Cheat Codes/Trainer help

[Bobbleplx]

I very much enjoy this game but I have been unable to finish it. The missions drag on way too long, there are no difficulty settings to speak of and I feel I would like it a lot more if I could just skip the combat or make it easier.
I have been attempting a variety of methods to assist with this, but many of these trainers have been flagged by malwarebytes, and all the others had executable files that, when launched according to instructions, were shown as open in task manager but other than that nothing happened.
I have heard about cheat codes but all the really useful ones require you to enter a console through pressing [SHIFT + ~], but this simply does not work. I have also heard that this requires you to download Mafiacon, which only works on version 1.2 (and when launched tells me my version is incorrect), but attempting to install the 1.2 patch either brings up a message asking me to uninstall the game or just telling me the game is not installed, even though I am running the installer from the same folder as the game.exe file, and sometimes while the game itself is open!
I am at a loss here and I would very much like to enjoy the story without having to repeat missions an excessive amount of times. If anyone else has gotten these cheat codes or trainers to work on modern systems, please share your methods because I would much appreciate any advice at this point.

As an addendum I should say that this was attempted completely unmodded, on several fresh installs, and often verifying integrity of files through Steam.

[Bobbleplx]

edit: I spoke too soon; of all things, this Youtube tutorial worked a treat, and I hope anyone reading this can follow in my footsteps to experience this beautiful game in the best way possible.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2hpRXwea4