Are you playing on Casual?
What level?
And yes, frontal assault is dead. Lure and kill off, working your way forward.
(The flying fortresses are optional, so you can also just skip them if you don't like them)
-Normal, casual, hard; it doesn't matter. Difficulty isn't the issue as the combat isn't difficult, just tedious/frustrating.
-My current level is 27.
-Frontal assault means death, okay. But often so does just trying to lure an single enemy away from a big group with all the insta-hit-abilities. And that's asuming it's even feasible to do so, which it's often not when you're fighting in corridors or open areas. And lastly abusing the AI like that is what I've been doing so far and it's tedious and just not fun to me. I'm looking for alternatives to this.
-They're optional? I know they're not main plot related, but given the importance of fighting enemies on equal levels in this game, I figured they're crucial for you to grind of couple of levels out of.