I've been enjoying the game a lot so far. I'm a couple of hours in, and it's very different from the Fire Emblem I'm used to but certainly not in a bad way. The individual encounters feel kind of stripped down and simple, but they're also very quick so they don't necessarily feel boring. Not sure if they'll become more complex throughout the game, but the unit abilities will at least develop to add some depth. "Quick" is not generally how I'd describe Fire Emblem, but only one stage so far has been more than a couple of minutes.
Is it just me or are clerics amazingly powerful? Two clerics can infinitely chain-heal each other to grind up relationship and experience (no idea if that tapers off after a while, but I've milked a ton of experience out of it without really dedicating any time specifically to it) and Nosferatu is extremely good in Echoes. I feel like I could throw a cleric into the middle of a lot of maps solo and have a decent shot at winning provided their shaky accuracy doesn't fuck me too badly. Plus they get infinite uses of very powerful support skills like Warp. I have two and am almost starting to think three would be worth it.
And as powerful stuff goes, the game just throws you a Levin Sword very early on, in a game with no weapon durability, and just lets you go nuts with it with seemingly no downside. I'm playing on hard but the game certainly doesn't feel hard yet, it seems like it's pretty generous with powerful abilities and items.
The game flow is pretty different form normal Fire Emblems in that most of the time all enemies on the map will rush toward you starting on turn one, rather than waiting for you to come to them or being easily baited. That helps contribute to the "plays very quickly" thing but also makes battles feel more intense because if you fuck around you can get completely surrounded in just a turn or two. It's interesting. Not sure I prefer it over more complex terrain and enemy formations, but it's a nice change of pace.