Keep dying immediately--Am I missing something?

I feel like an idiot, but I've gotten killed like 20 times now by the two guys at the cottage in the very beginning.

I can beat Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but I can't beat these guys. The combat system is so unintuitive for me. And they take like 4-5 hits to kill with the axe but I die after about 2-3 hits.

Am I missing something? Should I just keep butting my head against this?

I think I may need to start a whole other game to do the fighting tutorial again. I thought the game would ease me into it easier, but maybe I was wrong?