I'm not saying he's bad. Best way to describe him is like Kula. She has good stuff and if you break her down and really start to use the combo system she can be a beast, however just using the specials in a footsies game will get you killed if you are not careful. Her shoryuken hits aren't very reliable (meaning unless you have the shoryuken mastered on how it hits you are going to whiff on your opponent a lot). Her slide is very punishable, her freeze breath is easy to get inside of, and her psudo hurricane kick to iceball isn't nearly what it used to be. However if you figure her out all together she is a beast.
Robert is a lot of the same. The shoryuken isn't nearly as accurate as it used to be, the hurricane kick (Hien shenpuken I know the names but I talk SF to simplify) is not safe at all, the fireball is average at best on properties, the dive kick is not nearly as safe as in past game also is a bit slower giving the opponent more time to adjust to it, and Ryoko Ranbu can be knocked out of pretty simply taking away one of the bigger advantages he had in the past games. That all being said put all his stuff together and I'm sure you can do serious damage w/ him cause he has many different attacks to work from, but on a simple footsies level, he's not very safe to use. I'll probably pick him up and work harder on him eventually, but there are a lot more characters to master that are more my style that I can work my way into the combo system while still feeling comfortable playing footsies with.
The balance is ridiculously good on this game cause I've watched the different streams of the game and the players seem to change their mind on who they want to use tournament by tournament. I mean do you remember a SF game where the players were picking totally different people from one tournament to the next?
There was actually quite a bit of character variation after the 2012 AE patch but yeah, they tend to stick more with one character in that game.
As for Robert, not having overly safe moves isn't much of an issue. Kyo is the same way, pretty much all his moves are punishable and yet he is a complete beast. Robert's ground db f+D is very unsafe but the B version seems pretty damn safe from the looks of it. unless they have a really fast move (like an EX super).
His footsie game is strong actually, you can use the same cancelling normals into fireballs tactic as Kensou. I used it with him in 2k2 and seems to work just as well here, highly annoying. Should be even better since he can easily capitalize of lows in XIII, like cr.Bx3, db f+B and cr.B, cr.A, f+B, f+A, finisher. Such strings also give him forever to hit confirm into HD. Then there is also that wall bounce and Iori style crossup. This guy has a ton of tools, if most of his moves were safe then he would probably be broken. A safe on block fireball, pretty safe db f+B and super safe neomax are enough for me.
Not sure what you mean about his dp but it has been pretty good at stuffing stuff, there is always the EX one as well. Can't remember his regular Ranbu being too hot outside of combos, Takuma's was the one that was always good (which makes sense since its one of the very few defensive options he has).
So yeah, maybe he just doesn't fit you guys anymorebut to me he seems similar to his previous years just with more combo options, tools and tricks etc.