I was going to complain about a few things with this game, and still may, but it's possible I may have brought most of the problems down upon myself due to maybe the biggest bonehead move I possibly could have made. One of the biggest advantages the player has is stealth and stealth weapons. Well into the game, about L-12 or so IIRC, I found inside a chest a needle gun. Its stats were no better, and a bit worse, than some weapons my team already had. So, at the base weaponsmith I dismantled the gun for parts which are used to upgrade other weapons. Aaaaaaargh!
Now, it seemed a good idea at the time, but eventually I realized what a horrible mistake I'd made necessitating a restart of the game. You see, the needle gun is a stealth weapon (which I obviously didn't notice) and could have been given to the 3rd member of my team. In turn, adding this guns damage to the other two guns I already had would allow me to kill some higher level bad guys from stealth without alerting the whole mob of bad guys to my presence, which leads to getting inevitably rolled over as bad guys frequently start with a 2-1 and sometimes 3-1 numerical advantage. If you can't thin the herd via stealth it is often a very short battle indeed.
So, hope this helps someone. Off to sneak around. Later.