Welcome to Shin Megami Tensei unforgiving difficulty. Regular SMT games are always hard, and in my opinion SMT IV is one of the easiest.
In the same 3ds you may try Soul Hackers and Devil Survivor Overclocked, which in my opinion are way harder than IV.
Yes, the beggining is really hard. It will take some time before you can get demons with good healing abilities and magic that block effects. The key in this game is to built a team with demons that have different null effects, so even if the enemy strikes first or uses an attack that is critical to one of your demons, that same attack may find a null effect on another demon of your team, then you break the chance of a Press Turn (extra attacks) from the enemy.








