Jesus christ you guys are a bunch of whiny cunts.
After ~15 hours over the weekend, I'm loving the shit out of this game. It's everything I wanted from a Dark Souls sequel.
The port is miles ahead of DS1, even if it still isn't taxing high end PCs. I'm fine with that, Dark Souls is about mechanics, not graphics for me.
Controls are great, using a PS3 controller emulating a 360 controller. They made a questionable change with the jump button on LS, but thankfully it can be easily rebound back to B. Having all the attacks on the triggers is still genius, leaving your right thumb free to use the camera as needed mid-combat.
Map design is great, I have no idea what people are complaining about. There may be a few too many bonfires, but I'm not really complaining. Linear? Every area has tons of branching paths, secrets and interconnections leaving you free to go wherever you want. I've played 15 hours and still haven't been to areas that friends of mine visited within the first 2 hours of the game. Talking over mumble as we go, we've been doing completely different things at different stages of the game.
Lore is still the same ineligible disconnected clusterfuck it has always been, I didn't expect anything else.
Build variety seems increased from Dark Souls, from what I can see. I spent 3 hours or so PvPing in Belfry Luna and faced everything from throwing daggers and bows, through hexes, miracles and sorceries, to at least 20 different weapons (dual wield, sword+board and 2-handed). Avoidance and tanking are both viable strategies, although admittedly it has become easier to do both at once with the increased carry weight thresholds.
I'm a big fan of the durability change, actually. In Dark Souls 1 you never switched between melee weapons once you got your preferred setup. Dark Souls 2 forces you to swap due to durability, and weapon damage type also matters a whole lot more, with slashing weapons tearing up flesh and crushing weapons destroying anything armored. This incentivizes me to use multiple weapon setups, which I am all for.
In sum, I fucking love it.