Personally, I've found Elden Ring to be, at base direct comparison, a little more challenging than other From titles, however, in actual play and impression, it has been substantially easier.
This is because, unlike other Souls titles, Elden Ring has, indeed, got tools that allow the player to adjust the degree of challenge they'll face. The biggest one of these is your Ashes - Doing a boss fight alone versus doing it with an Ash is a large adjustment to the overall challenge of the fight. *Most* players, at least in my sphere of experience, start to feel like Ashes just make the game too easy - sometime around about halfway towards two-thirds of the way through their first playthrough. What you commonly see is them trying to use them less, or possibly swearing off them, but if they aren't an experienced souls player, leaning back onto them again as the game reaches its final stages. A lot of players often then promise themselves not to use ashes for the bosses on subsequent playthroughs.
Ashes are a difficulty toggle; they substantially make a challenge easier by providing more damage, and another target, taking a lot of the pressure off the player to reliably avoid a boss' attack patterns and giving them more space to breath, learn from their mistakes, and recover from them. This is not a bad thing - everyone will play the game in the way they find most enjoyable, and it doesn't pay to listen to snobs or elitists.
The next break in difficulty that elden Ring provides is the open nature of it, that other From games lack. Importantly, this means that skill blocks, power blocks, or other walls you run up against rarely feel like actual blocks, because there's almost always somewhere else you can go and something else you can progress, and come back later with fresh eyes, more skill, stronger equipment or simply more levels and raw power.
My personal experience ran something like this (I don't have Plus and must play offline, so always solo, no human summons):
NG: Wretch (I like even stats to start from), kept 10 vigour the entire game, and was effectively one-shottable by everything in the game after Limgrave. Every boss needed to be done no-hit perfect, because getting hit was death. This was a difficulty spike that I knowingly placed upon myself, because that's generally just how I play. I started to use Ashes once I got them - I went to Caelid early, because it seemed cool, and I picked up battle mage Hughes from the Caelid Evergaol - he was a solid ash for me for a long time, until I found Tiche. Around Morgot, fairly well advanced through the game, I was starting to feel like the Ashes I was using were taking the teeth out of the boss fights - I was left alone far too often and it was too easy to get space and burn things down. I stopped using ashes for the last few bosses, after I felt like I hadn't really 'earned' Maliketh. (All bosses, fully thorough playthrough searching under every rock and in every cave etc. Rani end ^.^)
NG+1: Swore off Ashes entirely, but continued to push levels and power up my caster build. Still no vigour, everything one-shots if I make a mistake. This was the most challenging playthrough for me. (Frenzy end.)
NG+2: Respecced to try a different style and opted for a high mobility, lightly armoured dual scythe build. I had originally intended it to be scythe and shield, but I didn't find single scythe's move set comfortable, and it only felt 'right' dual-wielding two. this playthrough was a lot of fun. I discovered what it was like to have hitpoints, and the ability to make mistakes (sometimes) without dying. Overall, this playthrough, despite being NG+2, felt much easier than my first two. (Death end)
NG+3: Respecced again, into sword and shield; this playthrough was focused heavily on using the shield counter ability, as I wanted to play around with it. Less dodging, a lot of blocking and countering; high vigour, loads of hp, loads of defence, oodles of stamina. This play through was an unimaginable cakewalk, even without ashes... it was just so... easy, and stress free and lacking in any real feel of danger. I think I died maybe three times in the entire playthrough. (Fracture end)
NG+4, +5, +6: Balanced out my stats in order to be able to switch my equipment to different things and still be effective, in whatever way I felt like approaching a fight, but keep the very high hp and stamina. I was using these playthroughs as much less through run-throughs where I was getting a particular ending and doing options or paths that I hadn't yet done - doing things in different orders, getting extra dialogues I might not have seen, and so on. These playthroughs were fast and thin, and didn't clear all the bosses, except the ones I needed to for whatever ending I was getting. (Decay and Order ends, and fracture again)
NG+7: Respecced to all-round caster build, but with enough points to afford me a little bit of extra vigour this time (turns out at NG+7, 'a little' extra vigour on a low defence caster doesn't mean much ^.^ Oh well). Used Ashes freely this time, and experimented with different ones to see what they were like. The exploding jars are funny ^.^. The game doesn't know how to handle its mimic when it is a mimic of an incredibly squishy caster who can get her arse one-shot by most things. She's not a lot of use at this NG+ level, and other Ashes are more effective (Also did they make the mimic tear ash AI really, really *dumb* in a recent patch? It feels like it...) Anyhow, I didn't feel I had anything left to prove to myself, so moving through quickly was more important; this one is a full through, do everything get everything playthrough again, set up to be able to do every ending, and stopping at, but not doing, Maliketh yet - this is the place I want to be at when the DLC comes out, before we actually change the world and ash the capital.
Overall, Elden Ring is both the most approachable From Game ever, and it has the potential to be one of the most challenging, if you want it to be, or one of the easiest, if that's what you'd prefer.
Oh! By the by - since others are posting up video links, there's a series I've watched that demonstrates how approachable the game can be; this is one from a player who had never before touched any From game, and was entirely unfamiliar with the souls-like genre, when she started. It's been a very rewarding series to watch, and I've enjoyed the journey a lot ^.^
