Ok, I feel like I no lifed way worse than you guys on this. The game gets significantly easier once you have some of the main skills in the tree. Grit of course, back stab, all the time dilation shit. I use the dagger with nothing in my off hand (you are quicker with it empty) and can basically face roll anything Ive ran into lately. Dodge an attack, time slows down and I basically shank the shit out of them in their back. Rinse and repeat. (Ive reallocated a lot of my points into light attacks, and things that synergize with that tactic.) Yellow con Skirmishers, and those f'n bastard women that drop ghost bombs and hide in the bushes are the most annoying NPC's Ive encountered so far. They also are the only ones that counter my playstyle rather well.
*I dont like the skill tree as its setup. A lot of skills seem cool, but in reality are just idiotic. Maybe they have a place in the raids, or they are just "fun" for lower difficulties. Auto Loot on kill is probably the biggest time saver out of all of them, though. Just seems like a lot of fluff. The fog of war on them makes me think that someone originally had the plan to make changing your tree much, much harder than simply unlearning anything at the click of a button.
*The abilities are neat, but I for some reason.. just totally forget that I have them a lot of the time. Ive got four adrenaline bars, and use the axe throw when I do remember to. But even with 90% of them unlocked.. I just.. dont use them? Helped out with some 220 Combat Power Templar when I was like 90 CP. But havent used them since. Right now, I'm more of the opinion that collecting them is just a time waster - I may revisit this assumption when Im fighting things in the 300's, but as of right now.. they are just meh.
*Somewhere around when I got done with North America, I just totally gave up on collecting the non-icon gold dots. I dont have enough ingots to upgrade the gear that I need the materials most of the time anyways. There are just too many locations tied to the story line that keep you from collecting everything while exploring. I spent forever trying to figure out how to get into the cellar of this castle and just gave up. Then, later on - the zone story took me into that same castle and it unlocked that cellar. Doesnt really invalidate exploring, but a better implementation would make it where those gold dots dont show up until you can actually reach them. (Also, I f'n hateeeeeeeeeeeeee having to find explosive jars to break walls. They seem like they are everywhere in the world until you actually need one for a wall.)
Speaking of North America, I got the full gear set while I was there - but .. in hindsight, I just dont recommend it. Maybe itll have more relevance in a future DLC or further into the game, but right now they just seem like a huge waste of time. Same can be said for collecting all the tears in Asgard. I collected all of them and then looked up what they were for - only to find out that I just get a whopping 5 skill points for my trouble. Not.. worth.. the f'n.. effort. That should have been at least three times that many skill points, if not more. 30 tears for 15 is palatable, but 5? For that much time spent? Lord...
There are certain areas, one strangely enough in a forest? that dropped my frames down substantially. The first time, I just thought I had everything too high - so I neutered my settings to get through the area and.. this game looks like Absolute SHIT on medium or lower settings. Almost unplayable just because of how it looks. So I can definitely see where someone would refund the game based on that alone. But as far as some of the graphical bugs that were talked about earlier? Ive had very few. Ive experienced the bug where you're just waiting for the NPC's to respond and you cant do anything a few times, but they are few in number.
As far as the Audio issues? I just dont think Im an audiophile enough to notice them.
TL;DR - the game has a lot of time wasting components that dont sync up well with time spent vs reward. But so far at a CP of 180'ish / dealing with Aelfred - I feel like the games a solid addition to the franchise.
