I'm the one trolling but people can't remember early game trash mobs in the undead burg doing Bloodborne sidestepping or just literal rolling like the skeletons in shrine of the storms.
Let's see how much harder it is to backstab in Dark Souls II and how it doesn't realign enemies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzHQL9IwCus&feature=youtu.be
So, basically 2 legit missed backstabs because the enemies get out of range, with plenty of other missed or just not executed due to inconsistent hit detection because of different elevation, despite being directly behind the enemy and having performed backstabs when I wasn't even behind his back just seconds before.
Still manage to get through a whole section of a late game DLC area with bonfire ascetic used. Oh and by the way there's
no rolling, sprinting or locking on, I didn't want to make it 100% trivial. On the other hand I tried getting to the gargolyes in Dark Souls doing the same no sprint, no roll, no lock-on run and every mob except the crossbow users was hitting me at least once before I could backstab them, I didn't even get to the gangbang upstairs.
"But you got hit here too!!" Yeah, by one guy I couldn't backstab because he was in a different terrain elevation and the game doesn't work consistently. And I too got hit once by another guy who rushed at me, that makes like two out of fifteen enemies, including alledgedly high level enemies like the lance and shield ones that are supposed to have good AI and be challenging alone, while literally walking only and trying to backstab only, no rolling or sprinting. In a late game area. I guess they should've put those in hordes too like everyone else.
Don't worry if you don't want to watch the video, here you have some realigning highlights in gif form:
My favorite:
Glorious improvement indeed. Backstabbing was bad in Dark Souls, but to say it's somehow harder or less reliable in Dark Souls 2 is ridiculous when it's more than ever the best thing to do in basically every encounter, considering the fact that you can barely attack twice at a time if you want to be able to roll away from the horde of non-staggerable enemies and that it makes you invulnerable to the inevitable succession of enemy attacks.