Personally I would recommend playing this game blind, or blind-ish. Many people here are sharing information and asking for help when they get stuck, and that's fine. In many ways these games were meant to be tackled as a community. But on the other hand, just following a guide, or reading everything in this thread regardless of whether you need it is bound to spoil your experience. It's just much better when you are exploring yourself and figuring out what works, rather than just painting by numbers, going where a guide tells you to, using the weapons it recommends, and following all the same strategies.
That being said, you are just as likely to get lost in this game as you did in Dark Souls. There are still plenty of intentionally obtuse mechanics, and there are multiple paths forward, so it's not always obvious which is the "correct" path. You can never really screw yourself in either game (unless you kill important NPCs, so don't do that), but you can waste a lot of time and make things hard on yourself by trying to tackle an area before you are ready, using weapons that don't compliment your build, or by missing useful items. But that's just part of the game to learn by experience what works and doesn't, and adjust your strategy accordingly. And in this game you can at least respec (though you need a particular consumable item that is hard to come by early on) if you mess up your build.
Personally, I would say try Dark Souls 1 again, since you (presumably) already own it. If it doesn't grab you this time, maybe the series just isn't for you. And if it does, you can always pick up DS2 later. I can promise you this thread will still be active in a couple of years.
