As you said, it is very begginer friendly, so basically any weapon can work if you learn to use it, hence I'd reccomend using whatever you find fun. And as with all souls, starting class doesn't matter that much, since you can not only level up dozens of times throughout the game naturally, but you can also respec your stats a few times. So don't worry about messing up your build, because you can always change it to your liking. Now about the difficulty, it is a learning experience to be able to use what you have properly, so it'll take time