The difficulty is way too high, I think the stats are not properly balanced, the best choice is always the 3-hit skill, I get that normal attacks deal more damage, but the lesser damage 3 times far outweigh the cost of the skill,and thus the difficulty, it's hard to not escape an encounter barely scaping by alive, having to fight always 3 enemies is not good when your only non-costing attack is not as powerful as it should be, AND it's not as effective to the type of encounters that the game have
A few things to consider here.
First, as is the case with most games, my games go through stages. In the first stage, for several months after release, up to a year or so, I'm actively adding content, fixing bugs, and tweaking gameplay, so suggestions made then have a chance to be integrated into the game. After that, the game settles into a set state, and I'm unlikely to mess with it much beyond serious bug fixes or needing to ret-con something. CS1 obviously entered this set state a while ago. I still appreciate feedback, but at this point it will be about considering lessons potentially learned for the game currently in development (and in that context, it makes more sense to discuss GT, since many things WERE changed and learned in the second game).
Second, to the meat of your complaint: this was discussed quite a lot when the game came out. CS1 was a first attempt, and definitely rough here and there. Nor do I ever expect my games to have super intricate gameplay in terms of the actual fight moves (though I think it improved a bit in GT). Personally, I would say CS is "hard" in that it's a little bit of a slog combat-wise (again, something I worked to address in GT). It's not complicated to beat though, you just have to conserve resources, be careful where and when you attack, and save-scum a bit. But yes, it's very much mostly about that 3 hit attack, though the single can be vital for the sake of timing. It's the "It's always faster to switch" meme: It's always faster to use your single hit than recharge your triple, and sometimes that can mean denying a boar the chance to exist next turn and do damage, or even ending the whole fight. But yes, I also ended up coming away feeling the encounters were maybe a little too punishing in CS1, which is why they have a different feel in GT.
That said though, third...why are you commenting on this now? I'm always happy to take feedback, but CS1 came out a WHILE ago, and I know you played it when it came out, you talked about it at the time. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with replays, and if you have new thoughts, by all means. I just would have expected you to comment on the difficulty several years ago when you first played it.