If you're having trouble with that, you can go to the cheat room on the right down corner in Krowley's basement and activate easy battle mode by talking with the mirror in that room, it'll enable an option(last one in battle menu) that kills all enemies on the screen. About the dificulty in the early game, probably the dev will change this in future updates, I'll bring this subject to him. For what I've seen on this thread, many people are struggling in this begining by the lack of experience gains on the game.
You're equipped with an item named ''Red Gag''? It increases the defense but makes unavailable the use of spells