An evil game made by an evil man with terrible balancing and incredibly fun boss fights. The exploration aspect of this was cool but so many areas were felt copy paste requiring menial effort to clear and rewards being not worth the time. (I respecced into a dexterity build and so many of the rewards were just spellcasting or related stuff that I just couldn't use.) Also being over leveled for bosses sucked. For these reasons I felt discouraged to explore areas since they were ultimately not worth it.
So many open world encounters were also less threatening because of the horse and if you don't use it then moving around is boring. They have some bosses that you can use the horse with, but it also feels like they forgot to make combat on it as engaging as on ground.
The camera movement and controls are some of the worst I've seen in a game. The lock-on was so janky and it doing things that I don't want it to got me killed numerous times. It feels terrible fighting a giant boss when you can't even see them attack in close range.
The bosses were all really cool though. (except Malenia and Elden beast) But still I don't think they should've had repeats of so many bosses because it takes away from the experience of fighting that one for the first time, since unique bosses were my favorite parts of the game. I wouldn't've rated it this high if not for Starscourge Radahn.