The thing that makes Elden Ring much easier is the fact that there is always somewhere else the player can make progress. In Dark Souls, you follow a more or less linear path and if you felt underleveled you had to grind enemies because you could not make any further progress until you pass where you got stuck. In Elden Ring, you can go to a different area completely and make a bit more progress there. From Limgrave, the player can choose to go to Stormveil, skip Stormveil and go to Liurnia Lake, go to Southern Limgrave, or go to Caelid if they’re a psycopath. This is in addition to all the helpers From has given players. Strong magic (compared to Souls games), Summons that are available to the player literally anywhere on top of the same Gold Message Summons from the Souls games, two moves that give players i-frames, etc.

Sure, if you play it like its a Souls game then it might seem hard, but if you play it as the action adventure RPG it is designed to be, the game is significantly easier than Souls games.

I have hundreds of hours in all the Souls games. I still say Elden Ring is easiest overall.