While this is an insightful take, allow me to disagree. I personally loved Salt and Sanctuary and found some of these things you don't enjoy are reasons that I do. I find the weapon system to be pretty balanced. In the game you can use Heavy weapons like Anchor-Axes, Hammers, and Great Swords. These have superb damage output but they also are pretty slow. The Quick weapons like Daggers, Shortswords, and Scythes are fast but they chip-damage. The long-range weapons like Bows, Magic, and Throwing Knives do pitiful damage but have incredible range and are fast. That doesn't seem too imbalanced to me. The difficulty curve problem is something that I enjoy but if you don't, that's fine. It's a bit personal depending on the person's taste. Souls-likes in general have this in spades, though. It's a big part of why I love the genre. The whole "secret ending" thing is dumb. I'll give you that.

Yeah, I totally get that my opinion on S&S is a bit of an outlier. That said, I messed around with the weapons a bit and I just felt that the strength weapons were so much more effective than the others, particularly the Greatswords and Greatscissors (IIRC). I think the issue is that they attack too fast if you use the right build options. The idea of quick weapons doing chip damage is an interesting one, but there just weren't that many situations where I felt like chip damage was useful compared to the monster DPS of even the default 2-handed claymore. As far as the difficulty curve, I personally facerolled my way through the first half of the game, struggled with a couple of midgame bosses (moreso than most people, seemingly), and then carved my way to the end without much difficulty. The final boss was pretty tough, but I was surprised to see so many people regard the Witch as the hardest fight in the game, I beat her in like 3 tries. Obviously, that varies from person to person. 5/10 isn't a "bad" rating for me, it's just that there are a lot of indie Soulslikes these days, and S&S pales in comparison to the others I've played. Also, I'll be honest, I absolutely hate when 2D games don't give you a map or try to make exploration into a chore (cough Hollow Knight cough), so that definitely annoyed me throughout my playthrough.

I get that. It definitely is a bit of an acquired taste.