Wow. I’m nearly 80 hours in and am only just starting chapter 19. I would say that there might be too much game here, but I think I can ignore most of the extraneous stuff on subsequent playthroughs and finish it much more quickly.
Edit: Welp, after 90 hours I finally finished my Golden Deer playthrough. It had some serious pacing problems toward the end (here’s this army marching toward us/crucial objective to take, but you totally have time to faff about a monastery for the next four weeks; this happened for basically four straight months), the final battle was merely processional (all my characters were equal to the recommended difficulty level, except the PC and Claude who were a few above) and the ending was a bit underwhelming and felt kind of rushed narratively, but it was still a great experience overall. I’m going to probably wait until the winter holidays to dive back in. Hopefully by then lunatic mode is out. Otherwise, I’ll try to handicap myself some other ways. Maybe limiting myself to only doing main story battles and paralogues, or maybe trying to force characters into classes they’re not suited for (hello Fortress Knight Byleth).