Yet arguably so brave? Naw but for real, I've only ever played a bit of Bloodborne so i have very little frame of reference for this stuff. I just know DS2 is very controversial and I don't fully get why. Was there something wrong/ off about the presentation or gameplay or something?
Ds2 is a great game, but it changed parts of the ds1 formula in ways that didn't go over well with fans. Most of the changes weren't bad, but it definitely gave the game a different feel. A few common complaints:
Dieing causes you to lose a portion of your max hp, down to 50% after enough deaths. You could reverse the hp loss by spending a consumable item or helping another player beat a boss. This one was unpopular because the game requires you to die to a boss enough times until you've mastered their moveset. Some people didnt like feeling punished for doing what the game expects them to do.
Enemies can only be killed a limited number of times before they permanently despawn. Having the game make itself easier if you failed at it enough felt insulting.
The dark souls combat system handles 1-on-1 fights better than fights against groups. Despite this, the game throws lots of group fights at you. Ds1 had a number of group fights as well, but you could lure the enemies out one at a time. In ds2, the enemy ai was changed so that enemies would chase you together.
There are a lot of great boss fights in the game, but there's also a lot of bland ones. A lot of the bland ones are giant dudes in a suit of armor with big two-handed weapons.
People liked how well connected the world of ds1 was. Not only could you see many of the upcoming levels in the distance, sometimes you could see the paths that connected them. Ds2 seems like it goes in the opposite direction and makes the world's geography impossible (and bizarre at times).
Cant believe I forgot about the combat pacing. It's much slower than ds1 and has a huge emphasis on stamina management. A lot of the issues with dodge timings are because many enemies have real wonky hitboxes, so dodging when it seems correct to do so will get you clipped.
LONG POST INCOMING
You're going to get a lot of "well personally I like DS2 but" responses, so here's the take of someone who dislikes the game and I don't really want to play it again.
Numerous technical issues: hitting an enemy with any weapon sounds like slapping a raw steak, the movement is very clunky, the odd graphics make everything look wrong the sound design is all pretty bad, enemy AI can be totally broken, there are numerous hitbox problems with a ton of enemies and bosses. I can't tell you how many times in 3 playthroughs my character was standing right in front of an enemy, locked on, only to turn 90 or 180 degrees away and miss when I went to attack
Enemies and bosses: DS2 relies on enemy swarms and ambushes heavily to produce difficulty, and its not fun. There are too many bosses; many boss fights are either a joke like Covetous Demon or a giant armored guy with 3 attacks. A lot of bosses like The Rotten, Old Iron King, and the Last Giant act like animatronics who might as well be wearing big stoplights around their necks the way they telegraph their attacks. Other bosses like The giant rat dog rely on cheap artificial difficulty to be hard.
Gameplay: DS2 introduced healing stones that slowly regen health in addition to the estus flask. You can buy unlimited stones for really cheap from a vendor, and it makes the game too easy if you keep yourself stocked and pop em off during every fight. Their addition makes me wonder if they added them, realized the game was too easy, and then added tons of ambushes and swarms to balance them out, or realized the game was too hard and added the stones to try and balance it out
The world: the world is sloppily put together, the most infamous example is that you climb a big windmill where the sky is clearly visible, reach the top and get in an elevator that goes up, and suddenly end up in a lava world. One of the strengths of all other FromSoft games is that the world is coherently put together, and makes it feel believeable. DS2 does not do that and it weakens the game. Another example of this is that in order to access the 2nd half of the game, you have to open a door by killing 4 main bosses or get 1 million souls. You have to open this door because the main path is obstructed by a pile of rubble any person could easily climb over. The individual levels that make up the world are almost all pretty badly put together
NPCs and Story: The NPCs are handled very badly, in DS1 and 3 to some extent the NPCs have their own goals outside the orbit of the player; DS2 almost every NPC goes back to the hub after you talk to them and never move, their sole function being that of a vendor, makes the world feel less believable. The story is pretty bad, if DS2 is your first game in the series there's a pretty good chance you could play through the entire game without having any idea what's happening or what you're accomplishing. DS1 sets up the world pretty well, ancient dragons, fire is discovered, Gwyn builds the world with fire, undead curse, Oscar saves you, asks you to ring the bells, Frampt tells you to go to anor Londo and then get the lord souls, and then succeed Gwyn. DS3 does too (although it expects you to know the story of DS1), endless cycle of linking the fire, fire is fading, lords of cinder, they all abandon the fire, you're awakened and need to kill them, get the cinders, fight the Soul of Cinder, link or extinguish the flames. It's totally unclear what you're doing in DS2 at a first glance
These are things from off the top of my head, and as you can see, it's a lot of problems
I actually have played through ds2 like 6 times and I have no idea what the plot was lol
I know the "soul memory" (I think that's what it was called) system rubbed people the wrong way, since it was used for matchmaking despite including unused and permanently lost souls in its tally (so if you'd lost, say, a hundred thousand souls over the course of a playthrough, you'd be invaded by people who potentially had much higher stats than you who hadn't lost any to repeated deaths). Likewise it became hard to set a specific community-agreed-upon level for PvP due to the difficulty in stopping gaining soul memory (I think there was a ring that stopped you from getting more souls while wearing it, used for the purpose of locking a character in at a particular soul memory level).
I think there may have been some other stylistic changes to how the gameplay flowed too, but I only played DS2 and DS3 so I'm not sure what those changes were, I just recall hearing a long explanation of it all once but can't remember any clear details.
Honestly dark souls 2 is my favorite souls game, but I can see why people don’t like it as it has a much slower combat pace than other games and definitely has a different feel and look than the rest of the series. Also holy crap if you play the scholars first sin version the game deadass is beautiful (but not as gloomy and depressing as the other souls games)
It's 15 minutes, but this video will give you an in-depth answer to that very question.
Basically: At the beginning of it's development the game was meant to be one way, but then halfway in minds changed and a "new" game had to be Frankensteined together from the assets they already had due to deadlines.
This led to a game that felt, well, stitched together as opposed to the other Souls games that had consistent visions their entire development.
people already got the real smart and thought out answers i will just give you the real short version:
TOO MANY BOSSES ARE JUST BIG KNIGHT which is a fun concept but it gets tiring and by the end of the game i would tell every single armored goon to fuck off also being compared directly to DS1 is not a good place to be as a game
