tl;dr: AI 2.0 made enemies far smarter than AI in most rpgs we've seen(probably); backstabbing rogue elf is amazing for single target dps, try it; play on explorer mode if you want to experience a more balanced version of this patch; position party pre-fight; watch your environment more than ever before, remove or place barrels early and remove puddles/poison fields/fire fields/etc before you engage the encounter.
Hope some of this helps you.
AI 2.0 has made fights drastically more difficult, a lot of them more so than necessary or realistic for most players to defeat. Now I'm sure it is possible, but it takes a lot of strategy and min/maxing already to really get through normal difficulty in this patch.
If you want to just enjoy the EA and check things out still I recommend playing on Explorer mode, it is mostly like pre AI 2.0 patch normal difficulty, but I after putting 3 hours into it I cannot deny that you will become overpowered fast and defeat even tough enemies fairly easy.
So right now Explorer is a little too easy and Normal is too hard (for some encounters though I haven't gotten through much as I gave up when Kniles and Meat Golems 2 hit my party ;_;).
Also, due to the "ever lasting puddles" we got in this update mages can be overpowered, what I recommend is before starting the fight separate your party and manually place them in other spots as the AI now concentrates very hard on environmental advantages and combining their attacks together, like one will throw a oil flask and a mage will light it up.
I've found though that an elf rogue backstabbing is a godsent against these enemies as you use Flesh Sacrifice and Adrenaline and the target is basically dead for sure and you can sometimes get another target down to near nothing or kill them completely.
They will be patching this of course, this isn't anywhere near final and they just need us to keep playing and keep giving feedback so they can tune it correctly, there will still be a tactical mode at release so if you want challenge like this (if you can call most of these encounters challenging) we'll still get it, but right now we need to help them balance normal difficulty as it is the most likely to be played by most players and it is far too brutal right now for most players, even veteran players are having trouble.