Did anyone else skip all the paralogues without realizing it?

Alright, so at the beginning of the game I decided I would skip all battle missions since I tried a sidequest where there was no dialogue and just fighting. I didn't realize that paralogues gave sidestories at all, and ended up missing out on all of them. I picked blue lions, so now I am hard regretting my actions as I am missing a certain character from my party and just realized as I am on the final mission that paralogues provide additional story.

So now I am really sad that I missed out and never even realized I was missing out. Did this happen to anyone else? Just so I am not wallowing alone in my regrets.