I played a bit and each time u do the prologe with certian class u will get a specific weapon that will easy your early game but from what i noticed myself templar is the strongest early pick thanks to his great sword weapon .Later in the game i was able to wield 2 great swords with that i was able to deal around 1.5-1.7 k dmg with a single hit , and around 4-5k dmg with a crititcal .Really? I felt like the game was quite underwhelming in terms of difficulty (remembering from v2.6), but that might just be because of your starting origin. I chose Templar and without skipping the prolog (iirc you otherwise won't get your greatsword and just a starting short sword) breezed through earlier parts without any grind whatsoever, as well as the game in it's entirety, as it only gets easier it felt like, occasionally switching to paladin and nuking everything to death with the 25mp 3 hit spell (can't remember the name)
So yeah, I either have some heavy memory displacements going on in my head or your starting origin made things unnecessarily difficult for you
edit: on another topic, the changes to random hit spells and some spells in general now using a line/row targeting feels somewhat odd I reckon.
Even if u start with a weak early dmg weapon ( Thief dagger deal low dmg) once u get meredith her spells deal a lot of dmg .