ill post my ramblings with terrible grammar here while waiting for the DLC
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In DeS you trick the environment,
In DS you adapt to the environment
In DS2 you interact with the environment
In DS3 you speedrun the environment
In ER you discover the environment

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"Heresy is not native to the world; It is but a contrivance. All things can be conjoined."
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so first thing I notice in the game is that you do not really choose gender at all, you only choose body types and they just so happen to be feminine, masculine and such. Which is something you do in Monster Hunter and probably a lot of other games too. But more I played more I went back on that idea and it felt ludonarratively important.

when you explore the world, clashing identities are recurring in main bosses, which are allegorical beings to how lashing out against fundamentalism caused several ways of life, all still 'rooted' (pun intended) in fundamentalism and its divisioning perspective - people being mistreated has made them to internalize as to how world is supposed to be made and then it reflects on their external beliefs or whatever they are doing. A lot of them have several identities and none of their identities are ever really established/highlighted for being the real one (the correct one, if you will) - or how they came to be. For all I care the possibility of having several identities is not even highlighted textually or at least not in memorable enough manner for me to recall - connecting the dots and understanding is completely on you, immediately after you come face to face to such individuals.

anti-divisioning is not only regarding individuals but at the very least in-game items too. When I first started collecting items that give you souls or whatevers the currency in Dark Souls 7, first thing that caught my eye was how they are not really named in varied manner like they were in other Soulsborne games, but now you can see that I managed to overthink its narrative importance.

Main trio are main character, marika and miquella I think.

Miquella is referred as a man but also has identity of a saint which is a female, (but only formally) going away from fundamentalism and golden order and wants to create shelter for literally everyone. Its never really confirmed whether Miquella's body is a male or female or intersex though, which may happen in the DLC.

Marika is also Radagon and they both are trying to do different things, reflected on how Marika wanted to shatter the ring and how Radagon wanted to repair it. we don't know which one is the real one of course. If either one of them is, at this point of their existence.

then there is Elden Beast that controls them and maybe even some higher gods dictating its fate, almost as if a foil to the player itself who controls the main character.

Since the very beginning (of the game) value is given to being embraced, remembering, learning and whatnot, hence the need to be given comfort and affection, that which cannot be physically attained by Marika (or alike) since these identities can't really touch one another and are being isolated from their alleged loved ones (Godfrey, who can barely contain his civilized pretense and mentally melted Renala)

One thing about Elden Beast, though, is how it does not really have any identity that can be divisioned, establishing as a figure that completely contradicts the fundamentalism despite being its very inventor.

main character of course has no clashing identities whatsoever, main character will be whatever you want to be, self-insert is everything, serving as a force of nature that optionally could overrun all of these old ways of living and accumulate it all into identity of their own. More importantly, our self-insert could also gain knowledge from their encounters and direct experiences completely on their own volition, reflected on gathering spells and delivering them to masters/teachers - foiled by Gideon who mostly just gets intel from everyone else and gives up, using said research against you if you were to overshare said information on your own. After all you are the only one in the world who has not lost the taste of the grace.

If you merely finish the game and get its basic endings, you only get endings that feel like afterthoughts and are anti-climactic - of course, the ones you get by collecting runes of old that you continue to follow. Actual endings, however, come from the exploration and end by the evaporation of the world and its ways, finally freeing the world from divisioning all things, an ending towards which Marika has been guiding all of Tarnished all along.

This subverts the expectations of the 'old ways' of playing Souls titles, where it all started from 'David and Goliath' type of gameplay and degenerated into 'git gud' mentality by the end of Dark Souls 3, where people castrate themselves into spearheading entire game instead of trying out different things. Here, like in Dark Souls 2, you shall liberate yourself from the one-dimensional playstyle and keep trying out different things - and by the end of the story, instead of choosing whether to run away or get swallowed or whatever like in other Souls games, you need to discover different endings and may even give up on the throne that has always been meant as a systematic trap to misdirect your ambitions.

(the way I interpret, Marika in her madness could only lash out by guiding you towards Frenzied Flame ending, but Melina grew to gaining her own agency, so that you would choose something else)

after this I read how the world of Elden Ring is alchemy conceptualized as a fantasy world (not really sure where does the concept of homunculus fit in here) to make a commentary on how artificially divisioning the world through both faith (religion) and reason (intellectualism) severes the connection between (wo)men and causes both internal and external identity issues and throws the whole world into the state of perpetual stagnation.

I think final boss in itself is not to be seen as individual entities but they in unity represent a traditional marriage into one allegorical being. in alchemy elden beast would be something like Rebis (explained in elden beast trivia on the wiki) which is sort of an angellike figure, in itself a hermaphrodite, but Elden Beast also is a parasite of a traditional woman and a man (or rather, they represent what is an ideal of a woman and a man in the world) and I think they all influence each others mind as Radagon and Marika can swap with one another and Elden Beast resides there all the same, so its not like Elden Beast has more control over Radagon than Marika. So a hermaphrodite divides itself into a man and a woman

but an irony is that all of the off spring (I think all) are born as queers, with these identity issues where they can't be a traditional person fitting to order's understanding, all of them are impure, with or without incest involved.

instead the only one that comes out as 'unalloyed', as in pure, is Miquella, who may or may not be intersex themselves (could be a nice reveal in DLC), but despite going away from the order, he/she still divides themselves into identities of a man and a woman, unable to free themselves from the deeply rooted, conditioned mindset. After all, whatever discontent you feel, or your wish to change the world - all futile - as unless the very root is burned down, it will always grow the same fruit.

so 'elden RING' in itself is a symbol of marriage and that symbol of marriage transforms itself into a BEAST (could be a religious beast akin to son father and holy spirit), revealing that marriage in itself is animalistic and a woman is a pray while a man is a weapon, a tool of the order itself. While the order itself is non-divisioned being, it still uses divisionment on purpose to control sentient beings and their nature.

which is foiled by another marriage and countered by an Age of Stars ending where MC and Ranni have a queer relationship and companionship where they venture on adventure of discovery instead of being stuck as a lonely existence the way Marika did. Instead of burning down the world, you make use of everything you have learned to creatse something anew, something completely alien to the concept of divisionment, whatever it may be. Radagon could have been entirely different being, or one made by Elden Beast to fulfil the role as the intellect was required rather than Houx being a representor of brutal age that could only pretend to be civilized (as Godfrey failed to live up the standard of being an ideal man as it has always been an unnatural pretense generally speaking, so did Radahn, failed to live up to self-imposed standard that was Godfrey and became an actual animal, incapable of being human and got forever prisoned to massacre his own beloved men - or rather, he did, in fact, became what he aspired to, without learning what he was wishing for as he never knew who Godfrey was in reality and as dream turned real, it was his worst nightmare). Or could have been created by Marika's conflicting thoughts and desires. not sure if its ever stated objectively since identity matters are not even stated or rather, are rarely (if at all) stated in unreliable manner by unreliable narrators.

Bunch of characters and bosses you encounter naturally are also foils to your path, but that's the case in every above average story anyway so I won't bother recounting them.
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I feel like game itself could greatly benefit from not having such tame encounters throughout the entire game, where you keep only meeting 2-3 monsters piled together even in the endgame, which is actually pretty easy so long you level vigor (there is not much to even level tbh, its not Dark Souls 2, and yet you can obtain almost as much levels by the end of the ER - I think I was around 130 level in around 50 hours). But I guess game is just not optimized well enough for that.

despite the big size I think levels themselves are a bit too short, but unlike what they did with DS3, the world actually feels lived in with how you can randomly keep meeting praying monsters, or maybe even singing (this is dragged down by how reskinned monsters are scattered around the world, serving as a reminder of artificiality, but there are barely any games without repetitiveness around so I can forgive it) and playing on instruments and in general its as if they tried to make the world with set-pieces that feel like paintings, you can feel the how these things were in the concept arts themselves and access them all in a single ride from different angles. Although that does take a hit on how generally levels were meant to be built up in Souls formula so that the gameplay with its encounters could feel methodical, making Elden Ring a lot less concerned to be 'a game' in comparison.

On one hand, bosses (naturally excluding mini-bosses) are easily the best among any Souls games, despite just being a base game - but mostly as duels, since game is was not really concerned to make fights that are more than just a duel in open-field(ish) arenas. So on the other hand, you can clearly see game is not really experimental in some of the aspects - it does not feel like you can play around bosses like you can in DeS for instance (where you can get silent walking ring so that blind bosses won't ever be able to see you) as they do not have much gimmicks beyond getting an item to stun them or block one of their attacks and you can't weaponize environment against them to my knowledge, since locations also pale in comparison to, say, DS2's Zelda-like levels. They also are not really 'obstacles' which was making certain bosses interesting in previous games, but nonetheless their destruction in this game happens on your volition.

But, as I said, game is moreso focused on discovery, to the point of the most of the game being pretty much optional. One of the sections of the open world is technically hidden level, complementing the narrative and roads and shortcuts in-between these levels also need to be discovered on their own right. Needless to say, my appreciation of the game skyrocketed here. People blasting through the game with walkthrough open may not be into it, but I dig it quite a lot. If we were not be living in the age of internet, discovery of Elden Ring would not feel like a checklist, but an actually amazing effort. I hear how people talking about the discovery losing its magic in 20 hours, but its exactly these post 20 hours of gameplay sections are where you start discovering actually interesting, exciting areas, start discovering the secrets and how the world functions in hiding to further make use of what you have learned in another parts of the world (which was the intention all along) - even if catacombs and such feel rather cheap, they still adhere to this very ludonarrative - and discover an entirely hidden continent thats also the best section of the game and is not even a repetition.

Miyazaki I believe has said how specific creatures being in specific areas and not being repeated has always been part of environment story-telling in his mind and I can understand people who criticize the repetition in Elden Ring likely have that older perspective, but I believe this time repetition itself is also environmental story-telling and benefits the idea of the world (namely its lowest common denominators) losing (or never even attaining) the semblance of individuality they may or may not ever have had.

I have also seen people complaining about how collecting souls and stopping the process of being a hollow have always had meaning in Souls games and apparently its not the case for Elden Ring but I beg to differ - Runes are the world you are supposed to understand through which you understand yourself and give your own meaning. All in all, completely subverting the age expectations and conventions of Souls games and further evolving them (alongside the way bosses fight you by reading your inputs and all)

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Unfortunately, day and night system does not have much substantial additions to the gameplay, unlike, say, Dragon's Dogma.

You can also feel how Souls formula was not really made to be open-world be it how you can just skip through everything since enemies can't gang on you so hostility of the environment goes out of the window and theres not much really to do after killing everything aside from collecting materials or whatever), so I mostly see it as an atmospheric build-up to good old dungeons, rather than game's main appeal. It's polar opposite to Demon's Souls (where you just choose and teleport to whichever level-line you wish) and the culmination of its structure - there you needed to at least kill the final boss of any other level-line and then you could turn DeS into a linear game and head straight to Allant. Whereas in Elden Ring you can kill any of the two bosses after going through their respective dungeons (whether you 100% their dungeons or not, as they hide a lot of secret sections) and then turn ER, too, into linear experience by heading towards Elden Beast.

(though I still believe Demon's Souls is the most interesting Souls game mechanically)

ER of course also grants you freedom to go anywhere you want, anytime you wish and even if the game admittedly gets patterned, most of the time game compensates on itself by upgrading said patterns. Fortunately I have not even met most of the double bosses, which brings me to what makes me appreciate it openness - I do not 100% games, at least on my first run, so replayability comes from how each time I can just take different paths in the game instead of burning myself out on the first one, which I think is the same for most of the players, as well as how developers intended to create the game.