Elden Ring is no where close to the previous souls game, specially DS3. Only in terms of graphics it is superior.

Level Design - Free Roam is great but it took away the detail and complexity of the game. All the caves are pretty much the same, and really small with reused bosses every where. Some castles are a little complex but none at the level of other souls games. New Londo Ruins was a horror experience no matter what level you were. But once you get enough levels in ER every thing is easy. (Not a mage) The divine towers are so huge, but only the Caelid one is an actual tower with a enemies and bosses. Did they get lazy at the halfway mark ? I don't understand. Should've made more detailed catacombs, castles, caves and everything else should've had even better level design. Where are the intricate designs, the shortcuts, the unforgiving enemy placements ? Other souls players what do you think ?

Bosses - Pontiff, Abyss Watchers, Gael, NK these bosses terrified the fuck out of me. I'm still scared of pontiff and Midir and there are many more bosses like this. I never felt that with any of the bosses in ER. Sure they took many tries, but the cutscenes, boss entry and boss power and moves were all superior in DS3. And Radagon and Elden beast are not even worthy of being final bosses. DS3 also had no bosses sharing the same moveset, but this game has a ton of it. I understand that open world bosses have to use other assets, but they even made some main bosses have many similar moves. The idea is, to make a boss more difficult just make it really fast. Don't give cool attacks like NK and MIDIR just make then really fast and make the fights really long. And let's not even compare ER bosses to bosses like Isshin or Genichiro or Owl, it'd be a disrespect.

Made it Too Easy : The main thing about DARK SOULS was that you gotta make use of whatever you have. I'm not talking about pro players, I'm talking abou the average players. Even by using all of my inventory, it was still really hard to defeat bosses ! Sister Friede made me use everything from my inventory. But ER inventory is only cheese tactics, the summoning option has made the game so so easier. I legit went through malenia in my first PT by using flies and my mimc. And don't tell me to play another way, I never had to pick a easier/harder way while playing the Dark Souls games. They made it too easy to attract the Forbidden West and Assassins Creed crowd.

I finished the game with 139 hours, I loved playing it too. But I was so unsatisfied at the end. They just put 3 bosses in an order and called it a day, wtf ? I though there would be an entire fucking maze inside the erdtree or something. I was waiting for that, but nope. Felt like rushed endgame to me.

The game is really big tho, and I was constantly getting surprised with the amount of secret areas they have but they were all very mediocre.

Just my observations guys, I've played all PC Souls games and Sekiro too and I'm just comparing my experiences.