You don’t have to farm levels. You just go do something else that naturally results in levels or loot making your character stronger. Since all of the game is wonderfully designed, it’s never a situation where you run off and “kill 10 bats” that people might have in mind due to precedents set by e.g. world of Warcraft.

Also, few ppl understand this, but community knowledge is actually a core part of the design philosophy. That’s why there’s player messages and blood stains built into the game. It’s not a dirty thing in this game to look stuff up or ask for help. There’s a huge community and comradary aspect to the game.

Elden Ring has this capability but none of the previous games did. Stuck on O&S? There is literally nowhere else to go except through them.

You can summon Solaire which eliminates the hardest part of that fight, which is both bosses chasing you at once. While it's true that you need to defeat them eventually you can detour through the Painted World to get some levels and items.

I summoned on most of my attempts. It still took me days and consumed most of my Humanity. Had I run out, I simply would have ended the game.

Well you didn’t. You persevered and then succeeded and no one had to make it easier for you.

If you made it through O&S and don’t like the game, then I think it’s safe to say that it’s not the game for you.

And that needs to be okay too, for people to say that. Personally I’m not good at basketball, it’s just not the game for me.

A potential upside is that because it's tedious, you'll probably want to do it for only as long as necessary before trying again so the difficulty is somewhat adjusted to the player's need, and you don't actually change how enemies behave - the mechanics of the game are still the exact same, your numbers are just a bit bigger. When I imagine an easy mode I would figure making changes for how things work would be necessary, like having a boss' attacks be more predictable.