Rescuing Archaeologist Quest - All Boasts - Advice?

[HolderofSanity]

This is more me letting off steam via rant than anything, as I'm pretty sure there isn't much else i can do but slam my head against this mission until I get lucky.

The short of it is that I'm on the final room of this quest, I have to save the archaeologist by killing all the enemies within 5 minutes. As in the title, I'm running both "without a scratch" and "fist-fighter." I have 2 large mercenaries and 4 guards at my back, fully upgraded slow-time, and adequately upgraded heal. afaik I'm about as well prepared as I can be.

As for the rant, I'm really glad I've got my nostalgia goggles on because otherwise I might think this is one of the single most poorly designed games I've ever played, just passable so long as you're on normal mode and about as tanky/high damage as can be. I'm at my wits end, not even sure exactly how I've finished every other quest up to this point with all boasts. It feels like every time I start to do well, some ai is surgically inserting glitches/bugs for the express purpose of making me angry. I was dumbfounded at first by the fact that enemies will animation cancel, deal damage out of sync, randomly ignore punches during in between combos (fists just pass through them, i think it has something to do with being level with them, happens more on slopes), and sometimes pull off lightning fast counter-attacks during slow-time. I thought this mission would be even more of the same but of course they upped the ante even further with those jackal mage enemies. They have a fireball spell that they can cast after charging for a while, not a big deal I thought until i realized the spell will go off if they take damage while charging and there's no wind up animation to start the charge. I literally cant attack them even in slow time because they will instantly start the charge during one of my combos and the next hit on them sets it off. Basically a random chance that one of my punches will backfire and end the attempt, with no way to avoid it. Icing on the cake are my companions, least aggressive mercenaries i've ever seen. They'll straight up ignore enemies standing in front of them sometimes, weapon sheathed, walking towards me as if we're just traveling and there's no combat. They will rarely gang up on an enemy, might be scripted to only allow one companion to target the same enemy, not sure tbh but it's really stupid. And I cant even begin to describe how furious i am at the fact that the stupid-ass guards can deal friendly fire to you with their crossbows. Literal autists trying to use ranged while they are touching the target, at least 1/5 of my attempts have ended because of they've shot me while i was between them and an enemy. I feel like im fighting my own crew half the time, while they get stuck repeatedly swapping weapons, ignoring enemies, attacking ME, or just making really stupid decisions.

Anyway, thats it. If i wasn't so damn stubborn I'd put this game down for a few weeks, but i love everything about this game except the game itself i guess. So I'll keep at it. Hopefully someone here can give me advice.