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Your first warning should have been the fact that you're dealing with Kingdom Hearts

Second Chance and Once More are pretty much a requirement. It's vital to the balance of the game, and if anything I think you should start the game with them. Ramp up the difficulty, instead, and I don't mean give me unflinching infinity comboing dream eaters that do 70% of my health per hit difficulty.

Second Chance and Once More are essential for mitigating frustration from unfair deaths, and in a 3D plain with as many options as KH, those are unavoidable. they're basically anti-frustration features, used try to stop people from being mad when Zack hits them with his omni slash and kills them instantly.

My suggestion to you? Do a Critical Mode Level 1 run

Agh, the problem here is that I'm equal parts agreeing with you, arguing against you, an explaining game design. I'm going to try to organize my thoughts better.

What I'm saying is that each hit has a much lower chance of inflicting a status effect, to balance the fact that things are getting hit more often. If they had kept the same percentage from classic FF, you would pretty much be guaranteed to apply the status every time, and even moves like instant death would be relatively easy to apply.
And that's the thing. The longer something lasts, the more it is allowed to MATTER. In Final Fantasy X, battles are turn based, you take a huge percentage of your health in damage for each attack the poisoned character pulls off. As such, an enemy susceptible to poison in FFX is very vulnerable. But in XIII, if you took 1/4 of your health in damage after every attack, you;d be dead by the end of your combo, as such poison loses a lot of its oomph.
These same percentages apply to elemental damage. Fire damage dealt once per turn, reduced by 25% gives you an advantage, but when multiple enemies can attack simultaneously and repeatedly, taking 25% less damage becomes drastically more powerful of an ability.
It's basically supply and demand, the less frequently something occurs, the more special it can be. Elemental attacks are trivialized by the fact that they are common

The thing is, they're taken into consideration, but promptly ignored because it can only be a major factor during boss battles. The most prominent regular enemy in KH to use elemental magic are the flying ones, the music themed ones from KH1 and 2, and the food themed ones from BBS. These enemies are almost invariably found in groups, rendering an elemental advantage more or less moot. And that's just the thing, the way KH is set up, you're very rarely going to encounter an area that lack variety. It's very unlikely you'll ever be in a situation when a single element will be dominant. Most enemies don't have elemental traits in the first place. But there are three major reasons for this:
1- The worlds are small and short. This means that you'll probably have moved on to the next world right around the time you've seen every enemy the world has to offer. A world only lasts about 20 minutes, after all.
2- There are a tonne of enemy types. So each world's small space will be filled with many formations and variations
3- It's not long before the enemies are swapped out. In a KH game, it's not long before you stop seeing so many nocturnes, and more wizards. Eventually, you'll be facing an enemy group who is largely based on nonelemental damage, or who has access to all elements
This is pretty common, you can see it in a lot of RPGs. The intent is generally to eliminate the 'advantage' elemental stuff gives you, but KH as we've established, doesn't give you much of one.

Look at an old game, like chess. When you put that game in the hands of AI, the most common result is either a game that is nearly impossible to win, or far too easy. The problem with AI s that in runs on the inner workings of a game, while we work off visual stimuli (and sometimes other stuff but I digress) enemies also don't need to press buttons. Programming AI is a largely predictive process, you need to either program things loosely enough to accommodate the player, or predict their actions. Good AI ultimately boils down to programming a firm level of understanding of the rules into the target, and in a test of skill, this can be great, that's why a boss battle tends to be more complex than a normal enemy, but when you start applying this to generic enemies in the field, problems arise.
Maybe not at first. After all, swarms of intelligent enemies sounds great on paper, but in practice, it almost invariably leads to frustration or boredom. At first, it may be cool or intense to find the right way to break a Neo Shadow's guard while it deftly dodges all your attacks, but over time this becomes routine, and leads to two other problems, namely the player searching for and finding AI exploits, and drastically reducing the available move pool as clearly 'best' options emerge.

KH is definitely imbalanced. Blocking most attacks was more trouble than it was worth in early games, became completely overpowered in BBS and the DS games, and then sank right back into its earlier mold. Blocking was never included in the original KH balancing act because the average player pretty much wouldn't use it. The risk vs reward was always off.
The magic system is completely separate can of worms I'm not sure I want to open right now.

KH is a design focused game. It's helmed by a character artist. But the enemies are far from the same. They all have unique attack scripts and tactics, they're just laregly lost in the crowd. I have a hard time believing you can't remember specifics though. No getting sniped by Mandrakes? No getting trampled by a Berserker Sword thing? Fat bandit punches you with an explosion and sends you across the map? The game is definitely more focused on what the main character can do versus the generic mooks, but I'd have to say it's still pretty impressive how varied they are

But there's not much flesh to add to these mechanics. What KH needs to do, if anything, it make the elements more distinct. Give a visual cue so players know they ARE taking less damage from elemental attacks and such. And since I know someone's going to think it, yeah, fire attacks and such are pretty obvious, but what about shadow? What counts as shadow damage? Do Shadows deal shadow damage? If something punches me and its fist is on fire, does it deal fire damage?
If you add visual representation of elemental damage that is quick and easy to understand, then throw in some NPCs that give you advice, I'm willing to bet more players would equip themselves accordingly.

The thing is, the bulk of the enemies you'll find in Agrabah don't match the fire element of the boss you fight at the end, and no boss prior uses that. If you equip yourself with fire protection you'll be helping yourself against two attacks: the Red Nocturne's fire, and the Fat Bandit's flame thrower. Meanwhile you'll still have shadows, soldiers, blue rhapsodies, yellow operas, large bodies, wyverns, bandits and pot monsters to deal with
And then, to my knowledge, Jafar's only fire based attack is his flaming boulder. But that's jsut the thing. With KH, it's not always clear what element something is. Is the laser he fires a fire elementl attack? Lasers are usually non elemental in final fantasy, and if I didn't know that I still wouldn't assume anything because it doesn't have anythign that really says 'fire' about it.

Your version of strategizing involves being able to change all your equipment quickly and intuitively mid battle, at KH pace no less. That's really impractical. Snap decisions in an action game, at least one like KH, can at best be "oh **** that guy is moving, better block!" or "That thing is blue, I should set it on fire"
Artificial speed is still speed. Sora recovers from a single swing FAR faster than in KH1. There is significant lag after most of Sora's moves, magic cannot be comboed at all, Sora moves fairly slowly, and has limited movement options, and a zoomed in camera. This is all based around a slower means of play. It doesn't matter if an attack is longer because it racks u[ several hits and Sora recovers very quickly, or if he has a longer recover time, the ability will knock his enemies away. I'm fairly certain Sora's slowest recovering move is Explosion from KH2, and I'd estimate that its recovery animation is roughly as long as Sora's basic recovery animation in KH1.
I don't know the specifics anymore, but a few years back I did some pretty in depth comparisons between each game so I could animate them more accurately for a KH fan game I was working on.

I REALLY hoping this was easier to understand, please say so if it isn't :/

So t should play in THOSE situations. KH bosses have always benefited from a frantic battle theme over a hero's anthem

The thing is, he could have been informed that his plans succeed when he arrived in the future.
But knowing how KH likes to take moments and add twists, I'm going to go ahead and assume this happened when Xehanort released his heart at Terra, or when Terranort tried to release his heart

My guess is that he's jumping right to the end, so he doesn't have to worry about dying of old age because it won't take THAT long to achieve his goals. He's still spry enough to hold his own against three keyblade wielders, after all (and it's pretty clear he was intentionally holding back)

See, the thing is, it's not that those RPG elements aren't there, it's an action RPG after all.
But being in an action game completely changes the dynamic.
Here's an example. Final Fantasy XIII has a kind of awkward not quite action based system where characters constantly rapid fire attacks and spells. Because of this, the chance of actually being afflicted BY a status effect is a fair bit lower than in previous games, because enemies would often get hit by the same spell five or so times in rapid succession.
An action game is, by it's nature, faster than a turn based one. In a classic turn based game, reducing damage by 10 percent really isn't that great, because you have lots of characters, and generally won't be fit by the same thing twice in rapid succession. With an action game, the hits come faster, and that buff starts stacking. If something reduces fire damage by 50% and you get hit five times every minute, that's a worthwhile investment. If you get hit 100 times per minute and it reduces damage by 50%, it becomes overpowered.
Of course, then there are other factors in action games. The ability to doge generally means the damage increases, because properly intelligent AI would make standard enemies too much of a threat. Block is generally saved for especially skilled or talented players, and it generally pays off for them by way of extra damage or a stagger.
KH has always prided itself on having a large cast of distinctly designed enemies, it's not so much a case of more enemies = more challenge, but rather a mean of having more variety, and that variety, in turn, renders elemental bonuses largely moot
Now you bring up Ursula, but that's a boss, a very separate bees nest. I'd still say a major problem with KH is that there's rarely any indication fo what kind of enemy you'll actually be fighting in the end.
One point I'll have to concede is that KH1 DID definitely come pretty close to having these classic RPG elements... and that's largely due to its slower pace and smaller cast of enemies.

I wouldn't so much call that incomplete as "fearing death by old age"

That's REALLY not a glitch. That's pretty much like saying "I was playing Megaman and I JUMPED OVER AN ENEMY WITHOUT KILLING IT! GLITCH!"

That's the general assumption. But it kinda contradicts what Xehanort said about people being unable to be sent FORWARD in time...

I'd assume that the Master Xehanort is the complete form because it's the only Xehanort that's truly just Xehanort. Everyone else so far, besides Young Xehanort (if even that) is reliant on a second part. Xehanort mixed with Terra and Eraqus is not a truly 'complete' Xehanort

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this.

It is different. In Final Fantasy, you'll be introduced to a new area with a select few enemies that you'll become at least a little intimately familiar with by journey's end. You'll start to pick up on things like "oh ****, it's that giant thing, these are a pain to take out" or "Yes, a cluster of these weak frog things, they're so easy to beat with a Fira spell and you get so much EXP"
Meanwhile, the items you collect are largely tailored to what you do. Going into a dungeon full of fire enemies? They'll give you the icebrand... but what's this? They threw you or a loop and put a fire enemy on the middle floor! Now your ice weapon is useless! Luckily you have a black mage who can take care of things, though this wastes precious MP, however, if you , look around you can find a secret passage with a firebrand, which you can equip on your second sword wielder, NOW no matter what enemy type appears you'll have their weakness.
But what's this? The boss of this dungeon is Odin! In the dungeon you found two thunder bracelets, which reduce lightning damage by 25%... but who do you use them on? your white mage and black mage are pretty fragile, so they could use the defense, but you COULD use it on your warriors instead and keep them fighting longer...

See, the slower pace allows you to develop a stronger idea of what's going on. In KH things are so fast paced and rapidly changing that you really have no reason to be constantly changing your equipment, most players will admit it's hardly worth the time it takes to press the L button to quick-cast blizzard on an enemy for extra damage, never mind actively pausing trying to actively predict which mod you'll face next.

Honestly, the most practical use for elemental buffs in KH is for when you're having trouble on a specific boss or mob

The difference in design between an RPG and an action game generally dictate that you be more forgiving with immunities in an action game. In an RPG, at least older ones, you move at a more plodding, almost themed pace. In a game like KH, where action is fast, the enemies are numerous, and you can't even see exactly how much damage you're taking, overly specific elemental weaknesses lose most of their impact.
One thing I CAN say is that Critical level one runs of KH games make these benefits much more noticeable, but simply by virtue of what reduces your health to zero instantly and what doesn't.
Another thing about KH is that you never REALLY know what you'll be facing next. Sure in Agrabah there are a couple of fire enemies, but there are just as many ice enemies, and it's not like any of the other elements disappear either. And the enemies in KH generally aren't distinct enough for the average player to worry about making one specific type easier. I'm pretty sure the only things people would want protection against would be getting comboed to death, easily the most common form of death in most KH games.

Aha, you ARE Sforzato

Oh how silly of me, I forgot that if something isn't as bad as the holocaust, it doesn't matter. Of course.

I don't buy systems for a single game

you slur your speech and act like you have no inhibitions

what about fake drunk

Try to take over the world?