I decided to give Lunatic a shot. Normal Classic was an absolute joke since I went for all the characters and did a lot of support stuff to see the conversations. By the end of the game, I could just walk one of several godly characters down the middle of the map without a worry in the world. I figured Hard would be a "normal" level of difficulty, so I skipped that and went to Lunatic to see how much of a challenge it is, and boy is this difficulty dumb.
It turns the first few chapters into a complex puzzle to trade Frederick items without ever ending the turn in enemy range. My game clock says just under an hour to get to Chapter 4, but in real time it was more like 4-5 hours of soft resets and praying to the RNG gods (mostly in chapter 2, because I went into that one in a condition where I absolutely needed one or two lucky blocks in order to live past the second turn. I also got greedy one time when I was about to win and accidentally lost a character, costing me an additional hour or so)
It
is satisfying to chip away at the solution to the problem of all of your characters being completely impotent except for Frederick, especially when you finally figure it out how to do it, but it also feels super silly. Apparently it gets better when you unlock the DLC and are able to buy the maps to grind on, but the road there is a bit ridiculous, I don't like grinding as a solution for difficulty, and I like the idea of paying $2.50-$6 for the privilege even less. Part of me wants the lunatic experience, but having to grind and pay to do it may be a deal breaker.
Hard Casual may be better for me. I think I'm done with Classic, since I soft reset all deaths anyway, the only difference in switching to Casual is that the odd occasion when I lose a character to greedy experience farming at the end won't force me to replay the entire map.
Permadeath is the best thing about the series.
Isn't permadeath in like every strategy-RPG? Final Fantasy Tactics has it. Valkyria Chronicles has it. XCOM has it. Not sure if Disgaea and Phantom Brave have it since I haven't played either of those in a while. The only difference is it's instantaneous here, whereas others give you a short window to revive.