I’m torn about them. On the one hand they free up the combat design to be as wildly different from the exploration as it wants. Which can result in really creative stuff. Favorite examples are Undertale, MegaMan Battle Network series, and Tales series.
But on the other they interrupt the flow of exploration, the music, you forget where you were by the end of combat and they can be very annoying if they happen to be common or just as you’re about to leave an area. The consolation prize of growing stronger with every battle only helps so much.
Random combat is the number one thing that makes me drop a game.
Its annoying, it happens too often, it always interrupts me when I want to do something else, and it is too repetitive.
This is why I stopped playing a lot of JRPGs. The other thing I drop them for is when combat only has a single song and always starts with the exact same intro, like what happened with Dragon Quest 11 or whatever it was that I played.
I hate grinding. Its repetitive and boring. Its not fun. If a games story missions are not paced properly with level such that I can do only the story missions and never be underleveled, then I will drop that game immediately.
I also hate grinding but sometimes I get addicted to it. Like my lizard brain likes watching the numbers go up. I recently loaded an old save in final fantasy and saw my level at 99, health at 999/999 and gold at 999999 and was like “I don’t remember grinding any of this”. It happens in a trance.