The encounter rate is too high and the battle system is far too sluggish (seriously, it felt tired even in 2000). I'm also still not a big fan of the 'equip item and gain AP to learn its abilities' way of doing things, but IX does it better than other, similar systems in the series (mainly because of the variety of exclusivity of equipment).

Not a criticism of mine but used to be:

I used to hate on the party management and how the game determined who would be in your party for about the first half of the game. Now I totally dig it and I'm really into how the game encourages these different ways to play. I just picked up Amarant and only now do I have the option to swap characters. It's made for a really balanced game thus far. Enjoyable, yes.