Other than story a lot of those aren't really things I think of as plusses in the series direction relative to 5-7. People talk about 7 being vanilla but that's the appeal to me there, I think it's (along with 6's) lack of specialness makes them just incredibly fun from a gameplay perspective and I also love the story and characters of 7, moreso than any later games (nostalgia is probably at play here admittedly). The new support system is a weakness that leads to a lot of filler conversations, I don't think the gameplay is better so much as different and more mechanically complicated and that it's defined much more by skills, map gimmicks, and weapon effects, which just add layers of systems and I don't find that as appealing in my Fire Emblem. I also don't really think Awakening brought replayability to the table, the series has always been very replayable.
I'm probably sounding more harsh than I intend to come off as, I love every game I've played and had a ton of fun with Fates but I do wish things could scale back and we could get more games in the Thracia mold like Binding Blade and Blazing Sword were.