Ain't nothing but a mis-stake...

For frame rate, I would recommend the settings presented in this video. The video has chapters, so you can jump straight to the recommended setting section. They include battery saver, recommended (40fps), or prettiest (30fps). The higher fps setting may help with combat, but the game is meant to be hard and very punishing. A lot of the game comes from trial and error, and steadily improving your playing and pattern recognition.

For messages, it's possible a graphical setting might help, but otherwise the deck has a built in magnification tool that may help you. Normally you hold down either the steam button or the ". . ." Button and then press L1 to turn on the magnifier, but if you're using it frequently you can also bind one of the back buttons to magnify. I would also recommend setting some of the back buttons to toggle between potions and drink them, I found that to be very helpful when playing.

Well I can't help much with the technical stuff (haven't had any issues to solve) but here are some tips to help with the difficulty:

• If you started as a Vagabond, unequip 1 of the weapons and maybe your gloves so you're not fat rolling right off the bat. Class starts with a set of heavy armor, a sword and shield and a halberd and begins the game already overloaded, which will make avoiding attacks harder.

• Rest at the site of grace that's just north of the big camp but before the gates going up toward Stormveil so you can meet Melina and get Torrent as well as unlock the ability to level up.

• Immediately after doing the previous thing, go back to Kale (the Santa Clause looking guy) and talk to the girl that will be there and get the summon bell and your first summon.

• You're directed to go to the castle in front of you when you start, but it's intended for around level 20-30 so you'll need to cut your teeth on some easier stuff. Instead of proceeding toward Stormveil, head south to the Weeping Peninsula. It's a slightly lower level area than where you begin the game, and there is also a couple merchants with extremely useful tools like the lantern which will allow you to more easily explore caves, mines, and crypts without giving up your off-hand for a torch. There is also a good, pretty easy legacy dungeon to conquer there that will give you some goodies and runes to level up.

• Hemorrhage (blood loss) is one of the best status effects in the game, and almost every corporeal enemy in the game is weak to it. Bleed builds are essentially putting the game on easy mode. The Samurai class begins with an Uchitigana which has the effect, and you can easily find a second Uchigigana in the early game to dual-wield them.

• Rune Fragments can be thrown to distract enemies. Throw the stone where you want an enemy to look, and if it was close enough for them to hear, they will investigate giving you a chance to sneak by or backstab them. You can also hit someone directly with them or a knife or other thrown object to pull them into aggro away from a group (though there are some spots where this aggros everything so use wisely).

What?