Games with more fleshed out stories I enjoy include the Metal Gear Solid series, Final Fantasy (6,7,8 are my faves) and The Witcher 3 (I enjoyed the morally ambiguous decisions you had to make, and I wasn't always sure I'd made the correct ones) are a few examples off the top of my head. Obviously the story isn't the main focus of the Souls games because at its heart it's an action RPG, a much darker, more nuanced version of the Zelda series kinda. However, considering there are numerous YouTube channels dedicated to discussing and interpreting the lore/story of these games, then there's a lot more to it than you're making out.
Fire spells come under the pyromancy school, sorcerer spells are different, and there are also cleric spells which are different again. Starting as a Pyromancer and learning some of the better spells was the closest you came to being overpowered in PVE in the first Dark Souls actually, but I don't know which one you were watching them play. There are plenty of bosses where a 1H plus a shield is a viable strategy and also some designed to punish you for doing that, because what fun would it be to adopt the strategy for them all? All play styles are pretty much viable, but you are encouraged to experiment and adapt to the specific needs of the situation. This is where the substance comes in I feel. I'm not going to lie and say it was all plain sailing, there were times where I wanted to smash things, but it kept me coming back because getting just that one step further felt incredibly rewarding to me and I was completely absorbed in the atmosphere/ambiance of the whole thing.
You know, I generally hate equipment loads, but for whatever reason, it works for me in Dark Souls. Tweaking your stats and striking just the right balance for the gear that you want to use is something I find interesting. You never want to get to the point where your roll is slow because of heavy gear, so if you want to go that route you level up your endurance so that you can comfortably equip heavier gear. Also, the flask animation is slow because that forces you to really plan out when you can afford to use it, something you need to master against many of the harder boss fights which adds another layer.
There are new items/new enemies/different placement of enemies in a New Game+. This can come as a surprise when you thought you'd memorised the entire area on a previous play through. Unless you are using a walkthrough for your entire first play through, then I guarantee that there will be lots of stuff that you didn't do. The game hides its secrets well. I took it slow with my first run through Dark Souls and logged around 80 hours, more than I can say for a lot of games.
Apologies for the walls of texts, I just really love these games and talking about them! My friend and I played through the first 2 at the same time, and we're doing the same for 3. It's one of those games where we can be like "did you see that?!", "did you do this?", "did you find that NPC?", "how the fuck did you approach X boss/area", etc.
