4/5 ★ – AllieN7's review of Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin.

When I first started my journey into the Fromsoft Souls games, I played the original edition of Dark Souls 2 on Xbox 360 back in like 2014/2015 and loved it. I think I was initially drawn to the game thanks to YouTubers at the time hyping it and its extremely hardcore difficulty up. I have very fond memories of exploring the kingdom of Drangleic, fighting the challenging bosses, and dying a lot. But for some reason, I never got into the rest of the Souls series till recently, I think I started Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne back then but never got far, kinda funny looking back at that now since I’m pretty much a die hard fan of this series. But now I’ve played every souls game all the way through and decided to revisit this game and finally play it’s Scholar of the First Sin edition as well as the 3 DLCs. And honestly? Despite it’s black sheep reputation among the fan base, I still really enjoyed my time with this. Even though I very easily consider it the weakest Souls game, there is a lot to appreciate and love about DS 2. The story and world is great, even with some really weak level design and frustrating enemy placements leading to a lot of annoying gank fights (both in terms of normal enemies and boss encounters) I still find the general combat and gameplay to be incredibly fun and rewarding, the atmosphere and environments are incredible, the music is great, and the general vibe it brings is amazing. There’s definitely issues with the janky gameplay, the hit boxes are very inconsistent (level ADP!) leading to some frustrating deaths, and like I said earlier some levels are just a little ridiculous with the enemy placements as they all gang up on you and stunlock you to death, some boss runs are absolutely ridiculous with all sorts of stuff going on as you try to rush to the fog wall, and the bosses are genuinely pretty disappointing, or even straight up bad and lazy. Demon’s Souls and DS 1 definitely had some pretty bad boss fights, but I’d say those games at least had some really high highs and a level of consistency, there’s definitely a noticeable drop in quality there, still some really good bosses at times. I think comparing Dark Souls 2 to the rest of the series really shows the game’s flaws, but I still consider it a great game and miles ahead of other action RPGs both at the time and nowadays. Maybe it’s nostalgia talking, but there is a lot of value in this game. Majula is just beautiful, my favorite player hub in the entire series and the music is up there with some of my favorite gaming tracks, and there’s so many other moments of pure genius and greatness that really help outweigh the bad lows this game puts you through. Think I gotta replay the original edition of this game to fully understand all the changes with difficulty and come to some conclusions, but this game is great even after playing the rest of the series. I don’t particularly agree, but I really understand why some people are so die hard over this game and defend it over and over again. I think with a more consistent direction, more quality over quantity, some changes to the level design and balance, and some much improved boss fights I would easily call this game another Fromsoft masterpiece, but as it is now, it’s a pretty neat game that I like a lot.