Balancing and challenging content, RPG at that time were more difficult, they didn't need to put difficulty setting to feel fun to play. Now i always have to change difficulty setting and usualy it's too hard or too easy, never in the middle...
What games are you thinking of, because from what I remember, most classic RPGs tend to be pretty easy. Pretty much all of Square-Enix's games after the NES era are on the easy side (with a couple of exception like SaGa and Vagrant Story). The Wild Arms, Suikoden, and Grandia series are all pretty easy. Pokemon has always been really easy. And so on and so on. I'm all for difficulty settings, because the default with JRPGs is to make them easy.