I play on hard.
Yeah, at first I was getting ass-raped by almost everything outside of the tutorial. In all justice, I was going a little Rambo-style. I (rogue) with the elf mage, pausing little, using the rogue as tank, etc... I finally accepted this was really like BG, so recruited some people, read a little about my powers/the new rules (so I knew what to do more or less) and started pausing more frequently and using my head (like in BG) and now the combats are doable. There is some encounter now and then that makes me repeat it a few times, but now it's a walk in the park.
So, get people on your party xD

I have completed some of the quests in the first town now and have 3 companions, and the game is beginning to get rather easy (on normal)
However i don't know how much harder it will get, maybe i just need to play a bit more to encounter more powerful foes.
My second playthrough will be on hard though.

on hard at the last couple of fights there were like 4 shades and 3 shadows [harder than shades], it was insanely difficult, i really had to place specific members of my party where i want them, draw them in, and use spells very efficiently. i'd imagine this would be completely impossible without a priest.

i actually ended up using torches, because their dmg reduction to crush / slash [most melee weapons] is quite absurd o.o
they have almost no dmg reduction from fire tho, good thing i checked the beastiary :)

i also just read on a tip in a loading screen that the area of effect marker that's not red [further from point of origin for the spell] means that only enemies will get hit by the spell, and the red circle means everyone [unless stated "foe bla bla bla" specifically on the spell description, so no friendly fire on those]

Ah that's handy to know. I thought it was about spell power, with damage on the outer circle being reduced because its not the centre of impact.

On "Normal", camping supplies is capped at 4. I'm a Wild Orlan Wizard, can only cast 3 spells per rest and am on my own at this point, so even that is pretty low. At least I have 3 "per encounter" spell attacks. I am also at the cave with the bear, tried it 4 times now and almost killed him once (with a single 'fan of flames' spell). I can only get hit by him once or twice. I sneak up, try casting an oil slick on him (hasn't worked yet), then flames when he rushes.

I figure I'll just keep trying until my oil slick works - then I should be able to get of 2 fan of flames and kill it.

wait, there's only 1 bear on normal ?
man i think it's time i re-start on normal instead of struggling so much on hard

my character is a monk, they're awesome and all, loved them in every RPG i ever played, but their mechanics in this game are a bit meh
gotta get hit for wounds to stack, and to activate abilities
but armor isn't high enough and damage reduction [DR] isn't high enough for it to be really useful :/
could get more DR with a heavier armor, but that doesnt really fit with the whole monk theme <.<

thought about starting a character with that class with the soul whip, sounds cool
or maybe a barbarian

edit: i generally feel this game classes aren't really balanced properly, some classes really feel gimped, from my short experience atleast. mostly wizards / priests and monks. i'd expect a game like BG1/2 that is based on D&D rules to not be the most balanced, but for a 2015 game, i expect all classes in a game to feel useful. or maybe it's because i got used to blizzard and their insane balancing too much

You need to make sure you don't pull group aggro. Some enemies seem to attack not in groups, others do. You can still kill them one by one, e.g. with the fireball spell... get to the spot where you see them but they don't see you, then cast fireball and leave the area immediately by a specific range. When the fireball hits, there seems to be some calculation of your current position compared to the position of the enemies. If you have the correct range, then only 1 or 2 will attack.

Similarly, you can just go in, get aggro and then leave the area with the enemies behind you... then hit pause as soon as one of those who are a bit behind turn around to leave... and turn around likewise. Then those at the front will still be following/attack you. Ofc this only works with enemies that are not faster than you, so not with wolves.

I started trying to customize character equipment based on my old D&D habits as well, but I soon learned this game pretty much requires you to use the best armor you can get for every class type. As far as I can tell there is no penalty for casting with armor on, so I bit the bullet and started using armor for all my guys. My casters are still weak due to low hit point totals and low endurance but they survive a lot better when they get mobbed with heavy armor on.

I’m also finding pistols and arquebus’ even with their painfully slow rate of fire are much better than wands. At least they have been through level 5, later I may find better wands, but the starting wands do not do much damage at all. So I think we need to toss out our old D&D assumptions about what will and will not work best.

The combat system really favors high damage two handed weapons over one handed weapons, since only damage that is scored above the damage resistance will be applied. Early on in the first map after the tutorial starting area I fought the bandits holding the dwarf cook hostage and killed all but the shield guy. He and I then proceeded to bang away at each other for 5+ minutes before I reloaded a save and swapped to a two handed sword. I then mowed down the bandits in short order, so getting a weapon that gets lots of excess damage points above DR ratings is critical to good performance in game.

This might also cripple the weapon enchanting system for one handed weapons as all the low level elemental damage I can currently craft states it is applied as a percentage of damage done. So I assume if you don’t score damage above the monsters base DR rating then no elemental damage gets applied either. Though this would need testing as I guess it’s possible the % is applied to whatever the damage is before it is compared to the DR. Question would then be does that elemental % then get applied to the elemental resistance if any, if so very little elemental damage will ever get applied.

the biggest downside to using heavy armor is the recovery speed loss, an armor with -50% recovery speed translates to -50% attack speed, cast speed, etc, because it takes you 50% longer untill you can take a new action. that is, if i understood it correctly [still learning how this game works, might be wrong]

DR only reduces dmg untill 20% of the original dmg, so if for example your dmg is 10, and the enemy has 10 DR, you will still do 2 dmg [same as before, if i understood it correctly :x ]

i really liked how monks were in bg2, and was hoping for a same or better experience, without all the nonsense stuff like immune to normal weapons at higher lvls, and insane dmg reduction. really all i imagined was a martial arts dude that dodges well, hits fast for a decent dmg, and has atleast a basic DR to allow to take a couple of hits to utilize wounds mechanic

currently debating with myself if i should start as a cipher, sounds really awesome and i liked the spells, atleast the ones you get to see on lvl 1 character creation screen

also, when not playing on expert mode, the suggestions and recommendations for attributes confused me a bit. i can't imagine why is int recommended for a barbarian for example O.o

Yeah, 1 bear on normal.

As to gimped classes, wizards usually were even in the older games at early levels. But at higher levels they become one of the most powerful classes. I'm really hoping this game is no different