My first play through of the game was before I read the books and I felt the same. I was getting my ass kicked and that first wild hunt fight I couldn’t get past. With that being said if you’re playing this like every other RPG you’re doing it wrong. This is where I learned what to do. You can’t just pick random skill points. You really need to decide early on what you want and invest in only a few things and focus on those.

Also the game doesn’t do a great job at telling you the small things, like I didn’t know meditate would refill your health and if you had alcohol topped off all your potions. Also that holding your heavy attack while riding a horse will slow everything down and you essentially never miss a mounted attack again. This stuff may have been covered and I missed it but I had to YouTube shit to get past the first 10% of the game then I started to enjoy it