No idea why they'd make that fight so difficult when you're not guaranteed to have anything to manage it with.
Well, it doesn't have to be your first fight, does it? You get a lot of cues handed to you in game that there's things to do in town, and that the orcs are somewhat tough. Several people have pointed this out to you now.
If they didn't put the harder parts *somewhere* - in this case the orcs on the beach - and you finished other stuff first, you'd be getting to the orcs later and saying "Why'd they have to make that fight so easy? This is boring."
That the orcs are too hard isn't so much a design problem as the result of your choice to hare off into the higher level area with low level characters.
