I’ll actually copy a comment I saw recently by someone else who knows more about Final Fantasy than I do. Apparently it’s much older than that.

Though historically the ATB system was invented for FF4 and used by all games until FFX itself before being used again for X-2, though I think most of them had the option of “active or wait” like Chrono Trigger to pick from. I haven’t played most of those FFs to say for certain. Not that it makes it better, but it technically was the return to form and earlier games just had less you cared to watch happen.