Yeah I appreciate Conquest's limited ability to grind. I'm worrying less about who's a good character and just going with who I like. For a first playthrough I'm not so worried about min-maxing anyway. It's definitely not required to beat the main game (I hope, still on Chapter 17 of Conquest). I do feel like I'm missing out on a lot of Nohr-side characters though. Without the ability to grind I won't get to see if they're any good. One good thing about Awakening was that you could see the vast majority of content in one playthrough. There's good way that I can see to be able to view all the support conversations for all the Nohr units.
Yeah, but it's more like the classic fire emblems. You had your main squad that you rolled with, and unless you found a particularly good late game recruit, you kind of had to ignore them.
But I am definitely missing out on paralogues. As much as I want more characters to use, my pairings need to be about winning, not love.