Out of complete curiosity. Do you ever get teammates in this game? I played this game during the version where it was cut off. After rescuing the princess and learning about your friend's imprisonment. Certainly, complaining about difficulty would be pointless. As the game has an easy fights mode. But it still would be a nice touch.
Main reason I'm asking is because of an 'early game' teammate...of sorts. During the hydra/unlocking the mines quest. You get tasked with snackrificing a cow (turned into) girl. All you need to do is walk '10 steps' in the right direction and the cow-girl is gone. However, I noticed that you could actually bring her into fights too. (Doesn't have a sprite or anything but she does exist and fights/take hits.) She even leveled up and learned a skill while I roamed around.
After that I fed her to the hydra anyway.
Which really sucked because the very next fight I got into was against the 3 cave snakes. Which was the perfect time to have a teammate help out. I only won that fight because of luck after about a dozen or so tries.
So long story short. Were there any plans on the cow-girl joining your team? Maybe after leveling her up a bit so that she could fight the hydra with Sabrina? (Since it's impervious to magic and the skill the cow-girl learned was a strong physical attack.)