Well that's an issue with the random battles and granted a valid one. But when you say "grindy" I tend to think "augh, I need to get to Level 40 or there's literally no passing this boss." So considering Level 1 games of FFIX are all the rage, I was pretty confounded.
pretty much all the FF games can be beaten without intentional grinding AFAIK, when I say that I mean like, if I go into this area to do something or if this place has a good atmosphere, how much is random battling detracting from that? FFIX is the worst of the psx FF's by far in that regard, **** FFVIII was progressive enough to give you an encounter none ability and have the enemies scaled to your level so intentionally leveling was pointless to begin with. too bad FFVIII had so many other issues