A quick reply;

> p4 tracks file metadata of client workspaces on the server

Honestly, using P4 necessitates a plugin for $EDITOR of choice. The jetbrains IDEs do full on integration, but I managed a decade with an addon that just ran "p4 add/edit" on any save.

> Scripting p4 is a nightmare

Agreed, but so is git, or plastic. My experience has been using the CLI with -Ztag is the way.

> By default, p4 "helps" you with text files by "correcting" line endings on sync or even converting between encodings

This is a nightmare, and definitely one of P4's worst traits. Everywhere I've worked we have a presubmit trigger, to catch this.

> By default, p4 keeps flies read-only, only unlocking them when explicitly marked as being edited.

See point 1, but honestly you go very very far with just p4 edit a whole folder.

> Branching a modest game project, with, say, Unreal source code, can take hours. And this is the quick version where you ask the server to simply create new metadata, with no file transfer to a client.

A new stream including submission at my current job is about 20 minutes. Even at $BIG_CORP with 800 people working on a project, a branch didn't take hours. (Assumning by branch you mean streams. If it's a branch I have no idea, we don't use them)

> p4 is licensed by the user-account

P4's licensing is predatory. It's very much "talk to us", but you'll find out that "talk to us" pricing is exactly the same for absolutely everyone. If you're really lucky, and get someone who is feeling generous, they might give you 1-2 extra automation seats. Given P4's security model is so old, I don't hate shared credentials for this. A bit like IAM roles, nobody should really have access to the credentials even if they were scoped appropriately.