I am barging in here to ask a Hyrule Warriors question since it's the only musou I've played. Apologies if it's long winded, there is a tdlr.
I almost failed a new stage on Normal last night because there was so much shit happening and I only had one character to use, which was my level 12 Impa (for reference, Link and Cia are at 30 after I replayed some earlier stages with them to learn attack strings)
The pace was near hectic at times without any companions. Allied Base is being attacked by two camps chucking boulders at it, three captains are sending bombs from the north and --oops you killed the bomb before the next dialog suggests killing the captains to control the bomb, oh well-- and now a friendly NPC is screaming for help in the opposite direction, from a camp I'm not sure is worth recapturing. Meanwhile, Darunia has run down the mountain and is attacking the Allied Base and I fail if he clears it out. So many things going on, and I wondered if aside from knowledge of the map my level was making it worse.
The campaign explicitly does not list level requirements or recommendations for any of its stages so I don't know if it scales up or down. It's tough to tell when the keep bosses generally die in 5 hits regardless of who I bring. Should I be grinding XP on characters that I haven't used yet but will need for given campaign spots lest I have them vastly underpowered against things that are now tuned up to a theoretical suggested level?
tldr do I, as a person with less than 15 hours of playtime, need to care about XP at all while advancing story or is that for the optional side modes