Wouldn't really call it the gold standard of ARPGs. In fact the label of ARPG may not be as accurate as one may think to describe what souls are. They way the player is granted his move sets is very telling of this.
In Souls games and derivatives (Bloodborne and Elden Ring) your moveset is decided by your weapon. This may look like something obvious, just like any other ARPG, but it actually is more peculiar that it seems. You have weapon types, like straight swords for example. Usually, a weapon type is characterized by its members sharing similar movesets and/or properties with one another. Therefore, inside that category you have different weapons, like longsword and broadsword. Now while being both straight swords, both have different movesets. Longsword have a thrust as a heavy attack, giving it range, while broadsword have wide swipes for crowd control. And then you can find special weapons like, for example,
the Carian Knight Sword which has a special heavy attack with guard point properties. The thing about this is, that the main difference between them are 1-2 attacks, and you must equip the 3 weapons if you want full access to their movesets. Your weapons decide your moveset, not your character. The only exception to this rule are spells and Ashes of War, which are modular.
Now, in contrast, most ARPGs of almost all types, being slower and methodical like Dragon's Dogma, anime over the top like Tales of, or hybrids like Nioh do have one thing in common: your moveset is decided by your character or, in some instances, your weapon type, not your weapon itself. In Dragon's Dogma you have vocations with limited skill slots that allows to customize how you play, in Tales of each character has his own moveset and you have to choose what skills to equip, and Nioh, the most similar to the souls games, each weapon type has a very expansive moveset and a modular system that lets you customize what skills are at your disposal at each moment. It doesn't matter you are using a longsword or a broadsword, if you are a fighter or your character has leveled said weapon type, he will always have access to their full moveset.
This difference is important because each one emphasize an element of gameplay. The second model is an example of combat focused games in which the system are designed around giving a rich and somewhat deep combat experience where the player has access to many options while at the same time allowing certain degree of customization and avoiding becoming full on Hack'n Slash games like DMC by making the player choose and customize their character to perform a certain role in combat. As your character fights he becomes stronger, as he becomes stronger more gameplay options open up and combat becomes deeper, granting the player a learning curve by having a few skills at the beginning and allowing them time to familarize with them as they level up and learn new ones, adapting to the growing complexity of combat.
In the case of Souls games, the system they use is ideal for them, not because it makes combat better, as the second system offers a wider and richer array of choices, but because it makes exploration much more rewarding. Finding a new weapon is not only an increase in power, but also opens up new gameplay styles for the player. Fighting may increase your stats and is true you need a minimum stat requirement for certain weapons and spells, but once the minimun is reached, leveling up is just a matter of bigger numbers. In truth, it is a wonderful system that, while it does has the inconvenience of making it lesser than the other if taken in a vacuum, it compliments the Souls games perfectly and makes for a very satisfying experience. Even spells and Ashes of War, which offer a certain degree of modularity like the second system, are obtained principally by exploring the world, not fighting.
Now, as I said, the label ARPG may not describe precisely what souls games are, at least not entirely. And to explain myself, I would like to compare the game to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and derivatives. Anyone that hasn't play those games and likes From's Souls should try them at least once, because their design philosophies are strikingly similar. Castlevania uses the same system as the Souls, albeit in a more simplified manner: your moveset is decided by which weapons you have equiped, so a sword may do a fast but short ranged stab and another one may do slow but wide vertical slices that make them better at hitting enemies that are higher. Character levels are just about stats and both have a very strong focus on exploration, rewarding the player with more weapons, spells and the like. Combat in both games also has a strong emphasis on enemies and bosses design to offer challenge instead of the combat system itself being the main point. Souls games and their derivatives are very close to Metroidvanias, particularly the -vanias part of it, which also have RPG elements.
So I would say souls combat does lose when comparing to other, combat focused ARPGs. But if you compare to other Metroidvanias or exploration based ARPG, I would actually call them the gold standard of what they should be. I'm not even saying it is bad compared to other ARPGs, is just the perfect fit for what the games really aim to do and do a damn good job at that.
