I'll be honest — I liked the way Melee handled clones. Each clone pair had essentially the same moveset, but they had different character attributes (walk speed, run speed, jump height, double-jump height, fall speed, air speed, etc.) and different properties on their moves (frame data, damage, base knockback, knockback growth, knockback angle, etc.), so even though the moves were the same, the playstyles of the clones were different from their parents. Ultimate's Echoes are considerably lazier IMO — there are virtually no character attribute or move property changes between them. Without that, what's the point of giving them a separate character slot?! Granted, the degree of this varies from Echo to Echo, but generally, there isn't that much variance in their playstyles compared to, say, Fox and Falco in Melee. (In order from most to least meaningful variation: Ken is a full-blown Melee-style clone, with better speed, distinct move properties, and different command specials and throws compared to Ryu; Chrom and Lucina have their consistent hitbox gimmick setting them apart from Roy and Marth, with Chrom also having a different up special on top of that; Dark Pit has altered properties on a handful of his moves; Dark Samus has more Electric effects while Samus has more Flame effects, and Dark Samus has slightly different hitbox placement on her Smash attacks; Richter's Holy Water has an Aura effect instead of the Flame effect that Simon's Holy Water uses, causing them to have different effects on certain hurtboxes (namely explosives and Red Pikmin); Daisy is just a glorified reskin of Peach.)
