I actually felt much the same way when I first picked up the game. I may have went in without any knowledge or expectations, but that was rewarded with a very slow and agonizing demonstration of... not so much the difficulty, but how absolutely punishing the mechanics are. Combine that with the skeletal plot (likely due to early access status) and what appeared to be a bit of a "railroad via impossible encounters", I was less than impressed.
However... that was my first 4-5 hours. What I did next was take what I learned, and make a new character. I made a focused lizard mage, who started with 15 intelligence and "+3 memory" skill to maximize battle actions and damage. I scrounged for every piece of armor, clawed at every possible avenue and advantage, and I applied the very tactics that destroyed me in the first playthough. It didn't take long to learn that if done right, the game is just as impossible for your enemies as it could be for you.
What I was rewarded with was knowing that there are, for example, several different ways to escape from the fort. It's not a railroad; I just, to put it blunt, sucked. In fact, after discovering my first way out... I went back in, and starting clearing out enemies, starting in order from most managable. It became an arms race of beating the lowest enemies I could find, surviving the encounter, and assimilating any loot I could find, up to and including the paintings on the walls of the fort.
Then, I come up to what I'll call "midway" through the first act. Suddenly things are falling into place with the plot, and I'm gaining hints of what appears to be a really neat story in the making. The varied things you can encounter kept my interest once I had the skill to progress, managing gear was interesting due to the magic armor and physical armor differences, and limited resources forced me to make interesting decisions every time I came across a nice piece of gear in a shop.
I began to learn of the various advantages and disadvantages inherent to different styles. Spreading your points can mean you have access to a ton of powerful toolbox abilities, but don't deal much damage. You can focus all your points into one aspect, and that character will be a high damage monster, but will lack in utility in comparison. Pair two such characters together, and your high damage will punch through the defenses of your victim, then the utility monster will knock them down for a turn, only to be put in the ground for good by your high damage character's second round.
Essentially, what I'm saying is I suggest you attempt to absorb what the game is beating into you, then try to use that to beat it back into the game. If you can manage that, the varied builds and playstyles as well as the interactive battle system may just capture your attention.
I'm on my "third" playthrough now, and it's feeling even easier at all points than the first time I beat it. In my opinion, the challenging aspect makes it more engaging and more rewarding, and now that I've experienced the whole of the first act, I find myself excited to know more about it come release.
