Okay, I kinda feel the need to do a pretty heavy 180 on my original post above. I was only an hour or so into the game and those were my initial impressions. I definitely can understand why I saw things that way, but now I'm about 20 hours in and just finishing Wolnir and Smouldering Lake. So actually the level and world design is not an entire rehash and to be quite honest I am extremely impressed with all of the landscapes, environment design and NPC/enemies.
This game is dense as fuck though and since I haven't had internet access to download updates yet, my poise is absolutely worth fuck all and shit is aggressive as fuck so the density can be quite annoying at times - not even difficult, just annoying. The gear is well designed this time around in terms of aesthetic and whatnot but holy fucking shit, everything that is not a straightsword or rare exception is absolutely like "Why would I ever use this?!?" Which sucks hard because I'm the type of player to use everything - and it's taken a ton of fun out of the process.
I feel like a strong and unfrotunate landmark of the Souls series is to improve or even perfect something that was broken in one game, only to fuck up and break something else in its place in another game. Bleed is fucking incredible in 3, which is great because I tried sooo hard to make viable bleed builds in the previous entries with little success. But now, Poison is like utterly useless. Magic and faith builds also seem far spread out and not nearly powerful as they used to be. They seem viable, but barely. Pyro is about the same as 2, with a lot of viability and great spells that are useful in most situations. Dual wielding is OK, but seems to suffer from a real lack of damage output overall for how slow and stamina draining some weapons can be. The movesets of weapons all around don't seem to be as well thought out or interesting as 2, but not terrible. I miss powerstancing. I don't like how many weapons can't be infused. It's a shitload. The items overall are pretty good but weapon buffs don't last very long anymore. Firebombs and knives, etc are.about as useful as they will ever be so that is a plus.
MAN the camera is broken as fuck. Tracking is short leashed as shit and I fall off cliffs and run into shit trying to leash the way you can in EVERY other Souls installation.
Game is fun as shit overall. Area design is incredible, enemies are as difficult as ever but I do wish more items were more viable.
I'm rambling opinions and know I'm late to the party but I just want a place to vent some thoughts as no one I know really plays these games.