Yes they did hire an advisor, Dale Dye the same one who worked on SPR, and as to all your other complaints the devs needed to think about playability, there's a million other posts on this topic and I don't wanna list off all their reasons so just do a search for it.
If you wanna more difficult experience play the game again in all three difficulty modes, and there's always the multiplayer...
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"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them." - Mark Twain