Couple of tips I discovered after a few hours. Just got to the main island.
If the camera feels "floaty" on PC, turn down sensitivity 2-3 notches.
Take your first skill in lockpicking since there are some chests that require it and i don't believe you go back to the starting town. Nothing major in those chests, but I hate leaving them behind. Alternatively your first companion has a chest with +1 lockpicking on it that you can equip when needed.
You can craft abilities like lockpicking, crafting, science onto gear if you get lucky with drops (ruby, obsidian, etc). Though you still have to select those abilities in order to progress into that tree.
You can pause in combat which pulls up a sub menu to choose actions. I haven't used it much, but it's implemented well.
The first town has lots of fire and ash floating so you may miss the sparkling chests that contain loot as I did initially. They look similar to fire sparkles.
Just found a combat arena in the Coin Guard barracks in the new island. Appears to be a gauntlet of foes for some easy XP. Found it just by exploring the area (you get sent there for a quest).
There is some fast travel and a campfire option to organize your party of 2 others with a shared stash similar to Dragon Age.
Block.Block.Block. That seems to be the key to combat. On PC the right mouse is a quick block depending on what weapon you have. It appears to mitigate all damage and cost no resources to use. The only factor is timing since you can't hold a block, so you just have to time it which is not that hard or twitchy. So far it appears you can block ALL attacks. Haven't fully tested for AOE damage yet.
If you run into doors you don't have to press the door open button.