TLDR.: very bad port, poor quality game, way behind its era's possibilities, heavily overpriced and overrated.
I might push myself through this game for lore reasons, but do not ever-ever buy this for full price. I wish this was PS exclusive, and Bloodborne had a proper port for PC.
Very bad 1:1 port, feels like a pirated, cracked game. The tooltips were not even updated for PC users, you have to google everything. The game constantly resets some configurations you have to readjust with each game start. Missing this may result in ingame death, which the game actively punishes. Cheating is prohibited as per their EULA, so there's no way to amend your losses caused by their mistakes without risking your account.
Extremely outdated design on all fronts compared to its era, especially for the price.
Some very bad design choices like Adaptability, an attribute that is basically mandatory to level up, but is never explained
Very clunky, slow animations. If you are curious how a pensioner fight club looks like, this game is for you
Controls are unresponsive too many times, this is an issue on all platforms. Movement has too many rough edges, it's disturbingly hard to control and position your character, especially during fights. Sprinting and rolling on the same button sometimes causes a hiccup where after sprinting and arriving to an object, certain terrain element, or pushing a different button may cause your character to dodge. This of course causes fatal accidents. This group of bugs still exists in Elden Ring, 7 years and 3 games later.
Some collisions are terrible. You're constantly slipping and floating on terrain, and enemies hit through walls. Your hits are the only exception as your theatrical, wide, self-exposing swings are beautifully crafted to be stuck in literally everything.
Sometimes, terrain assets you can interact with like barrels do not reset and certain objects like gates do not stay open after a bonfire rest. This may break progression at times.
Having to verbally bully npc characters into becoming interactive is a very soulslike experience. However, in DS2, npc characters are especially dull and predictable:
"Ahhh..... .... ...an undead" (in a world full of undead)
"Hahh.. hahah.. you'll probably fail, but there's that thing over there..."
"Anyways, I am _____"
"Let's get back to smithing"
"Ahhh..... .... ...an undead"
Altogether, there is no flow to the game. It is slow, extremely grindy and hard to get the hang of for first-timers as nothing is explained. I am very well aware of the way soulslike games are challenging, that said, being a punching bag can still be fun with a good level design. However, this game consists of intentional noob-traps literally everywhere, where mistakes are punished exponentially due to systems like hollowing and durability. It will be annoyingly time-consuming to get through the first time, and very easy in further runs.
