I just finished my first playthrough (hard, 193 hours), and I agree very much with almost everything you said (I didn't ever mind which way 'r' and 'f' scrolled the skills lol).
The game was too hard at a certain few points- mainly due to me missing cave entrances or switches or other "should-be-obvious" stuff. I literally missed the black cove (i think?) off of the beach west of cyseal until I was somewhere around level 14 and wandered back that way randomly. I missed the cave at the north where sparkmaster is and all of that stuff that happens up there until I was stuck at level 12 missing huge amounts of xp due to the areas I missed, even though I'd struggled my way through killing basically every enemy I could get to (except the desert).
Otherwise, though, even before glass cannon, the game and battle were too easy. Midnight Oil+flare, rain+ice shard, rain+blitz bolt, were natural and overwhelmingly powerful. On hard, I generally could defeat anything up to 2 levels higher than my party, and against single targets they could be 3- sometimes 5 levels higher (so much cc in this game haha).
Lots of inconsistencies you addressed, I really feel need to be worked out ASAP.
I started crafting at around level 17, having looked at a crafting guide early on and seeing clvl=17+ as a common thing for a big boost in stats lol. (i didnt look up walkthroughs except when I became hopelessly stuck (usually due to missing a switch, never having had to interact with braziers previously, or having missed an area entrance/exit (which happened quite a bit)).
