Anyone else playing the game right now that can share their view on it?
*Potential spoilers for The Surge!*
TBH I don't think running direct comparisons with Souls is going to serve you well with this game or others like it, especially since FROM has essentially been making them since the first King's Field, that's a lot of practice, even then variations between titles like Bloodborne and DS II can become bones of contention. FROM got lucky, their throwback was released just when players were hankering after some old-skool punishment and the dawn of realization that a lot of babies were thrown out with the bathwater when developers just chucked away all the old genres and playstyles in favour of 3D action adventure mish-mashes that most games became during the 360/PS3 era. It's going to take some perfecting for other studios to come up to Souls' standards and they may well move away from it altogether in the same way other genres and sub-groups evolve.
I definitely agree that combat is tricky and lop-sided with regards to 'tells', it's so easy to get butchered when faced with an enemy you can normally beat no problem. Recently during gameplay there was a tutorial message about ducking/jumping and counter-attacking - christ, I have enough trouble just blocking or dodging, how am I supposed to do that?!?
With light VS heavy armour.. the way I'm looking at it is that both the starter sets are just that, most likely the later suits of armour will properly allow specialization IE lighter armour with massive speed boosts vs. heavy armour with noticeably improved defense ratings. I got a level 3 mod, for instance, which is twice as effective as the level 1 mod it replaced - that hints to the rig set-up blossoming later on in the game, with improving it across all areas dragging things slightly in your favour. Even then, armour points don't seem to do much at all to damage caused, it looks to be just how effective that slight defense bump is overall, which then gets combined with damage/speed bonuses, more effective healing etc. to make a full package.
For all that let's see if I can actually get further, I'm on the second area (sounds like you're the same) and have not managed to open a single shortcut for hours of gameplay, the distance to cover and enemies to best before opening them has proved too great.