A lot of the things you mentioned
1. Grinding always feels degrading 2. the characters never learning 3. the entire second half of the game 4. the difficultly "scaling" 5. that pay to something thing just sitting there... staring at me 6. The turn based combat never felt like it hit a good spot like it did in the demo 7. I'm sure there were more quirks for me in the story, but I'm not playing it again
There was no one big thing and usually I prefer that cause it makes it simple, can I get past this 1 thing in the game? vs. can I get past the reoccurring repeatedly annoying, but small things in this game.
Well that's interesting. Ah well
I still enjoyed the game and shredding through it in hard mode with this class combo/set up:
Agnes (Spiritmaster/White mage): Holy one, Maximize HP [Gear is focused on mind and magic defense/physical defense]
Tiz (Ninja/Pirate): Frenetic fighting, precision [Gear is focused on strength/crit]
Ringabel (Ninja/Templar): Frenetic fighting, precision [Gear is focused on strength/crit]
Edea (Ninja/Dancer): Frenetic fighting, precision [Gear is focused on strength/crit]
I took advantage of the second half grind fest to make this set up. Ninja is OP. 9999x2 damage in one turn is amazing