Two questions related to NPC conversations and party members before my purchase

[Gittes]

- I just watched a Lets Play of the prologue and although the art direction, music and setting were nice, I find nothing more boring in games than talking to NPCs. There was definitely too much of that in the prologue. Will this decrease significantly as the game progresses so at least half as much as I experienced in the prologue? Cutscenes in which I can passively follow the action don't bother me.

- How many party members do you collect in the course of the game? RPG elements that I have to apply to too many characters often overwhelm me in games and take the fun out of it.

Thanks for all the answers!

[MakitaRotSprout]

The dialogue scenes are all skippable and not essential.
As you progress there are generally much fewer dialogue scenes except for one section at the end of act 2 which is also skippable. I'm not a fan of story games or npc dialogue myself but I love this game.
There are 6 party members. There's quite a lot to remember about how to use their different mechanics. If it's too overwhelming you can easily get away with just focusing on strengthening 2 or 3 of your favourites and ignoring the rest.

[Saelin]

The prologue has the most NPC talking at one time. There is like, only 1-2 town in the game (maybe spoiler?) and 95% of the NPCs are optional.

You do have conversations through cutscenes and also between party members at camps. I don't think any of those surpass 5 minutes, excluding the end/beginning of Acts.

So yeah, the prologue is the worse part of this. Also it's almost all skippable anyway.

[Kernist]

I would say the prologue is the 2nd when it comes to length of talking to NPCs, first one is the village. Still, you don't have to do that. As for party members - at one point you can have max of 5 party members and in fights you can use only 3.