The original Bards Tale was difficult in this way:
Every square you moved, you could have a % random encounter. That % being if it was day/night cycle within the city. Every dungeon level would have a % attached to it. Some places had nearly a 30-50% random encounter. So every 3-5 moves you'd be fighting something.
Now when in a dungeon. This ended up being pretty brutal. The only way to heal your party or to get mana (spell points or whatever they were called back then) was through the bard's songs. I think mages could heal the group, but relied on those spell points. So once mages ran out of mana, you'd have the bard sing, and regen would be really slow on those points. And if you didn't move, the chances for an encounter was reduced but still happened. So things got pretty hard. If your party died, you'd respawn at your adventure guild, have to create new characters at level 1, then fill up the rest of your party with your dead guys. Then drag them across the map (which can of course cause encounters on your level 1 guy) to the temple to get them resurrected by a priest in the temple. So a lot of people would level up a guy just for that experience.
If I remember right, every time you rezzed yourself, you'd lose a number on one of your stats. They had STR, AGI, INT, WIS, etc etc like every game. But every rez was a -1 on one stat permanently.
It wasn't too bad since every level you gained a +1 on a stat permanently. But lots of death would gimp your toons.
Now that sounds frustrating in a way, but not too bad. But later on mages would get a teleport to the adventure guild, so if you got stuck in a dungeon in a scenario like that you could teleport your group out. Then you could heal/refresh mana and go back into the dungeon and try again.
If they keep that same formula (which I doubt they will) I could live with it, but I could see people bitching about it these days. So they might be referring to something like that with "difficulty."