I kept at it and managed to get through the entire thing, eventually. this is quite the "demo" given that it's about as long as some full games already. it's a lot more fun when I'm not cranky and tired, though the encounter rate might be a little high. at least it makes it easy to just outlevel problems.
actually, on the same line it does seem weird for the player to be able to hit the higher ranks given how early in the story this probably is, but I'm guessing it's an artifact of this being a demo version of the game.