Namco on Dark Souls 2 marketing: "treating it as a massive AAA title, would be nice to attract Skyrim players"

[Angelus]

He speaks the truth ^^
Like someone else in this thread already pointed out, the key to Dark Souls difficulty is the initial lack of knowledge about each area, and the enemies. You never know what to expect. Once you've played through the game it become a cakewalk, because you've been up against everything and have the knowledge required for success. There's not really a whole lot you could do to make the initial run easier without ruining the essence of the game, which is you walking into the treacherous unknown.