I didn't think I would appreciate Dark Souls 3 as much before playing it. But I was having a great time even as early as the first proper area, where I had a ton of fun just exploring and finding items and shortcuts connecting an area in the most fun way. Some of the highlights of my playthrough was just finding a random path during a boss runback and accidentally finding a shorter path to that boss from a bonfire. And the bosses in this are some of the best I've ever fought in a game. I'll forever cherish fighting and eventually beating Abyss Watchers and the final boss of the base game.
I also played both the dlcs but didn't like them as much as the main game as they weren't that memorable.