DARK SOULS™ II

10 years ago I got invaded by a hacker named "I'll Kill the Blacksmith" while in the safe area of Majula where combat is normally impossible on my very first run of the game. He proceeded to kill the blacksmith then left. I think about this atleast once a month. 10/10 great game even without a blacksmith.

An unfairly criticized sequel, it has everything that makes Dark Souls great. If the first game is like Berserk in its vibe, then the second one is more like The Lord of the Rings. It has a unique, magical, fairytale-like atmosphere. The main story mode is slightly weaker in quality, but the three fantastic DLCs are experiences to remember.
5/5

It's like a luxurious all you can eat restaurant, that serves pain and suffering. 10/10 would recommend to make others suffer.

Dark Souls 2 is Dark Souls 2 so it's great. I did play Scholar first though and I enjoy the enemy placement more there than here since I feel it gives you more options overall on how to tackle each area so if you want to minimize combat it's possible once you realize how the aggro works and differs in each version.
The one caveat is that if you are a real fan of the genre you need to play both and you should play this game first so you can enjoy and better be able to take advantage of the new options Scholar offers in relations to this OG PS3/360 version. One thing to note that Scholar with the lighting engine mod plus texture mods does look nicer (not only that you can tweak each area to your liking and save your settings which is great) than this version but the plus for vanilla is that you don't really need to bother with torches for this one since the game never gets anywhere near as dark as Scholar where the torch or a light spell (haven't used it myself but I mean dark souls 1 had it gotta be here too right?) is basically mandatory in certain areas/locations.
I would be remiss not to mention that Keyboard and Mouse controls don't feel quite as smooth here and the camera seems to fight you a bit more in vanilla than it does in Scholar once everything is properly set up (both games have that annoying bug that you got to disable double click every time you start the game, that default is horrible and I can't fathom anyone playing with it enabled) but if you are on a gamepad I would think they control around the same. I basically need to lock on more in this version than in Scholar where I basically just use the mouse to free aim everywhere.
Another difference is that Scholar may throw more at you but they also added more summon signs so even if you are solo you can get an ai pal to help you out with some bosses that in vanilla as far as I can tell you got to solo yourself like the gargoyles.
Overall It's nice we got got two versions of the same game to enjoy and that's all folks!
Go get them souls!

peak dark souls game. the only from software games that are better imo are elden ring and sekiro. gonna 100% the enhanced edition of it, would do it for this game if the enhanced didnt exist. highly recommend

Despite the fact that I've played it the least of the 3, and got into it the most recently, I have decided that Dark Souls 2 is my favorite of the trilogy. It provides the most freedom on repeat playthroughs, the most charmingly complex mechanics, and the best balance between linear and convoluted level designs.

i really liked the game, idk why people complain about it, for me it was very hard to get through some areas but i feel like this is a good challenge for yourself to accomplish