Woof. The actual battles - incredibly fun. Good strategic decisions, rewarding combat, tense at the appropriate times. But, there's a lot of other things in the game that aren't combat. I was playing new game plus, so the beginning was faster - that was nice. It was pretty slow last time. The idea of the monastery and class assignments is very fun, but it feels... padded? Like actions take too much time relative to how much you have to do them. Also, you _really_ run out of useful things to do in the last quarter of the game. It's like they planned 12 missions worth of monastery activities, but have 20 missions in the game. The (character) classes themselves are decent and ability mixing is cool, but there's really only a few paths for each character through the tree. And, most of the top-tier classes are mounted. So if you max out say, an assassin, they have nothing left to grow into. Just like last time, I enjoyed the first half more than the second (which dragged). There's a lot of content there, but i'm not positive that's a great thing. Future me: probably don't play the third route; just watch the cutscenes. It's too much time for what you get. Played Blue Lion route on Hard/Casual (no permadeath).
Did a lot right. Gameplay was as fun as always. Game started very strong and pestered off. Once you max stuff, the game starts falling apart. If you don't get invested in the characters, then most side quests become wastes of time. There's a lot of cool combat mechanics and depth. Rewinding is helpful. Story is pretty good, but doesn't resolve in a super terrific manner. Played the Golden Deer route on Hard/Casual (no permadeath).