emelfm2 is my favorite so far on tc - though I'l admit its the first one I tried and I haven't exhaustively gone down the list and tried them all. I haven't revisited fluff or mfm for a while, but when one of them was in base I would have used it in preference to loading an additional .tcz (with deps) unless I needed to "bring out the big guns" for whatever reason. (not complaining about not having one in base, mind you - as a personal choice (with widely varying public opinion), whatever choice was included would likely be "wrong" for so many users.)
I've tried emelfm a few times but I've always gone back to emelfm2 - because I have most of its deps loaded anyhow so I'm not saving that much by sticking with the old one. It never occurred to me that it might be actually working better.
There's enough room for improvement in the emelfm2 "usr experience" that I actually fired up mc just the other day.
New version of emelfm2? Do tell... new features? Less quirky? - not sure I could use non-quirky software.