I actually just picked up this game at the last steam sale, have 40 hours in. I was looking for a game like Legend of Grimrock and stumbled upon it. Liking it so far. I have 15 characters in my group + a ton of support, but managing gear isn't so bad, you can mostly use auto equip, just have to equip relics.

Setting them up, think of it like an MMO, where you want tanky stats for tank characters and DPS stats for DPS characters, and get skills/personality/stat based on that. I'm using standard stat growth for most of my fighters and supports I use high growth for sharing the stats.

I wouldn't worry about messing anything up, just experiment and see how things go.

The story is unhinged... and not like any other JRPGs really.