I'd say that Elden Ring has quite a few of the zones that would be considered "shitty" in terms of traversal and encounters in them, except they are 95% mitigated by Torrent. Traversal in Caelid or Liurnia for example would not be very fun if Torrent wasn't in the game. Poison and scarlet lakes everywhere mixed in with lobsters and giant dogs and birds everywhere that close to oneshot you with their wombos.
The only zone I can remember where the entirely of it was a hassle was the scarlet lake one where you couldn't summon Torrent and you had to run around raising the platforms and pillars. But that didn't have an annoying encounters, just the "boss" warden/dragon thing which wasn't very difficult.
But due to Torrent, in the open world, everything felt completely fine. I "disliked" one place in the entire game, a tomb where you had to run around doing the puzzles for the light to be able to kill the mobs and such. There might have been more, but one was really long, several floors and it was just a hassle. Overstayed its welcome. Other than that, all the other tombs were ok since they were fairly short (though, one of the only negatives of Elden Ring, they got somewhat repetative by design and encounters)
The only zone I can remember where the entirely of it was a hassle was the scarlet lake one where you couldn't summon Torrent and you had to run around raising the platforms and pillars. But that didn't have an annoying encounters, just the "boss" warden/dragon thing which wasn't very difficult.
But due to Torrent, in the open world, everything felt completely fine. I "disliked" one place in the entire game, a tomb where you had to run around doing the puzzles for the light to be able to kill the mobs and such. There might have been more, but one was really long, several floors and it was just a hassle. Overstayed its welcome. Other than that, all the other tombs were ok since they were fairly short (though, one of the only negatives of Elden Ring, they got somewhat repetative by design and encounters)