Some of the newer FE games suck at that too, Three Houses in particular apparently.
Older games give you very good prepromotes in the midgame, and the 3DS games have the child recruits (it makes sense I swear) scale up to current story progress and scale off stats/skills of parents.
I was actually optimistic, because I like Mario&Luigi, so these combat systems CAN work. The problem is, the parry systems in E33 are 80% of your success (if you don't grind), yet are more shallow by comparison, and most of the depth is in the RPG parts that are just a supplement (unless you grind + play on easier difficulty settings, but it seems you need a Picto for AP on damage to let you have fun then)
I'm a big Etrian Odyssey fan, but the first one's pretty basic, and I haven't played the remaster.
It already had a pretty good gameplay loop going though, so it's worth a try, especially if you're going in blind to the plot reveals.
It really proves that the game can be a normal JRPG, albeit a grindy one in the beginning.
It's unrelated to difficulty, but, is it a good one though? Being grindy to me is generally a pretty terrible thing in a JRPG. Part of marketing for SMTV's rerelease was nerfing the impact of level on damage, and basically everyone loved that.
I also don't see many defensive options for the half of the game I'm at besides Maelle's redirect, or maybe absurd defense/HP stacking, if defense even works.
It might not make up for the other shit they do, but at least Nintendo seems to treat its employees right
And some people STILL can't beat it without parries.
Granted, I'm in Act 2 (Expert), and I think the ludicrous level factor into damage is to blame. The fact every other (mini)boss you fight is overlevelled, and just a few levels seem to be a 2-3x damage difference, is so stupid, I imagine someone running into 3 in a row and just giving up.
If the main difficulty is intentional, then it's not an artifical barrier, the easy mode is an artificial easener. How easy is easy enough? Some people can't beat Clair Obscur on the story mode (presumably by not doing side content) In case of gardening, it'd be getting someone to garden for you, and just chilling with the results.
Let's plays/walkthroughs exists, and only lock you out of interactivity. And interactivity doesn't mean much if every option beats the game.
Case in point, if I see some post-game superboss with lore behind it, I just look up the thing online.
Doing Fire Emblem soft Ironmans (not reloading when a unit permadies) made me love the series even more, it went from "ughhhh do I really have to move on without this guy? This sucks, what if I'm underpowered later" to "I lost 40 people and died for the first time at the penultimate map, this is a beautiful, sorrowful story".
I now let a unit or two die even when playing for the first time, because it basically adds your own personal death scenes to the story. I will always pay respects to wolf boy who died to make that one final push happen, or respect the axe bro who went through his Kratos arc with a dead wife, kid and second dead wife.
A lot of hobbies like gardening, sports, chess require effort, why is it necessary for video games to be easy?
Forcing some challenge gets you to engage with more things rather than taking the easy way out. It's like bungee jumping (I'd assume), sometimes a push is necessary to experience something new.
Some of my favourite moments were trying Fire Emblem Ironmans, which initially made me go "this is stupid, I'll regret this, I should reload", only to change to "this is peak"
Or don't get it at all, never played them or felt like it!
(Bad news: I grew up with Nintendo instead)
That's also because M&L requires more attention to get the timing right. You need to look for cues who the attack will go to, see if you can jump on the attack or only over it, hold the dodge button rather than press, or multitask when both bros are being attacked. Or sometimes, DON'T jump, because you then take damage. The games are puzzle/action games with JRPG elements slapped in.
E33 is extremely telegraphed (barring the very rare jukes) so it needs to compensate with tight timing and erratic animations, requiring both higher skill + trial and error. Sometimes have to press another button, but you don't even need to figure it out (I tried to jump some attacks because of Elden Ring habits lol), the enemy or whole screen telegraphs it. It's a JRPG with action slapped in, at its core at least.
For another example, Deltarune and Undertale are basically action games too, but do a lot of stuff with their dodging, sometimes even switching genres to platformer/shooter etc.