LONG POST INCOMING

You're going to get a lot of "well personally I like DS2 but" responses, so here's the take of someone who dislikes the game and I don't really want to play it again.

Numerous technical issues: hitting an enemy with any weapon sounds like slapping a raw steak, the movement is very clunky, the odd graphics make everything look wrong the sound design is all pretty bad, enemy AI can be totally broken, there are numerous hitbox problems with a ton of enemies and bosses. I can't tell you how many times in 3 playthroughs my character was standing right in front of an enemy, locked on, only to turn 90 or 180 degrees away and miss when I went to attack

Enemies and bosses: DS2 relies on enemy swarms and ambushes heavily to produce difficulty, and its not fun. There are too many bosses; many boss fights are either a joke like Covetous Demon or a giant armored guy with 3 attacks. A lot of bosses like The Rotten, Old Iron King, and the Last Giant act like animatronics who might as well be wearing big stoplights around their necks the way they telegraph their attacks. Other bosses like The giant rat dog rely on cheap artificial difficulty to be hard.

Gameplay: DS2 introduced healing stones that slowly regen health in addition to the estus flask. You can buy unlimited stones for really cheap from a vendor, and it makes the game too easy if you keep yourself stocked and pop em off during every fight. Their addition makes me wonder if they added them, realized the game was too easy, and then added tons of ambushes and swarms to balance them out, or realized the game was too hard and added the stones to try and balance it out

The world: the world is sloppily put together, the most infamous example is that you climb a big windmill where the sky is clearly visible, reach the top and get in an elevator that goes up, and suddenly end up in a lava world. One of the strengths of all other FromSoft games is that the world is coherently put together, and makes it feel believeable. DS2 does not do that and it weakens the game. Another example of this is that in order to access the 2nd half of the game, you have to open a door by killing 4 main bosses or get 1 million souls. You have to open this door because the main path is obstructed by a pile of rubble any person could easily climb over. The individual levels that make up the world are almost all pretty badly put together

NPCs and Story: The NPCs are handled very badly, in DS1 and 3 to some extent the NPCs have their own goals outside the orbit of the player; DS2 almost every NPC goes back to the hub after you talk to them and never move, their sole function being that of a vendor, makes the world feel less believable. The story is pretty bad, if DS2 is your first game in the series there's a pretty good chance you could play through the entire game without having any idea what's happening or what you're accomplishing. DS1 sets up the world pretty well, ancient dragons, fire is discovered, Gwyn builds the world with fire, undead curse, Oscar saves you, asks you to ring the bells, Frampt tells you to go to anor Londo and then get the lord souls, and then succeed Gwyn. DS3 does too (although it expects you to know the story of DS1), endless cycle of linking the fire, fire is fading, lords of cinder, they all abandon the fire, you're awakened and need to kill them, get the cinders, fight the Soul of Cinder, link or extinguish the flames. It's totally unclear what you're doing in DS2 at a first glance

These are things from off the top of my head, and as you can see, it's a lot of problems