The game had two people do the QA and less than 10 gameplay testers. Over a period of 7 years those less than two handful of people testing the game got incredibly good at it.

There is a difference between difficulty and actively being mean to players. The two environmental damage and some of the run backs are incredibly rude. Especially the bloodborne style grinding for shard bits.

I say this as someone who 100%ed the game. I definitely think they cranked it up a bit too much and catered to the pantheon of hollownest crowd instead of making the game overall balanced.

I predict more patches to smooth out some of those rough development edges.