Can only speak to the first game but....
Paying for portcrystals does kinda suck, but New Game plus allows you to keep Portcrystals and extend port crystals locations to about 10 iirc(you're locked at 5 in standard play).
Wakestones are tricky. You don't really need them in DD1, but since you can kill the NPCs and revive them with wakestones, it may make you use them more. I only recall two instances where you could use them for that in DD1. One where you kill a Sanctuary member and revived him if you wanted to, or that Mercedes fight with that guy who you could revive if you stepped in.
Rift Crystals. Considering most of the extra game content isn't here, I'm guessing you'll mostly be spending this to hire high level pawns. Does seem a bit P2W but I dunno.
You can purchase art of metamorphosis in Gran Soren in DD1. Don't remember from which vendor. You could also change some aspects of your appearance at the Barber Shop(but I've never used it) Is this actually locked to real world money purachse? Okay just checked, it cost 5000 RC, you can only use it once per playthrough, it refreshes in New Game +, you can also change your appearance when you start New Game +
I always hated that one game save thing for DD. I know I've seen people defend it a lot, but it's super annoying. I play, I hit level 200 and max and want to start over, but still want to keep my old character for reference, I have to go find my save file, back it up, go offline and replace the files. Instead of simply starting a new game and having my old save game. It wasn't about save scumming.
So...umm...no New Game + then huh?
The more I see of this game, the more I want to wait for a Dark Arisen style expansion. The PC performance situation has put me off buying for a while waiting for fixes, but I think I may wait for that DD2 Darker Arisen.