As of June 8th 2022, Elden Ring has sold about 475 billion copies, proving that even a series of dark, brutally punishing games devoid of hand-holding like Dark Souls can be pushed into the mainstream. With certain "modifications", that is.

After Dark Souls 1's success Miyazaki's trademark reticent world building ceased to be a mere charming quirk, starting its transformation into what's now a recognizable and marketable pattern for endless commercial exploitation.

Nothing's left of Miyazaki's past subtle considerations. Gone is the tasteful simplicity that gradually gave way to more elaborate visuals, and takes the ball the Dark Souls 3-esque hyperexcessive slapdash IMAGERY™ of gold-clad mega-knights, maximalist vistas with giga-moons and opulent castles and other eye-rollingly boring trinketry, plopped straight out of the From Software® Imagery Dispenser™.
All that to the sounds of one of, if not the most generic, forgettable OSTs From has ever had a hand in composing.

Elden Ring's lame "open world" loses the tight level and encounter design of Dark Souls 1 yet doesn't gain much freedom due to its map's corridor-like macrostructure and is also simultaneously absolutely impossible to balance so players end up being either under or overleveled for most of the game, unless they specifically follow the level range map from the wiki, defeating the purpose of the WORLD being OPEN.
I fail to see any difference between The Lands Between with its unending rehashing, its seemingly arbitrary loot distribution and a tacked-on crafting system most people immediately forgot about and your average Ubisoft open world.

As far as the bosses go, From don't even bother trying to innovate, focusing instead on investing in R&D to synthesize the most obnoxious movesets science can birth. The game's constantly rehashed one-note bosses try to push the old combat system way past its limits as once again From Software is betting on one the weakest parts of their games, their mediocre combat, forgetting the rest of the package along the way.

Thus emerges a drab, joyless experience with no exploration, no mystery, no dread and no wonder, just soulless, distilled press-circle-at-the-right-time dark_souls_three-ness spread thin over an uncreative, lifeless copy and paste non-world, hilariously bent on endlessly parodying itself in its absurd, borderline delusional excess.