>>96
Matthewtuberculosis suffers from Dunning–Kruger effect and for some reason people hang on his every word, maybe because of his accent.
He expects the interconnected level design of a small area (a castle with its surroundings) to be applicable to a larger area (an entire continent). You could say the level transitions were weird, but that's not the point, you just can't have the same design depth when you're supposed to take the player to completely different places every time they are moving on to the next thing. It worked well with DS1 because it's a single place that you can chisel the fuck out of to your hearts content, but with DS2, the Forest has nothing to do with Tower of Flame. Funnily enough, I don't hear people praising the fact that with Majula as the hub connecting all four great souls, you can pretty much play the game however you want without having to follow pre-determined paths. DS2 is very non-linear and you don't need interconnecting areas. Tuberculosis incorrectly states in that video that DS2 railroads you and it's just an outright lie. Fast travel from the start is not exactly casualizing because areas are all connected to Majula rather than to each other, it's a necessity. Imagine having to walk all the way from deep in the Iron Keep back to Majula, even if there weren't drops that impede backtracking, a lot of the levels just aren't designed with backtracking in mind. There's too many bonfires, though.
The level design is, on average, lacking, but that's on average. There's good stuff in there too. The situations where you're pitted against multiple enemies aren't bad design or lazy design, like tuberculosisman says. They're just a challenge DS1 players weren't used to overcoming with their one size fits all strategy of roll and backstab or parry and facestab. Suddenly they have to manage multiple enemies and their minds break (even though in original DS2 the hordes were pathetic, only in SotFS/DLC did this design really shine and people hate it even more).
The biggest problems in the game, from a design standpoint, are covenants and soul memory. DS2 was obviously made to focus more on PvP, I even think the level design is so bland so that players have better arenas rather than levels to explore, but they botched it all with the bad covenant design/rules and soul memory. The concept of Blues helping the way of the noob members is good on paper, and not even hard to put in practice, but somehow From thought it was a good idea to put as many restrictions as possible on it. Then invaders can't even invade all that much because it's a fucking currency, so there's even less opportunities for the Blue covenants dynamic. The rats was also a cool idea, so was the bell defenders, but the areas needed to be better designed. Still, it's easier to get summoned to defend the bell than it is to invade a sinner. Rats is pointless if nobody goes in the rat caves, even when you do get an invasion the rat is just a fancy invader trying to fumble with pharros mechanisms and just gets his shit pushed in, the areas needed to be better designed and the gimmick of using pharros should have been streamlined for combat. Sunbros is alright but you'd only ever join it for the spell. Only covenants you can say are in a good position is the Dark and Champions, with Bloods almost being good if it wasn't for the gatekeeping of invasions behind farming.
The hitboxes shit everybody points fingers to is real but it's not that big of a deal outside some bosses not having clear visual indications of their attacks (like the dragon stomps that aren't clear and make it look like a bullshit hit). Enemy bullshit isn't exclusive to DS2 though. Also lag probably warped people's perception of this problem, lag in DS2 can get really bad and it's sometimes subtle.
Soul memory, it just sucks. The nips were high on bad crack when they came up with this shit, it's the only reasonable explanation.
Majula is the best hub.