Just for testing sake, I reinstalled once again but didn't enter my account info. Was able to play without issues.
Then I cleared data, restarted, downloaded game data, synced my account. Game was choppy again, and froze upon finishing a single fight on auto. Then closed the game, restarted, and login froze at 75% again.
This leads me to believe it's the same or similar database issue that has plagued the game from the early days. We were just the unlucky ones that got hit by it this time. Makes me wonder just how many of the troopers that I've dropped because of inactivity were actually locked out because of this issue.