I can live with random encounters as long as I eventually get the ability to stop them at will: Moogle Charm or Enc-None, for example.

Moogle Charm is never more useful than in the Fanatic's Tower. Zip up, take the treasures, kill two bosses, zip down.

That being said, I actually like the random encounters in FFT. It's nice to use them to level up the party between boss fights.