Lords of the Fallen isn't very difficult. There are areas you might think are difficult, but it's actually because you went there way too early (this happened on 2 occasions in my first playthrough, both of them were the Bell Doors). It's kind of like walking into the graveyard on DS1 and progressing the game that way before going to Undead Berg.
I made the mistake of complaining about these areas in my 'artificial difficulty' post, but it was actually me just finishing them early. So aside from my navigation errors through these areas too early the game was as easy as Dark Souls 2 (not the DLC).
I read that Lords of the Fallen (release day version, not sure if patches nerfed the difficulty) was pretty hard...especially in regards to some of the long range enemies- such as archers- that were difficult to reach