It will no doubt amuse and bewilder some to find that my wife and I have been playing on Story Mode (with scaling turned on), and have found it much too difficult--having been surprised with how often we seem to be dying. It wasn't a problem in the first Pillars, where we didn't ever have to think much about combat.
In some battles in POE2, when our ships are boarded, our characters die almost instantly, and I had another encounter today on an unnamed island that seemed unwinnable after multiple attempts. I was led to believe that I could auto-attack my way to victory after my experience in Pillars 1!