This sounds not very good.......I mean the quality of the kit!
Than I would recommend, to take this as experience, never buy a kit without looking inside the box.
Now what to recommend as an alternative? The first kit was in scale 1:40, big scale usually is easier to built than smaller scales (my opinion, others opinion differs maybe), but f.e. my first lit builts were in scale 1:64 and made some relatively good results. I made several Jotika kits which have very good timber quality and good manuals (which is very important in the beginning). But also the russian manufacturer Master Korabel seems to be very interesting for you, maybe the gunboat).
I recommend usually also not too much masts, so one or two masts, this will result in enough rigging works. But we know also modelers, which built as a first model the HMS Victory and afterwards the Santisima Trinidad, with very good results.........
I think you should first click through our different building logs and take a look at the different models, start realy every time on the first post and you will see very fast, which kind of models would fit for you......A forum like this is helping very much to get insight in the pros and cons of some kits.