I feel like every thread that was made on it, I'd like or love what I saw of the art direction, but myself and many others would also comment or complain about how overtly miniscule and oppressive so much of it looked, sometimes distractingly or annoyingly so, but it seems they stuck with their guns on the art and scale of much of the assets, text etc either way.
I will play it soon thanks to it being on Game Pass, but many impressions I've read, including from people I've been historically been inclined to agree with, have been negative, and the complaints seem pretty well merited.
Thing with the Soulsborne games is that whilst they're quite difficult, they're not really ever unfair or too frustrating with how they handle risk versus reward, and the fact that you can learn levels, arenas, bosses etc till you perfect things, means there's more of a steady gradation to progress, limiting frustration. You also generally have the options to get back your lost stuff even if you die.
Below sounds like it's a lot more frustrating and unfair due to the fact that with death you not only lose items, but key items that you needed to unlock latter parts of the game, the frustration of which is further exasperated by the fact that much of the game is procedurally generated on the fly and different each time, thus that same learning curve and risk vs reward isn't quite there.
Side note, there also seems to be this misnomer with some that Demon Souls was negatively critically received, it wasn't. Demon Souls sits at 89 on metacritic, so the difficulty didn't dissuade or prevent critics from appreciating or really enjoying the game. That obviously hasn't been the same case for Below, hence the mixed or negative critical reception.