"To me many action games blow souls games out of the water because souls games are still heavily rpg. They're about the amount of options and builds you get. Unlike action games that give fewer options but have much more depth in those options"

A very weird take since you answered the question by yourself, why can't both of the genres co exist lmao?? Character action games dont blow Souls or action RPG combat system out of the water because like you said they have entirely different design philosophy. Why is even Souls a genre because afaik they did not invent stamina based combat system ?

Proper positioning, Observing telegraphed attacks, combo recover windows, staggers & punishing them during mid combos are the only things one needs to keep in mind when it comes to Elden ring. There are only very few bosses that do "input/frame 1 animation reading", as you said Elden ring bosses have endless combos & AOE but majority of them are exploitable. Delayed attacks & posotional combos are the key factors that made it different from r1/roll spam bosses of Dark souls 3. Elden ring bosses are still r1/roll spam(if you limit yourself to that kind of play style) but they are nearly as useful as they were in Dark souls 3 because of positional combos. Aggressive bosses like Morgott/Malekith/Radagon/Godfrey can be punished heavily mid combo i.e. every time Radagon does the triple hammer slam bait attack after jumping above the AOE you get free jump attack or Godfrey's infinite stomps can be jumped over or roll fowraded into jump attack or r1 attack attack. There are like countless examples for each boss.

Malenia on the other hand is a shit tier boss because afaik there's no way to punish her combo, only possible counter is punishing her poor poise

Only something like Hybrid battle mage can yield some degree of arsenal complexity unlike something like vanilla build dual greatsword

Out of the vast options of viable of weapons, incantations, sorcery & ashes of war available, I chose the combo of (Catch flame+Adula's Moonblade+Stone of Gurranq+Gavel Haima), some people may prefer simpler combinations like(greatblade phalanx+grandeur) but that's as far as you go in Elden ring in terms of arsenal complexity.

But since its an action RPG, Back when patch 1.06 launched I simply did a dual greatsword power stance jump attack build that featured nothing but doge roll jump attack, had the most fun with it because I was going aggressivley powerstancing inflicting massive poise damage. Last time with 1.08 I went with reduvia+dagger which was equivalent to dual mac 10 provoding an entirely different experience

Its not exclusive to Elden ring because that's how action RPG play in general, providing different options

Basic things like parrying is level gated or something like jumping is not possible in God of war because it was not developer's vision while designing combat system. None of the bosses in God of war are designed in way where Souls type movement is required, comparing the two is pointless