In general the game's walk speed is infuriating and for some reason taking damage first makes you slower, then speeds you up when you only have one hit left. Since putting distance between you and an enemy is how you give yourself time to actually do the combat that is just random extra frustration. And the main gameplay outside of combat is mostly backtracking distances that would be fine at normal video game walk speeds
Also all the boss fights are a normal enemy but three times. Literally. It's usually the first time the enemy appears but like, three times in a row?
And you need to buy new attacks, there is literally a character that is a gate that blocks you if you didn't buy the new attack. They could've done a thing where you could beat the entire game on the base attack but grinding for stronger ones makes it easier, I guess they had limited time bc I'm pretty sure all combat difficulty is hardcoded