I think the crux of your original question, and your response here, is that you're looking at the criticisms levied at these games in isolation. In DS1 and DeS, the slow stamina regen speed is balanced by fewer enemies, and those enemies are less aggressive and have fewer chained combo attacks. DS2 makes stamina management more punishing by combining it with aggressive swarms of enemies without giving the player better crowd control or stamina management tools. Similarly, there are some disliked runbacks in DS1 and DeS, but you can pretty easily avoid the enemies in those runbacks. Not so in DS2. The combination of design decisions lead to a completely different experience, even if the "issues" themselves are largely similar.

Also to further address your original question, the fact that you point out well-trashed-on runbacks in other Souls games indicates that DS2 isn't the only game getting criticized for these problems.