What class did you start with, Royalty I hope so if this is your first Souls game, if not restart as that.
Soul Arrow will kill a lot of bad guys at range safely. Combat you just need to learn the flow, you can also parry/riposte most attacks, sidestep into backstab also is kind of OP/broken for a taking on a lot of human sized enemies. For the shield guy, if it has blue eyes you should be able to beat it if it has red eyes don’t fight it you can come back much much later to deal with that guy.
I assume this is your first souls game if you are having that kind of trouble because Demon’s is generally somewhat easier than later games.
So remember this isn’t a character action game, combat is about picking your openings not smashing the attack button as fast as you can for a combo. Everything is much more methodical
