I came to this from FusionFall and Scarlet Blade.
Class and specialization, check. Jobs and Hobbies cooperative system, double-check.
A reasonable amount of EXP to level, check.
Jewel and rune gear enhancement system, check.
I know a lot of people complain about the grinding and the characters being gender-locked, but this is still a lot better about it than some of the other games I know about. Heck, what about the MOBAs where you can't customized at all? Despite locking classes to specific genders, there are a LOT of choices involved in playing Echo of Soul:
Within each class you get to choose between two paths at lv 10. Don't worry if you end up choosng something that doesn't end up working, though, because the Jack of All Trades object you get for achieving lv 25 allows you to open a second skill page and choose an alternate path. Then you can switch between your pages when you're out of combat. You also get 2 Amnesia items up to lv 70 (the current cap) allowing you to respec twice. As noted the game doesn't have a dedicated healer, so you have to keep your bandages, potions, and scrolls well-stocked. Gears and items do have level use restrictions, so it's wise to keep track of that. Most items before lv 69 only cost 1 silver each, making it easy to equip yourself. Jewel enhancement rates are strict, however.
You can create more characters on a single regional server than there are classes, so there's plenty of room for trial and error, and your account has shared storage, making it easy to send drops for other classes to your other characters.
You can also choose how much PvE and PvP you want to do, since you can access the Battlefield as soon as you reach lv 10. Want to avoid grinding? Do PvP. Hate getting one-shotted by better-geared players? Grind normal quests and dungeons. In BFs all players' stats actually get equalized regardless of level, so the biggest difference becomes skills and buffs. But I've even killed a lv 70 as a lv 10, so if you figure out your skill cycle (and avoid getting sun-locked or Zerg rushed) you can still do well in PvP even as a lowbie.
Note, however, that the BFs grant more points for capturing towers and collecting resources than they do for kills. Your reward for BFs will vary depending on your score at the end, even if your team loses.
Event and dungeon bosses will take strategy (solo) and teamwork (event, legendary, and raid) to defeat without getting killed. And I should note that each time you get killed by a monster your gear's durability goes down. You can get it repaired at any shop or let it break. Learning bosses' special attacks is essential to surviving dungeons and events, so those who say you can just mash attacks and survive are dead wrong. Perhaps they didn't progress far enough to tell.
At this point the older guilds are very well established, but you can still find ones that are helpful. If you want to make gold fast, you can join a hostile guild and farm Essence of Courage in the PvP field Valhalla (do beware of hunters who like farming you). Each EoC goes for about 1 gold, and if you farm for the whole hour you can get about 300 of them. EoC's are ingredients for the professions and hobbies.
Currently Aeria is running a speed-level event where you get special jewels and gems, as well as EXP boosts from BFs an dungeons. This lets you level even faster (lv 57 with my Sorceress in 5 days). They've also reduced grinding and gathering quests before lv 70 to 2-3 instead of 8-10. But the event is bound to end soon.
Aeria runs events on a regular basis, and they do weekly maintenance and update semi-regularly. Echo of Soul is well-supported and far from dying.
In the lv 70 end game you'll be introduced to the Free and Team Arena mechanics and a separate set of gear for PvE and PvP. You'll need to amass points and coins to get the higher-level gear to so you can access the higher-level PvE dungeons and hunting grounds to get better gear, unless you want to stick to PvP BFs and arenas. You still also have Valhalla and a grounds called Issus I haven't figured out. The bigger guilds dominate there. There are still many options, although it can get repetitive, which could be why Aeria updates as often as they do, introducing new quests and content.
I have to admit it's nice seeing an actively-supported traditional grinder out there (let's not kid ourselves: most MMO's are grinders). I like this one because levelling is faster than I've seen in other games, and there's less emphasis on getting gear out of the cash shop. If you grind enough, you can access the gear you need fairly easily.
Overall I give this game 4/5, since there is always room for improvement, like making the lv 70 content easier to access so newer players can participate more fully in events. Otherwise I'm having a lot more fun in EoS than I did playing SB or FusionFall -- and I went berserker with SB's Whipper and rinsed the other classes as a Sentinel, so I can have fun with very little. EoS is significantly less grinding than either of these games ever were (although to be fair, FF was entirely PvE).
