It depends on the level of your party.
I didn't have so many problems in the second playthrough. Even if I hadn't but Lae'zel with height advantage, the difference is that in this run I went back to my usual strategy: to overpower my party so that bosses become easier. When I reached all my party was level 3, with good armor and weapons.
Furthermore just like another user remarked, BG (but almost all the games of the early decades of videogames) had frustrating beginings with characters killed with easy (in Daggerfall you could be killed by rats in the first room of the dungeon where the game started), in BG even in easy mode some battles requires multiple reloads, and the adventurers were so naive to choose places to rest, in the wilderness, not completely safe [and when I read some comments that applaud to such setting I thanks that the explorers of the days that were weren't so naive to be unable to find a safe spot where to rest instead of waiting for a tavern or a home].
