It's pretty much indifferent how you level up your character. You can even win with a really badly skilled party as long as you use tacitcs and skills wisely and support each other.
The game is only hard until you get a hold on its system in the first view hours. Then it's actually kind of easy, but not that easy to become boring. With crafting and really good gear you get so powerful in late game that challenge isn't a big issue anymore.
I also don't understand people who think way too much about "builds" and where to put each single stat point at which time. Guys, it's not a PvP game! It really doesn't matter that much. Just roleplay and decide intuitively what to choose. Game is winnable on normal difficulty anyway.
And on hard...well, if hard is too hard for you, then just reduce the difficulty. Games are no dick checks and it's not a shame to play a game not on the hardest difficulty level. Just play what seems fun to you but don't complain about bad balancing just because you obviously know too little about the game or because you want to squeeze the game in a certain corner it never wanted to be...
