Monolift takes everything out of the golden days of RPGs such as turn based strategy and hardcore grinding. Who the hell is Mistwalker. Xseed is the exception and RPG's true last stand.
FFVII was gold. It featured long lost battle mechanics and had a groundbreaking epic story that was movie like. The FF that killed them was FF11.
X is bound to lack grinding. You pilot a gun toting robot!
You never played Xenoblade. It is painfully obvious. Its painfully obvious you DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MONOLITHSOFT. Every time you open your mouth about them the things that come out of it are not just factually wrong, its so ignorant its irritating. In fact, its painfully obvious you missed a LOT of jrpg's and are completely oblivious to its history.
ffvii or any ff past the nes doesnt even use the turn based battle system.
They use squaresofts active time battle system, created by squaresoft employees who left for monolithsoft, which is why xenoblade uses an evolution of the atb used in chrono trigger (monolith soft employees) for its battle system. Xenoblade combat is NOT real time.
You cant even use the turn based system past nes unless you choose it from system settings (or from the option at the beginning of the game back when atb was first introduced)
FFvii did not resurrect long lost anything. It ripped off ffvi's magicite system for its materia system, ripped off ffvi's music, ripped off ff vi's limit breaks, and ripped off ff vi's story.
It then removed any exploration whatsoever in favor of pre rendered environments with mind numbingly streamlined traversal, completely gutting jrpg's to anyone who enjoyed them for the actual act of adventuring.
It was then praised endlessly because it stopped you every 20 minutes, made you put the controller down, and played a video.
You will upgrade characters and mechs stats seperately in x just like you did in Xenogears. A powerful character wont do squat against a gigantic enemy riding in a weak mech. Robots require fuel, waste it, and your robots not going anywhere, just like xenogears. You cant spend the whole game riding the gear. There will be areas to explore that your robot is too big to enter, just like xenogears. And yes, there will likely be grinding in x just like there was for xenoblade. It is so freaking obvious you never touched xenoblade. One of the first things everyone comes across exploring the first area at level 1 in xenoblade are level 18, 30, 60, and 77 creatures just chilling in the world. Yeah, theres grinding in xenoblade. Its just done better than in older primitive systems.
For someone who claims to be 'an old school rpg player', you really havent played a whole lot of (not really that) old school at all psx era and earlier rpg's.
Oh, and on the same subject. Mistwalker is a company of people who also left square Eenix because it became garbage and interfered with making games good. Including the person who created Final Fantasy for squaresoft.
But yeah, total nobodies for anyone who cares about true old school rpg's pffft, guy who created final fantasy in charge of his own company. Whatever, Xseed's all that matters.
And since you dont know anything about mistwalker, its pretty obvious you REALLY dont know anything about monolithsoft.
Remember all the good games squaresoft used to make? FFIV, FFVI, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears (you never played this) etc.
Well, the reason squareenix cant make games that good anymore is because the people who made those games left square eenix to form monolithsoft.