I suppose whether you like or hate the changes in Awakening depends on how "hardcore" of a Fire Emblem player you were, because the changes definitely wrecked the metagame that made high-difficulty runs in games like FE 9, 10, and 11 more thrilling.
For me, who likes to play on lower difficulties, but also disdains grinding for the most part (i only did grinding with characters i wasn't using in my core group, and that was only to get all of the first-gen mothers married off), the changes were largely irrelevant. Now, my desire to unlock all of the children led me to beat all of the paralogues (and then i played up to Walhart's paralogue, but that one was too hard even with my stacked-out team on normal) which flooded the team with EXP so the late-game was a cinch, but the way i chose to play didn't mess with difficulty too much, indeed the later chapters of the campaign against Plegia were fairly challenging, iirc.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
