I could live with specific character skills, but ones that develope due to player choices and you create your own characters. An experienced player should be capable of creating a lethal party within a few hours, newbies should be able to just struggle through, but have to think to do it.

FFIX was just pointless battle wise.
"You have trained for hours and know the game very well, please wait while this small bird kicks your ass."
"You have simply followed the very linear paths available and have no knowledge of tactics, here's firaga."

Mini games should be fun again, as I've pointed out in other places, I believe X was actually an attempt by Square to run global experiments on humans.