Freya

The best decision at this point is to get the Weapons for your party of choice to Tier 2 max right now. You can go back and do Missions 1-14 until you get a Chocobo. Afterwards, you can find treasures that can transform Tier 1 -> Tier 2 instead of paying (you'll need to unlock the Ultracompact Reactors which cost 50k in the R&D Depot Store).

Still, it will take a long time which your only choice really is to go back and grind and proceed onwards with the game. There are certain parts you need to unlock before you can take advantage of Weapon Upgrading (like the Adamantoise in Chapter 12).

Hmm, not far from Santa Monica/Culver City.

I'm only on Chapter 4 but I'm enjoying it a lot. I think people are disappointed that it doesn't play more like a traditional Final Fantasy. They've attempted to make the combat much more fast paced and that means they've had to change the battle system pretty drastically. Some people are annoyed by that and even I usually dislike change but so far it's extremely fun and very intuitive.