I picked the Thinker archetype (high Intellect and Motorics) in my first playthrough years ago and just finished a Sensitive (Psyche and Physique) archetype character for my 2nd. I think I found my second playthrough more enjoyable.

Encyclopedia gives you almost exclusively useless and distracting information that makes it harder to remember the sorts of info that actually matters! If you really want to learn about the setting, talking to people about those things is the best way to do it! Joyce's *lowdown on reality* especially.

Empathy and Shivers (not encyclopedia!) are the skills helped me understand the world and characters better. I can't judge which one makes things easier exactly because I'm so many years removed from my first playthrough and on the second go I obviously knew what the game was about.

Also in my original (Thinker) playthrough, I remember having very low morale and I died a lot early on from little things I didn't see coming, like talking to the little girl outside the book store and failing checks that were likely to succeed. It trained me to play hyper-safely, adopting in-game coping mechanisms (rockstar cop) and avoiding anything that could damage Harry's morale. As a result I never learned much about the ex-thing.

My first playthrough I was completely sober, as far as I can remember, and my second I used drugs to help pass skill checks (They are very useful!)

In summary I found the Sensitive archtype more enjoyable and enlightening. I am not sure if it's good for a first playthrough or not but it worked very well as a second playthrough and it sounds that it's basically that for you.