I keep hearing this complaint and it surprises me everytime, I never had any problem with the hints feature (with the exception of the bugged quest where you need to retrieve the ball).....(2) That quest journal is useless, most of the time it tells me nothing of what i am supposed to do and sometimes it misleads you as well, then i have to fuck around for a good minute trying to figure shit out while getting increasingly annoyed.....
I'm not arguing with you, you're definitely not alone in having issues with this feature, I think maybe I didn't have problems with it because I never treated it as a quest journal that was supposed to guide me through the game, I used it as a hint sheet that gave me the occasional clue when my progress seemed to stall.