I honestly don’t even remember how the vanilla game feels at this point since I always play it with a ton of mods (including ones focused on damage rebalance and restoring missing mechanics from pre-2.0 days). With the right build you can break the difficulty in half regardless of the weapon type but I feel like some sections didn’t handle the skill and gameplay rework as well as the rest of the game, leading to some rough parts if you’re not prepared.

If you’re on PC there are some mods that might help with your camera issue. If not, I can only sympathise. I’m sure they’ll get it right one day…