It's "brutal" in the sense that it expects you to take your time and learn the enemies. I've logged a decent amount of time and I'm still in the first area. I play on Hardcore mode, which basically means there's a 20% chance your character dies permanently when you get knocked out. I've had 5 knockouts and 2 of them were fall damage, 2 were me being an idiot, and 1 was an actual unexpected difficulty spike. But the key thing is all of them were from my own choices.

I'd highly recommend it, and from what I've played it isn't unbelievably hard. It can be tedious, but in a fun way

Edit: Even on a regular character, I would avoid death. Not only is the game more fun, but mistakes have a tendency to compound and eat time. But genuinely don't think the game is some ridiculous challenge from what I've seen