I finally started playing this week. It's pretty good and I'd agree, it's the best Non-FromSoft Soulsborne, easily better than my previous candidate, Nioh 2. I just got into the Arcade.
Scenery/Art Direction is beautiful, the game itselfs PLAYS great and I really like what they did with the formula.
I don't like the weapon assembly stuff. It's cluttered, it's not intuitive, and most importantly: It's making me feel like I'm missing out, when I'm probably not. It takes way too much time to assemble something (since you have to go through all the menus and combinations manually again every time after assembling), so it's no fun at all to try out different combinations, since that takes a fuckton of time and menuing. So I gave up on that system.
Overall, that's a tiny point to criticize in a game that is otherwise absolutely amazing. I love the character designs, the monster designs, I love my donkey mask, I love all the side quests and shit you can miss. Honestly, Bloodborne was like a 9.6/10 to me (which is admittedly a bit high, something like 9.2 would be more reasonable) and in that vein this is like at least a 9.2 for me.
The game is a bit easy, but I actually appreciate that. Elden Ring kinda strained me out with the whole difficulty angle. I'm even making it easier on myself by cheaply using every summon I can get, without any remorse

Only Boss that gave me real trouble so far was the fat clown in that burning alley. The biggest issue wasn't so much the clown itself (allthough technically speaking he certainly was the BIGGEST), but getting there, which took like solid 2-3 minutes each time. The way was insanely long and along the way there were these flamethrower dudes. I probably spent nearly an hour on that until I found out that I can just run past the clown, activate the bonfire, and thus don't deal with all the trash anymore. I'm not complaining btw, I love this type of Demon's Souls Fuckery.
I also finally found a way to respecc with. I went for a lot of Motivity (I'm at like 25) and I have one boss weapon that scales on A with that, but it's simply too slow for me. I love that flame glaive kinda thing that dashes you towards your enemies with the R2 hit. I use this move honestly more than I use R1, so this weapon is kinda essential for me, but I only get it to like a C scaling with the cranks. So now I'll finally be able to respecc, put in a different crank and get this hopefully to scale with A on something.
Also, having block on L1 is stupid, espcially if you want to "parry" right. Changed that to L2, I really think this should've been the default, at least on a DualSense.