Don't necessarily agree that SotFS made it worse, but I agree that DS2 is my least favourite of the series. Which makes it one of my favourite games of all time.

Agreed, The enemy placements in SotFS were deranged at times. The changes to Heide Knights were a mistake, changing them from cool wandering enemies like the Black Knights to being rarely encountered outside of Heide. Iron Keep got absolutely swamped with Alonne Knights in the upgrade making it a nightmare. Idk how anyone was meant to find the DLC keys without looking at a guide. Why exactly you find the key to the Brume DLC in that random pit with the Flame Lizards in the Forest of the Fallen Giants and not from the Old Iron King befuddles me.

Man so true, as decent of a game as it is, it hurts playing DS2 because of the untapped potential. It says something about the "bones" of the game that even with all of its issues it is still a memorable experience.

There is supposed to be some modder developing a total conversion that tries to deliver on that potential but as with any total conversion mod you never know whether it will release or not. But I hope it does so that the potential can finally be done justice.

I’d agree with this.

I feel like overall DS2 just has so many areas that while it has some amazing things (Fume knight one of the best bosses in any souls game IMO) it just has so much forgettable stuff too.

That and the fact that so many areas (and even bosses) are only made hard because they throw multiples at you, it makes it worse than the others in the series.

However…. I probably played more multiplayer in ds2 than in all others combined. Don’t know if it was due to balance, the overall slower mechanics of combat or whatever, but I enjoyed it.