extremely mid game, story is bland, characters are boring and poorly designed, gameplay loop is nothing but a time consuming grind. the core gameplay is fun but there's no value to find in it after the first 10 hours.
After 15+ playthroughs and over 5 years since I last played Dark Souls 2 I can finally say that I enjoy playing it, it's different and not as polished as the rest of the series but well worth playing.