*shrugs* I'm guessing you're someone who didn't like it from the start and I'm one of those that did. I imagine there are some people who fit inbetween out there, hence giving the game a little more time than one of either of ourselves being fair enough as far as I'm concerned. I found the more I got into the story behind certain characters, the more I enjoyed it, personally. You don't really know anything about some of the characters after five hours. Maybe you're looking at it purely from a gameplay point of view, in which case, yes, shortly after you get out of the stupid garbage dump chapter then I would say that you should have a better idea of whether you like the system or not. But for the characters, it's not until at least the following chapter is over (or preferrably the next chapter after that?) that you really get to feel that you know the characters. Maybe that's just me, though.

EDIT: And I found there was far, far, far, far more strategy involved with the battle system than there has ever been in a Final Fantasy game. I'm not sure what you were after, to be honest, but outside of the strict "black mage is only ever black mage, fighter can't use magic, etc." games, FF has never really had much strategy in the vast majority of battles.