None of the command removals seemed all that bad to me, except maybe Dark Wave (mostly since Dark Knight Cecil uses it in the Paladin battle and it just came out of nowhere in FFII US. I didn't really use it since I don't like losing health to do damage).

I didn't mind the simplification of items. It cleaned up the screen a lot more and it always seemed like overkill to me, having one item for every status ailment, especially in later FFs where there were loads of status ailments.