I'm playing Octopath Traveler. Had it for absolutely ages but never got around to playing it. It's really good, but it took me a while to get used to the combat.
Yeah it is. The enemies have armour which can only be destroyed by certain attacks, which you may not have in your party. Also, you can't see their HP and they tend to have lots of it. As to my party, I'm not sure if this is the right approach, but I've recruited everyone and I keep on swapping them out so that I can do all the stories xD
No they don't, but you need certain characters in your party for some quests. So I always just swap them out and hope that before I have to fight the boss they'll level up enough lol. Currently stuck on 1 boss though