Grindy isn't necessarily bad...as long as you can accomplish things appropriate to your level and make appreciable progress while you're doing it. For example, if you've played FKG, how long was it before your team was exclusively full of lvl 70s? It didn't matter if you had some girls that weren't top level, because you were able to complete everything available at the time without them. By the time they released the newer content we were ready for it. You hardly noticed the grind because it wasn't holding you back.

AB's XP grind is quite a bit more evident, though. Lack of levels is holding everyone back, and they shouldn't have released PoC until most of the first players were finished with the map tiles and wanting something to do with their oil. AB's grind isn't keeping people interested, it's deterring them from playing.

Also, I don't know why they're being so stingy with the candies when that's the whole point of playing the Nutaku version vs. the Android version.