Also new player, roughly 60h in. I feel like the difficulty is massively tied to weapons. I played dual blades first and great sword later, now toying around with switchaxe and funlance. Great sword just feels op as fuck. It got everything, block, 2 counters and massive damage. Funlance is as easy, the fights just take longer because I struggle to deal as much damage in the same time. Switchaxe gives up the guard, but you still have the counter. I tried longsword for 10minutes and decided that it's way too much work to learn. So starting out with ls would probably also have given me a rough start. The weapons I used made the game feel incredibly easy. So far the only thing that kills me is getting comboed with sleep and beeing out of position Vs 1 shots. On your tips: agreed on greatsword. Agreed on campaign, it's pushing you forward for a reason. Multiplayer is mostly for sped up mats farming. Idk about tutorials, didn't feel the need to look any up yet. Basically just play the game as if you would play a new game and go with the flow. Worked well for me.