>>723568629 (OP)
Reasons why Dark Souls II was maligned:
>Soul Memory
It's bad because it counts total souls accumulated, not total souls spent, so you couldn't cease its progression. Then they added the agape ring, which works, but now it consumes your souls so if you want to twink you don't get to keep souls at all.
>weapon degradation
It was tied to frame rate, so on consoles it was fine, but on PC your weapons have the durability of wet paper towels. This is mitigated by consumables and spells, but I'd rather just not have the problem in the first place.
>enemy despawning
After they've been slain enough times, enemies will stop respawning. This is fine during a typical playthrough, but if you're the type to linger, eventually entire regions of the game will be devoid of anything in them at all. Empty maps. This is mitigated by joining the Company of Champions, but the covenant comes with its own changes that you may not wish to deal with
>no Red Eye Orb
This is self explanatory; reds were upset because they had to farm for orbs. It's annoying busywork that could better be spent invading.
>invasion timer
It puts pressure on the invader to do something, which is antithetical to the "I've got all the time in the world" strategies that people would employ, things like hiding and blending, lying in wait to ambush the host, or playing the long game by running through the level.
>hosts can be invaded while hollow
Why? It renders moot the entire point of Humanity/human effigies.
>abundance of healing
>introduction of sublime bone dust
The first is self explanatory; there's too many healing consumables in the game that can just absorb damage. Bone dust effectively replaces Humanity, which makes no sense. There was no reason to fuck with the previous mechanics that worked so intuitively.
>a bunch of other issues, i.e.
>aggressive enemy tracking and bad hitboxes (got patched to some extent)
>split into two versions DX9/DX11
>visual downgrade from the promo material
etc.
