Was going to write up something similar, but OP nailed most of it. Ill just add a few things:
Racial stats / abilities. Stats could be 1 of all primary attributes, wits, con, memory, or mix of the 3 utility. These options all work well with all classes.
Attribute system: It's terrible. Maybe it balanced, but having your damage scale *DOWN* with level feels like you are being punished. Even the utility parts scale down as the baseline scales up. This makes me suspect (although I didn't try it) that pumping full stats into hp is the way to go, since the bonus/malus seems to be capped at 30%. 70% damage at double HP is clearly the best option in this case.
Possible Fixes : Add in back a DOS type scaling, and only give one point per level. Furthermore, you could add back in the baseline stat requirements PER SKILL, and give diminishing returns on having points above the cap.
Schools/Spells: As far as I can tell, no skills require more than 1 point in their school. The bonuses on school vary a lot, but are either op (necromancy), or not all that useful (earth only affects one spell). There should be other reasons to level up, particularly if you are heavily invested in that school. I would like to see either a memory or CD reduction to skills by investing heavily in a school.
Memory: The idea seems fine, but the balance is off. 2 points per 1 skill slot is a terrible trade. If memory is that scare, only skills that are always useful will be taken, and no one will ever bother with rain. This is made worse by the fact that most of the harder battles are ambushes, so you don't have the opportunity to switch out your skills to optimal (unless you scum / reload, but then your skills will always be optimal anyways). Look at arena mode : The level 8 characters have something like 25 memory, and having all of those skills gives MORE interesting options, rather than just keeping the vanilla damage skills. Memory should scale slightly with level, be cheaper to upgrade, or skills should have reduced usage if you invest in their school.
Combat : Feels a bit fast. Wouldn't mind a 20% buff to everyone's hp. Further, the new armor system is fine, but it would be nice if there were a few (lesser) forms of cc that penetrated armor, and more interactions with armor (currently there are 2 skills that increase armor, and a few that specifically target it). Since cc is 100% effective after armor is gone, more ways to defend / cleanse against cc would also be nice.
Act 1 : Feels significantly smaller than act 1 in DOS. Particularly, there seem to be less 'little' quests / side quests (Sparkmaster, wandering chest, the wells, escorting the researcher back to town, etc). There also seems to be significantly less combat, in particular boss style fights. In DOS act 1, we had the lighthouse ghoul, the twins, the court, and braccus. Here we have the end of the act only. Sure there are one or two harder encounter (one in the swamp, and the witch), but in DOS there were plenty of hard encounters and plenty of bosses.
