I think the settings thing is sort of intentional. The assumption is that most users of ST2 like json, and the default file settings are well-commented in the JSON files. Also, it's weird that you thought you had to use Emacs, since clicking the menu option for a preference file opens that file in ST2. That being said, the whole global default/user default/file default system is pretty confusing to me. I think I get it, but I still put settings in the wrong files, which then don't work, and so on.
Another issue with ST2 is that, like you mentioned, for whatever reason, it's very hard to find answers to your questions via Google. You always either end up at some release notes that tell you the feature you want exists, but not how to use it, or at some forum posting from 200 years ago that's wildly out of date, and full of the usual wildly-stupid comments one finds in most internet forums. There are number of features that I now use daily that I only found out about through word-of-mouth. (To be fair, this last part is probably true for many people with many editors: "Oh, you can do $x in $EDITOR? Show me how.")
Another issue with ST2 is that, like you mentioned, for whatever reason, it's very hard to find answers to your questions via Google. You always either end up at some release notes that tell you the feature you want exists, but not how to use it, or at some forum posting from 200 years ago that's wildly out of date, and full of the usual wildly-stupid comments one finds in most internet forums. There are number of features that I now use daily that I only found out about through word-of-mouth. (To be fair, this last part is probably true for many people with many editors: "Oh, you can do $x in $EDITOR? Show me how.")