Hiro is supposed to be a know-nothing newbie adventurer. Adventuring is not easy, safe, or intuitive, and the complete lack of a tutorial mixed with the huge amount of information that the game dumps on you reflects that very well. If you take your time, do some research, or just practice and learn from your experiences, you'll eventually find something that works for you. If you experiment beyond that, you can easily conquer the more difficult encounters with advanced techniques.
Plus, losing and humiliation are key themes. One of the best ways to make that feel natural is to make the gameplay a genuine challenge, and in ToA's case, figuring out how to fight and read your opponent and so on are the challenges that you have to overcome. Nothing makes you feel weaker than getting raped by a goblin because you don't actually know how to fight and therefore lost to one of the weakest monsters around, and nothing is more humiliating than being turned into a fucktoy for the Warlock or the Dark Knight because, despite whatever advantages that you had, they beat you anyways.
It's not a game design issue, it's a game design choice, and it's arguably one of the strongest choices that the game has made because it fits with the theming so perfectly.
foraging needs to be easier or something you can make your companions do, i'm really tired of micromanaging food