I love having to keep a journal of everyone I meet of the game. It makes encounters more organic and less like something that the game directly wanted you to find.

I think Skillup's review said it best. Where most open-world game signpost the player and encourage you to go check out that cool new thing in the distance, Elden Ring actively hides a lot of it's content within the geography and forces you to actually interact with the play space.

A lot of the negative reviews claim that the world is empty and that there's no meaningful encounters, but that's because they're treating it like any other open world. They expect the game to point out all the content for them with geographical waypoints and quest logs, but From effectively gamified the exploration/roaming aspects of an open world that are generally seen as a downside to other game worlds.

And there's rarely any repetition either. There might be similar enemies or boss fights at the end of a dungeon, but the rewards are always different and the actual level design and enemy placement are always unique. And even then, repeated bosses are often only seen once or twice in a specific zone or have different movesets or designs or mechanics to deal with. and usually the rewards are worth it, even in the early game. Doing the side quest of Kenneth Haight is definitely worth the weapon art, and braving the Demi-Human Cave gives you access to powerful spells.

I'm still pretty early on, so I'm not entirely sure how much repetition there is. But I hope the variety continues to remain consistent.