For the most part the story and characters are really good but for how serious and lofty the themes and plot are in the second half it feels really out of place with how tropey some of the characters are. It's not neccessarily that the characters are bad or unlikable it's just a weird mismatch with the tone of the plot. Much of the story deals with the effects of war, but most of the characters on our team never seem to be effected by it at all? Very few of them really drop their lighthearted tone for the entirety of the game even though theres a certain moment in the plot where it really seems like they should.

I would say that despite being a strategy game it is much more fun to go into battles with a little preparation as possible. I found that when I was micromanaging every single peice of equipment, ability and battalion of my team, completing every side quest, using every possible slot of free time to improve stats I was just steamrolling through the actual battles themselves. The most fun I had was when I gave up doing most of that shit and starting doing the bare minimum of preparation. The last battle in particular was some of the most fun I had in ages. I was slowly losing party members and running out of weapons, making tactical desicions of which units I could afford to lose, where to position everyone, untill it organically ended with the final boss and me with a shitty sword. Honestly either play on a harder difficulty or ignore almost every single optional battle if a challenge is what you're after.