I believe you’re vastly overstating the importance of this game and franchise. As I said, I think it’s a terrible series of games (and I’ve played them up to CS3), so there’s absolutely some bias here.

Also, what does other people’s review have anything to do with how impactful or important something is to the medium? Does this mean that the Hentai game Mirror with ~96% positive, 85k+ reviews on Steam is even more significant than Trails?

And if you look at modern RPGs built around serialized storytelling and grounded politics—Disco Elysium, Baldur’s Gate 3, even the way Persona 5 structures its arcs—you can see Falcom’s fingerprints everywhere.

Please show me where those fingerprints are, because I don’t see them.