From Software finally added an Easy Mode to their game

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Machina said:

There have always been several ways to reduce the difficulty of the Souls games when you play them (grind souls for levels when you hit a roadblock, co-op summoning, looking up boss weaknesses, etc.), and even more have been added to Elden Ring, as the OP and other posts have pointed out.

Elden Ring takes the grinding one and makes it more varied, because you're not stuck farming the same small section of a level over and over again for souls. In Elden Ring you can just go to a part of the world you haven't explored yet and try a different boss instead. Indeed, if you decide to finish every area before moving on (which for me I define as killing every boss), then you'll find you're significantly over-powered for most of the game, because it seems balanced around the idea that players will do something like 50-75% of the content that's available to them in a major new area before progressing the main storyline.

These and other changes make Elden Ring less well-balanced and finely honed than a Souls game (and also a lot less nerve-racking - although whether that's a good thing or a bad thing will vary from person to person), but also more interesting and less repetitive. I hope they continue making both types of game going forward.

When I play Elden Ring, it unquestionably has the DNA of a Souls game, and yet it feels different at the same time.  There is a lot more choice in Elden Ring.  Often that is good, but sometimes it is bad.  (I.e. too much choice can actually be a bad thing.) 

I'm about 60 hours in so far, and overall I think it is a good thing though.  I like to explore everything I can, but I also like challenge.  So I'll explore one area thoroughly for a while, and then get tired of how easy everything is (because I'm over leveled) and go to a harder area for a while.  Then when I want to go back to exploration mode, I'll return to the easier area.  This part makes it feel different from a Souls game, but overall I think the freedom is a plus.