Within the game, whenever a choice appears, no matter how small, be sure to save beforehand. It's a good idea to save, pick a choice, and reload to see different consequences your first time through. What you're keeping an eye on for your choices are your conquest meter, which leads into the "wow you're a horrible person" grand route, and usually comes from the "bad" choices, for example, between a choice to kill or persuade someone, killing them usually leads to conquest points, and your reign meter, which leads into the "redemption-y" grand route. A few things to keep in mind however, if you make a choice and hear a sound from it, you've gained affection with one of the heroines. If your list of heroines doesn't show a point gained, it's from one of them you haven't got in your party yet. Conquest and reign points are important, but it's a good idea to focus on the affection for the heroine/s you want first, then conquest or reign points, unless you're aiming for a playthrough with 0 affection. Also, under the call button on the map, if you're on the reign grand route and trying to be a decent person while also getting a waifu, make sure once your "mingle" bar gets full, from clicking on it and it building up every turn, to click off "mingle" and click "train". The first couple "train" scenes are necessary to unlock more scenes for each heroine which you can gain affection. Without them, you don't get enough affection to unlock their endings, or their choices to gain bonus skills. It's a good idea however to make sure once you get their "what power do I seek from them" choice to disable the training, however I don't believe it has any consequences to their route since their skill choice locks them and no further scenes or changes happen to them or their affection, they just begin to get negative divinity, penalties of which I'm unsure of. There are also several sub heroines, to ensure your best experience, it's a good idea to not aim for high rankings from beating each chapter fast, and instead to skip turns enough to make sure each heroine in your party has gotten their events done that particular chapter. In particular **SPOILER** Jorm, Fenrir, and Hel. Without 2 affection for them during their respective chapters, not only will you lose the chance to get another heroine, Disir, but they will also eventually not be in your party. So overall you lose 4 high tier units for the final map. **END SPOILER** Something else major to keep an eye on, when you reach Glads, you will have a choice to fight golems in a confrontation. It's very important if at all possible to fight them, and win, winning the fight against the golem squad is one of the primary ways to ensure you get the sub heroine for that chapter. If you fail or retreat most likely the sub heroine will disappear at the end, again removing a high tier unit from your army for the game, endings, another high tier unit, and several additional scenes. If at all possible, put all your available resources into winning that fight.

Be a disney villain. Always. Be prepared. You may think you're powerful or unbeatable, but plan for being not. On normal, the last chapter the blind first playthrough in particular has a noticeable difficulty spike, the baron shield unit and the one next to his slot in a single squad, even with them being lower tier units, are incredibly valuable. Not only will you be unable to get units that can take on squad wide attacks without rare or unobtainable first playthrough medals anywhere near as easily as them, but they also are a useful class to have in general, with **SPOILER** Hel in the squad particularly, you can not only have a very tanky team, but also absorb the enemy's force meter, which on normal can create situations like the final boss being unable to use a single special move. **END SPOILER** Something to keep in mind, at least from my experience on very hard, enemies appear to invade in a pattern, with a bit of randomization, eventually you will have a turn where you're free to move or not, some turns they will sometimes have a "kill team" with units noticeably more difficult to take down, and otherwise they will be cannon fodder scaled for the chapter. Also in advance be very careful with difficulties. No matter how good you believe you are, or actually are, it's a good idea to move slowly, and be absolutely sure before moving ahead further than you're prepared for. For example, do not complete normal and instantly head to very hard your second playthrough. The majority of the game will be doable, but the fine print of "the enemy formations will be changed" hides the fact that the enemy will use incredibly high tier units with abilities and base stats that blow everything you have access to, even at max level, completely out of the water, particularly with low preparation in advance. If you're brave enough however, be sure to create a save before you begin the second playthrough and keep it secure, so if a terrible situation comes up you don't have to create an entirely fresh save, because there's no changing the difficulty or giving up to a bad end and carrying over your army again. Please be careful, many of the new formations on harder difficulties can absolutely wreck your armies you have prepared, with abilities that can lead up to removing upwards of 100 of your entire squad's defense while in battle. Don't be afraid to do each ending on normal or hard to unlock additional medals, units, and time to prepare in advance. I hope some of this helps someone. I will eventually add more as I gain more knowledge with the game and think of information that might help others.