People rag on the newer games because there's a bit of spite that by using a more mainstream art style and allowing more time to be spent romancing characters, it's popularized the series from irrelevancy to meaningful hit. "Selling out" by making the game a lot easier and more approachable. That's my take on the distaste for the newer Fire Emblems.

As someone who's played every FE released outside Japan, I don't think the ragging is completely unjustified. The quality of writing in Awakening and Fates was a lot simpler than the previous titles, and the support system was revamped to focus more on breadth than depth. The latter was definitely a dissapointing to me, since, while annoying to unlock at times, the supports in Blazing Sword and Path of Radiance were a lot more interesting and natural than the largely one-note conversations the newer games have. I suppose it's subjective, but I can only remember a select few supports that stood out in Fates, and not a single one in Awakening.

On the counter side, there's definitely a hipster side to it too. Fates, and Awakening to a lesser extent, see the most refinement from a gameplay perspective, and Fates has some of the best stage design in the franchise. While the story had issues, it's definitely dissapointing to see the newer games dismissed for that and the romance aspect alone.

To the the original point though, I think the series has seen enough change that I wouldn't recommend basing an opinion of the series on one (or even two) titles alone. Still, playing Echoes, it's easy to see how much the games from changed from both a story and gameplay aspect.

I've heard that it's had a very nagative impact on the story and tone.

Marrying characters was optional in Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates. With the exception of the main character Chrom in Awakening, who would marry the woman he had the highest affinity with automatically by a certain chapter if you hadn't already married him with someone.

Well it is true that it may be worth doing. I certainly liked having characters pass down their skills to a child to create units with skill combinations that would otherwise be impossible. But because you're comparing Awakening/Fates to Echoes, it should probably be a non-issue for you.

You see, what you miss out on if you don't marry a unit in Awakening is access to an optional character. A child (that for story purposes is already grown up) that has no bearing on the main story. You get an optional story mission for them though. And there are optional DLC storylines for them as well.
But the thing is, these children units don't even exist in Echoes. You don't even have the choice to get them. Marriage or not. So you skipping out on unlocking them in Awakening would probably equate to a similar experience to this feature simply not being present in Echoes.

As for the way the characters are written in the "Social Links" of Fire Emblem Awakening/Fates, it sounds like it's present in Echoes as well in a similar fashion. Just that the final Social Link level doesn't unlock a child character, and that there are fewer Social Link interactions overall. I haven't played Echoes. Just judging by what I read.

As for the way the characters are written in the "Social Links" of Fire Emblem Awakening/Fates, it sounds like it's present in Echoes as well in a similar fashion. Just that the final Social Link level doesn't unlock a child character, and that there are fewer Social Link interactions overall. I haven't played Echoes. Just judging by what I read.

I can actually answer that with some authority. I went through my first playthrough of Awakening without aquiring a single child character. It was a concious decision of mine. Not because I wanted to test it. But because my OCD prevented me from pairing up characters without thoroughly thinking things through and balancing story vs gameplay benefits. It caused me to take a year long pause from the game. And then one day I just decided to move on to the end without doing that, but on a separate save file. I came back to my old save file later when I had decided who should marry who.

I played on Hard mode and Classic mode, which is the combination of the two most difficult settings available at the start.
And I found that starting from as early as Chapter 5 (there are about 27 main Chapters, not counting side missions), the game started becoming way too easy. To the point where I deliberately avoided grinding my characters exp up as much as possible.
Here's a video I made from Chapter 8, where I only use two of my units to solo the entire Chapter 8 map.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppMPXQaPO0A

The video is sped up, but you don't have to watch the whole thing. You can check a moment here or there to get an idea of what's going on.  But I just want you to know it's there.

What's significant about it is that the only two units I use, Chrome and Sumia, I actually try to get them killed in every possible way outside of ending the turn and not attacking. I do attack, but that's about it. Sumia has the weakest possible weapons equipped. I rush them out alone carelessly into the enemy fray, even exposing my Pegasus Rider Sumia to archers, which are super effective against Pegasus Riders, and they just wipe the map by themselves.

They barely even get touched. If at all. And pretty much one shot everything. This simply came from an early game Class Promotion. As the game would go on, I found that my characters would only grow even stronger than my opponents at a disproportional rate on the highest available game difficulty. Even when I deliberetaly avoided leveling my characters up on optional missions to try to keep some sense of challenge intact.
For the other characters in the video, I deliberetely chose "End Turn" all the time. The only time they ever did something was when some enemy fodder teleported behind them and attacked them.

I have another video where I don't even attack with Chrome and Sumia, but simply chose "End Turn" with them as well while moving out carelessly towards the enemy. And the end result was the same, only it took a few turns longer.

And this wasn't because Chapter 8 was particularly easy. This is how the game continued for me as soon as I started class promoting some of my units. I almost always used the weakest weapons in the game, throughout the whole game. Because they were the cheapest, and got the job done.

However, what I want you to know is that a single well crafted child character runs circles around the two units in the video in terms of how OP they are. They can have way better stas and skills than their parents. It even gets ridiculous. To the point where you can solo the most difficult DLC map, featuring over 30 Fire Emblem heroes from other games as opponents, with a child character, and it can be impossible to die even if you do your best to try to make that happen.
So for me, the only problem with the balance of the game was how I would be able to use the child characters and still have fun with them.

So while there may be a certain balance built around them, I don't think it's what you suspect.
I don't think the game was balanced in any way that it would put you at a deliberate disadvantage if you didn't aquire one of the optional children. You get one of them automatically through the story, as I mentioned in the previous post, and that unit alone is pretty much all you need for any situation.

No problem. If you play any of them, we could discuss why and you'd understand the intricacies better.
Just note that this was my first Fire Emblem game aside from playing the DS remake of the original for a few hours. So it's not as if I particularly knew what I was doing beforehand. But the way I see it is that is that many rpgs tend to start out more difficult in the beginning (aside from specifically hard missions), when your ability to customize your chartacters is more limited. The better you are at doing it, the easier a game gets perpetually, and this can be difficult for devs to balance for as people's skill in this department vary. I feel that they allow the ceiling for how OP you can make your chartacters in this game to remain extremely high in proportion to the game's difficulty. Perhaps the highest in any rpg I've played.

And just to clarify again, although it sounds like you understood that, but the two units in the video are not even child characters.

Bottom line though. I don't know if I'll like Echoes more. But if children and the "social links" bother you in Awakening/Fate, it shouldn't be much of a different experience to Echoes if you simply ignored them from what I hear.
Aside from that, I really enjoyed Awakening. Haven't finished Fates yet. I know there are some legitimate concerns against Awakening/Fates, but there also seems to be a lot of misguided elitist disdain as well.