So I guess just to get the bad stuff out of the way.
Supports outside of Alears are too hard to earn. You can spend half the game focusing to get one pair to A.
Somniel isnt great. I like the look and feel, but its mostly near worthless activities, and theres only one activity to reliably raise supports in cooking, which is just one at a time. Arena works fine, but its still random. Excersize serves no point on normal or hard, and the people who play maddening are going to hate that kind of thing to begin with. Also the clothing stuff is just a big swing an a miss, don't know why these couldn't have been in supports at least. As a huge fan of Greg Mach, Somniel is a letdown.
Theres some iffy UI choices, mainly Bond Leveling and Skill Inheritance being different rooms with a loading screen between them, and not being able to forge from the deploy screen. Also the recommended level stuff is broken, since its based on internal level and not displayed level. Once you start promoting units, those numbers dont gel unless you promoted at 20, which you shouldnt be doing.
I spent most of the game thinking the economy was fucked, but realized that you shouldnt bother putting a ton of money into nation investments unless youre going to be doing a ton of skirmishes, and I got everything to level 3 and did.2 skirmishes, so yeah I did that to myself.
It seems like an oversight that your fucked out of Magic and staff proficiency for a huge middle chunk of the game.
And uh..checking my notes..yeah thats it. I like everything else about the game.
Its clearly not controversial to say the gameplay here is great. I dont know how controversial its going to be to say its the series best. This is of course based on hard mode, I cant speak for maddening players. Removing permanently earning sills from classes to destroy just about any incentive to go through a bunch of different classes on one unit basically saved the entire second seal system to me, after hating it in Awakening and not loving it in Fates. I can so easily change my class on the fly and theres no penalty, no excess effort I have to go through, and unless Im changing from a Berserker to a Sage or something I likely wont have screwed my growths over. The Unit/Class growth split is thankfully very alive here. Even though everyone can do everything, everyone still feels unique.
Maps are excellent, OK at worst, across the board. There wasnt a single time where one didnt work for me, even t he most draining, multi hour maps were a ride.
The story here is totally fine, good even? Often cheesy but in a good way, and with some genuinely strong points. Its certainly better on that front than any of the 3DS games. It without a doubt puts its worst foot forward, with the first 7 or 8 chapters not really getting me invested as much (which unfortunately was the entire preview chunk of the game). It was enough that while going into chapter 10 I was hunkering Diamant having been the main lord of the game instead. By the end though I was complete on board. The Hounds are a ton of fun and they really brought it al together for me. Some people Ive seem complain you fight them too much, but thats what makes it work!
It's getting late so Im starting to lose track here, but yeah, I absolutely adored my time here and have already stated another playthrough. Not going to fuck up and promote at 30 this time either lol.