>>714575978
It's very experimental. You can see they wanted to try out many new systems in a game, and they didn't have the guts to call the game Final Fantasy fearing some of these experiments may fail and drag the game down.

If you're having difficulty, it's probably the BR system.
Grinding in this game puts you at a permanent disadvantage.

After the fight, your BR (level) is compared to the monsters you defeated, and if there is little difference, you only get some HP and damage. But if the enemies were much stringer, you get an almighty AP action point. And our BR will eventually go up regardless.
The game is about avoiding all combat if possible, and then stringing together many strong enemies to make sure you get AP on level up.