I'm fairly certain the term "love/hate relationship" describes the only kind of relationship you can have with Dark Souls 2.
There are definitely a lot of tally marks you can give to the "love" column — its open world is enormous, ready to be explored in any direction of the player's choosing. Its system of character development, while occasionally inscrutable, is one of the deepest that games have ever offered. It offers so many elements to master, so many secrets to learn and uncover.
In the "hate" column — Dark Souls 2 is a stone-cold bastard.
In today's Overview, Phil Kollar and I jump right into Dark Souls 2, eager to vanquish foes and destroy furniture in search of dank loot. In doing so, Phil only dies every ten minutes or so, which is way, way under par for this franchise.
