Well, according to what I know about the sphere grid within 6 hours of playing on it, it really doesn't make a character that unique if the player has patience... eventually you can walk everywhere on the grid and make everyone know everything... o.o; A character loses his/her/its uniqueness then.
So yes I still prefer FF9 system the most ^_^ FF8 system is just crappy in terms of drawing (but refining stuff is so fun), and materia/magicite have the same problem with the sphere grid... Dress sphere has the same problem...