I've been playing it for a few hours now, and it is indeed pretty challenging. The naked challenge would end as soon as you encounter someone else than Bandit thugs and marksmen - even those could kill you if they come in sufficient numbers and/or if you're somewhat unlucky; I mean a new mercenary has 40 to 60 HPs, and the lowest damage weapon, a knife, does between 15 and 25 damage, so 2-3 hits or 1 critical with a knife certainly kills a naked guy.
As far as the map travelling and the missions are concerned it's comparable to M&B. The travelling is more or less the same style with an overhead map, and you and other parties roaming it in realtime, changing to TB for the battles.
Right now there seem to be three different kind of contracts included: protecting a caravan (which is low risk/high revenue at the beginning of the game), travelling to some city/village, and razing an enemy settlement/hideout.
Other than in M&B you only get money (crowns) for completing contracts, EXP is only earned through battle.
I did pretty well with my company, making money by protecting caravans (which hardly got ambushed, don't know if it was luck or just the few enemies on the map at the beginning - one guy got obliterated by a pack of werewolves after leaving the first city in some LP, so probably the former). After doing this for around a week I had reached the maximum of 12 mercenaries which were also sufficiently equipped (at least gambeson and stuff for the melee-guys), so I started doing raze-contracts to gain EXP which worked pretty well, as long as you only accept those with a payment of around 1.000 crowns. It's still possible to get unlucky if you encounter an Orc berserk or warrior or something like that. Since right now there's no penalty for cancelling a contract that's hardly a problem though.
Doing this for another week saw my guys levelled up, and all the melee-guys in at least some sort of mail. Since I didn't lose anyone I decided to go for a challenge and accepted a 2.000 crowns raze-contract. The target was some "Abandoned Graveyard" so the enemies were Undeads, which I had fought before, although only Ghouls and Wiedergänger (as the zombies are called). Both are pretty straightforward: Ghouls are mindlessly rushing you, have no armor and are pretty easily killed as long as they don't eat the dead (which makes them more powerful the more they devour). The zombies are classic ones: slow and dumb.
This "Abandoned Graveyard" also accomotated - beside those two types - three Vampires and a small army of Skeletons. The vampires have high HP, which regenerates when they hit one your guys, and can also manifest themselves more or less wherever they want (and can get away again too, without the free attack for leaving the zone of control) - so don't even think about taking shots with your archer-guys, they'll all end up with a vampire next to them.
The skeletons don't attack mindlessly and form shieldwalls on their own, holding their position while their archers shoot at you.
It was pure luck that I only lost one guy (one of the three founding members), all other guys were injured, 4 or 5 even down to less than 5 HPs.
I continued to do caravan protection and delivering contracts till the guys were healed up and the equipment repaired. Then I started doing easier raze-missions again, levelling up and getting better equipment (although I haven't found any of the real good armor from the scenarios yet). At this point I thought that as long as you avoid strong/dangerous parties/hideouts (all enemy parties/hideouts are scaled: weak-average-strong-dangerous; I'm not sure if this only dependend on the enemies' numbers or their strength too but I think it's only the former) it could become pretty dull if you don't do challenging things on purpose.
Around day 30 I started another caravan-protection contract which would have led me more or less across the whole map. Outside the starting village I first saw that the orcs had begun to establish new (strong) settlements next to the roads, and orc parties roaming around them. Luckily they were only average or weak parties and didn't attack. Up until this point I had only 3 or 4 bandit ambushes against caravans and all of those were either weak or average. After around half the journey I saw the first strong bandit ambush, accompanied by a dangerous one. My company was able to fend them off without loses, although all caravan guards and one of the two mules died. I'm not sure if it's possible to intercept ambushers, I didn't manage it yet.
Shortly before arriving at the target village another dangerous bandit ambush killed the last mule, making the contract void. I decided to continue to that village anyway, only to get ambushed by a strong orc party consisting of a few young orcs, and many berserks and warriors. That was the first battle which lasted more than 20 turns (more than 40 in this case). Although I won in the end all 3 spears and all 4 swords (including a greatsword) broke during the fight, and I lost 4 mercenaries (of level eight). At this point I called it a day but I'm pretty sure the company won't last that much longer anyway.
tl;dr: It starts somewhat challenging, seems to get easier, only to **** you over. I like it.
