Bit of advice for anyone following this. Do try and stick to the main quest for a fair while! Do one rift, then return etc. There's plenty of instructions/hints etc constantly revealed as you play through. I've not yet got what I assume is the blacksmith (well, might just have unlocked him, but quit before I could confirm), but have played for 6 hours I'd guess, and there's still new mechanics being introduced.
Puzzles so far have been interesting enough, not needlessly time consuming for the most part, even the "busy work" parts have been a 10-20 seconds of swapping things, rather than having to run back and forth for 30 seconds etc.
I do need to start using the quick access belt more, and playing with that, and apparently there's a shortcut to drink a health potion that I need to find, there again, a lot of the time I seem to go from 140 health, to 90ish, to dead in just 2 hits, so not much time for potions! It's still quite satisfying combat though. In large scale fights, I find my companion survives quite well, but against a few, but very strong opponents, they're just a distraction until they get overwhelmed. It does feel more like a skill issue on my part still though, on breaking through the soul armour the tough opponents have, and putting it on hardest difficulty should make it hard!