Now that I finally got around to play through this game that I only knew from a demo 'back in the days', there are some points I only figured out relatively late in the game but that might be helpful:

1) All F keys are Hotkeys. F1-F4 lets you select one of the active party members, F5-F8 lets you select tactics on the fly, and F9-F12 lets you hotkey skills and spells (however, the hotkeys are the same for all party members, so you can only hotkey 4 spells total).

2) It helps a lot to level all party members from the very beginning to keep the game flow going. Every character only gets EXP for the damage he is dealing. There is no leech or anything else distributing EXP. Hence, if you get your archer to 20 but still got a level 3 berserk you want to level you might find that tough because the archer snipes down everything before the berserk gets to it. They don't have to have exactly the same level, but make sure to rotate frequently. The game becomes extremely slow when you constantly have to wait for your 'strong' characters to recover.

3) Leveling the wizard is hardest but he ended up being my strongest character. Up to level 10 you just have to drag him along. At level 10 you can max one of the dragon 'summon' skills. This allows him to just cast some dragons and run off while they do damage. An easy way to level him is to go to one of the castles, send most of your party away, open a door, cast some dragons, close it again and just wait for the exp to role in while the dragons continue to do damage. Once he hits level 20 max one of the kanjis and just kill everything...

You can easily keep him alive with the energy shield later.

4) Related to 3), I only noticed late in the game that spells leech... you can easily get your wizard to have 50%-100% ki leech by crafting some equipment. With that he can just fire kanjis endlessly becoming extremely strong (I nearly soloed the last boss with the wizard).

5) Craft a +gold% armor in time. I used up all the gems and gold I had to make an 800%+ gold armor mid game. This offers incredible returns when you make sure to always open all chests with the character wearing this armor.

6) Drops improve rapidly after you move on from the 4 castles to the blue pathway.

If you set your tactics right (the big green button next to the life sphere, left click to switch them, right click to change settings) your characters will cast even computer controlled... It's a bit fiddly but you have to make sure in the chosen tactics the mage (or any char you want to cast spells) is in <spell> slot and has the right spell selected in <role editor> tab. I think he can only have one spell chosen for casting.

The whole tactics selection is pain in the ass to set up imho, especially if you keep rotating characters a lot to heal them up/level them up, but if you can spend time to set them up properly, you can switch them very quickly in combat.

yea I found it much easier to just keep a couple casting characters that I control and let the swing and slash guys do the work. I work the Ninja, mage, etc up as casters, with ki leech weapons, and donations to max their spells so they do all the casting work, the rest just with health leech weapons and going in swinging with max armor and weapons slicing and dicing. Easier that way really than to worry about the warriors "casting" in combat.

Sure, a couple spells and powers are good to throw on just before a big fight, but really why worry about having the big warriors casting when they have their builds focused on weapons. So its a casting ninja and casting mage, plenty to keep you occupied in combat with spells. The others get their resistance of choice, or weapon damage element, or similar and good to go until after the fight.

Your maxed out caster is going to lay waste to everything in the room anyway except for boss's long before your melee guys do anything. And they probably will do the most vs boss's also. The melee guys you have on your team are just for distraction. A mage with good health/mana leech armor, throwing out level 35 aoe spells, is killing stuff in seconds, and keeping full health and KI at the same time, along with having 250% gold boost probably. Mage or Ninja, basically the same thing. Leader of course everything into charisma after you reach his strength and dex goals (you have enough melee warriors, use him for what he does best, makes crafting and buying cheaper, since he is THE ONLY ONE that does that, and customized equipment gets expensive. You have your brick, beserker, archer, swordsman, etc for melee. Use the Leader for what he does best. Charisma and cheaper prices.

also please let me know how to hotkey spells to F9-F12, I never found a way. I only use a couple spells on casters anyway but would be nice to know. Tried to figure it out, never did.

For me it works just like Diablo 2, ie click the spell icon on status bar to get it roll out the spells and then just press F9-F12 while mousing over them.

yep that did it thanks.