On the other hand, in my opinion all Final Fantasy games have been quite easy if you only do the storyline part. Sure, most games in the series takes ~40-60 hours to complete when doing the first run (not counting XIII). And such, I think even this games storyline should be fairly easy to follow through. And honestly, I do believe that the enemies should be hard so that parties have an effect, but in contrast, I want enemies thats supposed to be for your level or slightly below to be rewarding more, so that grind works again.
All Final Fantasy games I've played (VII, VIII, IX, X, XII) have been very grind-supportive, If you'd spend ~4 hours grinding before first boss in FFVII, you can run through 1 disk in no time at all, everything will die at 1 attack anyway.
So not allowing grind in a FF-game seems quite wrong . I do however as stated encourage harder enemies and higher sp gain when in party, I just think that solo should be an option.

Edit: I lost ~250 of 1000 hp with 1.19, as well as my equiped weapon dropped from doing ~150 dmg to doing 19 dmg, but I still play with hopes of improvements to solo capability later on.

//Regards