Brotherhood follows the manga more then FMA.
but FMA spends a lot of time with fillers full of emotional feels. Depends on what you're looking for in this piece. Even though FMA has fillers, the fillers aren't that bad and don't take away from the core story too much.
I can only think of two filler.
The bandit chick that steals eds watch and the episode focused on mustang and his crew.
Every other episode whether it was mainly dialogue served a purpose.
Nina's death carries more weight in the first series in my opinion.
The handling of barry the butcher was great.
Scar was more Bad ass.
Envy wasn't a ***** lol
More grounded i would say as far as the fantasy aspect goes.