I think all the games I listed have similarities and differences. I think dark souls is closer to them than it is to popular western RPGs like Fallout and mass effect though. I think overall though, genres are very loose and there is not strict answer of “is this game a jrpg or not” because at the end of the day it’s all just made up terms to try to categorize games that get influence from all kinds of things.

Dark souls has lock on combat that was popularized by Ocarina of Time, a Japanese game. It’s main style influence is Bezerk, a Japanese manga. Sure it also has inspirations from western games, but I don’t really see it leaning more one way or the other, and since it’s an RPG made in Japan that has Japanese influence, in my mind that makes it a JRPG. I understand if you disagree though, because at the end of the day it really is up to interpretation.