At this points I'm just looking up which variables I need to change in a hacking tool to just experience the story. As for gameplay, I concur 100% with everything that quewye has pointed out. I've been playing these RPGs for 30+ years, there is an old but gold formula that works for them... Trying to stray from that perfected formula was a huge mistake given the amount of love and passion put into the game everywhere else. If you are going to have random encounters in the game regardless, then you need to have them reward the time they are taking up by making them take up less time in the future. This is typically done traditionally with XP.
What I don't get is in another post the dev says they don't like the grind aspect, yet they still have a ton of encounters between point-A and point-B, doesn't even matter if they are random or ones you have to dodge. Time needs to be rewarded for dealing with them. It's a critical function in these kinds of games for a reason.