I praise DS2 for going in a slightly different direction than "DS1 cycle forever, nothing matters".
Also, somehow, Elden Ring had worse balance and bosses than DS2.
I always hated the cycles thing. It was just a way to explain more sequels and it cheapens the endings of dark souls 1. As much as I like the dark souls sequels it would have made much more sense to leave it at 1 tbh.
Or make the others prequels! There's plenty of stuff to explore in the past. The Undead hunts? All the big kingdoms?
Anyway, DS3 kinda rubs it in further by giving you the opposite of whatever ending you want (at least for the basic two). If you link, it just fades anyway. If you leave the flame to die, it just goes "lol, I'm back" later. Kind of ruins the "maybe this is the last one" narrative.