I tried normal and phew, this certainly was hype: I was followed by a conga-line of minotaurs to the throne with 6hp left and no cure herbs. Thankfully you heal between maps, so I actually managed to beat the general.
I'm not 100% familiar with this genre either, except literally 10 minutes of Shining Force 2 and the occasional aborted Final Fantasy Tactics playthrough. I think my first angle of going further here would be to add more units to control for the player, and not just an ally (unless that was the whole idea, one player character and the rest is all npc allies, I think that could work too with some tweaks and more focus on abilities maybe). Also, I think you already mentioned it below, but I think a tutorial could help as well, for example I didn't realized there were chests that could be opened (I went to one but must have missed how to open it somehow).
I liked the music a lot in this, the tracks were all great. And like I mentioned, it was very hype for me, it had me hooked, great job there!