I agree with everything you said here. I hope they give us map designs on par with radiant dawn. hopefully enemy turns don't take as long with some of the longer maps but I'd prefer this. You have casual mode making it accessible along with everything you stated and RD difficulty and we have the perfect FE.

"watered down pair ups" is how supports were originally done and honestly how I prefer them. Honestly, I prefer the older games. If I to say what the perfect FE game is it would be radiant dawn due to the great maps and the way everything was handled. Nice difficulty too.

@OP: You should try Radiant Dawn or even its prequel Path of Radiance. You might change your mind on what is the best FE. If you like strategy and challenge... 

Outside of what you said, some things I'd like to see return or change in FE 2018:

• Nice compelling story with a conflict that actually makes sense. Awakening felt too generic, and Fates was convoluted and filled with plot holes. Echoes was probably the first time I cared about the conflict in a Fire Emblem since Radiant Dawn. For a game series with war as the focus...this is kind of a problem!
• My Unit/Tactician as an observer character, not a key story character. Robin was pushing this a bit already, but Corrin had no idea what he/she wanted to be. Having an avatar in a game like Fire Emblem is unnecessary (I'd rather take an established MC any day)...but having an avatar with an established backstory doesn't even make sense, and contradicts the point of having an avatar in the first place. It was like Fates was going after two rabbits and catching neither. Blazing Sword had the best inclusion of an avatar so far...i.e...basically just watching from the sidelines and almost never showing up.
• No more children! I like the romance options, but the additions of kids just makes me cringe, especially when their implementation is as contrived as it was in Fates. If they are brought back, find some good story reason for it, and not just create a random other dimension to fast-bake them into adults. Gosh what sad pointless lives those kids in Fates led. /rant
• Depth of Supports vs. Breadth. I get why Awakening and Fates went with a wider variety of support conversations...but to me, the GBA titles had the best and most compelling supports in the series so far. Hector/Lyndis and Eliwood/Ninian were fantastic, and even changed the outcome of the story in Blazing Sword. It was a disappointment to go from such compelling support conversations to "Oh I'm shy I want to be more outgoing....oops it's hard to not be shy...I guess it's okay to be shy...let's get married." I'd much rather have a few well written pairings than a million trivial ones.
• Ability to auto-promote at level 21. Enough said...I just prefer this over having to wait for Master seals to show up.
• Weapon durability to return. I know this is annoying, but I prefer it over the stat debuff mechanic in Fates. Inventory management adds a certain managerial charm to the game that I enjoyed.

I could probably think of some more things...but this is what's important enough to come to mind right now. For the record, I do enjoy Awakening and Fates...but they both brought about mechanics I really didn't like...and well...I'm very critical of this franchise I love so much. Overall, I'd say Path of Radiance is the gold standard I hold for the franchise, but that's not to say there aren't mechanics out there that could improve it.

Not being able to reclass means your character is specialized, rather than being well rounded with reclassing. Therefore, you need to pick your team better and positioning becomes more important. Which character attacks who and in what order is important. Of course, this only really matters on the final few stages or on Lunatic.

Magic has always been really powerful in basically all the FE games, but like I said, having preset accuracy means you can't always hit even on terrain that has no bonuses. Terrain bonuses are a bit too powerful in this game, though :p

Also, sorry dolphin, but a game being more focused doesn't make it minimalistic. It makes it a better game because you spend more time enjoying the story and coming up with strategies for every map than to grind characters and breed them/class change them to have an OP team that one shots everything. I see you like to one shot units, but that makes the movement and weapon type all you get to think about. It removes alot of tactical elements, especially from the map layouts, wich used to play a critical role, but not anymore.

Basically all of the mechanics and game logic.

No weapon triangle, the EXP wall characters hit at level 10, the requirement to visit statues to change classes, the barebones map design, the Cantors you managed in the OP, the witches who you can't tell if they'll warp or not, the poor stat growths that amplify the lack of EXP, the Jeddah boss, the sidequests that hardly ever amount to anything worthwhile, the dumb stat growths when you change class which for the most part amount to next to nothing and only reset how much EXP you can gain.

I couldn't manage to finish the game. It starts to get tedious in act 3 before it gets outright bad in act 4 and a bunch of units are so outmatched that they become good for nothing. It doesn't help that characters can only equip one weapon or item, and stronger weapons decrease speed which increases the double-attack rate of enemies. It's as if the game was deliberately designed to be grindy in order to make you spend money on EXP DLC to make it bearable.