Too soon to say. So far, I've only been able to control one character in the party, and they haven't introduced much of the functionality yet. And absolutely no strategy yet. It's pretty much "push X to not die" so far, with the occasonal break to throw a potion. But I don't expect that to last much longer. It does seem that we've shifted back to the classic battle screen rather than the FF 12 model where battles just took place in the world; however, it looks like you can avoid non-boss battles if you want.

So all I can say really is that the jury is still out on the battle system.