I only really started this game as a joke with a friend and told myself I didn't see myself playing this one because I really fucking hated Dark Souls 1. I heard this game was a bit different but I figured if people that loved Dark Souls 1 even often say this game is terrible there was no chance I'd like it! I was surprised to find out it was completely fine! Didn't love it or anything, the world was much less connected and interesting as a world than Dark Souls 1, it makes up for it, to me at least, by being much less obnoxious and designed to make you miserable. I heard problems with I frames and stuff being a stat, which is kind of stupid don't get me wrong, but I was surprised at much I didn't care about this. This game gives you levels like candy so I just got my stat to the average Dark Souls I frame level and moved on. I also found this game to to be like really fucking easy compared to the others though, you do so much damage and bosses are so bad at understanding if you're behind them. The Pursuer was pretty cool though, I generally liked the more Duel esque fights, like the Dragonrider or the Old Dragonslayer. Most of the big monsters were too slow/stupid to really be interesting or fun though unfortunately. They did do another shitty gargoyle fight and fights with 2 or more bosses are still as poorly designed and unfun as always but even the dumber bosses like that were just so much easier to handle and felt much less stupid and overwhelming compared to DS1.

To be fair, there's a very solid chance I'm just much more used to the bullshit of this series so I had a bit of a tolerance here but I do think DS1 is still by far the most frustrating and annoyingly designed of all the Fromsoft games I've played. I understand finding a charm in that, I like plenty of insane bullshit, I'm a Sonic fan! I just think every other soulsbourne (not counting demon souls which I haven't beaten) does everything so much better and doesn't make me miserable the entire way through. That being said I'm glad this game surprised me like it did, and after playing all of these games I have a much larger appreciation for what these games are. I'm still not as in love with them as a lot of people are, and a lot of that is an unwillingness to care about the lore of it all and get as invested in the world and I just wanna play silly game and kill big bosses, but I've evolved from thinking Souls games were dogshit 5 years ago to thinking only Dark Souls 1 is dogshit and the rest are actually pretty fun worthwhile experiences! Yay for growth!