Shit, just cause I'm still salty af after playing it earlier today I'm just going to list all the grievances I've had with it that I can remember.
And, keep in mind, I've played clear over 1500 hours of DS1, and these are things I feel are genuinely retarded about DS2, and not just "wah wah, i'm bad and game iz too hard"
That fucking retarded bonfire in Sinner's Rise with 3 enemies that instantly start shooting you while you're there, thus invalidating the number 1 purpose of bonfires in DS2 (especially since you can't level up at them anymore.)
Why the fuck do I always have to travel all the way back to Majula to level up? It doesn't change the game in any "meaningful" or "engaging" way, it just takes an extra 3-4 minutes of my time. There's always bonfires right after boss fights anyways, so all it's doing is making me take multiple extra steps to level up instead of making it convenient.
That fucking invasion on me earlier today was absolute horse's ass. In the first place, I had just respawned at the shitty ass Sinner's Rise bonfire, so I had to deal with the annoying ass crossbow guys and lose half my hp since for some reason none of them want to stop shooting when I rush them all, and they all recover from my attacks in less than a second, meanwhile my character's lazy-ass takes a solid 1-1.5 seconds to pick his shield the fuck up after I attack(meaning I inevitably get hit at least once, no matter what). Second, this mother fucker who invades me runs up to me with no armor and some fucking long-ass katana thing and is clearly geared for a much higher area than me(Oh, you know, probably the 2nd biggest problem in DS1 PvP, aside from terrible latency?). Third, I hit him with 2 full combos before he does anything and he loses less than 1/5th of his hp(fuck that noise). Finally, this motherfucker proceeds to walk up to me with his retarded katana and target shield, bitchslap my tower shield to the side, and one-hit kill me.
That fucking retarded exploding corpse thing on the way to the Servant's Quarters bonfire that makes a noise about .5 seconds before it explodes after you walk right fucking next to it. Seriously, how the fuck am I supposed to react to that the first time around?
Old Dragonslayer is the shittiest, most blatant fucking rip-off of a previous boss I've ever seen. Same exact character model(albeit with updated texture quality and slight color change) and practically the same fucking move-set aside from the fact that lightning is swapped for purple goop shit that he throws at you.
Rings have weight. Are you fucking kidding me? The whole point of a ring is to have a decent stat-boost/upgrade, but in a limited quantity so you don't have a shitload of passive effects. If my character is strong enough to wear an entire suit of knight's armor and still run a decent speed, a single fucking ring is not going to change how fast I run/roll. Are these rings made out of fucking lead? And don't even fucking tell me they're going with that "Well they're made for godly beings so they're probably worn like bracelets." Yeah, it made sense in DS2, you have 2 wrists, therefore 2 rings. But if you're applying that to DS2, WHY THE FUCK CAN I WEAR 4 NOW, AND WHY THE FUCK DID THEY SUDDENLY GET HEAVIER? The old bracelet theory was purely a thought-up explanation of why we couldn't wear 10 rings that actually fits with the lore(the real reason being that would be overpowered as fuck.) so that it didn't take out of the immersion. Now, the fact that we can only wear 4 rings is stupid as fuck any way you put it. If they're now normal sized rings, what magical force is preventing me from using my other 6? If they're bracelets, why can I all of a sudden wear 2 more, and more importantly, why not just fucking call them bracelets?! Even from a balance perspective it sounds stupid. "Let's make rings overall not as influential a force as they were before, but make it where you can wear two more of them, buuuut, they also have a weight." JUST FUCKING LET US WEAR ONLY 2 AND MAKE THEM AS GOOD AS THEY WERE BEFORE.
Why is everything so fucking slow in DS2 compared to DS1? In DS1, combos and recovery rates were fast for both sides. Now, in DS2, all I've noticed is that my fuck-brained character has made a personal rule that he has to balance on one foot for as long as possible once he runs out of stamina. I've also noticed that some enemies recover insanely fast, and are capable of attacking you before you can even recover from attacking them. How the fuck does that make sense? I put a massive gash in that motherfucker's chest with my sword, and yet he strikes back before I can even lift my other hand to pick up my shitty shield. Overall, everything is so much slower. Enemies move and attack slower a majority of the time, but then sometimes will randomly decide to do a little blow mid-combat and then hit you with a random, much faster, and much less telegraphed(or telegraphed exactly the same as other attacks, that totally fucking helps. /s) attack that deals way more damage or straight up knocks me off my feet. Even when you perform attack combos in DS2, it is significantly slower than in DS1. Attack combos in DS2 tend to be only 3-4 hits long, and have a short gap in between attacks(because apparently this motherfucker decided to go adventure and be the chosen one but only knows how to swing his fucking weapon in one direction without fluidly chaining attacks together) as you recover or some other shit. So, instead of having cool-ass attack combos that both the player and enemy perform that are both easy to play with and against, combat is slow and boring aside from the occasional absolute bullshit attacks that a few enemies pull that require insane reaction time(or that just practically can't be defended against.).
On the other spectrum, some enemies are just way too fucking fast, like they're trying to make up for all the slow motherfuckers or something. As far as I've noticed it's mostly bosses, but I think a few other enemies do it as well. On bosses like Old Dragonslayer and Lost Sinner I wait for the enemy to make an attack that misses/gets dodges, and then abuse the opening that they left to get in some damage. And while yes, these bosses do have many openings and opportunities for attack, counter-attacks are swift and menacing, and many times end up with a trade of me attacking them once for about 5% of their HP, and then them turning around before I can physically dodge or lift my shield and getting chunked for 1/2 my HP. I'm the one who is fighting smart and abusing openings and not attacking recklessly, yet I get punished for it. Especially on bosses like Old Dragonslayer with more quickly-chained attacks, I get stunned and then locked into the enemy's combo and murdered, just because I used an opening to damage a boss. This in turn ends up with boss-fights being long skirmishes in which I extremely carefully wait for a boss to use an attack that has an opening that they actually take some amount of time to recover from, hit them once, dodge backwards/shield, and repeat. This is not fun or engaging, it's just tasking and extremely tedious.
Well, there's my problems with DS2 that I've encountered after a mere 4 hours of play(which is honestly quite sad, since I feel like I could barely make a list this long about DS1 which I've played quite a lot more than DS2. Please remember that these are personal opinions of mine, and I do enjoy the game, just nowhere near as much as I enjoyed DS1(at least so far, that is.).