For me Elden Ring is the best game since a very long time and even surpasses Witcher 3 and Skyrim (unmodded). I don't have to grind anything in Elden Ring, character progression feels meaningful, the bosses are a blast and feel challenging but fair, the mount is awesome, ashes of war give so many options, the world building is the best which I have ever seen (especially the underground areas, like going down the sewers in the capitol and whenever you think that you are at the end there's an invisible wall which allows to go down even further). The only feature which I don't like are the summons but I just don't use them instead of complaining about them (some bosses have so few offensive windows that it feels like they were balanced around summons which I don't like tho). Also FromSoft doesn't seem to be obsessed with playing fun police and nerfing 90% of what players are using into the ground.
What I figured out is that defense in ER is far more important than it was in previous games. Using defensive amulets, boiled crab consumeable, golden vow buff, using that special flask (using the crystal tears which reduce equip load so much that you can always use fast roll and the one which boosts my magic resistance), defensive ashes like bloodhound step and heavy armor really helps a lot. On my first playthrough I got a bit frustrated as well because I was playing the game like Dark Souls but once I started to care about my mitigation and utilized ashes of war the game became a lot easier than Dark Souls, even without using summons.
I can see that some people who like RP and side activities don't enjoy Elden Ring but in terms of action combat and world exploration it's one of the best games out there while also being very accessable. The thread reads like a pure troll thread, bashing a game which has nothing to do with Bannerlord because the OP doesn't like it. Elden Ring was trending higher than Minecraft (which is considered as the most popular game by far) for 2 months, which is massive.