The issue with Dark Souls 2 apologetic channels like this is that they will either go after low hanging fruit videos or respond to Mauler nearly a decade after his DS2 series ended. Here are OBJECTIVE flaws with Dark Souls 2 (using Domo's language) 1. It has inconsistent and outright bad hit, touch, and visual feedback when take damage. I have made videos of this in the past comparing it to other Dark Souls games, the developers for DS2 did not understand the importance of hitting the players major senses and tell them they took damage. A lot happens in fights, it's chaotic, this is why vibration in controllers are a thing, it's why animation and sound to the player character is supposed to tell the player they were hit or are in danger. This is an OBJECTIVE flaw with DS2. 2. Combat tedium. People often complain about ganks, ganks in general aren't the issue - it's how often Dark Souls 2 makes you break the pacing or the momentum of your playthrough and draw out one or two enemies because the DS2 likes to mix in stronger and tankier enemies with weaker ones. They actually made this worse in the Scholar edition. For example, at Heide's Tower if you defeat the Dragonrider, it wakes up the Heide Knights - so instead of just facing Old Knights, now you have to draw the Heide Knights away (who have long aggro distances) defeat them and then defeat the old knights. This is just an example early on, but this is a pattern that doesn't stop in DS2, it gets worse as the game goes on. 3. The Dark Souls trilogy is an action adventure RPG. One that relies heavily on visual storytelling and exploration - both of which are a major downgrade in comparison to Dark Souls 3 and especially Dark Souls 1. Because this game was ripped apart mid development, you have countless areas and rooms throughout the game that are just empty unfinished boxes, repetitive tiling, and map areas that feel disjointed from one another rather than one cohesive world. This isn't just me saying this, the directors of Dark Souls 2 admit they had oversights in this regard. Dark Souls 2 feels bad, looks bad, and plays bad. It's a bad game. There is no good reason for anyone to go out of their way to defend a bad product this hard. DS2 is by far the contrarians favorite game. It's not a gem. You didn't find the secretly good game that is overly hated. It's just a bad game. You like a bad game.