As someone who never touched the difficulty, I think my smooth experience came down to considering the encounters more, not dial-mashing the controller. Some fights work a lot better with certain equipment. There’s three kinds of defense suitable for certain attacks: Shield, dodging, and sprinting (a certain enemy has a long gun attack, for instance, that’s good for sprinting).
I think I did struggle a bit at an eventual “rush” segment, but that’s coming up near the end of the game.