Yes, I know what I'm asking is basically sacrilege in the 'Soulsborne' community but I've played quite a few Souls games and I am kind of over the whole 'challenging myself' thing. Part of the reason I was originally drawn to the Souls franchise was the difficulty but now I just want to play Fashion Souls with a cool-ass character in a cool-ass world doing cool-ass shit. The game has so much lore and such a beautiful world and just so much creativity in general that the difficulty seems like a distraction from enjoying it.
I've heard using summons is a good way to alleviate some of the difficulty. Are there any other effective ways?
What aspects of the game are you finding difficult?
Some general advice:
If you're still getting your head around dodging attacks, it might be worth using sorcery to give yourself some range in fights while you're still getting your head around combat mechanics.
There's a world boss in limgrave called "Tibia Marina" it drops a spirit summon that makes two skeletons. Since the skeletons can revive themselves (as long as they aren't hit when down) they can be useful to keep bosses distracted.
After you best the first boss in Raya Lucaria academy, there's an item you can give the sorcerer at the church near the start of Liurna of the Lakes. After he's left there'll be a scarab where he was. It drops Thop's Barrier ash of war. This is a really helpful ash for learning to parry, because it flashes a symbol when during parry frames so you have some visual feedback with your parry timing.
Don't be afraid to summon other players to help you. :)
Had no clue there was an ash of war to help with parrying. How have I never heard of that?
I don't find any aspects of the game any more difficult than previous souls-likes that I've played. It's just that I want to be much lazier when I play now.
Thop's Barrier kinda gets overshadowed by the other parry ashes, Carrian Retaliation makes a glintblade phalanx when parrying spells, and Golden Parry does an aoe parry that makes spacing less important.
Still a really useful ash for learning to parry though (anecdotally, I've been playing Dark Souls since the awful PC port of DS1 but only got my head around parrying thanks to Thop's Barrier).