Dark Souls II has some really neat ideas that worked great, such as bonfire ascetics, instant humanity, power stancing and great fashion souls; However this comes at a cost. It also introduced many awful mechanics and arbitrary difficulty that just reeks of the developers not understanding what made DS1 work so well. i-frames being tied to a stat, soul memory, stamina regen mechanics, and worst of all the enemy placement. I have not ever played the original DS2 but have played Scholar only twice because of how painful some of these areas are. 10 enemies that aggro on you instantly is not well thought out or interesting, it's plain lazy and just adds artificial difficulty, forcing you to either shoot every enemy down or pray you are a good zoner. This makes boss runbacks (which to be fair are laughably easy, so there won’t be much running back) a nightmare. Iron Keep and Shrine of Amana are some of the worst areas in any Fromsoft game EVER. However, when the game is fair, it's great. The story is interesting despite being disconnected for the most part and the combat is great, PVP in this game is a lot of fun and the many builds you can do give DS2 a lot of replay value. Not a bad game, but certainly a questionable one, and it's interesting to see what was and wasn't taken into DS3 and Elden Ring...