The bloat is right. I had to min-max damn near everything in order to survive chapter 2 especially. I think the difficulty levels off again during chapter 3 and 4, but I can't imagine a newer player getting through on Core difficulty without having a completely optimized party if you intend to keep everyone single classed.
The chapter 2 superboss can be cheesed if you have the Close to the Heavens angel summon, who is immune to its physical attacks. I've heard you can also instakill it with a Dismissal spell if you're lucky, and despite what the spell says, you'll still get any loot the enemy had. The summoner lady is considered the harder fight, but apparently she's cheesed to hell if you drop a Glitterdust (or was it Faerie Fire) on her, as Glitterdust basically wrecks her concealment and the spell isn't subject to spell resistance and the enemy cannot save against it. Problem is, I don't think Camellia or Sosiel learn it naturally single-classed, and the other characters that might have to pick up the spell while leveling up. And checking my huge scroll stash, you don't find a scroll for it as well, except for the one in chapter 1 that you're expected to reveal an optional boss with.
I couldn't beat the superboss Playful Darkness in chapter 3 because I didn't have anyone capable of targeting her low touch AC besides Ember, nor did I have save DCs high enough to nail her down and lower her actual AC with my crowd control spells. Meanwhile I found the chapter 4 superboss laughably easy in comparison. Though I've heard Playful Darkness can actually be cheesed by abusing the environment - I've seen people talking about how she can supposedly be attacked out of range of your party by the area where the group of Succubi are.
I am fully aware of the Cave Fangs exploit, but I'm not going to use it because I expect that to get fixed.
I play on core and everyone is single classed (Except Regil who starts with 2 classes obviously). Some fights were tricky and required several tries, but I am now in Act 5 and face no problems anymore (no exploits either).
