It's disheartening, but I completely agree about the utterly baffling difficulty.
The concept of a game based on stealing your opponents' strength should be enjoyable, not a grind. Furthermore, the concept of a H-game is to HAVE FUN, not suffer for over four hours on an update as empty as this one. You could have done so much, and yet all I'll remember are maps that are too long (Mt. Moon), the inability to progress beyond level 25, bosses that force me to restart multiple times, and a reduction in the story and interesting cutscenes to make room for even more tedious combat...
At this point, we're not playing, we're just enduring to experience the story, which is actually quite interesting.