EDIT: I figured it out. Leveling is very important, it's probably worth it to have a larger notification than the little red exclamation mark at the top of the screen. after picking up a decent skill and swapping it out for parry, I was finely able to win the fight.
This game has really, really good art but confusingly balanced combat. From what I can tell, enemies get to use 2 attack actions per turn, plus any non-attack actions they have. For example, the second fight of the game, (when running up to a hex 3 distance from them) will use the following series of moves (I will be attacking their arms with slash each round):
turn 1:
bandit: move to you. hefty swing (30 dmg), move to you again because of the knockback, delay action
me: slah (14 dmg)
turn 2:
bandit: basic action (45 dmg), kick (5 dmg + slow)
me: slash (14 dmg)
turn 3:
basic action (45 dmg), back off (25 dmg + slow + push)
me: slash (14 dmg)
turn 4:
hefty swing (30 dmg, push, +30 dmg if you hit a wall), unstoppable (+6 strength tokens, increasing all further damage), basic action (45 dmg),
me: slash (14 dmg)
turn 5:
bandit: basic action (45 dmg), bash (15 dmg + steal all limb defence)
me: slash (14 dmg)
turn 6:
bandit kick (5dmg), out of cards, delayed action
me: slash (14 dmg)
turn 7:
bandit: basic action (45 dmg), hefty swing (30 dmg, push, +30 dmg if you hit a wall)
I am out of HP and die
that is a total of 335 damage from them with several status effects and 84 from me (all the damage values are going off prediction and looking at the card descriptions in their discard, I didn't record actual attack values).
to ilustrait my point, here is how one turn went when we were both at full HP:
One of his attacks, which he used along side unstopable in the same turn, dealt 27 damage, injured my head, brought my arm armor from 28 to 4, and applied 3 points of bleed damage.
one of my attacks on him deals 6 damage and brought his arm armor from 28 to 22
I am sorry about the essay, but I just want to make it clear the difficulty I am having. It mathematically seems impossible to beat the second fight of the game (where you are scripted to lose the first one). The enemy has between 2 and 3 times as many actions as you on their turn, and almost every single one of the actions they get does signifigantly more damage than you. I am sure there is something I am missing, but I have spent over an hour on this fight, trying every strategy I can possibly think of, and nothing has even come close to working. And this is only on normal difficulty. that isn't including the fact that several of their attacks not only do massive damage, but also hit multiple random limbs (or at least, the limbs they hit are not revealed when using preperation) so you can't plan around their really strong attacks with parry.
Again, I am sure I am doing it wrong, but I just want to know WHAT I am doing wrong and how I should be doing combat.