Well, first this game doesn't offer my particular play style. No stealth, no sneak attacks, no back stabs or pocket picking. An rpg without a rogue, go figure.
Also, the concept of an RPG is that the outcome of any particular challenge should be based on the skills of the character, not the player. The assumption that ever player has the reflexes of a teenager is a grave one. I actually went back and tried a combat on all three difficulty levels. There was no difference in their outcome for the most part. Easy level was just as hard to beat as normal or hard. I found no difference between damage done to them or to me.
I can only assume that that is a flaw in the difficulty slider. The game is locked in the difficulty setting in which I started the game. I would have to adjust the setting to easy 1st I think (tho I haven't tested it yet) then start a new game. However, I really not willing to go through all that again when an upgrade is slated to be released.
So every RPG is supposed to follow DnD classes? You can very well make a rogue-like character, perhaps you just haven't explored the game well enough.
"Also, the concept of an RPG is that the outcome of any particular challenge should be based on the skills of the character, not the player."
Says whom? They created a game as they felt like, they're not going to create a whole game being stuck on ridiculous boundaries of someone's opinion on the concept of role-playing games. In my opinion that only gets us more and more unoriginal games. Anyways, the skills of the character matter a lot, they DO matter even more than player skill. Nonetheless, this is an action-RPG, player skill is also supposed to matter, but that doesn't mean you need uber reflexes. It just means you can jump out of ambushes and dodge arrows/spells (which quite frankly are quite slow in general, if you do not have the reflexes to dodge many of those you likely have an impairment of some sort).
I've played the whole game, including the expansion, on the normal difficulty. I did die somewhat, but the game was far from being as hard as you're talking about. It does get hard if you try not to hunt creatures to get experience. You can increase health regeneration by raising STR, getting regeneration-improving items and/or getting the regeneration passive skill. My character is a warrior whose health bar fills up in a couple seconds, and he has a skill that absorbs damage and transforms it into health, I barely need potions at all. In the beginning of the game, as potions are expensive, you can always stick to food - it helps quite a lot.
