I like them as a mould breaking changeup.
They're all super easy as the simplified movesets are overpowered by at elast 10x the amount they normally would be.

And it's nice to kinda feel how the other characters are doing in the story from their perspective. Something a cutscene just won't always be able to do.

It's also nice because too many people never play outside a single role. Back in the day we at least had cross-class skills to get people out of their comfort zone for a little bit. Now we have no motivation for this. It ends up with people not knowing what to expect out of other role types. And while playing an NPC isn't exactly a facsimile for that, it might at least get people to try after thinking it was something fun or cool to do.