After level 5 it should get much easier with some decent equipment acquired. There are a lot pictures and other stuff in the fort to give you some additional gold income.
Otherwise most of the points regarding combat we are pretty much pointing out since day 1 of early access. Tactician is mostly a stat bloat of 50%. Not sure, if it was in the first much different in the first, but because of the Armor system this time it is extremely obvious and makes fights extremely tedious.
If you know, when and where you fight, the game can be pretty easy, if you don't know it, at least the first few levels are awefull.
The only thing you kind of missed or left out: attributes and skill leveling got made extremely basic and 0815 like, with focus pretty much purely on increasing damage. Also initiative is kind of broken, because of a round robin system, that forces enemies always to go at least second, forth and so on.
and yeah, that every neutral will fight you for death about worthless shit is really immersion breaking.
