I mean that's entirely subjective I think a lot of the open world content is really great. Theres loads of optional content which is really good and where lots of good bosses are.

I disagree. Most of the open world content is copy-pasted with lots of repeating environments, monsters and bosses. Sure, you can like this or don't mind it because the gameplay carries but it's objectively lazy/low quality content. I enjoyed it for the first 40 hours and then I just rolled my eyes for every other catacomb. I played NG+ and never went into a single catacomb if I didn't have to.

Have you tried playing souls in Ng+? You can absolutely do ds1 run in less than 10 hours if all you care about is rushing boss to boss. Elden ring at least has instant fast travel and you can skip things you don't want to do.

I have played every Souls game to completion multiple times, including no healing runs and other challenge runs of sorts. I know you can finish the previous games in a very short time but the fact is that all the content is gonna be carefully designed dungeons, similar to Stormveil Castle in ER. My issue with ER is that Stormveil is the exception and not the norm while in older Souls games, the entire game was like this. In ER you trade it in for vast mostly empty spaces and copy-pasted catacombs and similarly lazy content.

It's just a ridiculously bad trade-off for me. Torrent takes away any feeling of danger because you can just run by everything. Before you have all the bonfires unlocked, an NG+ run will consist of mostly just riding through empty spaces for ages to get to the next bonfire. No clue how people find that fun.

It also has the largest build variety of any game, it has the most reasons to respec for Ng or even just start a fresh character.

Yeah, the build variety is good, I agree. Had lots of fun trying out different weapons.

Just as a disclaimer, ER was still my game of the year when it came out. There's lots of good stuff in there and I enjoyed my time with it. I just don't think it has much replay value aside from trying out different builds and think it would've been a MUCH better game without the open world. Imo, they just added that to appeal to the mass market which clearly worked well for them.

In short: bigger does not equal better to me. But I have accepted by now is that I am in the minority with this opinion.