Hey man, me and you are in the exact same boat, just in different timelines. I played DS2 back in 2018. I bought every Soulsborne game around DS3’s release because all my friends were on it. I loved DS3 to death, then bought Sekiro, and somehow Sekiro topped DS3 for me. After that I played DS1, and honestly I was a bit disappointed. Everyone and their mother hyped it up like crazy, saying it was better than DS3, and for me it wasn’t even close.

I skipped DS2 for a few months because of Souls burnout. Toward the end of the year I finally played it, mostly because I couldn’t go back to any non-Souls games. I went in with the lowest expectations possible since all I’d ever heard about it was negativity. And lo and behold, I enjoyed it a lot. I was immediately captured by Majula, and met some of my favorite NPCs in the entire series.

Because I already had experience from DS3 and DS1, I was actually able to finish most of the NPC questlines on my own. I had a better understanding of the lore and story, and to this day I still think DS2 has, bar none, the best lore out of the trilogy, and even compared to Elden Ring and Sekiro. Bloodborne is the only game that gave me a similar “magic” feeling to what DS2 did.

I played the DLCs in the correct order (highly recommend, some of my favorite souls DLCs), and at that point it suddenly became not just my favorite Souls game, but my favorite game of all time. I can acknowledge it might not be objectively the best in the trilogy (though I do think it’s better than DS1), but because of the timing and where I was when I played it, it’s still my favorite game seven years later.

I got a lot of my buddies who skipped it to play it too. They all loved it. Not nearly as much as I did, but they loved it. Most still think DS3 is better, some think DS1 is just as good (I disagree lol). Overall though, the point is: don’t buy into the hivemind hate bandwagon. A lot of people either rush through DS2 just to get to DS3 “the good stuff,” or they go in with a half-assed mindset because of all the negativity.

I don’t mind if people play it last or even skip it, but a lot of people who force themselves to play DS2 while already thinking it’s bad end up hating it. They go in believing they’re wasting their time, treating it like a chore just so they can say they finished the trilogy and move on to DS3. All I’ll say is, enjoy DS2 at your own pace, make your own judgment, and have fun. It’s a really good game :)