I find dark souls 3 successfully condensed down the mechanics and gameplay of the souls games but delivered nothing in terms of exploration and world building.
The lore is DS2 is very good but the gameplay feels so horrendously unpolished and a lot of enemy placement feels really bad.
If I could play ds2 with ds3 gameplay it would potentially be able to rival the first half of DS1 for me
I don't know if I'd go as far with my personal tastes, but I know for sure ds3 makes me stressed out. I think the combat system is far too fast and roll centric to be enjoyable to me. DS2 is just a nice adventure and sometimes I need that despite its flaws.
Depends, just the base game or with all the DLCs? The DLCs are some of the best in the series, but the base game is about as enjoyable as fucking a fleshlight with glass shards in it. With the DLC I'd put it just above DS3 because you still need to suffer the base game to play them.