I disagree on the first two.

I found Drawing to be an interesting way of getting spells, I always make sure to have at least on character with the Draw ability so I can get as much as I can, and I love the way refining was implemented into items. I had a lot of fun doing it.

The enemies don't level up with you, they level up as you do. Even if you hardly ever level up the enemies will still level up themselves. That's the impression I got, but it doesn't matter to me, because I always level up as high as I can on FFVIII. The key to me, is that if you can get the right amount of abilities and get your defences sorted, you can reach level 100 (not 99 in this game) and be virtually unstoppable. So levelling up still has it's awards in this game. The only thing I hated was that you were vulnerable to Level 5 Death while on highest level.

I think FFVIII is a phenomenal game, it is my second favorite FF.