1) the game does a few wonderful quality of life improvements, most prominently the fact that when you trigger a pod (without any other enemies already engaged) your knights action points all regenerate to full, so you don’t have to inch forward trying to make sure you only trigger a pod at the beginning of your turn, which really helps in-mission pacing.

2) My experience, at least, was that the game became a grind about 25 hours in, when it kept giving you the same 3 missions and very little else for another 20 hours. I really enjoyed the gameplay, and unlocking new knight abilities, but I do wish the designers had sped up the main plot.