What am I missing?

[Khainiwest]

I just started playing fire emblem fates about two weeks ago, I fortunately finally found a special edition with all 3 cartridges at gamestop like in the last week of September. I have jplayed every american release of fire emblem, with hundreds of hours on each. Awakening was by far the best variant I've played and I was excited to read Fates blew it out of the water, yet I just don't feel it, I'm pretty disappointed as of thus far with it.

Now I'm not here to complain about the game, I'm just lost, like in awakening if I needed gold, or if I need to level up, I had the ability to grind it out to make my favorite characters viable, a-and I don't see it in this game. The DLC is grossly ineffective, the invasions/challenges seem to be much more valuable. I really just want to invest into my characters, I chose to go birthright first for this reason, but I just haven't found an effective way to grind them to that potential. Am I missing something?

Even when reading about which characters to invest in, it seems like there's no one valuable, they are all roughly the same mediocrity save for like, 4 characters which steamroll the game by themselves. Like I understand every game has its "seth" but it seems this game has 4 seths without the growth rate consequence.

I'm only up to chapter 11 in birthright, and I really want to be as addicted as I was in awakening, grinding my characters to make them bad asses, but so far I barely even want to play through the story, everyone seems so weak save my main character, people have written in depth guides saying very few are even worth investing in, and the investment strategies seem to be purposely ineffecitve. I mean even from what I read the kids are just as mediocre, what do I have to look forward to in the end game?

I don't mind challenges, I don't mind working but I just feel like I'm doing everything wrong, and from what I read about the comparison of the two games, I'm doing something incredibly wrong

[BANRYU]

I dunno man, I personally don't find Birthright that interesting, Conquest is where it's at for me. But I prefer the older-style FE games like Blazing Sword and the Tellius games, so maybe that's just me.

Not to say I didn't like Awakening, I was way into the characters on there as well... But personally, I vastly prefer pretty much all the design decisions that Fates has made, haha. I prefer the way reclassing works, the improved (IE, not % activation-based) pair-up systems, and for the most part map designs are more interesting and fair. And reclassing is far more interesting in this game IMO, where the possibilities are basically endless compared to Awakening, where options are pretty well set in stone for gen 1 characters, and marginally less so for 2nd genners.

Speaking for myself (again), I know that I really liked the Birthright classes and characters in terms of design, but when it came to the supports and writing and whatnot, I fond them considerably weaker. In terms of gameplay and optimization and whatnot, yeah, no one is really bad...? So use who you want or like based on design and writing and whatnot, and don't sweat the other stuff IMO. Grinding all the characters to usability is better saved for Revelation IMO, I say just get yourself done with Birthright story-wise and move on to Conquest.

It's possible that the things you don't like are entirely subjective, and that you're just not that into it. And that's fine, to each their own, y'know?

Edited October 17, 2016 by BANRYU

[Anders]

Have you played any other Fire Emblem game besides Awakening? Maybe you are a little spoiled because Awakening had such a big growths for all the characters in general, that you could just blow the game with almost any character, it was as if no one had a big "weakness", whereas here in Fates, you might found that some characters are as durable as wet paper, slow as a rock, blind, or weak as a baby.

Edited October 17, 2016 by Iniktemis

[Lord Raymond]

I just started playing fire emblem fates about two weeks ago, I fortunately finally found a special edition with all 3 cartridges at gamestop like in the last week of September. I have jplayed every american release of fire emblem, with hundreds of hours on each. Awakening was by far the best variant I've played and I was excited to read Fates blew it out of the water, yet I just don't feel it, I'm pretty disappointed as of thus far with it.

Now I'm not here to complain about the game, I'm just lost, like in awakening if I needed gold, or if I need to level up, I had the ability to grind it out to make my favorite characters viable, a-and I don't see it in this game. The DLC is grossly ineffective, the invasions/challenges seem to be much more valuable. I really just want to invest into my characters, I chose to go birthright first for this reason, but I just haven't found an effective way to grind them to that potential. Am I missing something?

Even when reading about which characters to invest in, it seems like there's no one valuable, they are all roughly the same mediocrity save for like, 4 characters which steamroll the game by themselves. Like I understand every game has its "seth" but it seems this game has 4 seths without the growth rate consequence.

I'm only up to chapter 11 in birthright, and I really want to be as addicted as I was in awakening, grinding my characters to make them bad asses, but so far I barely even want to play through the story, everyone seems so weak save my main character, people have written in depth guides saying very few are even worth investing in, and the investment strategies seem to be purposely ineffecitve. I mean even from what I read the kids are just as mediocre, what do I have to look forward to in the end game?

I don't mind challenges, I don't mind working but I just feel like I'm doing everything wrong, and from what I read about the comparison of the two games, I'm doing something incredibly wrong

Honestly, I have no idea what you are talking about. While I am VERY biased towards Birthright (it was my first Fire Emblem) the points you make I just don't see. The EXP DLC is very useful, you can gain up to 7 or so levels in one playthrough if you have weakinging ninjas with you. The Gold one allows you to get a ton of gold, like 75,000 in one playthrough, and is a decent challenge to keep you on your toes. Every character can be useful except for a couple useless ones (Subaki, Hinata, couple of others). I find the writing to be funny and pretty great at times, but that's probably because I had nothing to compare it to at the time of my playing. I find Revelation more fun, but that's just because it is just Birthright on steroids, and is more fun in my opinion. And if you want a challenge DO NOT use Ryoma. He is super overpowered and can steamroll everything without any effort whatsoever. Also, you may want to reclass Takumi away from bows, because he is just too OP with his Fujin Yumi. I find making him a Swordmaster is pretty fun. If you don't want the characters to steamroll the game, simply don't use them. And the beginning game in Birthright is pretty weak, with them throwing you shit units like Subaki, Hinata, Rinkah, and Hayato. But their children (save for Hinata) make up for them, as Rhajat and Caeldori can be very powerful units. Overall, I find Birthright to be a really fun game.

[Brynhilly]

I recommend you just play conquest,you may get a shallow,Stupid story but the gameplay is great

Typically its seen that fates and awakening are good games but not necessarily good Fe games since any character can solo the game

[NekoKnight]

I have no idea what you are expecting. Do you want to steamroll the game with overpowered characters? Do you want a challenge? Is it bad design that most units are "only" mediocre? Whether you want an easy game or a hard one, the options are there, and Fates is just a better designed game than Awakening in most capacities.

Why is the DLC "grossly ineffective"?

[Horuos]

Have you played any other Fire Emblem game besides Awakening? Maybe you are a little spoiled because Awakening had such a big growths for all the characters in general, that you could just blow the game with almost any character, it was as if no one had a big "weakness", whereas here in Fates, you might found that some characters are as durable as wet paper, slow as a rock, blind, or weak as a baby.

Yeah, he said he played every Fire Emblem game to come to the West

[Anders]

Yeah, he said he played every Fire Emblem game to come to the West

Oh, i see it now, i read it too fast and thought that he was talking just about the newer FEs, thanks and sorry. Then, as everyone says, i don´t know what can i say man, what´s exactly what you want? the game to be harder but with more powerful characters?

[eclipse]

Fire Emblem isn't a grinding game at heart. If you really want OP grinding in a SRPG, FFT/stuff by Image Epoch should do it. Instead of trying to force the game down whatever ideal you want, learn to work with what you've got, even if it seems like your units aren't that strong.

[Khainiwest]

Honestly, I have no idea what you are talking about. While I am VERY biased towards Birthright (it was my first Fire Emblem) the points you make I just don't see. The EXP DLC is very useful, you can gain up to 7 or so levels in one playthrough if you have weakinging ninjas with you. The Gold one allows you to get a ton of gold, like 75,000 in one playthrough, and is a decent challenge to keep you on your toes. Every character can be useful except for a couple useless ones (Subaki, Hinata, couple of others). I find the writing to be funny and pretty great at times, but that's probably because I had nothing to compare it to at the time of my playing. I find Revelation more fun, but that's just because it is just Birthright on steroids, and is more fun in my opinion. And if you want a challenge DO NOT use Ryoma. He is super overpowered and can steamroll everything without any effort whatsoever. Also, you may want to reclass Takumi away from bows, because he is just too OP with his Fujin Yumi. I find making him a Swordmaster is pretty fun. If you don't want the characters to steamroll the game, simply don't use them. And the beginning game in Birthright is pretty weak, with them throwing you shit units like Subaki, Hinata, Rinkah, and Hayato. But their children (save for Hinata) make up for them, as Rhajat and Caeldori can be very powerful units. Overall, I find Birthright to be a really fun game.

I want characters that do steamroll the game, but only after I put investment into them. I hate that I'm handed characters that can and have to go out of my way to nerf them myself. Awakening was my favorite because it allowed me to choose which characters were the god characters of my game, and I don't see it in this game. I had the same thing with Sacred stones/Original with hector. They had post game stuff where you could train your characters to obscene monsters, awakening had this with DLC.

I can see how you /could/ make that work, but with the running away feature and half of the weaker ones attacking your baby units, I just have trouble adjusting to this artificial time limit, suggestions?

I have no idea what you are expecting. Do you want to steamroll the game with overpowered characters? Do you want a challenge? Is it bad design that most units are "only" mediocre? Whether you want an easy game or a hard one, the options are there, and Fates is just a better designed game than Awakening in most capacities.

Why is the DLC "grossly ineffective"?

You know I keep reading this and I don't understand how. Every fire emblem game had potential characters save for the pre-promote ones, which I understand. There were ways to train them and grind them but everything I read, majority of the characters in birthright are garbage while the remaining require no investment to god tier. When it came to awakening, it was planning out the kids to make these god tier monstrosities, you had personal investment in them and I was hoping this game would expand on that. Even the other two USA gameboy games had that option of having a post game grind where you could train those characters up. Do we have those in this game?

Honestly the only thing I didn't like about awakening was the post turn reinforcements, dumbest mechanic ever. Keep in context I'm only 11 chapters in, and just don't feel any investment into my characters besides my main character, makes the experience dull for me.

Fire Emblem isn't a grinding game at heart. If you really want OP grinding in a SRPG, FFT/stuff by Image Epoch should do it. Instead of trying to force the game down whatever ideal you want, learn to work with what you've got, even if it seems like your units aren't that strong.

I mean, every fire emblem game I've played had some grinding aspect to it, that's why I loved it, yeah FFT was great too, but it was like "Hey, YOU GO CHARACTER WHO I SPENT A DAY TRAINING, YOU'RE MERELY A DIAMOND WHO NEEDS POLISHING." I don't get that feeling in this game at all, in fact with the scaling feature of the DLC it makes it even more frustrating because the characters can really never hold their own. Hell my main character has trouble not getting 90% of her health dropped in one hit. I imagine a grinding dlc for exp would not have the option of units running away or be scaled to your chapter. I really feel like just restarting and grinding every character I get per the chapter I get them lol

[BANRYU]

Awakening was my favorite because it allowed me to choose which characters were the god characters of my game, and I don't see it in this game.

TBH, I think this is more true of this game than any other Fire Emblem to date in some senses-- you have the Dragon Herbs from having all three versions of the game, extra classes in the form of Dreadfighter and Darkflier, and the ability to make any character pretty much any class you can imagine. Yeah, bad growths can happen, but that's a hazard in ANY FE game.

I saw some guy's PMU where one of the big stars of the guy's run was a Great Knight Nyx-- one of the most infamously and widely-considered bad characters in what, in theory, is a terrible class for her... and yet. Another example is Rinkah, who a lot of people also consider to be pretty bad, but with some preferential treatment from stat-boosters or even just some choice level-ups can still be really good.

The possibilities in this game are crazy, man. If you're not seein' it, maybe you're just not looking hard enough. And if you haven't at least finished both main stories, or Conquest at least, I don't think you have enough information to properly assert these claims of yours. But if getting that far isn't fun, then just don't play it, do what you enjoy, man. I know I bailed on my first run of Birthright 2/3s of the way through it just because I wasn't feelin' it lol.

[Khainiwest]

TBH, I think this is more true of this game than any other Fire Emblem to date in some senses-- you have the Dragon Herbs from having all three versions of the game, extra classes in the form of Dreadfighter and Darkflier, and the ability to make any character pretty much any class you can imagine. Yeah, bad growths can happen, but that's a hazard in ANY FE game.

I saw some guy's PMU where one of the big stars of the guy's run was a Great Knight Nyx-- one of the most infamously and widely-considered bad characters in what, in theory, is a terrible class for her... and yet. Another example is Rinkah, who a lot of people also consider to be pretty bad, but with some preferential treatment from stat-boosters or even just some choice level-ups can still be really good.

The possibilities in this game are crazy, man. If you're not seein' it, maybe you're just not looking hard enough. And if you haven't at least finished both main stories, or Conquest at least, I don't think you have enough information to properly assert these claims of yours. But if getting that far isn't fun, then just don't play it, do what you enjoy, man. I know I bailed on my first run of Birthright 2/3s of the way through it just because I wasn't feelin' it lol.

That maybe my problem, I was reading that this thing has crazy possibilities but maybe the options are too overwhelming and I'm just not seeing the specifics or something? That's why I titled this thread as I did, it's not about whether it's a bad game or not, just "hey, wait till you get to this part, or get to use this tool!", I really have no idea

[GoXDS]

I want characters that do steamroll the game, but only after I put investment into them. I hate that I'm handed characters that can and have to go out of my way to nerf them myself. Awakening was my favorite because it allowed me to choose which characters were the god characters of my game, and I don't see it in this game. I had the same thing with Sacred stones/Original with hector. They had post game stuff where you could train your characters to obscene monsters, awakening had this with DLC.

I can see how you /could/ make that work, but with the running away feature and half of the weaker ones attacking your baby units, I just have trouble adjusting to this artificial time limit, suggestions?

You know I keep reading this and I don't understand how. Every fire emblem game had potential characters save for the pre-promote ones, which I understand. There were ways to train them and grind them but everything I read, majority of the characters in birthright are garbage while the remaining require no investment to god tier. When it came to awakening, it was planning out the kids to make these god tier monstrosities, you had personal investment in them and I was hoping this game would expand on that. Even the other two USA gameboy games had that option of having a post game grind where you could train those characters up. Do we have those in this game?

Honestly the only thing I didn't like about awakening was the post turn reinforcements, dumbest mechanic ever. Keep in context I'm only 11 chapters in, and just don't feel any investment into my characters besides my main character, makes the experience dull for me.

I mean, every fire emblem game I've played had some grinding aspect to it, that's why I loved it, yeah FFT was great too, but it was like "Hey, YOU GO CHARACTER WHO I SPENT A DAY TRAINING, YOU'RE MERELY A DIAMOND WHO NEEDS POLISHING." I don't get that feeling in this game at all, in fact with the scaling feature of the DLC it makes it even more frustrating because the characters can really never hold their own. Hell my main character has trouble not getting 90% of her health dropped in one hit. I imagine a grinding dlc for exp would not have the option of units running away or be scaled to your chapter. I really feel like just restarting and grinding every character I get per the chapter I get them lol

imo, there are plenty of non-OP but good units. Mozu, as any Villager, given investment (instant Dread Fighter from Lvl 1 in her recruit chapter especially), Saizo's ok, Hinoka (especially as Spear Fighter), Oboro, Kagero (though squishy). Sakura also has decent growths all around but grinding through to promotion. and as frustrating as Rinkah's growths can be, just a HP Tonic at the beginning of the chapter and maintaining below max HP gives +4 dmg and she's tanky excluding her HP. just what are your standards? what's OP and what's trash?

Fates's grinding DLC isn't as brain dead as Awakenings but the scaling isn't as much of a disadvantage as you make it out to be. I've grinded the hell out of Awakening and it isn't useful at all after 3 Second seals. so for any one char you're grinding in Awakening, you'll still have to use Spotpass summons for many, many lvls. there's a few things you can do to make more use of the DLC. first, don't stress getting as many kills as possible if it's just going to make you overextend yourself and possibly get killed. just pull 1-2 autoaggro at a time per group if need be and skip the last half of the run completely. second, you need chip dmg/dual attacks more than in Awakening so do that. third, if you're grinding stronger units, there's a breakable barrier in the middle which brings you at the front of all the spawns. not recommended for grindng low lvls ofc, w/ the Stoneborns and all. granted, for the most part, challenges are more effective at grinding lvls. but keep in mind Conquest doesn't have challenges

plus, Awakening's DLC also had stuff run away and the only possible way you could've killed them all was with a lot of path blocking on top of Galeforce.

as mentioned, at its foundation, Fire Emblem is not a grinding game. just because you've only played the ones that had some shouldn't mean you can take that as the standard for all of them. and you mentioned that the other games had post-game grind. you're not even post-game yet so why compare with those?

[BANRYU]

That maybe my problem, I was reading that this thing has crazy possibilities but maybe the options are too overwhelming and I'm just not seeing the specifics or something? That's why I titled this thread as I did, it's not about whether it's a bad game or not, just "hey, wait till you get to this part, or get to use this tool!", I really have no idea

If that's the case, that it's all kind of overwhelming, my recommendation is not to sweat the options too much and go through the game 'normally' (whatever that means to you, lol; I personally define 'normal' by the first FE game I played, Blazing Sword. It sounds like to you, Sacred Stones/Awakening is more the speed of 'normal' and that's fine too).

For a first run, I recommend staying relatively 'safe' in terms of playing around (most characters function well in their base class) and just go through the game, use whoever performs the best without too much grinding in Birthright (as I mentioned before, grinding in Rev is probably going to be/feel a lot more worthwhile than in BR) and just get through the plot (lackluster as it might be lol).

If it helps (and obviously, everyone's different, but my own experiences are my best point of reference lol...), here are the runs I've done so far:

- Conquest, Normal/Classic : pretty normal run, didn't mess around with classes that much, mainly getting a feel for the game and learning mechanics

- Birthright, Hard/Casual : messed around with reclassing a little more, mainly on MU, but also got Rend Heaven on a couple extra guys, Takumi uses it esp well. Haven't finished, got bored and stopped around Ch 25

- Conquest, Hard/Casual : All-wyverns run, lol. Details in my signature, but the goal was basically to finish all possible units as wyvern units. Really crazy with all the bows, but really fun and interesting as well

- Birthright, Hard/Casual : all-ninjas run; currently in progress. Enjoying it so far lol.

TBH I keep doing casual because I'm a filthy casual I got too attached to mid-battle saves, and this game LOVES to screw you over with random unexpected crits from like, 9% and whatnot, so... whatever no shame lol. I paid my Classic nickel with Conquest so w/e

I don't have Revelations yet, but I'm planning on doing a 'normal' playthrough, probably with some class-swapping and a lot of grinding (although I get bored really easily grinding so mehh maybe not), and then an all-Rhajat playthrough, which is... well.. haha.

And then there's all the other stuff people do, I'm sure you've seen topics for PMUs (Pick My Unit runs) and the like, and those are an adventure all their own if you don't know what to do for yourself and whatnot...

But for your first run(s), I seriously just recommend powering through as quick as you can just for the sake of learning the plot and experimenting with the characters, then worrying about doing the crazier stuff on subsequent runs, and saving the grinding you seem to like for Revelations and whatnot. This game has tons of replayability whenever you do find whatever it is you're looking for. As to what it is that you're missing, I dunno man, I think it's up to you to figure that out.

[Khainiwest]

imo, there are plenty of non-OP but good units. Mozu, as any Villager, given investment (instant Dread Fighter from Lvl 1 in her recruit chapter especially), Saizo's ok, Hinoka (especially as Spear Fighter), Oboro, Kagero (though squishy). Sakura also has decent growths all around but grinding through to promotion. and as frustrating as Rinkah's growths can be, just a HP Tonic at the beginning of the chapter and maintaining below max HP gives +4 dmg and she's tanky excluding her HP. just what are your standards? what's OP and what's trash?

Fates's grinding DLC isn't as brain dead as Awakenings but the scaling isn't as much of a disadvantage as you make it out to be. I've grinded the hell out of Awakening and it isn't useful at all after 3 Second seals. so for any one char you're grinding in Awakening, you'll still have to use Spotpass summons for many, many lvls. there's a few things you can do to make more use of the DLC. first, don't stress getting as many kills as possible if it's just going to make you overextend yourself and possibly get killed. just pull 1-2 autoaggro at a time per group if need be and skip the last half of the run completely. second, you need chip dmg/dual attacks more than in Awakening so do that. third, if you're grinding stronger units, there's a breakable barrier in the middle which brings you at the front of all the spawns. not recommended for grindng low lvls ofc, w/ the Stoneborns and all. granted, for the most part, challenges are more effective at grinding lvls. but keep in mind Conquest doesn't have challenges

plus, Awakening's DLC also had stuff run away and the only possible way you could've killed them all was with a lot of path blocking on top of Galeforce.

as mentioned, at its foundation, Fire Emblem is not a grinding game. just because you've only played the ones that had some shouldn't mean you can take that as the standard for all of them. and you mentioned that the other games had post-game grind. you're not even post-game yet so why compare with those?

Well the trick is to get those first 3 seals to make them able to solo the maps of the later DLC maps, forgot the names though. I think the 'run away' similarity is an unfair comparison to as this only applied to the gold rush. That makes a little more sense as thieves typically run away in every FE game. I don't think I ever used spotpass in any function besides transferring avatar characters.

Well I compare the post game grind because awakening DLC replaced that, now we have an instant DLC grind that I find much less effective than awakenings but again, limited experience.

[Khainiwest]

If that's the case, that it's all kind of overwhelming, my recommendation is not to sweat the options too much and go through the game 'normally' (whatever that means to you, lol; I personally define 'normal' by the first FE game I played, Blazing Sword. It sounds like to you, Sacred Stones/Awakening is more the speed of 'normal' and that's fine too).

For a first run, I recommend staying relatively 'safe' in terms of playing around (most characters function well in their base class) and just go through the game, use whoever performs the best without too much grinding in Birthright (as I mentioned before, grinding in Rev is probably going to be/feel a lot more worthwhile than in BR) and just get through the plot (lackluster as it might be lol).

If it helps (and obviously, everyone's different, but my own experiences are my best point of reference lol...), here are the runs I've done so far:

- Conquest, Normal/Classic : pretty normal run, didn't mess around with classes that much, mainly getting a feel for the game and learning mechanics

- Birthright, Hard/Casual : messed around with reclassing a little more, mainly on MU, but also got Rend Heaven on a couple extra guys, Takumi uses it esp well. Haven't finished, got bored and stopped around Ch 25

- Conquest, Hard/Casual : All-wyverns run, lol. Details in my signature, but the goal was basically to finish all possible units as wyvern units. Really crazy with all the bows, but really fun and interesting as well

- Birthright, Hard/Casual : all-ninjas run; currently in progress. Enjoying it so far lol.

TBH I keep doing casual because I'm a filthy casual I got too attached to mid-battle saves, and this game LOVES to screw you over with random unexpected crits from like, 9% and whatnot, so... whatever no shame lol. I paid my Classic nickel with Conquest so w/e

I don't have Revelations yet, but I'm planning on doing a 'normal' playthrough, probably with some class-swapping and a lot of grinding (although I get bored really easily grinding so mehh maybe not), and then an all-Rhajat playthrough, which is... well.. haha.

And then there's all the other stuff people do, I'm sure you've seen topics for PMUs (Pick My Unit runs) and the like, and those are an adventure all their own if you don't know what to do for yourself and whatnot...

But for your first run(s), I seriously just recommend powering through as quick as you can just for the sake of learning the plot and experimenting with the characters, then worrying about doing the crazier stuff on subsequent runs, and saving the grinding you seem to like for Revelations and whatnot. This game has tons of replayability whenever you do find whatever it is you're looking for. As to what it is that you're missing, I dunno man, I think it's up to you to figure that out.

No I really havent looked into much of the game yet, I'll take your advice and try to blast through it, I just like experiencing all the characters and growing them. it just didn't seemed stressed to me based on my limited time playing though

[NekoKnight]

You know I keep reading this and I don't understand how. Every fire emblem game had potential characters save for the pre-promote ones, which I understand. There were ways to train them and grind them but everything I read, majority of the characters in birthright are garbage while the remaining require no investment to god tier. When it came to awakening, it was planning out the kids to make these god tier monstrosities, you had personal investment in them and I was hoping this game would expand on that. Even the other two USA gameboy games had that option of having a post game grind where you could train those characters up. Do we have those in this game?

It sounds like you care too much about others' opinions and you should just find the characters you like. Birthright might be the easiest of the three routes so you should be able use almost anyone you want, and if they're underpowered, you've already committed to grinding. Forge weapons, buy stat boosters and tonics, use your route bonus items. With time and gold, you can make anyone strong.

[eclipse]

I mean, every fire emblem game I've played had some grinding aspect to it, that's why I loved it, yeah FFT was great too, but it was like "Hey, YOU GO CHARACTER WHO I SPENT A DAY TRAINING, YOU'RE MERELY A DIAMOND WHO NEEDS POLISHING." I don't get that feeling in this game at all, in fact with the scaling feature of the DLC it makes it even more frustrating because the characters can really never hold their own. Hell my main character has trouble not getting 90% of her health dropped in one hit. I imagine a grinding dlc for exp would not have the option of units running away or be scaled to your chapter. I really feel like just restarting and grinding every character I get per the chapter I get them lol

You can either deal with the EXP DLC, live with the fact that playing with limited resources is a perfectly valid play style, play Birthright/Revelation (where grinding is part of the game), or find something that tickles your fancy. From what I can tell, you have your own definition of "fun", and it seems to be incompatible with the stated goals of Conquest (limited money/experience, so efficient allocation is VERY important).

Also, don't post twice in a row. Use the Edit button instead.

[Florete]

Even the other two USA gameboy games had that option of having a post game grind where you could train those characters up. Do we have those in this game?

Fire Emblem 7 did not have post-game grinding. Only Sacred Stones, Awakening, and Fates have that.

I'm a little perplexed at your problem here. What difficulty are you on? If Lunatic, then I can understand why you might be feeling that your units are rather weak, but if Hard/Normal then it confuses me as to how a series veteran can find the grinding options in Fates not sufficient enough. Which characters have you focused on? They all have their flaws, but any of them should become very strong with the proper attention.

If this is your first time playing Fates, are you perhaps not yet accustomed to the new mechanics? That can make things more difficult.

I'm not used to playing the way you seem to want to, but my suggestion would be to learn whatever new mechanics you still aren't fully accustomed to and use the character information on the site to investigate whatever might have gone wrong. You can do infinite challenge grinding as long as you have money, and you can get plenty of money from the DLC. If you need it, you can also get easy dragon vein points from visiting player castles and winning easy battles.

[Khainiwest]

So i took everyones advice and decided to just plunge through the story, I'm starting to enjoy the game again, I just felt like I wasn't deep enough in and I was looking for someone to tell me "BY THIS CHAPTER", "THIS CHARACTER" or "THIS ITEM".

[BANRYU]

Yeah no, don't worry about that kinda stuff until your subsequent playthroughs lol.

I get where you're coming from honestly, I have to remind myself not to overthink stuff and just enjoy games for what they are a lot lol.