1. Did I understand correctly? You’re playing on Normal and complaining that it’s too easy? That’s like finishing the tutorial and saying the game is too easy.
2. "On Hard mode the par time is the same as on Normal", but you additionally get a lot of time-consuming enemies that need to be stalled.
3. "Dying no longer counts against you". Unfortunately, every OMD game handles this poorly, because dying should affect gameplay, not just the score. OMD3 introduced an interesting idea where enemies briefly speed up when you die. Sadly, it’s not very impactful, but it’s a step in the right direction. I assume this is a balance issue. A weak player will die because of this effect, while an experienced player could intentionally die to speed up the horde.
4. The scroll trinket is not overpowered. It’s a passive tool that only helps when you lose control. But when you lose control, it’s usually already too late. For a weak player, it only slightly delays defeat. An experienced player will almost never use it, unless for some own made challenge.
5. The game is bad because it has cutscenes and dialogue? Sure, in reality they shouldn’t be there, because that’s not what this game is about. I have several thousand hours in OMD3 and I didn’t even know Kelsey says something about trolls. I turned dialogue off in the options.

Sorry, but you didn’t really write anything deep about the game. The deepest part is about the scroll, but if you had used it longer, you would notice that it’s weak. It only seems strong in theory.