Regarding the school stuff:

-For the most part, I think the school stuff is implemented well into the game. In contrast to most FE games, where units start with very limited abilities, in this game your students are almost blank slates and you spend the game specializing them into new classes.

-Especially early on, it takes up quite a bit of time, which can be a bit of a drag if you're really only there for the tactical fighting. I think after 4 hours of play time I'd only played 3 relatively simple battles. Once you're in the mid-game the battle/plot percentage rises.

-Once you're used to the game, most of the school stuff doesn't take much time. For instance, if you know exactly what classes you want your students to be, you can set their study goals and then just autopilot that. Similarly, most of the substantive "actions" you can do in the monastery (gardening, eating, training with other professors) can be done quickly.

-However, it's definitely possible to take a lot longer, especially if you're a completionist. You can go around talking to everybody for their little bit of dialogue, and there is a pretty annoying thing where you can find "lost items" and then have to return them to their owners based on their descriptions. Even if you literally use a guide to see who gets what, it's a lot of busywork just to build support points.

-That said, I think you can get about 80% of the necessary school stuff done in 20% of the time. It's only really time-consuming if you're are hardcore completionist who wants to recruit all the other students, max out your supports, get your professor level as high as possible, etc. Since the game (currently) isn't too hard, that's not really necessary, so you can take a more easygoing approach and just focus on the battles.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4310868&forum_id=2#38681246)

there's also some annoying design bugbears that hamper the series.

random stat growths can be infuriating, watching a mage you pumped valuable experience into miss something absurd like eight straight magic skill growths is annoying as all hell; not as bad as something like old wizardry with random stat decay on level up, but a poor mechanic in a 20+ hour linear campaign.

devastating critical hits coupled with character permadeath is also a unappealing mix in the ruleset. losing a character because of a risky choice gone wrong is fair punishment, but freak criticals often turn tactically sound moves into restarts/reloads.

difficulty in the games rarely feels good after the initial third of the games, where you've figured out the core mechanics and understand which units are overpowered relative to the rest of the cast; often these characters have such power as to ignore core systems in the game (e.g. some can ignore the rock-paper-scissors matchups that undergird many of the game's combat because of absurd stats/skills). most "hard" things are either gotcha traps (surprise reinforcements, obfuscated mechanics/objectives) or enemy stat monsters that can often only be matched by one of your overpowered units (often the hero/lord of the game).

path of radiance or the gameboy advance games (i think) are probably a fine entrypoint to the series, with genealogy of the holy war, thracia 776, or radiant dawn as decent ones to check out if you found the entries enjoyable enough. probably better to branch out into other games for your jap-strategy fix after that, though. stuff like der langrisser, berwick saga, front mission, etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4310868&forum_id=2#38681273)

Conquest really nailed map creativity and in 3H they basically just went back to "standard FE map generator". It's also ludicrously easy until like the very last two maps.

It's got a lot of polish in small places and most of the combat is better. Some gambits are comically broken but in general it's an interesting mechanic. The plot is basically unfinished and connecting the dots an exercise left up to the reader, the bad guys are silly, but it does a great job of world building and sucking you in. The school stuff was fine, but they should've just had a smaller camp or something the second half since it's just kind of "there" and plays no role in the plot.

If lunatic is similar in difficulty to say, CQ hard (lunatic was absurd with it's stupid debuff stacking ninjas) it will go from "fun but autopilot" to one of the best games in the series hands down. If it's like Awakening lunatic where it's basically just "minmax or die" the game is still good but it would be a letdown.

Having played two paths, it's clear the game suffers from "unfinished game syndrome" like so many AAA games these days. The path I liked way more story and character-wise just fucking ended five missions efore the first one I played.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4310868&forum_id=2#38735970)

I will say the menus and navigation in 3H are confusing as fuck, I don't know how they dropped the ball so badly there. I didn't realize I could sell my stupid fish until 50 hours in, by which point I had more gold than I could ever find a use for anyway.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4310868&forum_id=2#38736000)