On Genei Ibunroku #FE the gamepad is used in a way similar to a smart phone, you get 4 options on it so you can keep track of the game, main story, side story, some weird chat thing and a map.
So I guess you should be able to tackle the main story at your own leissure, at least to some extent and there are side quests, the chat is withing the characterse of the game, you can't actually chat with them, it's more of a way to know what the characters are up to, chat looks like any chat on a mobile device with emojis and all