I don't get how the BG can limit yourself, to be fair I prefer it over the Xillias' stupid overlimit (don't know much what older games had), which forced you to be linked with someone. With the BG you can do mystic artes whenever you want, which I do not think is a bad thing at all.
As for healing, I heard that in Berseria is the same as in Zestiria, it doesn't heal in percentage but it's based on the user's arte attack and on the target's arte defense. Though it's not really the same, they were definitely changed/nerfed, since Healing Circle (let's take this as an example) in Zestiria actually heals a good amount of HP regardless, compared to the other crappy spells, and can heal even more if you raise those stats.
From what I've seen in Berseria the main healing source is your Break Soul, but that means you have to attack even more in order to heal, don't like this. But who knows, maybe at end-game, when your stats are high enough, those spells will become good [?] (I doubt it).
What I also don't like is that they're even worse if you raise the difficulty, and I like to play with the highest difficuly available, guess I'll just disable those spells from the AI then.
The thing is that when you are low in HP you usually stop attacking/back off to defend or heal yourself instead of attacking, in Berseria if you're low on HP you have to attack more, causing you to do even more damage, it's like you're doing the same thing over and over, though appartently you can do this only with Velvet and Eleanor, the other characters' Break Souls are situational, Rokurou's is a perfect example (howver it can still be used to cancel combos)
It would have been better if healing spells were reliable (+heal/a bit shorter casting time) and Break Souls didn't heal you imo.
To be honest I hope they'll go with the Xillia route in terms of combat as well for the next game, since I do not like arte trees that much to begin with. It's true that in Berseria is less limiting, but it still remains so.
With that said, I'll finally be able to start the game in a little while, so I'll have a more clear view.