The Eblan Five (The After Years)

Simple question: is it worth investing the time to continue using them as a party and levelling them up?

I've noticed that, besides Edge, they and their bands suck a bit.

I never really got into them. The returning characters are generally better than many of the newbie characters the game introduces. The Eblan Ninja are interesting, but sacrificing Golbez , Rydia, Kain, or Cecil for any one of them seems like a bad trade, especially since the Eblan Four tend to be one trick ponies.

I remember on my first playthrough, I intentionally killed one of them just because I wanted to hear the Mysterious Woman battle theme. No regrets!

I only played this once, and like WK says, the original characters are much better and why would you have some crappy ninja on your team instead of freaking Golbez?