The load times really aren't bad at all, though of course they are worse than the original (PSX game and all that). I always found some of the crying about them a bit bizarre, since they were sooo much shorter than load times of contemporary games like FF9 and CC (which take nearly 30 seconds to get into a battle). Chrono Trigger's the only one of the FFA/FFC re-releases that had especially bad load times and even then they weren't FF9/CC level.
Perfectly acceptable way to play the game. I don't think the various versions of the game differ in ways I find tremendously important, so I'd get whichever version you find most accessable.
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