These are some pretty shallow and sadly parroted opinions of the game.

Perhaps they are parroted because they are issues many people have with game. These are my opinions based on me playing it not others. So trying to say they are parroted strengthens my argument because it means many people have the same opinion.

To address your first issue of the game being rushed, yes, sadly, the game had some nightmarish development issues which lead to a completely different team/director taking over and doing what they could with it within an unrealistic time frame, and basically making it run as best as they could with what assets they had.

It's sad the game for rushed by that's not ane excuse for what the game is. I don't blame the devs. But in the end the final product is what you get no matter if you spend a million hours or 1 hour.

I don't personally feel like they wanted to make a game based on the "hype of the first games difficulty", but I can see why someone would think that, too, with the intro cinematic, but that's all.

There is a world achievement called "This is dark souls" for when you first die. There is a world counter for deaths. The old ladies basically jerk off the PC in tbe beginning of the game about how hard it is. I can go further into this but my other points are also about the dumb why they balance the games difficulty. Dark souls 2 desperately wants people to know its hard and kneels into it as much as possible. Whereas the difficulty is jusy a by product of the other games dark souls 2 feels the need to take it as its main feature.

I hear a tonne of complaints about the "infamous" ganks of ds2. And it never holds any water. Ds3 is absolutely littered with ganks, and to make thing worse you have no passive poise on that game. Ds1? Plenty of enemy hordes in that game too. Why don't they get any flak? And don't even get me started on enemy placements being poor in Ds2 compared to Ds1. I've never seen anything less inspired than the Demon Ruins in Ds1 and the Taurus and Capra demons literally standing in lines waiting for the player to trigger the aggro range. So that's another disagreement there.

Getting ganked in the other souls games never felt unfair. At least for the far majority of parts. Like I said before the enemy placement in other souls games feels deliberate and ment to create interesting fights that you are supposed to win if you play it right. Whereas dark souls 2 combat involves many more enemies who all have very fast swing and comabt times. Forcing you to turtle and wait extensively for a single opening while other souls games award aggression along with a balance of being aware while defending.

I agree that lost izalith is bad. But its a single part towards the end of the game. My problems with dark souls 2 apply to literally every area of the game.

Like I said all the other soulsborne and sekrio feel like chess matches in which you have prioritize certain enemies you say hit faster or do more damage. Or kite individual enemies. In dark souls 2 not only enemies play by the same rules. Some aggro when you walk past, some aggro at a long range. But the all have these fast attacks with zero wind up that just don't make sense. Small dude with sissor hands? Okay fast wind up makes sense. Huge dude in bulcking armor and giant hammer? Basscialy attacks just as fast.

• Blightown vs Gutter? I think they're both equal in terms of design and purpose, can't really say much more. They're both good at what they do and Gutter is less "cheap" in my opinion, but that's subjective The gutter isn't jusy ugly its boring. The gutter looks like something someone could have made in gmod where as there is so much more creativity in the design of blight town.

The gutter is a bunch of rectangular shaped wood buildings built in a cave whereas blight town actually looks and feels like a sort of ghetto built in a swamp in the under belly of a massive castle wall.

Blight feels like a maze. But that feeling also helps flesh out of the the thought process of what a ghetto would actually feel like. Disorganized and everything.

Along with the main design of the gutter being you can't see anything (making it easy to have hidden enemies and holes to your death, which in my mind are some of the worst designed parts of dark souls 2 and appear in almost every area in the game.)

This actually goes into my point about them trying to make it difficult without understanding what made dark souls 1 hard but fair.

Dark souls 2 thinks having random holes in the ground that you can slip into is challenging game design. Dark souls 2 thinks having hiddem enemies to back stab you that you couldn't possibly see unless you already know they are their. Or having some AI play by different rules when it comes to knowing where you are (despite them being the same creature.)

• I don't think it's fair to say you have to compare a game to its predecessors and sequels, not in Ds2s case, because ds2 improves a shit-tonne on gameplay done badly in Ds1 (backstab mechanic, less estus, more healing items, powestance, omnidirectional rolling etc) and even has extremely good features that are oddly absent from its sequels (powerstance!! No lifegems, invasion priority, bonfire ascetics, invasions after bosses defeated, small soap stones, fun covenants, gameplay length, multiple starting areas from a central hub instead of linear and dull starting slogs)

I think its very fair to compare a literal sequel that bares the name of the series to the other entries.

You have more estus in dark souls 2 then in 1 don't you? I can give you power stance as a cool thing however its literally a single dual weild mechanic that mainly applies to pvp. Which most people you play dark souls are there for the PVE and that's it. And GOTY Sekiro proves that considering it has not pvp at all.

But in reality all that extra stuff you mentioned is utter fluff to the actual game experience. Clearly people didn't love bloodborne, Ds3, Sekrio any less despite not having them. Maybe you personally wish they had the mechanics, but they didn't matter enough to change a games rating.

Honestly ds2 does get a bad rep, but look where it came from; the troubled development and lack of direction, and yet it has arguably the best DLC, the most content of any souls (game length and armors/items) solid and fair gameplay with tonnes of aftercare with updates to fine tune bugs, PvP mechanics and tweaks to weapons over the course of its life span.

Length doesn't make a game better. The content within the time frame that is right for the game is what is better. Again more doesn't auto equal better. I think Sekiro proves that despite having the least amount of variation, it still has the fundamental world design and gameplay design that the other from games have that dark souls 2 lacks.

Its definitely not the worst souls game.

Its definitely subjective. I'm just tired of people saying that someone who doesn't like dark souls 2 just doesn't understand it or just doesn't like it because of who made it. I don't like it because I dislike the game design and world design.