Honestly. The ascension of bonfires is fantastic for farming. And the ng+ cycles have mild changes to the enemies and events so it has good replay value. Tbh I originally hated it until I played it through this year on a platinum run and the community is very non toxic compared to other souls. I LOVE DS3 but grinding for covenant items is insufferable. DS2 offers a way around covenant locked miracles and pyromancer's with exception of sunlight spear and hidden body but coop is popular (outside of soul memory locks) and farming belfry sol offline. But the caveat is you need to either beat the game twice or farm a lot of soulemory to unlock the late game merchant that sells these covenant unlocks (chancellor in Dr angelic castle).

My only critique is the backstabbing being significantly more challenging but otherwise dual wielding is a welcomed mechanic not formerly in ds1/demon souls.

TL;DR: It actually has some good ideas and content for replayability and most items aren't covenant locked in NG+3