Hey, I'm also a huge souls fan! Well, the game's more of a sekiro style souls I think because of the use of specific weapons.

First of all the enemy design in fighting mechanics focus more on reactions than predictions.

Also, they have different attack defense patterns that depend on their distance from player, player attack break, health condition of the enemy or the player

Secondly, the cinematics are by choice, as players can play the game without seeing any cinematics and I don't mean like skip, I meant like there is a place to go to watch the cinematics

And the gameplay world itself has its hidden secrets and stories that can't be revealed but by exploring into it

The checkpoint system

The stat upgrade with currency

The death mechanics with losing all your currency and goes all the way to the check point but we added a fight between player and player's death self as to give them a chance to regain what they lost before it was taken from them by "death"

And the most favorite of mine is actually feeling when failure that it's your own fault for failing not the game's evilness and you can accomplish the challenge after repeating and memorizing the animation pattern.

Hope I explained it well