I really didn't like my experience with Elden Ring, since it's more about optimizing builds at this point

I feel like Elden Ring of all their games has the most freedom to just kind of build however. It's mostly balanced without serious pitfalls so you just grab more health and put points towards whatever you want to be doing. Like I brute forced my way through most of it with an ultra greatsword build, restarted with an arcane build and just rolled everything by dual-wielding whips and throwing boulders at things, then took that into NG+ and rolled through the game dual-wielding lances because the lightning one had a funny weapon art.