To deal with one of yr obvious mistakes though. Wakka to begin with is prejudiced against Al Bhed. Whether cos he's racist or against machina doesn't matter, its wrong. But he learns during the journey that Al Bhed aren't the real enemy, and that its Yevon that's corrupt and hypocritical. He even apologises to Cid for his previous ignorance. So he's not just a stupid "redneck", is he?
Right. The same way a KKK guy "apologises" to Al Sharpton. Nobody magically unlearns prejudice - it sticks with you until you die - and if you want to argue that Wakka somehow did, you immediately concede that he is an unrealistic character as well as just a badly written character and a filthy scumbag racist.
It's like if you found out nazi's and hitler didnt kill thousands of jews and all along they historians and government were lying to you, and all this time nazi's werent racist at all but it's just what youve always been taught. your opinions of them would change wouldnt they.
(no personal belief attached to this, just looking for an example)

And the random battles is a matter of opinion, I personally prefered random encounters to seeing monsters on the over world and fighting them.