Chronos: Before the Ashes

This is the hardest difficulty in the game, and it is no joke. A short combo from even the most basic of enemies can kill you, and larger enemies hit like trucks. Despite this, I do suggest playing your first playthrough on this difficulty to also unlock A True Adventurer (80G) and get a handle on how the enemies attack and where to go for the story. This will help you in your attempt at the Old Enough (15G) achievement during a second playthrough.
 
Combat-wise, you will obviously learn the enemy patterns by trial and error, or you could watch someone play on Youtube first. I'd suggest taking the Sword as your starter weapon and then switching it out for the Spear when you find that during the story. This will give you a long reach and allow you to poke enemies to death and keep them off you. The mage enemies will be one of the biggest threats, so always take them out first by rushing in close and getting off a combo. Larger enemies will take patience, don't try to wear them down quickly, just go through the dance of dodging their slow attacks and getting a few quick hits in before repeating. Sometimes you can hold  to wind up a heavy attack and stagger them, but you risk getting hit while the animation goes.
 
Both of the above weapons increase in damage based on your Agility stat, so you can pump a ton of points into that early to ensure you're doing a lot of damage to dispose of enemies quickly - and save all your Rare shards to upgrade these two weapons. Vitality will obviously be a huge help to have more health and defense. I'd suggest you leave your strength fairly low unless you want to use the blunt weapons for some of the bosses, and arcane is only helpful if you rely on using the stone abilities a lot. The stones take a while to charge though, so the usefulness is limited.
 
You will likely die a lot during this playthrough, and your age can eventually become a problem, making your character move more slowly and get stunned from big hits. However, your combat skill will likely increase at this point as well. You will gain traits to help offset some of this handicap too. The aging system stops at age 80, but you can continue to level up with experience to gain more stats, so mostly this is just a test of attrition. Eventually you will prevail.