The importance you assign to the combat system in a remake is really kind of arbitrary.
Since when does a remake have to have a similar battle system to be a remake? Hell, even if they make it action based, they can still have MP management, limits, materia, summons, all that. A number of the core developers from the original game are coming together to remake the game. Nobody seems to be saying it has to be exactly the same, so why is this one aspect of the combat suddenly too important to the identity of the game to be messed with? The creators obviously don't think so, so is there some objective basis? Something higher than that?