I think if I have one criticism of the plot is that it takes a while to get going. If I may, I'd recommend you to play thorough it at your own pace, possible also at the lowest difficulty just to experience the story. It's well worth it just for that.

It really sucks that you bounced so hard. Some tips in case you ever do want to go back to it:

Enemies are puzzles too. Nearly every single enemy in the game has a specific trick to them that, once you get it down you can beat them much more easily. This includes bosses. Usually this is indicated by breaking the enemy.

Don't worry about the races. I think I only ever won a single race in the entire game, and it has literally zero consequence other than a couple lines of dialog. It's purely a feel good thing, and to connect you more with Emily through a friendly competition.

The story can feel a bit confusing and disconnected because there's 2 stories happening at once: the crossworlds story and the actual story. The actual story only really starts to get serious towards the end, so until then just focus on enjoying the fake-mmo world!

If it's not for you, it's not for you and there's nothing I can do about that, but I really want others to enjoy this game as much as I did because I do believe it's something special.

Not only that, the combat was also utter jank.

If you play with M+KB, you can aim as good as the game clearly expects you to. But you will rapidly develop RSI from the spam-clicking, nevermind how the melee attack has the weirdest input I've seen in a long time.

If you use a controller, most controls work fine, but in return you cannot aim that well. Which is still preferrable, but the game clearly originally built for precise aiming.

Combined with how janky all the enemy attacks and hit boxes are, it just feels frustrating. Plus the difficulty is wild, 90%+ are boringly easy, and then the odd totally normal enemy wipes you in seconds.