I think I'm headed in to that area, with the Lava. You definitely need to level grind your pokemon before attempting new regions or especially any boss fights. But, that's every JRPG. This is no different.
I feel like it's a bit like Dark Souls difficulty sometimes, seriously!
It's definitely an old school game design, where you have to complete the entire dungeon alive until you get to a save point just before the Boss fight. And cure and magic restore items are expensive, so...there is also the char grind necessary before progressing, and I don't know how I feel about that yet...?
I don't know about the British accents, but the companion has like a bad Irish/Scottish accent, where you do need to read the subtitles to understand sometimes, but even the subtitles have an accent, so I don't know.
I would say that at the 3rd boss, in the gold forest, juggling between 3 pokemons in real time is very tricky, and I can see if you don't have patience for this sort of thing, why some people hate it. It's basically the FFXIII paradigm system, but not as intuitive. Interesting...
I used to mainly go to Gamestop to buy old PS2 and PSP games. For new releases, it's usually Amazon, Walmart or Target. I remember buying Guild Wars 2 last year, at Gamestop, and the "knowledgable" staff were trying to get me to play WoW instead. It had a new patch or something. Yeah, they were trashing their own merchandise in front of the customer. Derp. Guild Wars 2 is still awesome, sub. free and I still play it.
My favorite part of PS4 streaming is the talkshows, which stream on twitch, but twitch ended that. It was wierd and cool. Except for the rapey part.
But there is a Vita 2. It will probably be marketed as a companion hardware to PS4, like the WiiU gamepad in the future. I'm excited to see if games like Diablo 3 and FF 14 can be played remotely on VITA. I really want this feature.
How come you're not streaming on PS4? It seems quite a few people are, mostly COD Ghosts, and KIllzone. It would be interesting to see a PS4 stream with commentary, but there really aren't a lot of PS4 games to talk about yet I guess.
This Tearaway being a neglected step-child argument has been brought up on a few blogs and podcasts, and it's true. It seems it should be marketed by Sony better, like they did with Little Big Planet. I will put this game on a priority list and play it soon.
Also, a lot of people with youtube channels aren't very knowledgable about games, but I think you would be different. Knowledgable gamers who stream are more interesting to watch in my opinion. Good luck with it.
Well now there is a short window to replay VIII before Lightning Returns and FF X & X-2 come out in Feb and Mar. So Jan.
Well, I likes FF and Dark Souls. A couple of MMOs too. 
