Here's something I need to ask. What about the swamp area makes people say it's such a poorly designed area? Why is it allegedly a bad area? Now, do not get me wrong, I typically loathe these areas in each of the previous games, they always came across as more of an annoyance than a cool and interesting area. Ever since Demon's Souls I have hated going into these areas, but this time in the swamp, while I can't say I enjoyed it, it was preferable to any other area in a previous game like it, and this may be simply because it was easy to get through quickly, even with the three fires of whatever to put out.
Past that, no, there are parts of the game world that do feel like it's a bit jumbled together, like Anor Londo and the Profaned Capital, and while I wish there had been more to these areas than they gave us, it makes a bit of sense. These are the capitals of old lords that relinked the fire, smashed together into one place out of time and space. In the first game, the world as we see it is the only world as far as we know, no previous cycles, no other lords that linked the fire, it's simply just this world, and in so the world feels very interconnected and like a world because of it. Dark Souls III has some of these areas and moments, looking up to see the chapel from the Boreal Valley, seeing Lothric from nearly everywhere in the world, finding the Firelink Shrine as it is in the world that you've been warping to(making me assume the shrine the unkindled finds exists in the past, but until I have more evidence to base all this on that's my pure speculation), the parts of the world that aren't smashed here to bring these lords together do feel like they are apart of the world for a reason and are where they are, laid out as they are, for a reason.
The biggest problem when talking about all this is saying it "feels" like something. Well, that means absolute shit in terms of whether something is good or not, as it might evoke a different feeling from someone else. Now, I'm sure there are bad design choices in Dark Souls III, while the bonfire placement isn't nearly as bad as Dark Souls II, it still is a little more frequent than seems necessary, with a few close placements almost seeming like different teams designed where the bonfires were placed and didn't consult each other on the placement(seriously, why do I need a bonfire right after getting dropped into the settlement, and then find one immediately after the gate as well? only one of those was necessary), and I'm sure there are others that just aren't coming to mind right now, but ultimately, the game, in my opinion, for the absolute shit that that's worth, is the best in the franchise, despite some of its flaws, and as for "feeling" like a Miyazaki game, I'd say this game brought me closer to feeling what I felt that first time Demon's Souls sucked me in, and even improved in ways on it as well. While it can never capture that same "first souls game" feeling, Dark Souls III brought me close to that than any of the other games has before, and then made me denounce my first souls game as well. So, I guess our feelings cancel out then.