While I can't speak to the difficulty level in relation to the other Souls games (yeah, I'm a pleb newcomer to the genre) I don't really feel like Elden Ring is punishingly difficult. Yeah, it's hard at points, and there's plenty of times where I've been killed due to overextending myself in fight, but I recognize that as my own stupidity and learned from my mistakes. I can see it being massively confusing if one were going in blind, i.e. no referencing a wiki or talking to friends that are playing it, but it's not like it's so full of cheese from bosses that you can't progress unless you have frame-perfect timing. Getting slapped around by bosses? Level up more and learn to stop flailing around like a moron in the fights. Barely doing chip damage on the enemies? Level up more and buff your weapons. Getting lost in quest lines? There's a nifty thing called a pad of paper and pencil - take notes and learn to use the map markers. There's solutions for everything in the game, you just need to learn how to use them. There's no need for any sort of "easy mode" in its context.

EDIT: friggin' typos...

While I can't speak to the difficulty level in relation to the other Souls games (yeah, I'm a pleb newcomer to the genre) I don't really feel like Elden Ring is punishingly difficult. Yeah, it's hard at points, and there's plenty of times where I've been killed due to overextending myself in fight, but I recognize that as my own stupidity and learned from my mistakes. I can see it being massively confusing if one were going in blind, i.e. no referencing a wiki or talking to friends that are playing ii, but it's not like it's so full of cheese from bosses that you can't progress unless you have frame-perfect timing. Getting slapped around by bosses? Level up more and learn to stop flailing around like a moron in the fights. Barely doing chip damage on the enemies? Level up more and buff your weapons. Getting lost in quest lines? There's a nifty thing called a pad of paper and pencil - take notes and learn to use the map markers. There's solutions for everything in the game, you just need to learn how to use them. There's no need for any sort of "easy mode" in its context.