I'll have to say for myself, I loved XII's elimination of random battles. It was so freeing to be able to fight at your leisure, and chaining enemies together along with collecting loot made it genuinely fun to fight as opposed to a laborious necessity.

I really think that Final Fantasy as a series had been looking to eliminate the random battle aspect for a really really long time, but had never really settled on how to do it right. I remember people discussing the idea as far back as 8. It just always felt like the one issue they really needed to solve with the series. XII nailed it.