I'm not great at Souls games or anything (and Nioh has been totally whooping my ass) so I'm not trying to brag, but I really don't get people who complain about Elden Ring's difficulty.
Using all the tools available to me, I never had any real trouble with Elden Ring outside of a few very specific spots: Malenia, Radahn, Fire Giant, Elden Beast, that one mines dungeon you get ported into with the string-shooting menaces, Godrick at the beginning, the draconic knight outside Maliketh's room, the snow dragon, the Castle Sol guy, and maybe the Godskin Duo. I don't even know about that last one because I put one to sleep and just kind of dealt with them. And a lot of the others are optional. You can go back to Godrick later.
The only -required- things that were hard were the final boss, Fire Giant, and maybe Godskin Duo. All of those are in like the last 5% of the game.
The other 98% of the "main story" wasn't really any kind of problem. Fights I've seen endless bitching about like Maliketh, Margit, Mogh... they were all pretty whatever. Using all the tools available to you, and there are a lot, you can get through most of the game without issue. Compare that to Sekiro where they give you no way out, you gotta git gud, or Nioh where it's fast and furious and just whoops your ass...
...yeah, when it comes to Elden Ring's vaunted "difficulty" I don't get it, and it's a shame those articles and stuff keep people away from the game thinking it's fucking Cuphead or something.