For every one thing that Dark Souls 2 does better than its predecessor, it does 5 things wrong.
And that's being generous because, what does Dark Souls 2 actually do better than the first? You can select how many souls you want to consume instead of one of at a time? Yeah that's better than the first, but what else?
Also, I haven't played the DLC yet but I read that they added a dragon enemy very close to the area where you fight The Dragonslayer. ... yeah I'm not playing the DLC, no thanks.