77% positive review is an absolute joke, this game should easily be at 85% or higher, I think the hate it’s getting is from the people whining that Miyazaki was the game designing lead. I had 0 issues. The levels, weapons, bosses… everything was excellent. The music at Majula! It’s one of my favorite games of all time. Sure the first few hours are tough as nails esp when your health bar is only half, but once you figure it all out and can d handle multiple enemies at once, you have such a great time. IMO I’d give this game a solid 9/10, base game 8/10, base game + DLC brings it up to a 9. I put over 150 hours or so on the steam deck and loved every second of it.

Dark souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin is a game that suffers immensely from bad enemy placement, boring, rushed, and sometimes immensely tedious boss design, and overall worse level design than the first of the series. That being said, when this game is good, it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good. Some of the environments you adventure through were truly breathtaking visually, and helped to hide how ungodly repetitive the enemies in each area were. This game is an experience you can have, if you so choose. I shall give this game a rating of wasted potential/10

EDIT: I will admit though, there's nothing quite like the rush of dopamine I'm getting knowing that I am satisfactorily done with the game

i will deliver a swift uppercut to every reindeer that enters my sight

It's different to the first part in the souls series.
Cons: Many foes at once, enemy tracking not as good as in the first part, hp restriction mechanic, hitboxes not as good as in the first part, pyromancy spells require stamina, parrying more difficult than in the first part.

Pros: larger world than in the first part, great weapon variety, many cool outfits, bonfire ascetics (unique for ds2!), wonderful world design!(especially the hub - Majula), interesting lore, more bosses than in ds1, dead npcs can be brought back to the game in exchange for souls

Neutral aspects that differ from Dark Souls 1: ADP stat: Enables player to get more invincibility frames during rolls and therefore makes the game easier the more you level it, bonfire travel mechanics: available at the start of the game, areas are not as interconnected as in ds2, gemstones (and derivates): Common item that lets you restore hp over time and can be held up to 99 (?) pieces in one slot, torches (unique for ds2!): Enables player to see in dark places and can scare some foes

Its aight. it really does have some amazing bosses and areas but not all of the games bosses are that amazing, alot are either just meh or just Plain bad. Most of the areas in this game although can be frustrating at times are Very unique and most of them are honestly pretty fun, with some exceptions. I should also mention alot of the boss runbacks in the game are absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass.

weapon variety, and in particular the amount of weapons and viable builds is almost staggering, in most souls games there is usually so many diffrent and unique weapons but only a few are good and outshine the large majority, but not really the case in this game, tho there are some meta weapons. almost all of them are usuable if you are simply good enough

I actually really like some of the new mechanics in the game like bonfire ascetics. a more fleshed out NG+ And ability to refight bosses. some of the most iconic weapons and movesets were from this game. and powerstancing is a awesome concept. But there were some questionable mechanics like that stupid hollowing system and of course who can forget ADP?

hexes are really cool tho, I wish they were brought back in the future games better.
in DS3 there are so few and most aren't that powerful. but the idea of dark pyromancies is cool but Elden ring just drops them entirely.

pvp is also apparently really good in this game but I never do pvp or multiplayer stuff in souls game in general. so can't comment much on that.

the hitboxes in this game are also notoriously questionable.

but overall, this is a good game, might require alot more patience and persistence than the other dark souls games, but beyond that, its fun.

The weird one of the family

I expected DS2 to be bad because of it being the FromSoftware outlier. But ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, it's hella good

NOT GOOD GAME

It made me think I hated dark souls 2. That's how bad this update is. It makes significant, largely worse, changes to the base game. Some are fine, others are baffling. Play the original version of Dark Souls 2 instead. And after that, MAYBE give this version a try as a sort of master quest mode.

It's too good to give a negative review but to terribly awful for me to really enjoy it.