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I beat this game, it's not that hard if you pick the right character and get lucky. My strategy was defense. I made my character with 10 defense and gradually upped that to 14 by the time I got to the last tournament. I had a balanced character otherwise--as best I can remember, I had
3 strength
6 agility
6 attack
14 defense
4 vitality (as near I can remember)
3 charisma
4 stamina (again, roughly)
1 magicka
Mainly I spent money on armor--I had about 150 armor going into the final (second) tournament. I got the cleaver as my first better weapon, then I got the shortsword after upgrading my agility.
I didn't use a ranged weapon--you can get by without it, even in the duels, if you have a fair amount of armor and high defense. Same for magic/potion: I got by without em.
In battle, my strategy was to go to close quarters (walk, taunt) and do the lunge attack as soon as I was in range. When I was close enough, I did the quick attack which usually did 10 damage but sometimes did 20. That meant i got more hits in than the enemy since the quick attack uses almost no stamina. Plus I was a lot more likely to hit the enemy than he was to hit me due to the quick attack and my high defense. The end result was that I was able to deal damage faster than the enemies could deal me damage, and I killed the ninja with about 80 hps to spare.
Pretty unglamorous--not using magic or ranged weapons which look more fun. But in my case it worked.