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The battles are fine, just change the overworld, and make it "open world-ish", like the 3D Zelda games. It's ridiculous having to stick to a set path, look at the pic, there are some areas there that you can't walk on, even when it looks like you should be able to.
Make random encounters work like the newest Dragon Quest games, a model appears in the overworld and it chases you or runs away from you