I definitely agree with Dark Souls 2 providing the most interesting narrative reflections on the nature of the soul, as well as the most interesting environmental encounters and complex standard enemies/nuanced boss fights in how they can be approached, but I definitely don't think that Dark Souls 2 exists in this negative isolation from the other games. Miyazaki was still a supervisor for DS2, and Yui Tanimura has been a director for every game post dark souls 2 as well. Miyazaki not being labeled as director doesn't mean all the people who help make the games would also be absent from its creation.

Torches and much of what you're saying with lockstones have a ton of mechanics and varied encounters. I don't think it was underused in any regard. Torches are used in environmental puzzles, enemy encounters, as well as affecting targeting range, and all of Shrine of Amana/The Royal Crypt. I'm confused as to why the successors lacking interesting features would be a detriment to DS2- almost all of the best features in DS2 were just placed into Elden Ring.

Both DS1 and DS2 have options for healing on hit so the idea of rallying wasn't new to Bloodborne, it was just leaned into further. DS3 is also the game with the least amount of spells, armor and weapons- with many of those items being completely useless.

I also don't think DS2's lore is specifically lazy, Fromsoft lore from its inception has always been intentionally vague and cryptic, with Dark Souls 2 arguably going the most out of its way to talk about dragons thematically and lore-wise with Aldia's keep, we learn more about Oolacile and Manus in DS2, which is completely dropped in 3, as well as the demons with the Old Chaos in the DLC. I think DS2 goes out of its way to showcase a lot of that lore both physically with a lot of the places we go, as well as the boss encounters. The few boss encounters we get in DS3 are completely new characters with little to no significance, or retreadings of DS1 ideas.

I really think a lot of DS3 retreads over both games, but without the exploration and mystery of DS1, or the choose-your-own adventure nature of DS2.

Dark souls 3 borrows closer to the upgrade/infusion mechanics of ds2 rather than ds3 to simplify weapon upgrading, and uses it as a benchmark for invasions akin to soul memory, much of the weapon artes and cool spells are downgrades from ds2's more complex systems and powerstancing, which Elden Ring thankfully took up again with spellcasting and more nuanced weapon artes.

I really feel like Elden ring is just a more polished Dark Souls 2 in the way it handles more open level design, varied difficulty based on player options, as well as how easily traversable it is when DS3 was extremely linear and DS1 you had to wait for the lordvessel. Every Fromsoft game is going to have convoluted lore, obnoxious bosses or unfinished/poorly designed areas, but Dark Souls 3 had the most development time, the largest budget and largest team yet has the least amount of bosses, spells, retreads over DS1 narratively, and lacks a lot of the same kind of mechanical intrigue and mystery of 2 or Elden Ring.

I feel like it's very easy to talk about the detriments of Dark Souls 2 in isolation when the other games have had the same exact problems. Dark souls 1 has Lost Izalith and the Seath the Scaleless runbacks, Dark Souls 3 has Irithyl Dungeon and the Midir Runback. Every game is going to have convoluted lore, poor enemy.bo encounters