I agree with this. I just felt the character writing wasn't as strong as it usually is for Trails, but that's also partially Zeros fault for not being a good foundation.

Honestly yes, the characters are well written and all, but it doesn't really feel as strong as Sky's character development.
And it has a lot of faults like having you visit the same three places throghout the whole game, Lloyd being TOO anime, the villains suck because the game pulled them out at the last second, it has pretty bad pacing as in being too hype at one moment but being too boring at the other, etc.

Despite loving Wazy and Randy, I honestly prefer sky’s plot. The final boss was cool, but that doesn’t negate me not caring about most of the “hype” moments that happened beforehand. Also, Ian Grimwood 😂