Megami Tensei

so i bought nocturne for the switch and im rather quickly getting salty about some things and wanted to get some answers.

1. is the demon negotiation always this dumb? it doesent seem to matter what i answer to their question they 90% of the time get angry and leave if i even make it that far since 70% of them seem to think its funny to drain my wallet and then leave. i legit spent 50 mins trying to get a SINGLE demon today.
2. are the difficulties suppose to be like this? normal seems to be something the devs added in remastered to take the piss out of people who complained about the game, its easy enough i could finish the game in my sleep while hard makes me into a 4 year old child trying to beat up a 25 year old professional boxer. the enemy hp in hard is fine the problem i have is that randomly the enemy goes before you and you just die if they get a single crit (which happends WAY to often btw) or hit a single weakpoint as every enemy now has aoe. i would be fine if they attacked first only in ambushes and bossfights but why do random encounters just randomly get a turn before the player?
3. how in the everloving fck does the minigame in labyrinth of amala work? i have seen videos of people punching the orange dinnerplates but i cant do it, it simply dont work. i can punch before i get closer to it, right before i hit it or in the middle of those 2 and i still take dmg from it. im suppose to be able to get macca from destroying them. do i need a specific amount of str for it?