Do I miss a lot If I rush through the game ignoring many chests? [My game got deleted after the Malestorm boss fight and want to get there again fast]

In short, Steam and / or my pc decided it was funny to start over my game.

Prior to that I collected the life and Beta abilities on the corpses + as much chests and codes as I could. Now I want to get to that part as fast as possible.

I'll ignore chests and many battles if possible. Do I miss a very good passive item? I had one that enhances attack power and hit fast. I like those but I feel like theres no way I'm checking all chests and getting all passwords.

• is there a way to skip a first time cutscene? It seems i cant do so