We're comparing it to itself. Or, at worst, to NES/SNES era games. To us, a game with infinite lives, minimal penalty for fucking up, plus items to negate that minimal penalty, a path to outlevel any challenge, plus getting to call on people at damn near any time makes the game baby-time frolics.
It's challenging at times, sure, and there's the occasional boss that'll stomp your shit in, but the way people bitch about it, you'd think it was 'I Want to Be The Guy' on crank.
I can't say I've ever found myself playing the games from the late 80s or early 90s that have a serious reputation for difficulty, it was all before my time anyway, do you have anything more contemporary you are comparing it to so it can be called easy? Like lives as a system mostly just feel antiquated in the games I used to play with them, when it comes to penalties for fucking up Dark Souls will penalize you in terms of your potential ability to level up if you are playing sloppily which is really kind of unique compared to the standard for RPGs and hack and slash games more generally. There's also the curse mechanic that really fucks with players who, again, are not fully acquainted with the ins and outs of the game world and mechanics which more experienced players know how to mitigate.
The thing about Dark Souls is that its nature as an open ended RPG intrinsically means that there's probably going to be some build or strat out of the many that are available to you that makes things a lot easier, its just kind of the way things are in that genre and Dark Souls has a much, much higher intrinsic difficulty compared to almost every other RPG that it might be compared to that I can think of. The Elder Scrolls or Fallout will also have huge space for making comically OP builds, but they don't really pressure the player in the same way so sub-optimal builds usually won't have any issues. Dark Souls is different in that regard.
I also think that its strange presentation will create difficulties for a lot of players that are, or at least were at the time the game came out, quite unique. Summoning is an easy mode of sorts, but its not a straightforward 'Take less damage, deal more' that people are used to, you're putting your faith in another player and hoping that they are good enough to offset the increase in boss health, use of fairly rare resources and possibility of being invaded that summoning demands. Its not completely straightforward, similar to things like trying to figure out sidequests, secrets and obscure mechanics and weaknesses, its all so much more hidden compared to other games that it flies completely past a lot of people if they don't just use a walkthrough, certainly I probably wouldn't have found Ash Lake or ArchDragon Peak without them.
And a lot of players play DS games with lots of self imposed challenges, like I always feel like I'm giving up on some level if I have to resort to summoning for any of them, and a lot of players swear by sword and shield only with no use of potentially overpowered magic as the 'proper' way to play.
I might be biased though because I've always been kind of bad at Dark Souls and felt a lot more comfortable with Sekiro's combat system, which is closer to a traditional hack and slash even though I know some people find that game harder than the rest.
