I think at some point when this released someone asked for a review/perspective from someone having started with CS3 without even playing CS1+2, so I thought I would post this.
I was one of those, so thank you. I was very curious if the new class VII could help newcommers to keep themselves from being too lost.
After finishing the game, newcommers shouldn't have much trouble with keeping up with the plot, although they might have lore and character overload, but to me it seems that you would lose way too much in regards of emotional investment. I also thought it would get a tad frustrating seeing Rean know about stuff that new class VII doesn't and they just go "I don't know what's going on", so to me they didn't seem to be that great as gateway characters even if they should help with that.
Regardless, as long as people are able to enjoy the experience, I'm more than satisfied. And the slow pace probably does wonders in helping people get invested in the characters even if some of them, like Rean, have massive amounts of baggage attached. I don't know, as a fan I'm probably among the most relaxed with how necessary previous arcs are for each new arc (I always thought that people were vastly overselling the narrative relevance of Sky and Crossbell for CSIII, and playing it very much confirmed it), but even then I'm 8 games deep into this mess, I find it that it's really hard for me to separate my long time investment in the franchise from the experience itself, so at this point I'm thinking is best to just let people start wherever they want to start, and if the Trails formula clicks, then they will probably enjoy it regardless.