SO having played this more, I can tell you that there are a few key differences between this and the Souls series to help differentiate it.
In the Souls games, you will frequently return to the 'hub' areas to get a breather, talk to NPCs and so forth. But in those games, you physically navigate your way there or you use a bonfire teleport.
In NIOH, the gameplay is broken up into 'missions' where you look at an overworld map and choose to go to specific locations all over Sengoku era 'Zipangu'. There are multiple quest at each location that gradually unlock, so you'll be revisiting the same zones with different and more difficult objectives to complete. I won't be able to judge this as 'lazy' until I see jut how many different kinds of environments there are at the end.
When a stage's boss is complete, you can stay in the zone and continue to hunt for items or those little spirit dudes that are hiding everywhere or you can just leave. When you leave, the game's 'hub' is a menu with the overworld as a backdrop and you can go to the blacksmith, the dojo, a shrine to spend your experience and whatnot. You can always replay missions to find all the secrets you haven't discovered yet.
I know that this game isn't Dark Souls but I like how you're never lifted out of DS's world at any point. You remain there and stay immersed in its despair. I suppose that couldn't work in NIOH because unlike Lothric or Drangleic, feudal Japan is a real place and it hasn't crumbled completely into dystopian ruin. And because this is historical fantasy fiction, we know that at the end of the day, the nation survives. Also, Japan is an entire country; in Dark Souls, you can physically run through the entire game world in about an hour, maybe two. But there's no way you're crossing the entirety of Japan in anywhere near that time. So it makes sense that NIOH has to separate its zones with a menu hub. It's just a difference I noted between the two that helps to establish a different tone.
The other difference I've seen is that the the bosses don't continually evolve as a fight goes on like they do in DS. They may shift strategies and gain a power boost once, but they tend to veer more on the 'fair' side of a challenge rather than the 'punishing'. This makes them a tad more exploitable, but I don't mind this. Bosses in many of the greatest games of all time have punishable weaknesses and, in fact, those games are counting on you to recognize them and take advantage.
Overall, this feels like a more 'adventurous' take on the DS formula than anything else. Koei Tecmo still want to imbue the game and story with a heroic sensibility, which is another tonal difference from the desolation of Dark Souls. In those games, broken people inhabit a broken world and there's an almost nihilistic sense of futility to everything they do. In NIOH, the game's mechanics and interface are geared more towards stopping a great evil, righting wrongs and helping a land emerge from turmoil. Given the game's themes, it makes sense that the gameplay and structure are informed accordingly.