adjl posted... It can be, and I would in fact say that a game where you're forced to grind gold to keep your equipment up to date is forcing more metagaming than is ideal. Ideally, fighting a "typical" number of enemies, finding a "typical" number of chests, or otherwise doing a "typical" amount of whatever method accumulates gold should leave you with enough money that you'll have to make decisions about whose equipment to upgrade, but give you enough upgrades that - provided you're smart about how you use them - the gameplay that follows is a moderate challenge.
That's exceedingly vague and relies on a lot of assumptions about "typical" play, but that's what I mean when I say it should be balanced in a way that doesn't push the player to draw on their knowledge that they're playing a game to exploit the game mechanics. Buying new equipment when you reach a new town makes diegetic sense: If your characters were acting on their own, they would want to take advantage of that upgrade opportunity to better prepare themselves for the next leg of their quest. It also makes diegetic sense that they won't have enough money to buy everything (while also being an interesting gameplay choice, in which you have to choose between spending your limited money now or gambling that your current power level will be enough to tide you over while you save up for something better later). It doesn't make diegetic sense to exploit infinitely-respawning enemies to grind up enough gold to buy everything and not have to decide which upgrades matter most. You should still be *able* to do it, since that kind of control over character progression is fun, but you shouldn't be *forced* to do it by having the game balanced around immersion-breaking levels of grinding.
Now, a ton of games don't manage to get that balance perfectly. You're almost always going to end up doing some non-diegetic grinding in any RPG, and by and large the RPG-playing community accepts that. But games where you fall significantly behind if you just try to play in a way that feels "normal" are still going to rub some people the wrong way, which is understandable.
Just wait until you try Treasure of the Rudras where your expected to make your own spells, and effectively cheat by saving the spells the end boss uses and use them on another campaign.
Some games just expect you to be smarter, be a better player.