Having just finished part 3 of Radiant Dawn now, I think that the game is the only real successor to the Juggdral games in the post-Kaga era, with all of the strengths and weaknesses associated with that. I think it really tries to take from Genealogy, especially with its attempts at doing storytelling through the maps, which has mixed success. Radiant Dawn has way more uncontrolled friendly units and some of these maps have a ridiculous number of enemies/NPCs. This gives a real sense of epic scale but also gets kind of irritating when you're spending half of a chapter watching NPCs fight NPCs. Even if the maps themselves aren't huge, it really reminds me of the feeling I got from the ridiculously huge Genealogy maps, both the epic and the tedium. This game really heavily leans into the sort of political story Genealogy tried to pull off, with both scale and political machinations.
I think it trips up in a lot of ways though. A lot of these maps seem to be the stereotypical Awakening routfest with wide open terrain. A lot of the more interesting maps are designed around story which is pretty hit-or-miss. I looooove Geoffrey's Charge but I know a lot of people don't. On the other hand, the chapter with Micaiah and the Black Knight was incredibly frustrating and not fun at all. It definitely could have been a cutscene and had no impact on the game, it doesn't even really affect gameplay at any future point since the Black Knight has an unbreakable weapon and is max level and you definitely don't want Micaiah fighting here. The Daein maps in part 3 are pretty interesting and good at conveying of the Daein army is weak compared to the other forces at play (especially when you follow up 3-6 with how hilariously easy 3-7 is), but 3-6 is also one of the worst uses of Fog of War I've seen in the series. Jill also trivializes the Daein maps really, really well.
Also, the Blood Pact is the worst plot device I've ever seen in a Fire Emblem story. I feel like there could have been a really interesting story to tell with Daein in this whole mess and they just made the dumbest cop-out answer ever. What a waste.
Re: the bolded: oh just wait till you play Fates
(I agree with most of your post, though I haven't played RD in half a decade at this point.)