Some people have been reporting you start out at a lower level than you’re supposed to, and thus don’t even have enough TP to use Flying Ripper in the intro, much less beat the first coliseum battle.
My guesses are the following:
- There were two versions of the ROM released, one of which is not compatible with the translation.
- There are corrupt ROMs floating around.
- Someone has added a trainer or something to the ROM and the initial XP or other value has been set to 0.
In the event that the game is ridiculously hard and you suffer from the above problems, please try getting the ROM from a different source. Additionally, please try it without the translation patch and see if it works fine before applying the patch. (If that’s the case I want to know about it.)