From the mouth of Mike Wazowski himself, Elden Ring is balanced around using everything

i will never beat a dark souls game. i could, but it would be (and has been so far) a joyless slog of grinding for resources so that i can make any new weapons or armor i find actually worth using. getting new items isn't fun, it only means awkwardly travelling to whatever region has enemies that drop the most titanite shards and spending hours battling enemies in a region you finished hours ago just so that the new item does more than a pittance of damage. plus i really really expected elden ring to have any kind of climbing, even a simple ledge-clamber, after sekiro's ninja-parkour, and instead all we got was a useless crouch button and a less flavorful jumping mechanic. they've essentially been re-releasing the same game with a different map since demon's souls. overrated trash series, from software should have stuck to armored core games imo and i'm only partially saying that because i am obsessed with mechs. i would rather play EVE online and i hate spreadsheets.