I disagree with the OP completely. It's easily one of the most charming games of the last decade and probably the one which makes me get a Switch, despite it seemingly coming to PC as well.

Both character's intros alone where touching and amazingly written. Beyond excited and totally surprised since I didn't expect that.

Tge battle systems seems totally fine and it's way too early to judge anyway since this demo is nothing more than the intro/tutorial anyway.

I must be missing what is hard to understand here.

Let's use this enemy. It takes 3 to break.

Then every second sequence, you break, and do some extra damage on the next hit. You go again and 2x. It is the enemy turn. you do 2x. it hits you back. you do 2x, break and do some extra damage. You use a boosted spell. It is enemy turn. You 2x, it attacks, etc etc.
This sequence looks like this:
2x, enemy attack, 1Break1hit, 2x, unbreak 2x, enemy attack, 1break1hit, 2x, unbreak 2x, enemy attack
With a net of
Normal hits: 6
Break hits: 6
enemy attacks: 3
remaining boost: 0

Now if you do this sequence:
2x, enemy attack, regular hit break, charge, 3x attack break, boosted spell, 2x, enemy attack, regular hit break
You get:
normal hits: 3
Charged hits: 5
Break hits: 0
enemy attacks: 2
Spells: 1 + charge
Remaining boost 1

Now, break hits deal 50% more damage, charged up moves do 55%, and every boost of a spell is 100% more

So the total damage breakdown is: (using 30 base)
1)
180+270

2)
90+250+750

The math is hard to deny here. on top of which, the enemy attacked three times in your scenario.
Also, if you do 2x every attack, you dont get a chance to boost your skills, which do insane amount of damage compared to normal attacks. I mean look, even with primrose or the knight, a boosted skill does 750 damage with only 2 bubbles. That's 15 of your attacks. I just don't get how you're not seeing this.

This is a video of someone overhitting, as you say is the best way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJM7M7TdHs4

This is someone who used the system correctly: (her voice sucks, so just mute it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADsMx8Bl4G8&t=1261s

This is a level 4 (top) with an upgraded dagger
vs
a level 3, with the base dagger

I read the OP and saw the update. As far as I can tell, his sytem for the boss would be 1,1,1,1 break, max special, 1, 1,
In this instance, within the same 7 turns as given above, he doles out 1500 + 180 for 1680 whereas my alternative scenario resulted in 1100.
The main difference being that his results in being hit 6 times, (at from what I saw, 40-50 damage per hit) or 300 damage, which is within striking range of double the dancer's health bar. With 200 hp, the accurate actions would have to be 1,1,1,1,max special, potion, 1 -then 1,1,1 break for a complete repeating pattern of 1,1,1,1, maxspec, potion.

An alternative pattern would be
1,1,2break, 2xspec, 1, 3x break, 2x spec
this results in 150 +1500 and being attacked 3 times for 130-150

so it's 1680 + 300 hp loss, potion loss
vs
1650 + 150 hp loss

I understand your point that you can beat them anyway without the min-maxing (minimal strategy). But games like these ramp up over time, as others have said. It's likely that the game was simply at an easy enough level where you not giving af didn't affect win.

That's not what I said about a three shield battle, you would be forced to use a 2-2-3-1-3-1 - with the 1 being replaced with abilities to save time, since otherwise it is insufferably long. Like I said, there's nothing brilliant about doing this, it's just one more encounter type you will experience dozens to hundreds of times, and another chore-ish type thing you have to keep doing repetively; every battle with 3 shields will be pretty much the same. My issue is the bloat of the battle system. Why add additional steps in the interface to a game with so few encounter situations? Especially when those encounter situations are extensively repeated? This extra fiddling with the interface isn't depth, its complexity for the sake of complexity - and that complexity is just repetitive actions, there isn't variety; the exact same tactics are applied to the same encounters - which are frequently repeated. This is why it only took 2-3 hours, in my experience, for the battle system to feel like a real chore. Ramping up over time doesn't fix these issues, it compounds them by further bloating the system in adding more steps to be repeated dozens and dozens of times.

Take a game like Chrono Trigger, for example, the addition of enemy positioning and scripted actions is something that created depth. There are LOTS of unique encounters in that game.

In addition, when you factor in the large variety of magic, single techs, dual techs, and triple techs, you end up with dozens of different types of damage and statuses you can deliver to enemies. So you have a large variety of options to deal with a large variety of situations. One of which, using a lightning bolt to stun a dinosaur, and deliver more damage, is just one of the ways to take down an enemy in Chrono Trigger - it's every way to take down an enemy in Project Octopath. Chrono Trigger, in addition, didn't bloat its interface to get the actions done. It was done far more simply - you select attack, and the character attacks - no extra fiddling around; no extra interface burden.

Why make such half-baked suggestions? Cutscenes should be skippable without having to view them once. It's so annoying to watch stuff or click through lots of text on an additional playthrough. It isn't hard to implement a button press that prompts a message that asks if the cutscene should be skipped; that way skipping by accident can't happen.

The game is scheduled for spring 2018. It's doubtful that any major changes are going to be made to the full game based on feedback to the demo, so a delay isn't likely.

That's not what I said about a three shield battle, you would be forced to use a 2-2-3-1-3-1 - with the 1 being replaced with abilities to save time, since otherwise it is insufferably long. Like I said, there's nothing brilliant about doing this, it's just one more encounter type you will experience dozens to hundreds of times, and another chore-ish type thing you have to keep doing repetively; every battle with 3 shields will be pretty much the same. My issue is the bloat of the battle system. Why add additional steps in the interface to a game with so few encounter situations? Especially when those encounter situations are extensively repeated? This extra fiddling with the interface isn't depth, its complexity for the sake of complexity - and that complexity is just repetitive actions, there isn't variety; the exact same tactics are applied to the same encounters - which are frequently repeated. This is why it only took 2-3 hours, in my experience, for the battle system to feel like a real chore. Ramping up over time doesn't fix these issues, it compounds them by further bloating the system in adding more steps to be repeated dozens and dozens of times.

Take a game like Chrono Trigger, for example, the addition of enemy positioning and scripted actions is something that created depth. There are LOTS of unique encounters in that game.

In addition, when you factor in the large variety of magic, single techs, dual techs, and triple techs, you end up with dozens of different types of damage and statuses you can deliver to enemies. So you have a large variety of options to deal with a large variety of situations. One of which, using a lightning bolt to stun a dinosaur, and deliver more damage, is just one of the ways to take down an enemy in Chrono Trigger - it's every way to take down an enemy in Project Octopath. Chrono Trigger, in addition, didn't bloat its interface to get the actions done. It was done far more simply - you select attack, and the character attacks - no extra fiddling around; no extra interface burden.