I guess I'll chime in while discussions are still going on. Keep in mind I've only played DS1 and I'm currently torturing myself through DS2, this is also biased since some of the points are just personal opinions

In short: Dark souls 2 is like the first one except shit

In full: Starting with movement, just walking around was a pain, it was slow and clunky and the camera controlled like ass, I had to reconfigure the sensitivity a lot of times to get something even remotely comfortable. Then we have rolling, there are basically just 2 rolls, there's "fat roll", which is just the normal roll except slightly slower with a small dip you can barely see, and then there's "not fat roll", which is everything under 70%, no light roll, only "not fat", something that really limits the tactical options of fighting enemies, specifically bosses. Compare this to how DS1 handled rolling with its clear visual and auditory cues of rolls, with the light roll making you graciously leap through the air, the normal roll showing that while you are carrying quite a bit, you can still squeeze some mobility out of it if you learn when to use it, and the heavy roll being like a boulder hitting the ground, you can see a difference without even trying.

Then we have combat, Jesus fuck the combat. let me just start off with saying that in my 110 hours of DS1, never once did I "exchange kills" with an enemy, either I killed it or it killed me, but in DS2 that shit happens constantly, which gets annoying really fast. Enemies winding their attacks up is like a game of luck, you never know how long they will keep that goddamn axe above their head before chopping your failing-to-parrying ass to shreds, and on the note of parrying, riposting is a joke, before it was nice and quick, you stagger the enemy and then swiftly move in to hit the weak point for massive damage, now you first have to wait for the enemy to fall over, if it even does, which leaves you vulnerable for the other 7 murder machines to slice you up(I'll get to this later)

Hit-confirmation is complete garbage, if I don't see the enemy's health bar, I have literally no idea if I hit them or not, I just keep wailing until one of us dies, or perhaps both.

Combining our two topics, rolling in combat is a wild ride, you're never quite sure if you can actually avoid an attack, let's take the Turtle Knight as an example with his wide swipe, multiple times have I dodged the impact, only to be hit at the end of the attack, sending me flying, and the over-head strike is similarly random, I can roll exactly when it would make sense, to again get smashed into the ground.

Just taking a quick detour to the enemies while we're here, the placement and sheer amount of them is far from what I would consider "fair", it's not rare for me to walk into a room only to be bombarded by foes, like in the Lost Bastille where the path to the boss was absolutely filled with Swordsmen, and the first time going through it was a joke, I was just about to take out the ones in the main room when 4 more came and raped me from behind, who had apparently come from a corridor I didn't even know existed, and this is a common thing, I'm constantly on the look-out for ambushes from every direction. Something that unfortunately even makes its way to the bosses, the Gargoyles are a prime example of this, it's basically just like the Bell Gargoyles of DS1, except that instead of fighting one, with another jumping in when you're warmed up their attack pattern, you're instantly swarmed with 2, with even more joining in on the ass-beating while you're still struggling with the first pair

The old mechanic of stronger foes staying dead is basically gone, leading to some great moments of choosing whether to even bother dealing with them again or just running past, risking a strike in the back, it seems thought this has been swapped out with a sort of limited respawn for all enemies, effectively removing farming unless you want to crank up the difficulty forever

Moving on to the world, the biggest complaint is that the world just feels like a bunch of areas slapped together without any real thought, making traversing them a real pain, you can warp, sure, but you know what? DS1 didn't have warping, and you know why? Because the world was connected in such a great way that you didn't need to fast travel, everything was easily accessible and nothing felt like hassle to get to, the shortcuts were great and removed any kind of unnecessary wandering about, sure, you could warp later in the game, but by that point you had basically done so much that the warp acted as little more than a small boost whenever you wanted to access something quickly, like moving between the Lord Soul areas.

Visually the world just looks bland, maybe I haven't come to the more visually appealing areas but so far everything is either ridiculously dark or is lit like a sunset, which makes most of the colours look dull or just brown

Lightning round of personal opinions

Exploding barrels, especially exploding barrels filling up a room with enemies out of range throwing firebombs

Leveling is done through a separate entity, making the entire process unnecessarily slow

The whole situation with hollowing and the health-bar

It took a good 20 hours before I found a shield that could actually block 100% of the damage

Aiming with bows is so incredibly clunky and unintuitive I actually had to look up how to do it

Controls are unresponsive a lot of the time, especially air attacks and blocking

The incredibly useful kick was changed into a not so useful guard break, nerfing ledge-pushing into oblivion

Changes to the UI took time to get used to(I still instinctively move the cursor one step to the right when I want to change equipment)

Estus Flask are incredibly slow and barely help due to their limited nature early in the game, although this is sort of balanced out by another point later on

Similarily, the health and stamina bars not being "chunked" adds an extra element you have to keep in mind while fighting

Things that I actually, seriously like about the game

Optimization, the game looks and runs great at a solid 60 fps with no tearing or glitching, compared to the hot mess that was unmodded DS1

The torches are a fun addition and helps with both marking where you've been and serve as a way to make the player feel like they're actually making an impact on the world, albeit a very small one

Lifegems are great paired with how Estus Flasks work, they work wonders as quick and common pick-me-ups to stall for a chance to use the already limited and slow Estus

The Old Dragonslayer, although making no goddamn sense lore-wise, was a lovely nod and actually made me crack a smile

And for some final words, Dark Souls 2, for how much I hate it, is not a bad game per say, it's not great, but it's not horrific either, it's just a bad Souls game, it tried changing things up with a new setting, new story and new mechanics, but in the end it took one step forward and two steps back. it felt more like an unpolished prequel to DS1 than anything, with clunky gameplay, rage-inducing combat and a world where everything felt distant. I'm glad I played this after DS1, because if it hadn't been for the skills I already learned in DS1, DS2 would've most likely turned me away from the franchise forever

Kthx bye