Demon Souls is more gimmicky and annoying than truly hard. Dark Souls is insanely hard. Both though are singinficantly harder than ER. ER is the newbie friendliest Souls for sure. The fact it allows you to be overleveled and run away from boss encounters without locking your progression makes this game much easier 

I have some characters that I doubt I have died more than 10 times in the entire game. I measure this by the number or Rune Arcs I have, I have a particularl STR character I still have over 30 Rune Arcs (I use one every time I die)

I can easily die 20 times in a single dungeon in both Demon and Dark Souls

You will love the DLC then!

It has a more intricate map, encourage you to look in the corners to find passages ans secret areas

I'm on the second map and already collected 70% of the scaduturee fragments. I like to explore every corner of the map so I think it will take a week or more to finish the DLC. So far loving it. It's harder than the base game but still the easiest souls for me. Too many overpowered and game breaking options from talismans to weapons to ashes of war handled to you. The upgraded tutle talisman is game breaking to stamina-heavy builds (also makes more reliable your to roll and attack much more) and the taliman thar recovers MP passively now allows me to spak ashes of war without worrying

I think at this point I can already spot many enemies on sight and know how to defeat them. Faith builds are incredible versatile and have many damage options. I'm also playing on NG which makes things easier and my character is now close to level 200

After this playtrough I'll do the DLC again with my NG+2 INT-DEX astrologer and see how is to play the DLC as mainly ranged caster. Most bosses looked even easier playing ranged than meele tbh, but exploration and dungeons looks designed to favor meele builds

Fair enough.  I find demon and Souls 1 fairly easy.  I can beat both with maybe 10 deaths total.  I only played Elden once, but it is easier than souls 2 and Souls 3.  I find 2 the hardest.  

Great to hear that - cause, from what I've gathered, it just might be what I was hoping Elden Ring would be in the first place (at least when it comes to overall world design) - not that I didn't enjoy the base game, mind you, but this sounds like more what I initially was hoping for from open world Souls.

The damage reduction is not enough for that to happen, though but you do a decent amount of extra damage.

OT - finished just about the whole map, so only some cleanup left for missing items/blessings and what I presume is the end-boss. We'll see how that goes.

I just whacked a boss that I've seen a lot of people having trouble with, I really wasn't looking forward to it. It became the second one I defeated on my first try, don't know if I was lucky or if the current Bonk+Bleed shenanigans are simply that efficient. Currently level 18 Scadu and level 7 Ashes, I think I have only a couple of areas left to unlock/enter. So far, after about 18-20 hours, I'm having a great time all in all!

Personally gonna persevere with the DLC, probably won't come vlose to beating the last boss from what I've seen of him. I suppose the more I play, the more I like it and the less I'm concerned with its flaws and the BS choices they made for the DLC, it's still Elden Ring and it's still a great game but I'm itching to go to NG+ for another base game run which I think is way better.

Maybe the math works differently? I'd be interested in seeing thorough tests for this.

*SPOILER warning*

Final Boss