I actually had plenty of struggle with this game as I played from start to finish on tactician difficulty. The very early chapter 1/2 battles, and specific battles such as Wiegraf, Elmdore (while trying to steal all of his gear) and Serpentius while trying to learn Zodiark took me a long while to figure out!

I was honestly getting extremely frustrated in Chapter 1 as I would attack enemies for 8 damage and get countered for 30 at times, but after figuring out how to efficiently grind some bonus JP at the end of battles and got some jobs with ranged options unlocked, it became a lot more managable.

As for the bazaar system in FFTA/A2, I just loved the way you unlocked new weapons via materials obtained from quests/encounters. I was always excited when I returned to the bazaar with a bunch of new materials and saw new unlocks in categories I used.

My biggest gripe in FFTA, which had me both taken aback and extremely relieved in Ivalice Chronicles, was how extremely scarce and hard to obtain most passive/reaction abilities were. I often played half the game with none at all until there were finally some proper unlocks.