Just search around a bit. There are 5 doors that open with the soldier's key. Many goodies can be found, including a flaming longsword and other stuff. The game is easier, one can see it sooner or later. The "easier game" argument is further bolstered by the... ability to raise the difficulty level:

Instead of assigning traditional difficulty levels, the devs cleverly opted to set the whole game in a bit easier scale, give a learning curve and making it friendlier to the uninitiated via many dialogues with npcs. For the hardcore fans, there is the ability to throw bonfire ascetics in a bonfire to permanently raise the difficulty of associated enemies. In addition, one can choose the champions covenant (that's the name more or less) to further increase the difficulty.

All in all the game is incredibly balanced, amazingly smooth and truly fun to play The pace is such that urges the player to constantly move, search, discover - and of course - die. The masters will master it, the newcomers will love it. I can't stop playing enough to type a post.

400 hours and you can resist waiting on the game? And to me until now ds2>ds by far especially when it comes to class balance and the open world aspect. The grahpics and art is far more beautiful then dark souls and there is very little lag.

Get it now on ps3, if a ps4 version comes out i'm sure it will be a special edition with possible dlc so that could also be a good buy. 

Disagree entirely. You definitely don't need close to the number of souls from killing all (or most) enemies 10 times to get through an area. That's just overkill unless you keep losing a large number of souls and suddenly need to level up/upgrade equipment, which really shouldn't happen unless you just never go back to the bonfire and then Majula for whatever strange reason.

I'm at lvl 60, have a Falchion +6. and have only had three enemies disappear on me. I haven't been having too hard of a time.

You can also make souls back in other ways. PvP, sell at stuff at Gavlan, use the items that give you souls, use a bonfire ascetic to bring all enemies back (they're harder, but they give you more souls too). You can also get a Covetous Silver Serpent Ring which gives you 20% more souls by buying 10k souls worth of stuff from the Traveling Merchant (old lady), then talking to her.

Ya i only used the soldiers key for three doors. I agree about the difficulty to an extent, the last giant took me a lot of time while the dragonslayer boss(not ornstein) took me one try and i wasn't even prepared for a boss. The class balance is definately there but i do feel that strengt builds are op in many situations especially early on and in speed runs.