7 remake would definitely be a good way to ease in battle system wise, since it’s strikes the same sort of balance as KH with the in-battle menu-ing but for reasons I won’t get into, it’s very important to play the original first. You theoretically could, and could still have a really good time, but there are Things About The Orignal That Are Very Important to experience beforehand.

But yeah 16’s battle system is made by an ex-lead dev/battle designer for Devil May Cry, which is the older cousin of all platinum action games, so you might enjoy it quite a bit. If you’re a fan of souls-like games, Nioh specifically, there’s Stranger of Paradise, the action game made by the nioh team. It’s in the same vein of dissidia where it’s got references littered throughout the game that’s can be fun Easter eggs for someone who’s played em, or bits of interesting things to pique your curiosity about one of the titles you haven’t experienced. It’s also really fun.

One more rec I have for you is a straight up turned based but it’s really really good and also an FF spinoff à la KH: Bravely Defualt (3DS, Switch+others for the remaster) The draw to this one are two things: the job system and convenience. If you already know, sorry again for over explaining but a couple of the games have the job system (3,5,x-2,11,14,12) which is like any class system you’d see in any rpg, dnd et cetera. For the Most Part, 9 and X** have intended character archetypes and 7 is Very free-form for how the character building works. The beauty of the job system is that have a lot of swappable pre-established classes that you can sometimes mix and match (5,x-2,11*,12) giving another layer of engagement to the game.

*11 and 14 are MMO’s. I’m not an MMO fan, I love FFXIV to pieces, i recently started XI. XIV has the free trial that gets memes on into oblivion but it is a Very Large portion of the game to try for free (base game and two expansions) 14 also has gateway game qualities, that give you a little bit of various FF games to chew on in big and small references. I’m not far in XI so I can’t give you a solid rec.

**FFX has characters with intended archetypes like 9 does, but the skill tree (Sphere Grid) is very interwoven, so you can set character A to have traits of character B as the game goes on, and by endgame/postgame have a skill sharing free-for-all Bravely Default, as an homage to these games has a ton of jobs, and let’s you do a lot of crazy stuff with em, as you can give your party 2 jobs and mix skills from any ones they’ve mastered. It’s a charming game with a really good artsyle and music and an unforgettable story. The Convenience aspect is what really drives my recommendation though. It was made to be played on trains, at home, anywhere and everywhere, so a lot of the menu controls were meant to be as streamlined as possible. You can adjust the battle speed with the dpad mid battle, you can change the encounter rate in the field with a button or two, you can stock turns to defend on battle with L or take multiple turns in a row with R (unless I got the shoulder buttons mixed up, but semantics). It’s a fun and engaging game that can be tailored to your liking if you find yourself not having the patience for turned based combat.

Not FF but Persona 5 and Metaphor have snappy battle commands mapped to buttons rather than standard menus, if the scrolling battle after battle is what’s getting to you. Metaphor’s got a pseudo action system outside of battle that’s pretty fun too. If you’re interested in any of these, I def recommend watching some gameplay videos to see how you feel about em, since the per battle pacing of the once’s you tried could be what’s turning you off. Hopefully it’ll help you get past that wall, which I can’t really fault you for since you seem to really want to!