about the game becoming more difficult, yes, i have notice, that in some instances it has, more in the "more grinding" to do list, for example, you could win athletics points by swimming at school and running away from attackers in the past, but now you ONLY get athletics points by running. and ONLY by running either in the park or at the beach. you don't seem to gain any athletics by running away from attackers or chasing after the horses , which is mind numbing. you SHOULD win athletics by doing those activities even if its only a tinny bit. Just saying.
The acceptance bar was tune down, so this is a instance where the game became more easy as before you had to spend hours grinding acceptance.
as a tip for newbies: SAVE this is the most button you be hitting in the entire game, in fact there should be a quick save button in the menu.
In the first part of the game you have to grind up your stats, you can't jump on the cow farm or PC will get LOADS of trauma; you can only grind up resistances to say trauma or ways to helve it, get S rank in all signatures, grind up everything to S, specially skulduggery and athletics.
Pure path is best for beginners because you get 4K every month for being pure, you also get wings fully transform that will help a lot in key parts of the game and the sprite looks cool AF. if you later decide to go other path that is entirely on you. i guess its better to de-transform than go for the fallen path which is really traumatic. but that will mean you will have to grind down your angelic transformation, which is time consuming.
in the first part of the game your big enemy is stress, Trauma too but Robin is a great way to reduce trauma, you can also switch your "how you see sex" in attitude so consensual sex, to lower either stress or trauma as you see convenient. But from the two, stress is bad as will lead to PC fainting, and that can lead to even worst traumatic situations.