Fair, but I do hope you all also understand that despite the grind, this is kinda what digimon started out as, a very grindy, very time consuming virtual pet
It also wasn't something you sat and played for a set while like this is. You'd train for a while, then "set it and forget it" apart from the cleaning \ feeding. This is a very different beast.
This game IS very grindy, and that is coming from someone who adores DW1 and played it guideless for tens if not hundreds of hours, lol.