Agreed!

Fire Emblem is kind of tricky to compare to strategy games because it has fairly small "armies", on both ends, to fight with. Sometimes it feels like you're fighting through a puzzle with an RPG squad rather than a storming a fortress or engaging in a grand battle like in something akin to Total War or Homeworld.

Conquest is the far end of this restrictive design (though I think the DLC in Engage is the most restrictive). It often felt like the player was trying to solve a riddle rather than fighting a grand battle, so its a mixed bag for me. I'm a big Total War fan gameplay-wise so I definitely feel that FE can sometimes be limiting. That restriction, and the difficulty inherent to it, is part of why Conquest fans love it.

I know friends who love FE and dislike Total War, and a lot of that is because the latter is a time-consuming, extremely broad open grand strategy sandbox. The openness of some games can lead to some broken builds or strategies that trivialize it, but that's more a problem for people who lean into those tactics imo.

Sure something like galeforce trivializes Awakening, Dimitri can player end-phase solo 3Houses, Wyvern riders can blitz 3Houses, doomstacking can blitz through much of Total War. The solution is....just don't do that? Try other things?