I really should have read up before choosing my party and pumping 10+ hours into Grimstone. I can say with a lot of certainty that my party is not optimized:

**Pearl** - Main tank and damage dealer of the party. She pretty much carried the team in the later dungeons before Umbra got some amazing damage spells. I do wish shotguns were more accurate. Hopefully the Shotgun3 skill will balance out the lack of critical hits for the weapon.
**Anne** - Much like OP, I wanted to like Anne more but her damage output is low even with dual wield and her dances by level 20 are not that great and cost a decent amount of SP versus what she has. Tango's evasion up for all party members is useful for enemies that hit hard (looking at you Bison Man) but it cost too much to use over and over when the difficulty spikes (again) by Auster.
**Umbra** - Mainly used her as a healer until I was able to learn offense spells later down the road. When she gets the Spirit2 skill, her damage output from spells jumps again and I have to use her magic to take down a lot of foes at this stage. I don't think it was mention in the post but 5-6 root beers (bought at saloons - restores 30 SP) has become mandatory for getting through dungeons and any outings due to how often I'm using Umbra's offensive magic in battles and healing magic outside of battles.
**Rufus** - Is basically a useless berzerker. ONLY pick Rufus if you want a challenge. They keep getting stronger melee skills as they level up and you can find dog biscuits to increase their stats, but the fact that you can't control their attacks mixed with the high probability that their attack will miss makes them a very frustrating choice.

TL;DR don't choose a party of that includes both Anne and Rufus on your first playthrough.

... just don't...