Nah, I don't think easy would make a difference.
Generally, I don't support difficulty levels that simply scale damage or hit points - or other such trivial balance efforts. It's a necessary evil, I suppose - but it's a cop-out and can never compensate for poor balance.
The thing about Risen is that the balance is pretty spot-on for the majority of the game, and it's perfectly alright that you take a beating during your first several hours of playing. It's supposed to be like that.
What I'm not sure about is whether the endgame is supposed to remain as challenging throughout the ~40% of the game that it actually represents. Because that's where you start facing the same enemies over and over, and really - weapons, hitpoints, gear, and strength didn't really seem to matter except to sustain life for 1-2 more hits than when you first start encountering them. It's not really the numbers that are wrong, it's the way multi-enemy combat works.
The major problem is when facing more than 2 of them, because that's when it becomes unwieldy to maintain correct positioning and it becomes almost impossible to safely predict charged attacks - which will kill you in 1 hit even at 400+ life - unless you're 100% full.
Whether that was fully intentional and planned or not, I can't say - but I have to say I think it's poor game design, because you really want to give players a lasting sensation of power at the end. Unless, of course, you simply don't believe in that way of balancing a game.
However, Gothic 1 - which it seems to emulate closely - did manage to reward players at the end, or so I distinctly remember. I remember I tried to destroy Old Camp and everything in it at the end, and I succeeded. Something you could only dream about when starting. This is also possible in Risen, but it's trivial since your main enemies are MUCH MUCH tougher than what you face in Harbor Town or the Monestary.
However, with all that said, it's not really a huge issue. It was just a cause for some frustration with me, and it removed a significant portion of the pleasure I was expecting to experience near the end-game. I was truly enjoying myself until I realised that nothing would really change in terms of making combat less challenging, and my character would never really be a bad-ass. But it's still a fantastic game in most ways, and I wish PB all the best in future efforts.