I will argue the lore sentiment from you laddy. If you're willing to dig through item descriptions and the like, the lore can actually be quite fascinating and detailed. Nothing of the scale of TES, and it is very vague, but it can very fun to speculate and think about which is the point of it.
I will also argue that the controls are not weak. The tutorial I'll admit... is extremely weak, and I only knew all the controls from the start due to me researching the game before I got it. It was definitely an info dump, and the controls feel extremely unresponsive and awkward at first. The thing is, once you actually know what you're doing there are absolutely no attacks in the game you can't block dodge or parry. And once you get good at the game the combat actually becomes extremely fun and you really start to see the depth there.

I will say that the game lacked on the up-front story frontier though, and the game takes ages to really get into. Some people go multiple playthroughs without even noticing the underlying story, and THAT isn't a good thing in my eyes.
I went into this game knowing it's a very love-or-hate experience and I fell on the love side. I can definitely see how this game wouldn't appeal to a lot of people as it wasn't intended to do so.

I find the art design to be one of this games strongest points, with some of the enemy designs being absolutely breathtaking, and some of the areas like Anor Londo and the Great Hollow being simply gorgeous. I love the atmosphere of the game as well, and I was constantly paranoid and played in a very conservative way on my first playthrough because of it. Some areas were indeed lacking, but they were outweighed by the better areas.

This game takes a long time to get into, and it's impossible to say when the game will "start being fun" for any specific person. It got fun for me at the beginning of the Burg when I could start buying new weapons, and the game won me over when I reached the blacksmith. I was this games slave by the time I discovered co-op, and we're in a happy relationship now that I started doing challenge runs and PvP.

I will say though that if you aren't having fun by the time you beat the gargoyles... then this game probably isn't for you.

This game is also not as hard as everyone says, it's different. It relies on trial and error, along with a simple control scheme. It requires experimentation and dedication to beat, and it also requires that you learn an entirely new way to look at and play games.

If you don't like this game, I can completely get why and I won't berate you till you continue playing saying it'll magically get fun at some point. If you don't like it, than obviously the game wasn't made for you. That's fine. I will argue any points that get brought up trying to shoot it down as a game though.