Some advice for new players...

Start on the "difficult" difficulty option. I played this game for about 12 hours on "normal" and almost quit because it was too easy. There are so many fun mechanics in this game but they didn't feel consequential on normal. I became powerful and stayed powerful with minimal grinding and boss fights were over in ~5 minutes. I loved the story, the different mechanics, the graphical style, the gameplay itself, and yes even the grind, but the low difficulty made it so that I couldn't fully engage with the game as intended. At least in my opinion.

So even though It was painful to toss those 12 hours, I started over just now on "hell" and am having a blast. So give the harder modes a shot, because you can always lower the difficulty later, but you can't raise it anymore after partway through the game.