Dark souls 2 I'm poor fuck off

I know I'm late, but did they lower whatever difficulty they had for dark souls 2? I mean I feel as if this should have been the first one. I feel as if the devs should have released dark souls 2, then 1. It seems WAAAAAY easier and sloppier than 1.
Dark souls 1 was a very difficult game. Even enemies I breeze past gave me a hard time if I ****** up on my moveset. Dark souls 2 seems like a dumbed down version of 1.
Inb4 hella late/what year is it.
I'm poor. I fell in love with the difficulty/play style/DIFFICULTY of dark souls. And then after my first play through I'm like "I'm 2-3 hitting everything 1 handed....does it get harder?"
I have died more from accidentally walking off an edge than from enemies.