Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-1961216-20140429234542/@comment-1855630-20140502054339

I think the main culprit behind lack of difficulty in DS2 is the new encumberance system.

In Dark Souls, everyone wanted to stay under 25%. Even mid-roll was noticeably slower than fast roll, and encumberance affected not only the roll - you moved slower as well, which had a large impact on the gameplay - it made circle-backstabbing impossible in most cases, it took longer to dodge attacks, it took longer to move back in after a dodge, etc.

Staying under 25% limit meant low armor values and a medium shield, which made dodging attacks much more important(most medium shields will ruin your stamina when blocking strong attacks, making counterattack impossible), and of course meant more damage taken if you screw up.

In Dark Souls 2, there is only one encumberance threshold, and it's at 70%. Only then your movement speed takes a hit. Roll is affected no matter the encumberance value, but since it was so heavily nerfed and basically requires 20ADP to be useful at all, most people simply don't roll at all, relying on blocking everything instead. And since the weight limit is so generous, it's very easy to do: running around with a greatshield and a full set of medium armor is perfectly viable in Dark Souls 2 and requires no sacrifice to other parts of your equipment.

This, combined with the prevalence of "humanoid" bosses, who mainly use quicker but weaker attacks(compared to "beast" bosses as I call them who use slow but very strong attacks that cannot realistically be blocked) means most of them can be killed just by doing what you were doing against normal enemies - block, once the attack finishes, punish, repeat. And of course since you wear heavier armor, you don't get as punished when you screw up.