In this game this does not work. Not at least in the beginning. No matter what you try, if you are not skilful enough, you are punished up to the level of frustration and there is little you can do. There are other games that don’t have difficulties, like Zelda (it has very similar combat), but there you are not punished from the very start in any way at all, and then you have open world to go anywhere you like, you can choose whom to fight, whom to skip, you can ignore melee battles and fight only with a bow for example not getting hit at all or be creative in many other ways. You don’t have to restart somewhere over and over and over again, from the same point (unless you specifically seeking challenge - which is an option too). This is how you adjust your own difficulty (that is, balance between boredom and frustration) there. This game doesn’t do that, at least certainly not from the start. Maybe sometime later you will figure out some cheesy ways to fight - but not everyone will make it there. Unlike Zelda, where everyone will.
I also recall another game. Witcher 3. Also same type of combat. It also starts easy, it also has open world so you can choose where to go, like in Zelda. However, like in NoRest, it doesn’t offer you too many options how to fight. You can’t really go into full magic or bow there, these are supplementary, just like here. Like it or not, but you’ll have to fight with your 2 swords - normal one and silver one. Game understands thats and thus offers you difficulties system. And I don’t remember that people ever complained about that. Those who liked challenge or had skill - played on hardest one.
I played Red dead redemption on normal, and God of War series on easy. These games are designed for you to feel for the story and feel for the character development, its like movies, and these two games made me cry at the end.
NoRest also has cool story, cool world to explore, cool NCPs to interact with, cool places just to fish and chill (if a player likes that). So why not allow them to play this way too and pigeonhole them forcefully into something they do not want? This is not a Mortal Combat game, right? Yes, there is combat, but there are other many things as well and people can get fun from it.
