I played SotFS back in February when I did my binge of the Souls series. Going straight into it from DS1 was one of the most disappointing and frustrating experiences in my life, making for one of my least favorite games I've ever played. Going back a couple days ago from this log, I had a few videos pop up on my YouTube feed of people going back and enjoying DS2 after they started with SotFS so I decided "why not" and went for the experience myself. In the end, it was highly worth it because this version of DS2 was very fun and felt like a natural progression of DS1.
The enemy placement in SotFS feels like a kaizo game compared to vanilla, it feels like every single room has three times the enemies it should and so many places have added enemies when they shouldn't have. Vanilla felt perfectly balanced in its encounters, there weren't any locations that felt overly hard for their place in the progression of the game. The difficulty curve feels way more balanced in vanilla as well. I remember dying a lot in the Forest of Fallen Giants in SotFS since every encounter had between six and ten enemies to take care of at once. Meanwhile in vanilla, it felt much more inline with Undead Burg from DS1. This pattern continues for every single area, feeling similar in progression to areas like DS1 would be. The biggest example is Iron Keep, which in SotFS gave me more deaths than every single death in DS1 and DS3 combined. Meanwhile on this playthrough of vanilla, everything up to Smelter Demon took me one try and the run up to Iron King took me only a handful. Straight up this version of DS2 is so much better than SotFS and I think I'll actually get some replays of this game over time.
The enemy placement in SotFS feels like a kaizo game compared to vanilla, it feels like every single room has three times the enemies it should and so many places have added enemies when they shouldn't have. Vanilla felt perfectly balanced in its encounters, there weren't any locations that felt overly hard for their place in the progression of the game. The difficulty curve feels way more balanced in vanilla as well. I remember dying a lot in the Forest of Fallen Giants in SotFS since every encounter had between six and ten enemies to take care of at once. Meanwhile in vanilla, it felt much more inline with Undead Burg from DS1. This pattern continues for every single area, feeling similar in progression to areas like DS1 would be. The biggest example is Iron Keep, which in SotFS gave me more deaths than every single death in DS1 and DS3 combined. Meanwhile on this playthrough of vanilla, everything up to Smelter Demon took me one try and the run up to Iron King took me only a handful. Straight up this version of DS2 is so much better than SotFS and I think I'll actually get some replays of this game over time.