Combat is very good imo, just that the game is too easy and the gameplay really shines only during the boss fights

Oh yeah i agree
it is tedious for me because it is too easy
I wish they would just let you choose hard on the first playthrough

Yeah, the game has very poor balancing, it's way too easy when you are doing the secondary content, but it's as important than the main quest since both are complementary, so you can't expect the player to not complete a lot of the secondary content to balance the difficulty. I also agree that it would have been better if hard mode was possible from the start.