Yes, I must agree on the difficulty of combat at early levels (1-3). This is my 5th time playing on the Classic Mode, and it is significantly more unforgiving. I like a good challenge, however, it's not really a challenge when the Houndmaster and his lackeys kill your whole party before you can whittle down their defenses. That, in my opinion, is the major issue. I'm highly critical of this new armor/magic armor system. I've tried to take advantage of grenades and scrolls, but this armor system just blocks any status effects. The secondary issue is that the NPCs are stacked with defenses from the their equipment, which they rarely even drop. Meanwhile my crew has to get by with whatever gear we can scrape together. I understand that's a theme for early levels, but it's not balanced to throw all-star enemies at a rag-tag band of underdogs. My next step is to compare the new Classic difficulty to Explorer, in hopes that the later is better balanced.
