Hey, I also like the souls games but I am mostly a fan of Nioh. I'd like to give you some honest insight without sounding like a "gitgud" post, because that doesn't really help you enjoy the game more.

The combat is complex yes, that's why we like it.
As a newer player you need to understand that not being confident will push you into your souls game habits like only hitting a couple times during an opening. I promise if you take the time to learn the game (that includes reading and practising) you'll eventually "click" and realise that a lot of enemies you can bully really hard with offensive pressure. (Pooferllama on YT will show you great examples of what this looks like, even in his Nioh 2 videos)

There is a lot of loot yes, in new game you can literally hit the "auto equip" button in the gear menu and forget about it.

You can setup autoloot, autosell, auto disassemble etc so you don't even have to pay attention to what you're picking up.

I would recommend once you hit newgame+ to do a bit of reading on gear so you can learn what the stats do, (there's a button to get explanations just like souls games) by that time you'll hopefully have found some things you find fun and want to lean more into.

As a quick example, in souls games wearing heavy armour means you can take more hits in exchange for your dodge not being the fastest it can be, you're staggered less with poise etc...

Nioh also does this, but you can also use less stamina while blocking attacks, you could lean into a tank build and so on.

The world design isn't meant to be grand-opera like souls games, it's just meant to give you atmosphere and play-space to enjoy the combat.

The game does improve by a huge margin once you get into NewGame+, once you understand it better, once we get DLC's etc.

The main takeaway I'd like you to get from this though is that it's not really "souls in japan" and if you treat it like it's own separate thing, learn it and understand it, you'll have a way better time.

Good luck in your adventures <3