Dark souls 2 is painfully average, took me 24 hours to beat, compared to 63 and 84 hours in ds1 and elden ring respectively, not because of how "good" i am, but because exploration feels so unrewarding in dark souls 2. The first half of the game felt like a chore, youre controlling a freight train unless you dump levels into adaptability... funny how they couldnt adapt when they got a new director for the game and make it good instead. The second half is kinda good but still meh.
I really liked some of the boss designs, like Nashandra, but most of them were so unoriginal and bland;
big stone giant, how creative
big guy in armor
so good you get to fight him twice :D
they must have been really proud of him

Theres also a bunch of backtracking in the game, to the point where the game literally just gives you a homeward bone with infinite uses. Sadly, its given to you before the secondlast boss, so i dont really understand the thought process behind that one. Good chunk of the game is locked behind people turned into stones and if you want to "unstone" them you have to use a finite recource, but you might just get unlucky and theres literally nothing behind that statue actually because **** you :D
And some of the ****ing runbacks to the bosses makes four kings and bed of chaos seem like a 100m sprint.

Ds2 fans can cry, cope, seethe and mald all they want, it still wont make the game any better. And before one of them inevitably tries to say im a ds3 spam roller, i havent played ds3. And no, elden ring wasnt that good either, but thats besides the point.

All of the games have flaws, this one sadly has too many, and insists on showing them to you 24/7.

Let the dislikes commence

A quick tip for any new DS players is do not treat this game like Skyrim, or any other RPG. Especially in DS2. Take your time eliminating enemies, and really pay attention to their attacks. Do not charge in anywhere thinking you will destroy every enemy. Even the basic enemies. Good luck!

Honestly, this game has some of the weakest and forgettable lineup for bosses of any of the souls games. Many of them are just knights, an a lot of the enemy types are also reskins with minor changes here and there (more noticeable in DLC's).

This game, out of any Fromsoft game, even the old titles of DS1 and Demon Souls, have the worst enemy placement, and artificial difficulty spikes I've ever experienced. Very basic enemies will be able to out damage the player, out run, stun-lock, and have a ridiculously accurate and magnetized attack on the player, where even if you rolled clear out of the weapons visual range it WILL still tag you which more often than not leads to you being tagged again right after, or killed.

Almost every single enemy is capable of this, the most notable ones are the Alonne kights who are able to just stab the player during the mid of the role at the exact frame that doesn't have I frames any longer.

This game also does what I refer to as "swarming" far to often. Every other area will just have enemies, who are all capable of what i mentioned above, all at varying degrees of damage and speed (but all still stronger and faster than the player) swarm the player relentlessly, and because of this there is not really a way to time an attack in melee because even if they manage to hit 1 or 2 of them the 3rd, 4th, and so on will land hits on the player, and at times box them in, and outright slaughter them.

This is VERY noticeable in the Aged Smelter Demon area where the enemies are in tight corridor-like spaces, they physically block the players movement, every hit staggers, and stun locks all but the heaviest and tank specific builds, and there is a mix of ranged enemies who endlessly hit players with a barrage of multi hitting spells or miracles (one of them uses Great heal to full heal themselves and the other ranged user should the player think they're clever with hitting them from afar, but are a bit too slow to kill them) all the while the melee units in the room can corner the player, and melt them in very few hits, not to mention the annoying spell that instantly over-encumbers the player.

That would be a good example of artificially inflating the difficulty by placing too many overlapping enemies in a small area to overwhelm the player, and while the Aged Smelter Demon is a "co-op area" there are still other parts of the game that still do this exact thing; Shrine of Amana is notorious pre SotFS edition, but post SotFS it was made "easy" in 1 way, and more difficult in many others- Case in point mages there no longer shoot spells like they have it on automatic, it still shoots relatively quick, but is a bit more manageable, yet they dump the lizard guys who inflict bleed (which inhibits max health and stamina + stamina regen) hidden amongst the deeper pockets of water which you are bound to run through while being assaulted by the mages, heavier hitting enemies off to the side here or there like the one random old knights you fought originally in Heides Tower location, then by the boss location the overload the area with multiple knights, castors, some lizard men in the waist high water (significantly reduced movement in it), and a invader NPC who can just outright mow the player down with a barrage of spells once approaching the spawn zone, or one-shot the player, even if you manage to kill them the knights behind you and mages will be right on your heals if you were so unfortunate enough to walk close enough to aggro them.

now some areas have been given more Npc summons, great, that's wonderful, somethign to potentially help you traverse the more terrible areas right? Wrong, NPC ai is very awful for attack priority, and pathing. Most of the actual NPc's they give are so laughably bad their only use is to literally eat damage, and HOPEFULLY last long enough for you to have managed enough hits to either kill the boss, or almost gotten them to a manageable level of health before they ultimately die; the NPC's do just horrible damage, and i'm talking specifically the new additions they added to the game, i wont sneer or Jab at Jester Thomas, mans does work even if his health pool kinda sucks, but then you get this other NPC name Steelheart or Stalwart Ellie and she has a decent hp pool, but god damn does she do no friggin damage, like it's so negligible they might as well have given her negative damage stats.

Bosses often are capable of turning on a dime too mid attack leaving the player frustrated, and confused as to how that can be considered "fair" when it essentially is a way for the AI of the bosses to cheat. Some bosses are more easily observed doing it, Sir Alonne is one of them, he is capable of raising his blade for an overhead or underhand slash, and midway through the animation he can randomly lock onto the player behind him, and complete the attack with added distance and speed potentially killing the player unfairly despite the attack aimed at a cooperator or NPC. He can do this with his incredible fast jump attacks, long ranged underhand slash/stab, and at times he does it with his powered up stab attack which is... quite frustrating to say the least.

I just think overall enemy/boss design, placement, and balance is an utter mess in this game, and can severely kill the enjoyment for the player especially because the difficulty spikes are not gradual, and come and go randomly, making some encounters feeling effortless, and some more down the line torturous, and frustrating.

How fitting that the souls game that often gets alot of undeserved hate, has the most toxic and needlessly hostile people on its wiki page, The amount of comments that aren't even whining or blaming the game instead of acknowledging that they were just playing badly that have tons of downvotes and smooth-brains pulling the "Git Gud!" "U suck!" gatekeeper fromsoft elitist card on them is astounding

Which one is considered the hardest boss (excluding DLCs) ?

I like how on this site if you try and vent or complain about something annoying or something that you're struggling with, you get downvoted and a bunch of morons try to say "Git Gud, You just suck! Shut up!", Or "Skill issue! *proceeds to try and tell you that some unfair poorly-designed ******* is totally fair and balanced game design and it's totally your own fault that the camera is awful/hitboxes are ******* etc, and you just suck*" Real welcoming and helpful lot some of you are... totally not a bunch of Fromsoft Bootlicking, gatekeeping aholes who refuse to listen to criticism and will ****-talk people venting about things they're having problems with instead of helping them out and giving them tips any decent person who's not a toxic fromsoft simp who worships Miyazaki like a god would do

How do people even enjoy the bosses in this game, they have less attacks than back in DS1 and they consistently spam the same 1 or 2 out of their pool. Few bosses that have a 2nd phase are extremely laughable, being only a small buff to their weapon.

What bosses are immune to poison ?

This may be controvertial, but Fume Knight, even tho he keeps you on your toes, didn' really strike me as the hardest boss. It was hard, but not nearly as hard as is often portrayed by players. A tough boss, but still pretty killable in your first 4 attemps.

Yikes this comment section is a minefield.

This game has a lot of things wrong with it. It also does a lot of things right. Every souls game has weak bosses. This game still has some great fights. For example, Looking Glass Knight with human invaders is super memorable, for me.

The issue is this game has a lot more mediocre bosses than other entries; especially next to Bloodborne which released only a year later. That's a very valid criticism.

Adaptability is also downright a horrible mechanic. You're essentially forced to pump up a stat to 30 just so it doesn't feel awful to play.

I think soul memory, while it makes some degree of sense, is ultimately a bad addition. (Although based on Elden Ring PvP I almost wish it was in that game...)

However, the biggest issue this game suffers from is that going through a lot of the areas between those bosses can be borderline torturous. I think they did a pretty bad job of designing the levels/enemy placement in this game. This is especially evident in the Old Iron King DLC. Getting back to smelter demon and Alonne is seriously painful for no reason. They artificially inflate difficulty by throwing ******* at you constantly. Shrine of Amana is notorious as well.

So what did it do right?

I think the branching paths at first is pretty cool. It gives you a bit more flexibility when it comes to early game builds.

Bonfire ascetics are a cool idea that isn't in any other entry.

I think this game handles covenants the best in the series.

I think the lore is genuinely pretty good.

The biggest one for me, is that this game actually changes/adds things to NG+. This is a great feature that hasn't been utilized since. This feature should have been expanded on; not abandoned.

None of these games are irredeemable trash. Some of you guys are absolutely ridiculous. Is this the weakest Souls game? I think so, personally. Is it bad? No. Does it have bad things in it? Yes. As does every other Souls game.

Elden Ring has a lot of things I don't like, too. I still love a lot of things about it. The only games I have very few complaints about personally are Sekiro and Bloodborne, and there's lots of people who don't care for those games for one reason or another.

The thing about those games, however, is they're more or less designed around one kind of playstyle. Due to the flexibility of the Souls series in comparison, this means people will have a more positive experience with one game over another depending on their specific playstyle and build. It's hugely subjective in that regard.