dtgreene: High encounter rates and having toi spend time leveling up are common traits of earty JRPGs; you see this in Dragon Quest 1 & 2, Final Fantasy 1 & 2 (FF2 doesn't have XP levels, but getting good stats still takes awhile), and many others. (To be fair, this is also true of such classic WRPGs such as early Wizardry (1-5 except 4), Bard's Tale, Ultima 3, and perhaps even the first two Might and Magic games.) About the one major exception I can think of (if we don't count Magic of Scheherezade) is the original SaGa, or perhaps SaGa 2 with the right party (Humans and Espers/Mutants are *slow* to gain stats). (If we do count so-called APRGs, I could point out that both Crystalis and the first two Ys games have *mandatory* level requirements; if your level isn't high enough, you will encounter a boss that you can't damage.)
GreasyDogMeat: Yup. It's one of the reasons I usually don't like JRPGs. Pool of Radiance also had similar encounters but in some areas you could actually clear the enemies completely and no longer suffer from the random encounters and I wish JRPGs had taken some influence from that. One thing I do like about JRPGs is they seemed to be a bit more creative with their settings. One I'd like to play eventually is Chrono Trigger's sequel... Chrono Cross. I absolutely love the setting and art style. Looks like a place I'd like to on vacation! Well... minus the corrupted swamp lands and killer fish. Hear the story is an absolute mess though.
This problem is only really an issue in early JRPGs; once you get to the SNES games, you no longer need to stop and fight battles just to get strong enough to progress. Even Final Fantasy 3 and Dragon Quest 4, both later Famicom titles, don't require that you do this. Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6 can all be played straight throgh if if you want (though in FF5 and FF6, it can be fun to stop to learn new abilities (FF5) or spells (FF6)), as can Dragon Quest 5 (though I consider it to be one of the weaker entries in the series for other reasons, as well as the difficulty of getting certain monsters that are fun to play with).
Of course, then they replaced this sort of gameplay with excessively long cutscenes, which really drags down FF6 and FF7, in particular, in my opinion. There's also the later appearance of minigames that don't belong in an RPG; even Chrono Trigger is guilty of this (there is one part where you *have* to button mach in order to progress or even just to get to a point where you can save, which is enough to discourage me from replaying this otherwise decent game).
Also, I prefer it when random encounters *can't* be complely cleared, as I might want to fight more enemies for fun, experience, items, or whatever else is involved in the game's growth system. (SaGa Frontier, where weaker enemies get replaced with stronger ones the more battles you fight, has this issue, as certain monster abilities get harder to get once the weak enemies disappear.)
