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a stark change from chess to many grid based strategy games is how movement immediately gets homogenized. in chess every piece type has very different movement rules, but as soon as you remove the abstraction and put people in there like FE/FFT, suddenly it’s too weird for people to move that way

I think a part of that might be a matter of complexity. In chess movement IS the game, with "battles" resolved simply by giving the moving player advantage in any encounter. RPG strategy games like Fire Emblem have a lot of other factors to take into account such as unit statistics, terrain, etc.

Ultimately I think it's less about the abstraction being removed, and more about other gameplay styles being introduced that make movement rules-based strategy less of the focus.