I thought the world was incredible to explore, and not small at all. It's not a lot of area from above, but there are just so many layers stacked on top of each other. I think it's one of the best demonstrations of how to cram as much content into a 3d space as possible

Yeah I found DArk Souls 2 or Demon's Souls to be the easiest. I died the least in those games but with Dark souls II I definitely found the deaths to be the cheapest. By far the most instances of 'that was cheap bullshit' not 'welp, I guess I learned not to do that'. I think that's why some people translate it to mean it was hardest; not that they died the most or needed to improve but that the deaths they had in the game felt the least fair and thus the most frustrating. 

AS for difficulty...I genuinely do not see the hatred and vitriol the DLC is getting for its difficulty. "Oh it's too hard!" Not really. It's completely in line with the expected difficulty that was introduced in the main game and appropriately dialed it up. IT's DLC. It's supposed to be harder. It's been two and a half years since the base game came out. If it was the same y'all would breeze through it. The Scadutree Fragments are a brilliant way to ensure that even over-leveled people with prime builds they prepped for a year still need to work for it. 

Just like the base game and the people bitching about how the game is 'unfair' or 'too hard' with some bosses because they refuse to use summons. Some people are playing the game wrong, essentially confining themselves to a challenge run by not engaging with the tools given to you to play it, then blaming the game for not catering to them. I don't take anyone seriously who's like 'waaah, the godskin duo is the worst boss because it's two bosses built for solo play against you!'. Like dude...the game couldn't possibly be more clear that some bosses are meant to be played with a spirit ash or summoning an ally. USE THEM. 

Instead you just have players whining about how bad the design is while refusing to engage with the game's mechanics. That's on them, not the game. Heck, I even prefer playing the same way, solo. I PREFER playing the game without summons or anything. that is how I also prefer to play. But I'm not gonna whine and bitch at the game because it doesn't cater to my play style. A significant number of bosses in the game are gank fights for this exact reason. They put a lot of effort into the spirit ashes and summon/coop features in the game. Use em. 

That's just one example but it bugs me so much every time I see someone complaining about the game. No game is perfect but pretty much every complaint I've seen about Elden Ring has a viable, reasonable solution that the whiners just refuse to employ. I complained at first but the more I played it the more I realized, 'oh...no I see the solution here. Okay this is good, actually'. Every damn time. And the DLC is the exact same and pushes those features just as much. Personally, I did every DLC boss/area solo with a big hitty bonk stick and a lot of armor, so the game is absolutely doable. I didn't use magic or summons or coop. And I kinda suck at Elden Ring compared to a lot of you. I STILL Can't be Malenia solo and I did Radahn. Some people really need to suck it up.

Now that I'm done with the DLC and I can say I've beaten every FromSouls game, I've been slowly writing up boss rankings and scores based on quality. I have posted Demon's Souls and Dark Souls over on my personal page, and am working on Dark Souls II right now (Wow I do not like the bosses of Dark souls II).

Would anyone here actually want to read that? IT's...a lot of writing.

I've a The best boss thread here on the site, I'd be interested to know your top of each game but Idk if I'd read through an analysis of each boss. Done them all apart from Demon souls multiple times, I know the ins and outs of them. 

Just weird to me how people can love Dark Souls 1 and 3 and yet hate everything about Dark Souls 2.

Would you like a breakdown? I just wrote 13,000 words just ranking the bosses and throughout it I couldn't help but notice a tonne of little things that kept building up and compounding exponentially. I'll give you the cliffnotes version, though:

1 - ADP. I know it gets beaten down all the time but it's a real problem. Basically, the dodge roll function doesn't work properly if you don't pump like 20 levels into ADP to increase your agility stat. Using items and pretty much everything else is affected by it, too. Far too often, because of the lack of i-frames there are WAY too many instances where I dodge but take damage anyway. 

2 - On from that, the hitboxes are terrible. Again, I know people keep bringing it up but it's a problem for a reason. The game should be fair with what looks like it'll hit you and what will hit you. When an enemy can shoot a laser beam and I'm on the other side of the room and it still hits me, that's bullshit. When I'm BEHIND an enemy and he stabs AWAY from me and I still get grabbed by his attack, that's bullshit. Combine that and the ADP/iFrames and it's just a whole lot of cheap difficulty that is frustrating without any of the fairness that makes the balance so important. 

3 - for some weird reason, sometimes even with the above two issues when you get hit there's no visual representation of it. No character flinch, no subtle vibration or sound effect or animation or light effect. There were way too many times where I dodge rolled or was away from an attack so I thought I avoided it...then I got no indication I got hit, but then I noticed that my health was completely gone. 

4 - The combination of those three aspects means that even with the bosses that are well designed, they aren't fun to play. the lack of i-frames, the shoddy hit boxes, and the tendency to not give proper feedback when hit mean that even bosses that could have been fun in Dark souls 1 or 3 or Elden Ring are still shit because the game is fundamentally broken. and since so many of these problems overlap, it gets exponentially worse the more you play. 

5 - there's way too many instances where the game is just 'haha, fuck you, this is dark souls pissant, suffer'. Like, so many of the levels just swarm you with enemies, not giving you an opportunity to properly do crowd control, too many instance of instant death holes, too many shit gameplay mechanics, too many obtuse puzzles (Even for the famously obtuse dark souls series). The whole point of these games is that they're challenging but (mostly) Fair. Dark Souls II on way too many instances just said 'fuck it' and threw every cheap bullshit tactic at you just to make you suffer. The balance is hard, this game fails there. 

6 - Honestly, I knew Dark Souls II was notoriously bad for the boss run-backs but I didn't realize just how many of the bosses were that bad until I was actually doing analysis on every boss in the game. Even mostly good bosses like Sir Alonne and the Smelter Demon were completely destroyed by bullshit run-backs. I did a thing about all 41 bosses in the game and like 30 of them were notable for the shit that you had to do just to get back to the boss, and this is a clearly intentional design philosophy. 

Because fuck us, I guess.

And that really is the over-arching problem with Dark Souls II. It really does look and feel like exactly what it is, a game that was made to imitate Dark Souls without actually understanding what was good about Dark Souls. It was a game made by a team that knew Dark souls by its 'prepare to die' reputation but didn't understand the underlying philosophy that dictated why all the other games have resonated so deeply, and that is the feeling of overcoming adversity. A game can be hard but it has to feel fair to not feel cheap or frustrating. Cuphead will kill you relentlessly and has no time for failure..but so many of the design elements of that game made it so that getting right back in didn't feel frustrating or infuriating. Dark Souls and now Elden Ring have done a lot of things to make the game HARDER but still make it so that there's less frustration.

The boss runback thing is especially egregious because Dark souls, Bloodborne, and even Demon's Souls to a lesser extent had options to open up shortcuts because they knew that nobody would want to run a gauntlet of enemies and traps every time they wanted to fight a boss. You earned your access to the boss, now you can more or less run to it. There are exceptions but for the most part, Dark Souls and Bloodborne and Dark Souls III and especially Elden Ring were pretty good about making sure that the boss runs were decent. With Dark souls II those instances were the exception. 

It's fine if these issues don't bother you, personally. Everyone gets a subjective opinion about what they value. But these are objective truths about the game's core mechanics, fundamentals, design philosophy, and over-arching intent. 

Personally I don't know how anyone can play a game so broken and cheap to its core and genuinely not see what the big deal is. 

Woiuld you say the DLC is harder than the main game? 

Thanks to Runa for reminding me of what I didn't like.

In summary, Dark Souls 2 just feels substantially less polished than the others. People can show examples of the other games having hit box problems, but DS2 is the only time where it felt noticeable. 

The invincibility frames being tied to a stat is different, and frustrating if you don't know about it. 

Most of the Souls games have this level design where you are able to just ran past enemies most of the time. Not always, but most of the time, the games don't put up arbitrary barriers. Some exceptions like the New Londo Ruins are kind of rough to just run through.

But Dark Souls 2 for example has a number of spots where you have those large Ironclad Soldiers blocking small alleys. Which feels like it violates some big Souls-like level design principles that the other games do so well at. 

I do think DS2 gets too much hate. I think it's a great game, but I also think it's on the bottom of recent From Software games. 

It's harder in parts, definitely. But not so much harder than end game areas. The final boss is by far the hardest souls boss in the genre, they went nuts with him.

Fair enough. I guess my playstyle kinda circumvents a lot of the problems. Ive never had a problem with the ADP because I use a shield, so I dont need to dodge roll very often. In fact I didnt even know it was a thing in the game even though Ive beaten it like 10 times. lol

Hitboxes I feel are different from boss to boss in every Souls game. Larger enemies are usually harder to hit because they have several lock on targets and just blocks the camera sometimes. Especially some of the dragon fights can be frustrating.

You have to be careful in every Souls game. Use throwing knives and arrows for instance to separate enemies from the herd and pick them off one by one. It might be more of that in DS2 than in other Souls games. I can agree with that.

I think it all comes down to what you think is fair I guess. I personally find DS2 to be the easiest Souls game.

I have more problems with DS3. It feels like 50% of that game takes place in a swamp. And 60% of those are either poison or toxic. Several bosses have multiple life bars. It just feels cheap to me. Like the Sister Friede fight is just awful. The game also feels like its put together with cut content or reused content from previous Souls games. It just doesnt have it own identy imo.