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After the completion of DS1, Miyazaki set his gaze on working for Sony. An exclusive game called Bloodborne. leaving a different team to work on a sequel. They were tasked with creating a new engine from scratch, with little guidance and troubled development they delivered a great game, controversial to some, a worthy successor for many.
The review will be divided into three sections, and focusing specifically on if you should or not play the game, assuming you’re already a veteran of the series and know what makes these games great.
Note: I’ll be omitting any SOFT improvement.
A strongly-worded sentence: The average FromSoftware gamer sadly became amongst the most toxic communities, with acts of elitism or simply being one of Miyazaki’s lemmings, that can’t play the game for more than five minutes, because he’s not present to sprinkle fairy dust and some icing, If you’re one of those, then you should automatically avoid the game, chances are you’ll not like it, no matter how hard you try.

The bad:

Fall damage: Extremely punitive, feeling at times broken, even if you equip the cat ring. A limiting factor for certain exploration or experimentation.
Adaptability: An I-frame tied stat, which pushes you into having to change the way you envision your builds.
Hitboxes: Possibly the biggest problem with the game, you’ll be grabbed or hit by enemies even when you are not within their reach, same will work the other way around. Explosions also suffer from this issue, leaving to some gotcha moments. Backstabbing becomes a problem when the hitboxes are this crippled.
Pathfinding: The AI at times will be lost, scurrying around, unceasingly, without a clear path, unable to reach you, leading to some lukewarm moments of hilarious laughter or frustration.
Props and landscapes are botched: From very gorgeous areas, to scenery that feels stitched together in an amateurish way, the game also suffers from the lack of props to tell a story, making the world feel less empty.
Audio glitches: An example would be during boss fights, when you hit them.
Cutscenes: They tried adding cinematic black bars, it looks out of place, their attempt failed miserably.
Curses: They feel pointless and inconsequential, at most giving you the same effect as a normal death, pop an effigy and you’re good to go.
Repetition of certain bosses: Recycling content isn’t new, but they could’ve toned it down a lil’. Couple of re-used bosses, even from the previous game.
Map cohesion: DS1’s world was cohesive, connecting various paths and providing well-thought-out shortcuts for strategic bonfires. DS2 allows you to fast travel from the start, not much thought was put into how areas transition and connect, leading to vexing sights. Strategically placed bonfires would however gracefully return with shortcuts for the dlcs.
Acid and the repair system: They're botched, your weapons will usually break far faster than you’d like, and to further complicate things, some areas or even enemies capitalise on that and punish you and especially your gear, leaving you frail and vulnerable.
Movement: Not as fluid as previous titles, a snap-in feel that might lead to accidental falls from a ledge when you try to quickly manoeuvre.
Camera lock on: Never has been a forte of the souls series but somehow and in an unexplainable way the camera lock on feature feels even less responsive than it previously was.

The controversial:

Human effigies: Few and scarce, extremely punitive unless you’re a veteran of the series and know when to use and not overuse them, one ring nullifies half of the effect.
Life gems: DS1 nailed the healing system, focusing on a more fair and curated difficulty, being able to use one of your consumable items to increase the amount of flasks if you felt the need,
DS2 tried something new, you’re given less flasks at the start, you’ll have to find them through the game, requiring you to use life gems, which are a one use consumable item, that you can simply buy infinite stacks of them at a vendor.
Bonfire Ascetic and enemies de-spawning: They allow you to turn an isolated area into a ng+ zone, resetting the enemies, bosses and items. Allowing you to farm de-spawning enemies again.
Pharo lockstones and fragrant branches of yore: Pharo lockstones are an interesting addition, giving you some meaningful choices with what paths and rewards you choose, the problem is that fragrant branches of yore do the same, defeating the purpose already.
Torch mechanics: DS2 had big plans that shattered with a graphical downgrade, sadly torches were a casualty of that, they tried to salvage them, but usually you don’t really need them, so you can keep your shield for the most part.
Quantity over quality and certain backstabs: This point is extremely controversial, after the release of two Souls titles, veterans were storming through games, DS2 tried to spice things by making enemies harder and overwhelming in numbers, which led to the game feeling unfair and frustrating for some. They tried to counter a big issue with previous games where you circle around most enemies, and backstab them. One example of that are the turtle stone enemies, that counter backstabs.
Nexus maiden: With a bit of Demon souls DNA, the maiden idea was brought back in DS2 and 3. Forcing us to move back and forth, back to the central hub, shoving fast travel down our throats, instead of just letting the player cater their basic levelling needs and move on, interrupted.
GUI improvements: In some ways they did and in some they botched it, two examples would be how you consume multiple items and how much harder is to consult a weapon’s scale stat.

The good:

Equipment variety and PVP: Fans will be spoiled with a massive amount of gear, truly giving us infinite replay value, especially with the glorious addition of powerstancing. PVP benefited greatly from this, which makes you wonder, why people hate on this game, yet it has the best PVP of the series, surely then the combat isn’t that bad is it?
Covenants and npcs: Npcs although a bit one dimensional compared to DS1, they feel interesting, they have their own intricacies a good amount of lore to share that spices the world.
Decent amount of content and NG+: The game features a massive amount of content, NG+ isn’t lazily assembled, it has some new enemy types, new changes. DLCs are probably the best the series can offer, with interconnecting maps and less but more strategically placed bonfires, in some cases, even bringing puzzle and switch mechanics, if the base game had the dlc’s direction, it’d be the best DS game of the series, by far.

Last thoughts:

Demon souls possibly inspired by a great mix of many ideas seen in older games, like Legacy of Kain soul reaver or Onimusha, spawned its own genre, DS2 although flawed, delivered on that promise, the game is highly controversial but undeniably great and deserves in my opinion a strong 8.5 out of 10.