Interesting story. What I've found invaluable about Elden Ring, from a difficulty perspective, are two things:

One is the open worlds design, which you referred to. There are always several options (perhaps dozens) and so you're never really stuck, even if you can't pass a particular boss.

But the other, I think, is the much wider array of skills and capabilities you can deploy. In the other Souls games, you can vary your build, but projectile-based weaponry is always pretty limited - whether it's bow and arrow or magic, but especially magic.

In Elden Ring, magic is suddenly far more viable. I don't believe magic is an "auto win button" as some suggest - you really have to invest significantly in it to make it highly potent, and there are numerous bosses who have strong magic defence, which means they aren't a pushover. However, the ability to engage in combat at range - especially if you have some melee-based summons (whether humans or spirit summons) - can make all the difference.

This all results in a degree of control around difficulty that wasn't present in earlier Souls games. I think that it's possible to take an "easier path" if you choose to. But what's great about Elden Ring is that you can vary this experience on the fly. So you can choose not to summon, or you can choose to use a different weapon or armour, or you can choose to do things in a different order. All of these nuances change the difficulty as you play.

It wouldn't work for all games, but in Elden Ring, I'd say that this kind of difficulty tuning in context feels more effective than simply switching on an "easy mode" - a game-wide easy mode, by definition, is a blanket rule. I love that we can ratchet challenge up and down in Elden Ring far more dynamically.