> you don't have quests
You do have quests! They just aren't forced upon you. Listen to the dialog of characters and you'll hear where they're heading and what they want you to do.
> you don't have a narrated story
Exactly! Instead of being told a grand narrative of what happened, you piece it together on your own, if you care. If you don't, then just ignore it.
> nor giant enemies who react to weaknesses and have special ways to be fought.
The whole point of combat in the Souls series is that every enemy (giant or small, boss or minion) is dangerous, and you have to learn how to fight them to win. Every enemy has weaknesses (whether that be to damage types or after certain attacks).
The core difference between Elden Ring and the other games you listed is the atmosphere and tension. If you don't feel it, maybe it's not the game for you and that's okay.
It's also pretty disingenuous to state the differences between ER and other open world RPGs and then pretend it has to compete with other titles exactly on those points. It is true that ER has moved into a more popular genre, but it still remains a very niche type of game. It's not this incredibly popular because it moved to a full-on mainstream genre: it took some more widely appreciated concepts and adapted the souls formula to them, but what everyone is praising is how well they managed to keep those core souls values intact while moving to this new genre.
It let me start a game and just explore the world without being forced through a long intro/tutorial, doesn't have vast amounts of clicking through dialogue and I find the world way more interesting than what I saw playing ~2 hours into one of the recent MH games, or ~10 of Skyrim.
It's those games that now have to live up to Elden ring standard... Elden Ring is eating all open world alive.
And it doesn't compete with MH at all, mh is not open world and it's made of a series of small, intense boss fights. Elden ring usually is digested in long exploratory sections and days-long boss fights (due to wipes).
No quests? THANK YOU. Elden ring has only a handful of "kinda quests" and due to that, there is no chance for wolf-poop-gathering quests.
The entire focus is on the WORLD, on the environment and its secrets. This is how I expected open world to be a thing, and it never was.
I never liked open world, but elden ring is good.
Thank you fromsoftware, please keep doing this work, maybe AAA studios will wake up now.
The game's supposed to compete with Monster Hunter, Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, Dragons Dogma, etc. And how can it? You don't have a party, you don't have quests, you don't have a narrated story, nor giant enemies who react to weaknesses and have special ways to be fought.
What's the difference between your first handcrafted Draugr cave filled with traps in Skyrim, and your first handcrafted goblin cave filled with traps in Elden Ring? I think, it's that one came out 11 years ago.