While it may be true that the classic turn-based battle systems of old-school RPGs were the result of technical limitations, it's also true (at least to me) that those systems made battles a lot more tactical than those modern "button mash" battle systems. In older RPGs, be they ATB-based or not, I had to think carefully about most of my moves, while in games from FFXII and onwards, I honestly don't even see some of my own moves anymore. When everybody, friend and foe alike, all perform their actions simultaneously, the entire screen just becomes an un-overseeable mess, and you can't really follow what's actually going on anymore. This is augmented by the fact that you don't (or worse, can't) enter your own party members' commands anymore. I've had a lot of battles in FFXIII that I won without even realizing it until the victory screen popped up. In older games, defeating a boss or winning a hard battle always gave me a sense of satisfaction, while in FFXII or FFXIII, I was mostly left wondering: just who defeated these enemies now? Was that really me? Somehow it didn't feel that way...
And so I whole-heartedly agree with paladin181 and DLPB: the technical possibilites may have become better over the years, yet somehow Square-Enix didn't manage to put them to good use, imho. Just because they can implement a very fast-paced, hectic battle system doesn't mean that that's necessarily the best approach for an RPG.
I'm also worried about what Covarr said. It really looks like you get the flower automatically, and if that's indeed the case, they are likely to have abandonded other dialogue choices that they deemed "unnecessary" as well... which saddens me, as this is yet another interactive gameplay element that goes down the drain, pushing the game further into the "movie-like" direction that FFXIII took...