I have the exact same feeling as you.
I actually never cared much for Krile so far and was looking at DT to decide if I liked her or not, but it feels like I still don't know because I barely saw her.

Not only do we not compete with the other scions, we also barely collaborate with the ones that are on our side. There was so many opportunities to hang out with them while completing the numerous tasks we had to do in the first 3 zones and have some light and fun chat with them except... we never do because we got to babysit Wuk every single time.


I'd also like add something about the whole "low stakes" thing that was advertised too and that is used a lot by people to justify the slow start and so on.
The devs said it would be lower stakes, except it really isn't. The first part, yes. But by the end of the MSQ, the stakes are just as high as before with a world threatening enemy and all that. It simply follows the formula of 90% of jrpg out there.