While I disagree that its not fun at level 1, I think the problem you're having is a generic one with leveled systems to some degree; the zero to hero mentality is so baked in that its easy to feel starting character aren't up to the image you have for them.
No, the phenomenon I've experienced is pretty much only universal to deeply a-la-carte systems. Any class-based system with non-existent or severely limited multiclassing tends to avoid it immediately, because there's no inherent flaw in allowing you to get really good, class-defining, signature abilities at level 1. Any system that lets you pick up a level of this and a few levels of that as your means of creating character options pretty much guarantees that you
can't have those kinds of abilities early in the class tree.
4e D&D avoids it much better than either 3e, 5e, or either edition of PF. 5e LotR and AiME prove that the 5e system can do it pretty easily once you discard multiclassing, and discarding the spell system helps even more. B/X D&D avoids it better than 3e or 5e because the only abilities you have are either what you start the game with or those tied to the magic items you find along the way.
Basically, if your game has to say, "We can't allow front-loading of class abilities because multiclassing exists," then your game system has this problem.
PF2e is a different. It
doesn't allow 3e style multiclassing. However, the game silos nearly all character abilities and progression into categorized feats, grants very minimal sets of abilities at level 1, and then the design evenly spreads progression out over all 20 levels. In other words, PF2e still does all the anti-frontloading tricks that it's progenitors did. It's the same design as PF1e and 3e D&D, even though the game doesn't have to care about multiclassing breaking the design in half! They just left in this artifact of 3e design in without understanding that you don't have to be a clodhopping peasant at level 1. It just means you have to wait until much later in the game to have a minimally meaningful and minimally defining set of abilities.
PF2e could front-load your abilities more than it does and launch your character as a hero faster. It's a vestigial design.
Worse, PF2e doubles down on it. They take this vestigial design from classes, and they move it to Ancestry and Background, too. If you're an Elf, you get low light vision and the elven language. Then you can pick one of a dozen elf abilities. The rest aren't available until several levels later. Want to be an Elf that knows about elven arcana and elven weapon training and has elven resistance to magic? D&D lets you do that at level 1. PF2e lets you do that at level 9. To me, an Elf Hunter Fighter simply doesn't feel distinct enough at level 1 from a Human Guard Fighter.
The only reason it looks complicated is because they give it all to you as choices. But your resulting character can just
do less in terms of standout, signature abilities and the game just doesn't have flavorful, situational abilities unless you purposefully select them. That's why I say my character doesn't feel complete until about level 8. It takes about that long to have earned enough feats to have enough distinctiveness. If I'm an Elf Hunter Fighter, well at level 1 that means I can see in the dark, can use weapons, and have some skill proficiencies. And that's basically it. If I want two elf abilities? Yeah, that won't be done until level 5 when I get my second Ancestry feat. By the time you get to level 8, you'll have a few abilities from each area, and
now it feels like my character has enough stuff from the catalog to feel like a unique character.
Except I'm freaking level 8! Even in an idea world the campaign is basically half over.
But there's even less to like. I'm making all these decisions at character creation that limit what I can choose for the rest of the game. They don't actually feel like they
do much at level 1, but those three choices at level 1 affects almost every choice I get for the rest of the game. It's particularly frustrating because I can't see how the game allows my character to develop over the campaign
as a result of the events within the campaign because so much of everything is decided for me at level 1.
So, again, it feels like I need to have my character planned out completely before I sit down at the table, which is something I didn't like in 3e, or 4e, and is still over-rewarded in 5e. The game's rewarding me for completely planning my character in advance like that, and I don't want that. I don't really want to know what I'm going to take for the whole game before it even begins, and it feels really egregious because you're so bland at level 1.
Like it doesn't matter if every choice individually isn't OP. System mastery will allow me to make choices for abilities that work well together, or situational abilities that just come up far more often than everything else. That's rewarding system mastery. System mastery isn't about being able to make your character super OP. It's just about how much the game rewards experience with the game.
Nevemind the ludonarrative dissonance from reaching level 9 and gaining access to Ancestral abilities that are conceptually based on what your character should already know. "I have killed enough bandits to be able to understand my people's knowledge of Arcana and Nature." It's weird when D&D does it. PF2e seems to make everyone do it. Kinda weird.
The whole design feels orthogonal to how I think of TTRPG characters now. PF2e feels like a character building game that incidentally supports play as a TTRPG.
