Ogre Tactics is far from the gold standard of combat and encounter design in an SRPG.
isn't it one of the better ones?
There are a lot of people who would say so... but no, not really. It's got a lot of stats and fancy systems, but like so many jrpgs, a ton of it ends up being meaningless due to balance issues. FFT is far more interesting, honestly. It has broken things as well, but it has MANY broken things that are in conflict with eachother. There are about half a dozen insanely overpowered defensive skills for exampke, all vying for space on the same slot. Each has it's pros and cons, and each is wildly overkill for simply beating the game under normal circumstances. Active skills are in a similar situation, though Math is pretty much the undisputed king there with enough investment; again there are quite a few incredibly powerful options vying for second place. Support skills, movement skills, equipment slots... the game gives you many avenues to win in wildly different ways. The way it handles spellcasting (and some other interesting abilities) is a lot better too, with actual cast times rather than a recovery window, letting you set up crazy things like delayed attacks on a position, or on the flip side, sniping a spell caster while he's still chanting to prevent the spell from going off.
Tactics Ogre ends up mostly being about comparing a pair of numbers and making sure yours is bigger. The remake added support skills and more actions for fighters instead of just mages, but ultimately most of it is just chaff and you end up making one or two real choices on a character. That gets reflected in the kinds of threats you face. In FFT, the biggest threats are enemies with strange skills you didn't prepare for; in TO the biggest threat is always an enemy with really high stats.
Troubleshooter, though korean rather than japanese, is probably the peak of this sort of gameplay. Wildly complex game, factoring in things like terrain and weather and lighting, with unique classes for each character and massive battles than ensure it's impractical to just have one ace take everyone down or a squad of identical, optimal builds. The character builds involving slotting in potentially dozens of skills at once on a single character, with extra skills unlocked through combinations slotted at once. It's munchkin heaven. The actual combat operates on a much larger scale, but flows quickly past minor enemies without wasting your time, giving a purpose for both crowd control type builds that specialize in many targets, and those specialized in taking down an elite enemy. Lots of other aspects to build towards too, such as recon (which isn't even a factor in most games) various types of support, tanking hits, extreme range or mobility, taking turns more quickly, and more.
The newer Brigandine game, Runersia, is another interesting SRPG. Very different from the above 3, it involves commanders and minions, minions which can easily die permanently in battle. Rather than designed encounters (though it has some of those as well in the endgame) you pick and choose conflicts based on the way the war is going on the strategic layer, looking for fights to train up your own units or pick off or even steal powerful enemy monsters. I'd rate it pretty highly overall, though it can feel like a slog at times depending on how the strategy layer is going. It's also got a multiclassing based system for leveling up the commanders. Somewhat shallow, but that's a requirement when you're potentially actively using 15+ characters at a time.
On the other end of the scale, I'd rate something like Fire Emblem pretty low. Haven't played any of the modern ones, but the older ones are quite simplistic, mostly relying on cheap ambushes and scenario gimmicks to provide a challenge when you can otherwise wipe out an entire map of 30+ dudes using like 3 of your own.
there is no such thing as a JRPG without grind, you might think you're not grinding while you go from point A to point B following the story, but that's exactly what you're doing.
Or you could just... not fight those battles. Most JRPGs include ways to reliably avoid combat for a reason. Those that don't generally have an element of attrition factored into the difficulty.
