Hey,
Since you wrote that excellent post, I wanted to reply to it with my own insights.
So I never had sight, and never got to play hard video games. So all of my gaming experience has been with audio games. Most of the games I grew up with weren't very difficult strategically. Thus it can take me a bit of time to really master the strategy of a harder game. Just throwing all of that out there so you can see where I'm coming from.
When I play Island of Blood and Ash, I usually buy the knife as soon as I can, then at level 3 I start using guns, because something in me says if the enemies have them, I should have them too. Lol. That said, after reading your notes I may try to focus more on melee. I think I'm good enough with fists and melee where I could do that.
I can pretty consistently reach level 6 now (earlier today I made it to 8), but by the time I'm able to begin using my tools, the game has gotten frantic enough that I can't focus much on gathering. I can find little 15-second windows to gather, but it's very easy to get surrounded and lose a huge chunk of health in a split second. And the higher the level goes, the less time I can really put into it.
My biggest hurdle is finding a way to survive when a group of enemies closes in, since they're not packed tightly enough for an explosive, but they're not separated enough for me to pick them off one by one. So I resort to the cheese tactic of jumping across the board, frantically looking for a quiet spot.
With all of that said though. I don't want this to come off as me saying the game is too hard or unfair. Because it does have a really nice balance to it. You can tackle the challenge in a few different ways, and I can really appreciate that.