I suppose the issue for Elden Ring (and other soulsborne games) difficulty is due to it’s game design. It very much takes a minimal on-rails or handholding approach and expects the player to experiment, explore and eventually succeed through the game on their own achievements. It’s also likely why these games don’t exactly have a ‘story’ but do have lore and worldbuilding that tells a story.

Fans of the series usually appreciate this design either because it gives them a challenge, or nostalgia from games of old that had similar designs. Removing this part of the game for a built-in ‘easy’ mode as it were would make the series very simple and not engaging. Exploration would be tedium as there would be less threat to worry about, bosses would have their mechanics invalidated as player mistakes wouldn’t matter.

As an example the ‘first’ boss in the open plain thats been commented as having broken a few controllers isn’t designed to be defeated by a fresh new character. Players should probably not engage head-on, or will learn quickly not to, and sneak around to the next Grace point instead. They will pick up crafting, and hopefully move on to the next indicated Grace point where they will get introduced to levelling and a mount.

If they then decide to backtrack and approach the boss on horseback (who themselves is mounted) they’ll have a much easier time manoeuvring around their attacks, almost as if it was the encounter was designed this way.

The only criticism of this is that players are expected to figure this out on their own, which comes back to ‘it’s designed that way’. If players don’t take initiative to find different methods then they likely won’t enjoy the rest of the game at all. The difference I suppose in being told where/what/how to do part of a game vs figuring it out yourself.

To tl;dr this I’d probably say the game isn’t really for people who are in it for the ride. The game expects you to take the wheel, sometimes over rocky terrain. In the end if you get through it you learn how to drive, across the whole series mind you since they are so similar, and hopefully enjoy the journey.