


Having played through sotfs recently to platinum with dlc recently, and the original a few years back, I don't think one felt consistent more or less fair than the other. Some of the cheap shot parts of the first game have been removed but other cheapshot parts have been added. Still its a great game with lots to love about it especially the PVP and dual wielding weapon system, but still I am baffled that people with fully functional eyes say that it is the best game in the series, with conviction. Overall its just the most unpolished and inconsistent game in the series. The hitboxes are most certainly more borked in DS2. This one is more subjective but I think there's some truth to it. Encounter design is too often just throwing many duplicate enemies at you. Too many bosses are giant humanoids that play pretty similar. And Scholar did not do much to fix this to my knowledge. There is no reason it should look worse than Dark Souls 1 anywhere but it does in many areas.

There are some AWESOME looking areas, but it is painfully obvious which ones they had to leave unfinished/stripped bare. Obvious repeating textures, barren and flat geometry, etc. Out of all the games it has the ugliest, most unfinished looking environments. Right out of the box controlling your character feels slower than DS1 due to the adaptability skill, terrible idea The torch was pointless because they had to remove the dynamic lighting and many other things to make it run at an acceptable fps The version of the game we got at launch did not look like the game in the trailers, AT ALL.
