Here's the deal with battles. It's one of the few areas devs can be creative and mess around. Most of us JRPG fans are pretty open about it as long as it doesn't impede story progression early on while still offering exploits for advanced players to abuse.
By all means dick around with the combat system all you want, I ENJOY exploring new battle mechanics.
But that's not the problem with today's JRPGs. The problem is that the battle system IS the entire game all by itself. You can't just make the awesomest battle system in the world, throw in some QTEs and FMVs with a billy bad ass persona swooshing their hair at the camera with a stuck up snarky attitude, and then call it a JRPG.
Story and characters come first . If I finish the game and I'm not sad at the end that the characters aren't real, youre doing it wrong.
WTB having a beer with Cecil and coddling the hell out of Palom and Porom.
