I think you are mixing the tabletop PF game with the PF videogame here.
They have some differences, they have things in common, but they are not the same. The tabletop has more skills, spells, classes, mounted combat, crafting, downtimes etc and the combat and skillchecks are more hard and unforgiving in the game than in most Pathfinder APs.
I supposse BG3 and a D&D 5e game will be different too because they are made for different media.
I have never played PnP, so I can only talk about computer games.
You say that combat and skill check is more difficult in PnP?
I would assume the computer game is more difficult because you can save and load the game.
If your char dies in PnP and nobody else can revieve or the whole party dies because some unlucky dice rolls, then weeks or even month of playing are gone.
Yeah, what I meant is that the combat and skillchecks are (generally speaking) more difficult and unforgiving in the videogame than in most Pathfinder Adventure paths (the modules or campaigns),
In the videogame, you can reload to try again the fights and skillchecks and respecialize your character several times whenever you wish, as you pointed out so the videogame can be more hardcore.
I think the difficulty of the videogames is OK, since you can just reload and come back later. And you can switch the difficulty in options middle-game so...
About the difficulty, I do not think you can compare because in the TT you have a human DM, so you sometimes help "behind the curtains" your players because you do not want them to lose their characters because of a nat 1; unless they do something so reckless and astonishingly stupid that you have to or if they are really unlucky and you can´t do anything about it.
I enjoy using curses, diseases, long-lasting crippling wounds, etc but I´m not really a fan of killing a character outright if he fails one save.
Also, you can tune the encounters on the move in PNP: If they are killing everything in auto-combat you just throw harder or different enemies at them the next time and the other way around. If they have a group that destroys any damage-sponge enemies you change to encounters with sneaky enemies, more casters, or touch-based attack-creatures, for example. If they are using repeatedly a combination of debuffs to surpass any encounter you throw some undead at them, etc.
