I haven’t played SNES era RPGs for a long time. But I do remember Seiken Densetsu 3 did that thing where you could start the story with any character, they would have their own prologue, and then you would slowly gather other party members, which was mind-blowing at the time. And the visuals are clearly Final Fantasy 6, with chibi protagonist, but normal enemies and bigger than life bosses:
(Like here, they all supposed to be normal humans of the same size)
The problem, and why I dropped the game once already, is starting any JRPG is extremely boring, with how little stuff you can do besides hitting your enemy in the face. It becomes even more so when you have just a single character.
The main battle mechanic is exploiting weaknesses, just like in Persona series. But in order to stun the enemy you need to exploit a weakness multiple times.