Elden Ring for me was especially bad. Mostly because the main story simply forgot to give us any incentive to do anything we do. It's like they thought "well it's a souls game so of course the goal is become some lord of cinder/elden/whatever" and actually forgot to write any goal and motivation.
At this point the bigger goal would be to get away from Lands Between instead of going all murderhobo on the land that is seemingly populated by sane and not-crazy people. At least in places like Raya Lucaria.
For comparison in Dark Souls 1 we are given a backstory on the world with CGI intro, then Oscar saves us and tells us about the prophecy of Chosen Undead. Later Crestfallen tells us about it too and where to go. And this continues for the entire main plot of the game. Sure, some characters like Frampt are manipulative but the first time experience for most players is straightforward with everyone telling you WHY you should do it and WHY this is important.
With Elden Ring we aren't told anything until we enter Roundtable, but even then, no one tells us why should we care. From what we know, all the other lands are doing fine and this is not an apocalyptic scenario like Dark Souls where Curse of the Undead plagues all civilized and living kingdoms. Why should i care about Grace and Erdtree when it casted away the Tarnished in the first place?
As for Melina - you can encounter her in easily missable churches if you do not rest at them. She should appear randomly for all graces for level up at least. But she is still the most glaring and blatant unfinished/cut content in the game aside from Miquella. I mean aside from actual pure fancanon speculation from Vaati and others, WHO is she? Why does she have Torrent? Who was Torrent's former master? What is her goal ultimately? Why she burns herself and tells us NOTHING about what she wants to achieve? We get NOTHING.
It's like From got utterly confused that LORE can be vague and mysterious, but not the MAIN STORY which was always plain and straightforward in every game they made before because they understood that such a gameplay-focused game needs a simple plot to drive the events.
No wonder Ranni has so many simps. She is the ONLY character in the game who actually speaks plainly to you, tells you where to go, what to do, what is her goal and what she will do when she achieves it. Something unthinkable for 99% of residents of Lands Between.