Article is pretty weak and the author fails to make salient critiques nor recognize what DkS2 excels in.
Far too many of the arguments rely on a rose-tinted view of the first Dark Souls. For instance, the author posits that DkS1 levels were some complicated, multi-faceted levels with a ton of depth whereas DkS2 levels are mostly linear with a few offshoots, wraparounds, and shortcuts. That statement is half-right; DkS2 level design pretty much follows that pattern to a tee. However, neither Demon's Souls nor Dark Souls 1 did anything that deviated significantly from that approach. And the author believes there is true freedom afforded by DkS1's world design. This is bull, because of constant instances of content gating; you have to ring the bells, go through Sens, and obtain/place the Lordvessel to access a majority of the later content (or be able to meaningfully interact with it; there's almost no reason to go into the Tomb of the Giants beforehand, as Rhea won't be there and you can't access Nito). There's never been any sort of seriously meaningful non-linearity in the Souls series; this isn't Metroid or anything.
A lot of critiques are small things made out to be far more important than they truly are. Case in point, the spiel about that darn Earthen Peak to Iron Keep transition. Yes, it's silly, a bit nonsensical, and it stands out...but how much does it really matter? Does this greatly impact the moment-to-moment experience playing the game, or is it merely a conversation piece to chatter about? A lot of the accolades given to DkS1 are sort of the inverse of this, which is to say they are "cool" things to notice in reflection, or talk about, yet have little to no gameplay function. People always praise DkS1 for a sense of tension inspired by the relative scarcity of bonfires, of safety, or how the lack of warping could result in a player being marooned in a hostile locale, possibly cursed, struggling to escape...but how "real" where these scenarios? Did most "good" players ever experience them? I certainly didn't, and that means I find that sort of praise spurious, at best.
Then there are simply boneheaded complaints or downright incorrect assertions.
Claiming that Nakja is a ripoff of Quelaag is silly. Sure, they share superficial features, but the designs of the bosses, mechanically speaking, are quite different. Quelaag is a boss with few melee options who relies heavily on her chaos pyromancy to constrict the player's movement in the arena. The Chaos Witch with a amazing chest ahead can't move all that quickly and her slow pivot speed means she leans on a couple of explosion attacks to guard any attacks against her rear. Nakja has a lot more melee options than Quelaag and her magic lends to being attack-stacked with melee techniques...in fact, she makes very shrewd use of this ability. The Scorpioness is also faster, more mobile, has stingers that can be dismembered, and even has a special burrowing move she can utilize. Point is, despite visual similarities, the two boss fights are quite different under the hood.
Complaining about repeat bosses or bosses lifted from a previous title is silly as well. Twin Dragonriders aren't the most inventive boss, but I suppose the author must have had some momentary lapse of memory to forget Stray Demon and Demon Firesage, which were almost identical to one another. And I know the author claimed to have not played Demon's Souls (despite referencing Old Monk in things Dark Souls did to surprise players), but this complaint is quite ironic in that many Dark Souls bosses draw extremely heavily from Demon's Souls foes. The Gargoyles are quite similar to the Maneaters, Vanguard forms the basis of the Asylum/Stray/Firesage line, Pinwheel is a shoddy Fool's Idol ripoff, and Iron Golem is a (significantly) modified Tower Knight who happens to have a ring-out victory condition.
And for the kvetching about four ring slots...really? That comment strikes me as grasping at straws, a complaint solely added to pad on word count or somesuch. Four ring slots still affords for significant choices in one's loadout, as the number of rings useful to each build far exceeds four; there's a ton of rings that almost every character would really like including, but not limited to Life, Cloranthy, Royal Soldier, Third Dragon, Southern Ritual, Lingering Dragoncrest, Gower's, Old Sun, Thorns, Blades, Stone, Clear Bluestone, etc. And then there are build-specific rings like Old Leo, RTSR, Abyss Seal, Bracing Knuckle, Northern Ritual, and Knowledge/Prayer. And not to mention, wearing utility rings (be they PvE focused, Covenant-centered, or matchmaking modifers) is far less painful when it only occupies 25% of one's slots/choices as opposed to 50%.
All in all, this critique, like most writings against Dark Souls 2, struggles to be coherent because it has to uphold the silly notion that DkS1 was significantly different and executed much better. This couldn't be further from the truth. The Souls series has followed the same core design principles through all three iterations and has generally improved in each successive game.
I'd venture a guess that most of the negative reactions to DkS2 are attributable to "series fatigue".
The Souls games all share extremely similar mechanics from their DeS roots and there hasn't been a huge injection of new mechanics like, say, DMC1 to DMC3, which means veteran players don't have a lot to learn/explore in newer installments. They also have a very low skill-ceiling, which is to say that it's not terribly difficult to become proficient in handling one's character in the series and being able to perform most techniques. It's also important to note that much of the appeal of Souls games comes from a punishing level of difficulty and the thrill of exploring the unknown.
The previous statements sort of serve as premises for the argument I'm going to make, that the Souls series has diminishing returns to a wide swath of the playerbase. Veterans who mastered all the mechanics of Dark Souls 1 (and perhaps DeS) will find that much of their skill and knowledge are highly transferable to the sequel, eliminating the fun of figuring out a fresh, new system. And since the baseline difficulty of the game is balanced around new players, much of the content won't even serve as a speedbump. Players who already cut their teeth learning the importance of dodging from Vanguard or Asylum Demon won't have much use for Last Giant's lessons. In fact he, and much of the early content, will likely seem a bore.
I think the key to enjoying future Souls titles is to realize that the experience will never match your first as long as From continues to iterate upon the same formula (which seems extremely likely). The core of the games hasn't changed, but the players certainly have become a lot more versed in the mechanics; it's going to be very difficult to design a Souls game that can challenge veterans without being hopelessly difficult for newbies. From isn't likely to pull an Itagaki.
. Also, an NPC summon that survived a boss fight bowed before departure. Nice touches.
