I'm on chapter 8 right now so I haven't seen a lot of what you are discussing, but so far it feels like a simplified Sphere Grid. That there is little branching in each role doesn't bother me as much as there is no choice given over which roles each character has. I always like to activate every available node as soon as soon as I can, so I usually spend an hour or so every chapter just building up CP. This game tends to be unforgiving for underleveled characters.