Demon’s Souls and Sekiro would like a word.
I’ll give you the Dark Souls series though. They always felt more experimental and less cohesive in terms of the level design.
Not atmosphere or anything else though - they are masters of atmosphere and world building in all their titles.
Demon souls has an entire deleted level that is represented in game by a broken archstone.
Sekiro has a few empty levels and whole bunch of repeated enemies -- Also the dragonrot mechanic which is fairly pointless and a stealth mechanic that is basic, inconsistent and very rarely used.
Personally, and this is entirely conjecture on my part, I think From beefed up the difficulty of the main bosses to give the game more character. If the boss battles were at the same difficulty level as the rest of the Souls series the game would be fairly forgettable IMO.
I agree that they are masters of art direction, atmosphere and world building in general though and I always look forward to their titles. But I am happy to wait.