I'm a big fan of Fire Emblem, so I'm so glad you took this angle for your game (grid turn-based combat has a special place in my heart)!
I appreciate the way you balanced the RNG here, by telegraphing the enemy's attacks and giving the player a turn to dodge / respond, so your units don't just get 1-shotted by enemies. Obviously this doesn't completely nullify RNG (for example you could fail to roll a move die to dodge attacks, or roll melee attacks when you can't use them), but that's balanced by the player's attacks all being are insta-hits, and attack damage being quite strong (I found myself rolling 3's a few times , and I don't think I observed the enemies rolling any shields.)
I have two main points of feedback:
- When the game first started, I didn't know that the player attack phase and the enemy attack phase worked differently (i.e., enemy damage happens AFTER the player completes their turn, so attacks can be dodged). So in my first game, I was really confused by my units were dying after my turn ended haha. A pointer noting that the player has a turn to dodge enemy attacks would be helpful.
- Ranged attacks feel overpowered, compared to melee attacks. I would pray for rolling ranged attacks and move, since those actions felt so much stronger than melee or defense. I didn't really keep track of whether certain actions had a higher chance of appearing than others (i.e., ranged attacks are less common), but it did feel like ranged attacks should have appeared less often, or dealt less damage (all ranged attacks are only 1s).
Overall, I enjoyed this! After I figured out all the mechanics, specifically the enemy telegraphing where they were going to hit, playing the game was fun and pretty straightforward. As long as I gunned for killing off enemy units as quickly as possible (even if it didn't use my attack strength efficiently), I felt I could turn the game in my favor.