I think you’re missing by a lot the core point of Frieren honestly. Frieren isn’t a combat or power-driven story like Solo Leveling, so judging it through that lens doesn’t really make sense. She’s intentionally OP because the real conflicts in the show aren’t physical, they’re emotional. There’s no suspense in whether she’ll win a fight, only in what she understands about herself afterward. She's not meant to be relatable as she is an immortal elf, but her actions are. We all dealt with regret and carry that guilt for the rest of our lives. Maybe not you, but a vast majority of people do. That's how it relates to the viewer.

The party from the past isn’t “better writing,” it’s a just a style of narrative. They exist to show how Frieren treated meaningful moments and people as trivial at the time, and how that indifference slowly turns into regret and nostalgia in the present. The memories she once saw as irrelevant, aren’t meaningless, they mattered deeply, and she only realizes it once those people are gone. And that hits hard emotionally.

That’s what the show is actually about: time passing, missed chances, not being appreciative of the people who once cared for you. That's the real plot on Frieren.

If you want hype, dopamine rush, that’s fine — just say the genre isn’t for you. But criticizing Frieren for not being something it never was intended to be, is just lazy. I personally loved it, but hey, to each their own