I think your assessment is fair! Like I said in the first post on my topic (and affirmed more strongly throughout it), I came to realize I love Albion as a world and story but not so much as a game.
The awkwardnesses you described are all very real – one you mentioned that stuck out at me but that I haven’t mentioned before is the route to the Former building on the first island. You would think that at this early stage, there would be some sort of overgrown path to follow to get you there – but if you follow the path out of the city you instead get to the middle of nowhere! You have to clamber your way behind the city across vines on a narrow little pass and then go in the opposite direction from where you’ve been told for a while, just to get anywhere – and the maps are consistently much larger than they need to be for their content.
That problem arose again late in the game for me, when I was going through the hidden path in Umajo – there’s an exit that serves no purpose and will just dump you out in a vast space with nothing to discover or do. And because of the nature of the hidden tunnels, it’s very difficult to find your way back.
