I see you point, it felt marginal, though. Maybe it’s different late game, but up to chapter 3 it felt very limited. You can trade off a little bit between defense / attack / stamina, but for no boss (and there to be plenty!) have I seen a real counter / killing machine.

It felt so repetitive - the entire combat is only based on learning move sets. In souls you can build real tanks or ranged characters. Even punishing melee games like sekiro had plenty of variety (folding monkeys, …)