Of course you cant kill 10 ghouls at the start of the game, or a bunch of deathclaws... I feel the developers put a lot of thought into making the difficulty more realistic. Many of the encounters I had were obviously meant to be nigh impossible and Pushed resorting to other means: running away, stealth, using companions (ive found 4 who can join so far) turning factions against each other, and the old plant-a-bomb fallout trick.
A lot of situations that make it very hard to be a shining knight even if one doesnt want to be evil, its a rough world, this one.
Also: great plot twist when you find out who you are. Better than f2s main quest in concept.
I am not really talking about encounters being too hard. The biggest gripe I have with it at this point is that every encounter with ghoul patrols ends with me being dead within a turn or two. And I am not some level 1 character even. The encounters with the bigger groups of ghouls look like this for me. We spawn on the map, one or two of them get the first turn and shot at me, usually for around 15hp, or maybe 50 if that is the Power Armor Laser rifle ghoul. Then comes my turn, I can either stim up and shot once, or try to run away with my 10 ap. I run away, the whole band shots at me in their turn, and I am dead. Reload. Trying to walk from Sedith/Csomething to Albuquerque is an exercise in "Will I get ghoul patrol random encounter?" then I am dead and must reload. I can deal with it by saving frequently, or maybe I could invest more into outdoorsman. But at the moment, they are at the level of Enclave patrols random encounters from F2. I bet they are even more difficult with the changes to ammo penetration etc. Its straight up death on turn one.
But dont get me wrong, I like the mod. I like the multitude of solutions to quests. It is just my choice/luck that I decided to go with a more combat focused character for my first playthrough so my options are rather limited, and the combat is significantly more deadly than F2.