What the hell has happened to this game??

I played ~90h on release on hard difficulty and I died less than ten times in total. Now returning to the game and I have died 20 times in few hours, because enemies two or three shot me consistently on normal difficulty, because I can't seem to dodge or parry properly for some reason meaning blue attacks just fly past my parries and I get stunlocked regularly, and enemies seem to dodge all of my heavy attacks and my damage seems like nothing. Has Sony "balanced" this game during the past ten months or what's up??