I'd say the tougher bosses/enemy types play more like Sekiro but it was more forgivable there because of the posture system and you could still stun just about any enemy/boss with the Firecracker.
I want to love the game but I hate that a lot of bosses/enemies just keep endlessly attacking. It gets old fast and I honestly don't believe it's dependent on skill but more on dumb luck or finding a method to cheese the boss.
DS combat is really cracking under its own weight now.
The main problem with it is that its still mostly reactive and simplistic, even more so now. It goes like this: before you can do your attack you have to dodge/block/circle around enemys own attack, then you can have your turn and do the most efficient actions you can which most times is either something like 3 quick jabs or your weapon art. So even though you're mostly just reacting you cant even react in different or unique ways, and defensive actions don't move you forward in a fight.
Sekiro was an answer to this issue but as good as its system was i think it was already fully realized in that game. On top of that it was very restrictive in its own way.
What ER could have used were attacks of opportunity, it even has it partially implemented already. When enemies guard you can use a jump attack to break it and expose them. This could be used for other actions too, for an instance lets say that after a string of attacks the enemy is momentarily vulnerable to pierce jabs, or if you shoot him in the middle of his attack string he is automatically poise-broken, or if you interupt a casters spell it explodes in his face.
Again Sekiro had systems like this and applied them very consequently For an instance every time an enemy was hit with a projectile while airborne he was instantly punched into the vulnerable state, all enemies with red eyes were scared of fire, so on. Then to vary things up some enemies reacted to those exploits in interesting ways, introducing variety.
The issue with that is that it would make the game easier because balancing it would be a nightmare, alternatively it would have severely restricted the amount of options (weapon types, weapon combinations) at the players disposal. Personally i would rather have a more restricted and easyier but also more curated game, unfortunately i bet most people want it to stay like it is now. From is not stagnant yet so they might work on this more in other games, here i think they played it safe because everything surrounding combat is so different.
Edit: I was taking a shit and i had a idea. ER has this system where in the open world whenever you kill a group of enemies they recharge a bit of your estus charges. This isnt utilized in dungeons, but what if it was. What if instead of having 12 charges right off the bat you had 4 but progressing through the dungeon would recharge them periodically? What if boss fights worked like this too, lets say every 25% of bosses health recharges you to full, meaning that you can make less consecutive mistakes and there is more tension in the fight and you have incentive to play aggressively so that you could heal.
Right now ER builds tension during boss fights through attacks that can kill you in a split second, because if they don't you can just heal away from them and be perfectly safe until your metric fuckton of healing runs out, if you were encouraged to play more consistently it wouldn't be necessary.
There's the issue with mages being OP, well what if instead of estus being split into HP and MP charges, there was only one that recharged both. If a mage runs out of MP he might try to get a few jabs with a sword as to not waste estus, meanwhile a warrior could be encouraged to use more magic/weapon arts because MP refills for him either way. Estus could even give a very temporary boost to attack power after use to encourage a more aggressive play.
