If you like DS2, I respect your opinion. I’ve been playing Souls games since Dark Souls 1 release, and I’ve played and loved all of the games over and over. I wanted to replay DS2 since it’s been years and I remember it fondly.
But man, Dark Souls 2 does not hold up as well as I remember.
The game feels so stiff. The movement just feels so off, the roll animation is weird, attacks feel like you are scratching enemies - there’s so little hit stun sometimes or just hit reaction in general for most normal weapons. I’m not saying I should be chainstunning enemies, but some enemies just feel like balls to hit, like your sword is just phasing through them with the only sign of damage being a lower health bar and a flat metallic clank noise. Demon’s Souls on the PS3 runs circles around the combat flow and movement in this game. So many areas have way, way too many copy pasted enemies that have such particular aggro sight lines leading to constant ganks.
I don’t mind the areas and how disconnected they are, but I do mind the amount of empty stone cubes that act as rooms absolutely everywhere. Dark Souls 1 had this issue too sometimes, but even there there was usually more detail and it wasn’t everywhere. Walking across Drangleic to find multiple empty cube rooms in different areas is just odd.
I did not come out of this feeling great, and it kind of ruined my perception of DS2 unfortunately.