Wild Arms is vaguely like that (at least as far as puzzles go), so it's no surprise they clicked with you. I'm old enough that Final Fantasy (the NES one) was my first JRPG, and I learned pretty quickly that the monsters were the best part of them, which kept me wanting to play more just to see what else the designers could come up with. Shameless D&D ripoffs thought they were, Marilith and Tiamat were both pretty exciting to young me.