Well, I'm glad I finally finished DS2 and all it's DLC before DS3 came out. Mind you, despite being pretty okay and DS2, DS3 took me some time to get the hang of. Movement is more fluid and more reactive than DS2. Enemies seem to be a little faster as well, either that or they don't telegraph their attacks as much as they did in DS2. In contrast to DS2, enemies feel a bit... I don't know, weaker? Maybe that's to compensate the fact that enemies don't despawn like in DS2?
Despite having over 150 hours in DS2, I still consider myself quite the noob. The intricacies of the game's systems are not something I really payed much attention to, which understandable hurt me in the long run. I never even got around to playing NG+ or using Bonfire Ascetics, which I really should have done.
Thanks to DS2 though, DS3 is going to be a much smoother ride. Hopefully this time I won't try to balance out my character's stats, which would require me to level extensively like in DS2. I just finished DS2's final DLC at level 241, which others tell me is ridiculously unnecessary, especially for a non-NG+ and non-bonfire ascetics play through.
It's a little too early in DS3 for me to tell which game is easier/harder because of the differences between the two. However, I enjoy both equally because of those differences. I thought I was smart to farm the first boss out of the tutorial, but 500 souls per kill... that's a little underwhelming as a phantom. It's actually quicker and easier to farm souls with NPC phantoms by running around killing tough enemies outside of the boss area. Especially because one of those enemies gives 1000 souls per respawn. I think I can get about 2500 souls per run from the boss area to a bonfire in about 10 minutes.
Also, there was one glitch I encounter as a Phantom. It may have been due to lag, but it made me invincible against the boss. Both the host and the boss would move, but not use animations. What I mean is, everything would stand perfectly up right and just glide across the area, and for whatever reason, I couldn't be hurt because of it. Turned the boss into a piece of cake. I feel bad for the host. He probably thinks I'm some amazing player to be able to beat the boss without taking a single hit while stabbing it in the face repeatedly.