Update:
After playing through 50 or so hours of Elden Ring, this game is still the best "souls-like" I've played yet. I think there's something to be said specifically about interactivity with enemies in video games.

I didn't really realize until I thought about it over a long period but the actual reason why this game works so ridiculously well is because of how interactive each of the enemies are. Instead of simply slamming a big sword down onto or shooting a magic bolt into a boss and they take hit point damage and maybe stagger a little like in Elden Ring, the bosses in this game actually react to your offense and to your defense. Instead of rolling through attacks that, in reality, should've hit you but you are actually in a pocket dimension when you roll I guess, you are forced into either repositioning at the perfect time or to deflect the attack.

The prosthetics and different skills you unlock further the interactibility even more. Using firecrackers disrupts humans for about one swing, giving you a little breathing room, but with bosses like Blazing Bull it genuinely frightens them, opening them up for multiple hits. Lady Butterfly falls down from the air when you throw a shuriken at her. You can literally throw pots of oil at bosses then set them aflame with your flamethrower prosthetic, opening them to more posture damage, but this doesn't really work against spirit bosses, which you need Divine Confetti to actually do damage to (a dynamic that also plays into the lore of the game, implementing storytelling into the gameplay). The Armored Warrior forces you into kicking him off the bridge to kill him because Sekiro's sword cannot pierce through his armor.

These are only a few examples of the immense amount of thought put into this game's dynamics in combat that really give it an edge over quite literally any other game in the genre, and it's the reason why, despite all of the reused enemies, I've decided to give it a perfect rating. I hope to see the day where this sort of design is commonplace in games. It makes the combat in this game feel alive, and makes even the best games in the same genre feel stiff.
:End Update

cannot believe how good this game makes you feel as you get better and better at the combat, which is extremely well designed as well.

but the amount of recycled content here sort of tarnishes the experience in some ways. ashina castle is used 3 times with damaged variations, hirata estate is used twice, the corrupted monk bosses are very similar even with slightly different movesets, headless ape is quite literally just a copy paste of the second phase of guardian ape just with an annoying second monkey. for minibosses, there are 3(4) drunkards, 2 centipedes, 2 bulls, 2 elite ninjas, 3 general-types, 3 shichimen, and 5 headless (2 underwater and 3 on land). just seems like such a lack of variety, and it especially shows when you replay the game 4 times for each ending.

that being said, game is still amazing with regards to everything else.