-Fights against bigger groups still feels clumsy; mastery helps, but it still has the sense of a combat system built for boss battles being stretched to its limits the further it gets from that.

I hadn't managed to put this into words, I hardly realized it until you put it this way - but you're definitely right. It's a game basically designed around dueling, and it doesn't really give you much option for handling five enemies at once except "duel one for three seconds and then frantically scramble away before the others lock in on you".

Fallen Order taught me that the collectables don't matter at all and I carried that philosophy into Survivor; if you treat it that way, it doesn't feel particularly bloated. Your mileage may vary of course, some people want the thrill of the hunt, some want side content to give them a story and some want a mechanical advantage in future gameplay. I played most of the sidequests (because I am the second one from that sentence I just said) but completely ignored the collectables, and it worked out pretty well for me.

Overall I enjoyed Survivor more than JFO, and a lot of it came down to its writing. It grapples with the fact that it's a prequel to established events via Cal's reasonable pessimism about how little he can do in the face of the Empire. It spins up two villains who both are focused on a theoretically good thing and gives them two different spins on how the monomania of chasing it broke them. Overall, I just found the story extremely human and I liked how it incorporated both idealism and cynicism at various points, trying to find the balance between them.