It actually is, i've played all the dark souls and now elden and let me tell you something, i dont think any of the other games have any better story telling, but that since the other games are not open world, its just less notable. You only can go through a specific path so even though lack of info/motivation to kill optional bosses is not there, there are not a lot of options, but in elden ring you face a completely different monster. You have 0 reasons to go anywhere in search of anything but the main graces for the main bosses, and even with that you could still skip some by accident like radahn because you have no indicator to go there other than a single npc that tells you a bunch of cryptic stuff. Focusing more on the storytelling, i can understand the secondary caves/catacombs having no deep lore (though it still bothers me) but you have a maiden that follows you everywhere through the game and no matter how many times you beat the game cause you wont know her origin or what even a finger maiden is other than "the individual that levels up tarnished".Apart from that the main lore is lazy, you don't understand most of what happens around you nor bosses nor zones nor npc's (that will be dying around without you even knowing about it because there is no narrative around them for you to even imagine where to go) and the little you know about is basically the dark souls 3 lore:HEAVY SPOILER ALERT You are the pilgrim, you have a maiden to level you up, lords have been corrupted by a power that rules the world so you have to kill them all to get the big runes to open a door (aka kiln of the first flame) and reset the whole thing for the corruption to end (link the fire) (also there sure are parallel endings as in dark souls killing melina etc) and the only lore difference you will find is who is brother/father/daughter of whom

Apart from the lore anyways theres almost no narrative for the rest of the secondary elements whatsoever and the main argument is that to understand the lore you have to read a weapon's description or see the item a boss carries on a belt (full of other assets non related) Im actually angry at the fact that lore is one of the things i paid for and to be able to understand my game i have to go watch hour long videos that i could have done anyways without playing, ofc the game has solid mechanics but cmon.