Star Ocean 2 let you do that decades ago, yes. You could also craft equipment, potions, write books to share skills between party members, and use skills to generate money outside of combat. 1998.
A 26 year old exception to the rule. Now, good thief implementation is rare in crpgs, there's only a few games that let your party members move and/or act independently and outside of combat, but that's a few more than Japan*. Unfortunately, I'm not the kind of person that can go backwards from more control, more possibilities. Once you let me scout ahead with my thief to check a room, then take my sorc and cast a fireball from beyond the enemies' detection range and kill some of them before they know what's happening, it's hard to back to blobs, battle modes, non-interactive dungeons, and Mug.
Honestly it's always crpgs that have felt primitive to me. They trade off a ton of features in exchange for clinging to two things: A tactical map that almost never offers any real gameplay, and skill checks in dialogue. Which are great, when they're real and not illusory crap that all leads to the same result
Most crpgs
are relatively primitive, but the ones that stand out have features that jrpgs have rarely or never touched and if they have, not to the same degree of rigor. The simple reason is that those stand outs attempted to recreate the mechanical detail and possibility space of TTRPGs, and/or attempted world simulation. That's the axis along which I call JRPGs primitive, by which I just mean simple, spare, or you can say focused. You don't go into a JRPG expecting Fallout quest structure, or Arcanum reactivity, Arx dungeon design, Daggerfall chargen, Ultima 7/Gothic 2 world simulation, BG2 spell game, etc. Thus they don't do everything better because they don't do all the things. I
would like to see a competent Japanese crew do a hardcore, crunchy, full of CnC, skill checks, non-combat solutions, etc. --released to the general audience. Been saying that for years. Bring their penchant for unique settings, high craftsmanship, and high energy to bear on a such a base. CRPGs are fundamentally lacking in verve and personality, rather dry, which is always a problem I've had with them. Like the people in the west who could do otherwise went into adventure games, while in Japan they were in every genre.
tl;dr: Yes, more Elona plz Japan, and crpg developers were always depressed simulationfags.
*talking 'traditional' RPG, excluding T and SRPGs.