I don’t have much to say regarding the battle system itself, other than that I disagree. I found the puzzle solving aspect fun and addictive. And I did feel incentivized to battle for several reasons:
If you do the battles correctly, you’d get a net increase in coins throughout the game. Although you may be able to beat the game without spending them, having coins to spend undeniably makes the journey a smoother experience.
Those collectible treasures are expensive, and you really are encouraged to go for 100%, much more so than in previous games, since the game tracks everything in each area, including the ? blocks.
The enemies seem harder to avoid and harder to run away from than in previous games, meaning that more often than not, you’re better off fighting the enemies than not. In fact, I’d argue the only incentives NOT to battle are if you simply don’t like the battle system (which is fine, it’s subjective after all), or more obnoxiously, if you’re trying to “prove” that battles are pointless by beating the game (in a much more tedious fashion) without engaging in them.
These may not seem like strong incentives on their own, but when put together, they gave me a pretty strong incentive to battle, which I couldn’t say about Sticker Star or even Color Splash. And if I’m being honest, I can’t think of a single RPG or adventure game where I’m super engaged and incentivized to fight mooks (yes including the first two Paper Mario games). I also have to echo FastPuggo’s sentiment of not being a fan of this meme, since you’re pretty much stating your opinion as fact. Maybe you think I’m some zoomer who started the series with Sticker Star, but I’ve been with this series from the beginning, and I love the first two games to death. However, I still think there’s something admirable about IS trying something new after they believe they reached the limits of what they were previously doing, and I would welcome a sequel to TOK, since I still think there’s a lot of untapped potential with the ring-based battle system.