky Trilogy here) and I just completed Trails from Zero/ aka Zero no Kiseki.
Zero is the first game in the franchise that I've played that did not receive a official localization. Luckily the fan localization team Geofront has made a 100% english translated patch for the game. I can't stress how great the work Geofront did with this game. The localization is as good as the official titles and they're doing it completely for free (it requires a paid version of the game, so there's nothing illegal about it). They're busy working on the sequel for the game and I'm sure that will also be terrific.
With that said, I had some mixed feelings about Zero. It definitely follows the conventions of the Sky Trilogy much more faithfully than the Cold Steel games, but it's decidedly a much more cozier and grounded game. You're not exploring a huge region in this game like you did in the Sky games; Crossbell is considerably smaller and more defined. That's was a positive and a negative for me. I got to know Crossbell really well and the game does a terrific job of working with a smaller cast of characters, but I often found myself wanting a more expansive world. Maybe that's just a desire since I'm physically cooped up due to the pandemic, but one thing I really liked about the other series was just how large those worlds were. If the sequel follows the pattern of using the same map, I imagine I'll be way more burnt out on Crossbell than I was with the other nations.
This scaled down nature also extends to the characters. Rather than the pretty large casts that CS and Sky featured, you really only have 4 main party members for most of the game. There's of course guest characters that pop in and out, but for the most part you are focused on the four members of the Special Support Squad. I didn't mind this smaller cast, as previous cast often felt a little too large at time. However I don't know if I got to know all 4 members equally. Randy and Ellie in particular felt a little flat at times, though I certainly wouldn't say either character were bad or wholly underdeveloped. However, there's some strength in the guest characters that would otherwise be NPCs in many games. I liked when I got to pair up with boss of a local gang or the mysterious assassin that's been operating in the background throughout the game. The final two guest characters (who I won't spoil) were also really cool to have as apart of the party, and I was glad they weren't apart of the main group the entire game because it made that last dungeon really meaningful. In all, I thought the amount of characters and interactions in this game kind of hit a sweet spot that the CS and Sky games didn't always hit; a smaller cast of characters that you can dig in on. If only there was just a little more to some of them though.
The plot itself also takes the approach of being more scaled down, for better or worse. Much of the game's plot surrounds around the cast solving issues in town and becoming an integrated team within Crossbell. It works and you genuinely feel like you're contributing to the peace of Crossbell, which is considerably less political and war-engaged than Erebonia and Liberal. But the plot doesn't quite gain the momentum it needs. The chapter inevitably connect, but they're not gripping in the same way that some of Sky's and CS's were. By the end of the game I felt like I was only scratching the surface of the overall plot, despite having spent 50+ hours in the game. Which is a shame, because it really hits a stride towards the end of the game. I imagine (based on what is shown in CS2) that things ramp up more in the sequel.
Like CS and Sky, I'd say the game's biggest weakness is the amount of filler content. This game in particular feels like it has double the amount of sidequests that are just there to fill out space. You'll find yourself traveling through a lot of the same areas multiple times and there's plenty of spots in the game that are just obtuse in terms of how to solve specific tasks. Many side quests are again hidden away and I often found myself just not caring about doing some of the more elaborate quests because of how inconsequential they were. As with many of these games, I'd recommend just playing with a guide. You're not going to feel any satisfaction from finding the one NPC on the map you need to talk to anymore than you will just following a guide.
So where do I go from here? Ao no Kiseki seems like the most logical step but the translation isn't quite complete yet. I already own CS3, but it doesn't make sense to play 6/7 preceding games and not just play the last one. I have taken a few months between entries so my hope is that by the time I'm feeling the itch to continue the series that Geofront will have finished the translation of Ao.