Grinding isn't too different in each of the games in my opinion. In one game you grind on random and fixed battles with various mechanics, in another game you grind on reactive battles with various mechanics. 95% of the ME content was "move around, shoot things, talk to people." In other words, grind be a grind regardless. Looks like FFVII:Remake is going down the "3D real time battle" road closer to ME than it is to FFVII, so if they manage to do that while simultaneously retaining all the various other content in FFVII then I would argue that this game will cost at least twice as much as an ME game to develop.