A decent and fair review - I think you represent your thoughts on the game and setting quite well, though there are a couple of thoughts that I would like to offer up.
First, some of the mechanics of the game may not have come across as clearly as intended. Some of the talents, such as Accuracy, can be boosted up during play using style points, increasing their effectiveness for the rest of the combat. It might be worth reviewing some of the system around that, since it really would change how valuable they are to a player considering how to spend their valuable experience points.
Second, the apocalypse did occur very recently in the setting of the game. Previously, for the most part, the setting was indeed very "high fantasy" and while not "pulp," you might imagine a better fit for the system pre-Night of Fire. [edit - though we think it does work for Before and After, obviously - we'd not have licensed it otherwise
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This is perhaps a meta-system/meta-gaming point of order, but to say that some talents and character options are not well suited to a game set after an apocalypse is to say that characters themselves are perhaps not well suited to an apocalypse - but who lives their lives in preparation for such an event? Other than the gnomes, maybe. Characters in Desolation were not expecting their world to end, and the detailed setting information presented for the Before takes that into account. Characters should be created with their lives Before the Night of Fire in mind.
Of course, one might (and probably should) argue that a game system should support the setting characters are playing in, and my point in the paragraph above is a terrible example of metagaming! That would be quite fair
Thanks again for your review - I'm glad you liked some of things we did here, and hope that others do as well.