After having reached level 10 and cleared the Endless Paths along with nearly all of the Act II areas, I can now safely say the following:
While this is a very good roleplaying game, it is not a very good action game. The combat is a slog. A dull, annoying, repetitive slog made all the more-so by the horrible AI. All you need is a single fighter specialized towards tanking (Defender, that talent that gives Defender +10 deflection, sword/shield style, etc.), put them in plate mail with a large shield, and every encounter will play out the same way; all the enemies will cluster around and/or line up to attack the fighter while being utterly unable to damage them for more than a couple points.
So, all the rest of your party has to do is stand back and fire barrage after barrage of projectiles until everything is dead. If you have a chanter they should be chanting that increased reloading speed chant, and if you have a cipher they can be doing whatever since they have infinite spells. Everyone else should just be using guns/bows to decimate anything that moves in complete and total safety. Of course, were the enemy AI smarter, that would not necessarily make things better considering the utter lack of any method to draw/keep aggro beyond ‘be the first thing the opponent sees’.
Not helping matters any are the bugs that never should have made it out of beta testing, such as not being able to set multiple traps, companions’ inventories and quick slot items vanishing if you rest after removing them from the party, or there being no way to disable the rogue’s Reckless Assault ability (which seems like it was supposed to be a modal). Nor the more insidious bugs such as permanently losing racial/class passive effects if you double-click equip an item, or certain abilities becoming permanently unusable (stuck in the ‘on’ state) if the enemy they’re targeting is killed at the wrong moment.
So, is the game worth playing? Absolutely. Just not now. Later, after it’s got a patch or two at the very least. Personally I’m likely not going to replay it until some sort of party-member AI is added; having to micromanage everyone pretty much guarantees I’ll never be able to enjoy the combat.