Nothing is worse than the random encounters in suikoden 4. They turned those up to insane levels. You are in a super slow ship most of the game and battles happen every 2 seconds and that is not an exaggeration. You could see the island you need to get to and it would still take you a couple hours to get there. It took forever to get anywhere. Only way I could play it was with a game shark and turning off the random battles. Even with no battles it still took forever to get anywhere because the ship was so dang slow. Whoever designed that crap was an idiot, they pretty much killed the suikoden franchise....

turn based fighting --> I prefer that to real time action based combat by far. And I pretty much hate combat system where I e.g. have a party of 4 characters and I only control 1 people and the AI is controlling the others. When its only 1 character real time action based combat is fine though.

linearity --> no problem for me

too much reading --> not cool, but especially if there is no voice acting you can not avoid it

cliche characters and stories --> I dont care at all

too much anime --> there can be too much? ;) Seriously: Fine for me.

bad voice acting --> yeah, pretty disturbing (better NO voice acting at all than bad voice acting) I hate how we in germany often get Eng Dub only or Jap Dub with Eng Sub. Jap Dub with Ger Sub would be so awesome. But I got used to Eng Sub in the meanwhile. But only having Eng Dub is a reason for me to not buy a game at all - sorry, I can not stand it.

random encounters --> no problem with that. Only when its like every 4-5 footsteps then it is pretty annoying.

Skies of Arcadia's random battles were a bit over the top, in the Dreamcast version. Thankfully they toned them down on the Gamecube release. That's the only game I could remember where the amount of random battles really bothered me. Some of the battle network games too maybe.

I like turn-based battles, but I can't stand random encounters anymore. Probably why I felt Octopath never really resonated with me.

I'll add another complaint: Battle systems that drain your MP too quickly and force you to conserve your MP-restoring potions in dungeons, so you have to primarily stick to boring basic attacks until you get to a boss.

For me, random encounters aren't the problem. I prefer seeing enemies on a field map, but I can live with a game that has a decent encounter rate and escape rate. The real problem I have is grinding. It doesn't matter whether I can choose when to battle or not if I'm forced to choose to repeatedly and mindlessly battle to get past a boss or area that has a sudden jump in enemy levels and stats. That is an issue with a game's pacing and design, not with the way battles are encountered.

I played Tales of Phantasia on my GBA last year (started in 2016), and I could not agree more with your thoughts. I saw it through to the end, but I will never touch that game in its current form again. Random encounter rate out the ass, slowest paced battle system I have ever seen in my life (imagine an action-stopping FFVII summon every single time one of your party members, who is mandatorily in your party for more than half the game, casts a spell, and about 40 percent of the time for another party member), an MP (or TP)-based system like the one I mentioned above, and like many SNES RPGs, a horrible world map traversing system using Mode 7 that makes you waste more time guessing where to land than just walking there yourself (that would be true if not for the random encounter rate). I'm currently playing Tales of Graces f on the PS3, and I'm loving the battle system in it, and wondering if I can ever go back to the TP system in other Tales games now.

Actually their sales have fallen off because they stopped doing a lot of this stuff.  Final Fantasy X is the 2nd best selling FF game, and it was the last to include turn-based random encounters.  They should try getting back to their roots.

If we're talking JRPG sales in general, they've fallen off mostly because they just aren't getting made as much anymore.  Leaving aside Pokemon (which I feel is never considered a traditional RPG anyways) the FF series sales have been consistently in the 7-9 million range.  Since FF7, and with the exception of FFIX and FFXII, all of them have sold between 7-9 million roughly.  I don't know about XI, but I believe XIV is up there now.

 DQXI from what I have heard is actually one of the highest selling DQ games in the NA region now.

I can take them or leave them. Octopath Traveler was find with them, but there is also something to be said about Persona 5's approach as well.

Then agaib, I grew up in that golden age of Final Fantasy, so I am used to it.

I don't mind random encounters at all, but you can't make the encounter rate too imbalanced.

Random encounters can be extremely tedious when they're too frequent. I don't have a problem with them per se, though I prefer having the enemies visible as it gives more strategic options, but I enjoy exploring levels and trying to find all treasures and secrets, and nothing kills the excitement of exploration as effectively as constant interuption by battles (especially in combination with slow battle systems and long transitions). Forced battles isn't exclusive to games with random encounters but unless other games have ridiculous spawn rates and enemy density you will at the very least be able to clear a path through or sneak around the enemies.

Tales of Phantasia is a good example of a game where the encounters can ruin the experience. It's not a bad game as far as I'm concerned but it did take me several attempts before finishing because the encounter rate made me lose interest and eventually stop playing.