Yeah, for me the early game of ds2 was just not fun especially because I started as deprived which was a mistake (I had beaten ds1 and ds3 before) because unlike the other souls games deprived gets literally nothing and I didn’t know about the hand axe so I had to do the whole area with a dagger. Besides that though just fighting enemies doesn’t feel that fun to me in ds2. I think ds2 had a lot of improvements over ds1 but in many ways it also got worse, so idk. I don’t hate the game, I just don’t like it as much as 1 and 3. Hopefully Elden ring will be a banger.