I agree you all. While the terrain did very little for strategy, it did make the game seem more real, more fast-paced and more fun than just hoping not to run into a monster and then manually entering the same commands over and over again. Gambits removed a lot of the tedium (I rarely have to use status-curing items manually), but I wish you could change (or at least turn off) your guest's gambits to keep them from attacking a monster that's way too strong just because it's there (Vossler! You won't be forgiven!).

My main complaints are that some enemies just don't give up the chase(especially the Imperial Soldiers) which makes it hard to heal your party sometimes, and some monsters will join the party (nearly got wiped out by a bunch of bagolys in the Nam-Yensa Sandsea because of this), but you have to take the bitter with the sweet, as they say.