I never played the game but these sound like criticisms I would've made. Sounds like it would have been much more fun if they made night exploration more tom clancy style spy/sneaking missions using magic and environmental objects to cause distractions and sneak about. And if they got quidditch right, it would've added much-need replayability (and possibly multiplayer) similar to blitzball in ff10.

I also heard the combat was very simple and repetitive. I could understand if they were trying to focus efforts on other hand systems but it sounds like they just skimped on development efforts across the board.