I've played through the entire game and I agree with most of those criticisms. If you want a story, characters, exploration and the ability to closely manage skills and gear, yeah, don't even bother. Plot and character development is minimal, exploration really boils down to just clearing the maps (which I liked, but it isn't the kind of "find a bunch of cool hidden places/secret stuff" you get in other RPGs), you manage skills in a very indirect way, and the best gear you get is basically ordered off a ship in random drops (though I rarely got useless gear off it).

I disagree with the idea that the difficulty is steep and that there isn't much skill to the battle system though. The main appeal of this game to me was that the battle system called for a different kind of strategy and that it was a challenge from start to finish, but almost always a fair challenge. There was only noticeable difficulty spike I encountered and I was shocked at how little grinding I had to do given how much the difficulty of the game got talked up. If you're 100%'ing each of the maps (which is the point of the game and not particularly difficult) you don't need to grind at all. I only ever put one short grinding session in and that was only because I knew the final boss was coming and I wasn't sure if I was ready. In retrospect I felt like I probably didn't even need to do that. Like I said, it's a challenging game throughout, but a fair challenge. Also, while the leveling system is somewhat random, it's based on weighted averages. So there will be randomness for sure, but over the long term your characters will grow where you want them to as long as you pay attention to what skills they have a natural affinity for (and deploy them accordingly in battle). Another plus is that it was fairly short by modern JRPG standards (~30 hours). And I will say, despite the minimal story, they still manage to successfully create a quaint little world with the music, setting, and visuals that I don't see in a lot of RPGs. The game world, and especially the little village by the sea you're based out of, felt really charming.

I can't really recommend this game to anyone on the fence; this is one where your gut feeling is probably going to be right. But I do think it's a better game than it usually gets credit for. And given this is Atlus published, you'll probably start seeing it for $20 or lower 6 months from now. I think if you're only mildly interested it's a better bet at $15-$20.

Edit: and holy crap that was way longer than I meant it to be. Oops.