Might also depend how you're planning to play. I went with lustful sub, which makes the game objectively more difficult, but does also mean you can skip 90% of combats if you don't care about getting experience.
When I started, I didn't initially realize combats are supposed to give experience since lust submit -- which is all I was doing -- doesn't give any, so all my experience was from missions until I was forced to do actual combat. It's entirely possible lack of experience was most of the reason I couldn't do much combat-wise. (It also meant I kept savescumming the pirate base to 100% avoid combat because I was unaware that you don't get sent back to the start if you win the combat.)