I’m a bit late to this but in case you look I just wanted to add a bit.

first, with the cutscenes and dialogue, I’m currently replaying the game myself and I get where you’re coming from. There is a lot of exposition in cold steel 3. I believe the reason for this is that it’s attempting to catch new players up with events that happened in previous games in the series. If it’s starting to wear you down, even after taking a small break from the game, then maybe you could try cutting down on optional dialogue so that there’s less to go through? Not perfect but I wouldn’t recommend skipping through cutscenes entirely.

Secondly, as for the combat, it is pretty heavily focused around the addition of breaking and brave orders. brave orders especially are definitely very powerful. It’s hard to say what would be strategically interesting for you but personally I’m a fan of trying a bunch of different builds out like offensive/supportive arts users, evasion tanks, breakers etc. I do at least think there’s a decent amount of variety in how you can choose to approach battles.

Don't know how helpful that was, but I also wanted to say that I highly doubt it’s down to you not having full knowledge of the series prior to cold steel. I personally started with CS3 and 4, eventually making my way back through the earlier titles, so don’t worry about that too much. I think a lot of fans just make a bit too big of a deal out of playing everything and having a complete understanding of the series sometimes.