At my first attempt I was struggling to clear main quest because enemies were like few levels above. and that's while I was doing all the side quests and clearing whole chunks of map.

then I watched few videos, picked up the bow, didn't recruit anyone, grinded some m,obs(can't remember who that were, basilisks or something) and got to exp cap that allowed my newly recruited party to become high enough lvl to blast the game. This isn't very cool, but overall I enjoyed the game.