Topic: Are old school RPGs this tedious?

4 was the one that launched the ATB system.
But I think it was also the first one to allow enemies to have a sort of AI. (like you can see right at the start of the game. Don't hit a giant-needled-rat with a weapon unless you think you'll kill it in one hit, or it's going to hit you with a strong counter.)
I haven't played enough of 5, so I don't know if that or 6 was the one to introduce enemy "final attacks" (quite a cheap difficulty gimmick, I think ). Although I don't think FF6 was TOO unreasonable with that (except for one original boss, and then those added to the GBA version).

I never actively grind in those SNES RPG's I do try to get all the chests (And end up having a few more encounters than otherwise I would have but that is all).

Even on Dragon Quest VI when I made a mess by using the wrong classes to get the Hero class unlocked just doing loads of sidequests (Which were pretty much everywhere) was enough to sort it out.

That is what annoyed me about Bravely Default there is pretty much nothing to do.

Always in RPG games look for that one person , one weapon , or one magic spell that can hit all enemies at once... Then grind that and make it as strong as you can...

Now every battle should take less than 10 seconds in Phantasy Star 4... When one of your people can kill every monster on screen at once, helps the game feel faster and more fun

Except, you know, side quests and exploring dungeons, like you just said...

Yeah, I hated that I only spent 80 hours on my first playthrough of Bravely Default. So little to do.

This was what Truely got me into rpgs back in the day. It was the first of its kind to feature the type of story it had. I still rate it as my favorite FF of them all because it holds that special place in my heart. I say though if it's possible to the OP to get the ds remake with cut scenes and voices just for the added detail.

Well, I did eventually finish Phantasy Star IV despite my complaining. I thought I had already come so far, so what the heck. My random blundering around had levelled up my characters to the point that combat was quick and relatively easy. Based on the feedback here, I decided to try Secret of Mana next. I'm still in the early stages, but the contrast is interesting. Nope, no more random encounters. Yay! But now I'm facing the other type of RPG tedium: what you call "grinding". Apparently each time you get a new elemental magic you have to cast spells pointlessly in order to bring up your magic up to a useful level. And that includes all the other elemental magic types you'd previously acquired. I guess this era's RPGs need some amount of tedious work to pad out the game length.

Come to think of it, I remember Chrono Trigger and Paper Mario as being rather short. This is because they needed neither random encounters nor grinding. I did all the levelling up I needed just by progressing normally through the story. I did keep replaying Chrono Trigger to see some of its dozen or so endings, so I guess it had another way to extend its first-play lifespan. My next RPG after Secret of Mana will probably be Super Mario RPG. I have to be in the right frame of mind to take on another random encounter + grinding type RPG like Final Fantasy.

I remember doing a moderate amount of grinding in Chrono Trigger...

You could get away without grinding much in Chrono Trigger, but it makes the game quite a bit harder. I'm actually playing through Secret of Mana right now. Pro-Tip, don't waste your magic grinding too much. Bosses generally go down quick with the standard amount of MP, and magic is most useful for interrupting your opponent so your allies can get in some free shots. That alone seems to do me well enough. I tried grinding before a boss, but MP restoritives are rare and my magic didn't even level up by the time I ran out of MP...

Thanks for your thoughts. I might get more selective with my magic leveling up later in the game as I will presumably get a lot more elementals to juggle. Right now, I'm in the earlier stages where it's hard to tell which set of spells I will need most (apart from the cure water, naturally) and I can't level them up much anyway.

One reason I did not need to grind on Chrono Trigger was that as an RPG newbie I blundered around enough as part of my normal exploration and game play that my characters leveled up sufficiently in the process. It's different with Secret of Mana, where you have to consciously throw spells around. The other reason CT minimized grinding was that your characters get much of their improvements from new armor and equipment rather than frequent combat. With insufficient armor, a boss that deals 500 damage per hit will quickly end my game regardless of experience.