I think the "no chest auto-loot" is fine in principle. Strategic tradeoff and all.
However, I think the game's early chests are a bit problematic. The first one is in the middle of the forest about 4 turns away. Getting it is not hard, just annoying (which is not a good thing when the game is just starting). The following stage however is more problematic...
To get the chests in the first Town stage (stage #2 if you ignore the lizardman arena training), you have to:
A) Know the mission will actually end once you kill one specific unit (unlike what the mission objective says).
B) Walk units over long distances in three different directions
C) Blow up multiple doors and trees that each take multiple hits.
That's stage #2, basically the game's introduction to a lot of concepts. Getting the chests (which is a good idea when the game is marketed and reviewed as an hard Fire Emblem-like game) is a huge annoyance and it leaves a very sour first impression of the game. I actually restarted the game multiple times due to not knowing the mission end trigger (Since it auto-saves, it means having to replay the forest stage as well as the intro): missing three chests in an hard game was unacceptable.
At least up to where I am, I'll admit the game isn't THAT hard even with permadeath and no grinding, but I had no ways to know that early on since reviews keep mentioning how horribly hard the game is (I'm aware reviews are not controlled by the developer, of course). I could have afforded to miss those three chests, but I had no ways of knowing that. And getting those three chests was beyond punishing/annoying, especially for stage #2.
The chests afterward in the game felt fair enough actually (up to where I'm at anyway), but not those ones.
Edit: Since I'm seeing in the dev log that a demo is coming out, I really think it might be a good idea to change the chest layout in stage #2 (town stage).