If you’ve played Souls games already, you’ll know that a lot of the difficulty and perceived threat of Souls games is illusory. That hasn’t changed in Elden Ring, and you have more tools than ever before.

You can still run past almost everything except bosses, and with the open world you can just avoid hard bosses until you’re extremely overleveled. You can summon spirits now to help you in most tougher fights for the cost of some energy, you can craft all sorts of pots and items, guard counters make shield turtling better than ever, and as always you can summon players to get past anything if you’re really stuck. There’s respawn points right at the door of a lot of boss rooms now too, so more often than not, if you die you can just try again immediately or with a very short jog compared to previous games. The game isn’t afraid of throwing mean and cheesy shit at you (so many dual bosses and mini bosses), so exploit your full arsenal.

Just go in with an open mind and don’t be too hardheaded about how you approach things and you’ll probably have a good time. It’s likely both the easiest and the most cheesable of the Soulsborne games. Maybe don’t try a hybrid melee/caster build without a guide though if you’re going in blind.