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I decided to replay Dark Souls II for comparison, since I last played it over six years ago. As a reminder, I played all three first games as a pure melee character with a shield; I recently replayed Dark Souls I as a dex/rag build, swapping to Havel's set near the end, and now I decided to try Dark Souls II for the first time as a caster.

I was choosing between Faith and Sorcery, decided to go Faith, and started as a Cleric with a mace and Heal. It's also important to note that in my first and only playthrough of Dark Souls II (and coincidentally my first Souls experience ever), I accidentally joined the Company of Champions covenant within the first half hour, which significantly buffs enemies, and only found out about it near the end. So I decided to do the same thing this time, now being sufficiently experienced in Souls-likes and Soulslikes.

I must say that right after the casual Dark Souls I, playing in this mode turned out to be unexpectedly difficult. The starting mace has very good base damage, but the range is terrible, the swing arc is poor, and the character swings it quite slowly and runs out of stamina after a couple of swings. On the Company of Champions covenant, it took 2-3 hits to kill even the starting mob, and I couldn't always land them because either they didn't stagger from the first hit and started hacking me apart between my swings, or they recovered from stagger after my first hit and gutted me in return, or there were just multiple enemies at once, in which case I lacked the stamina/they attacked at too inconsistent intervals/I couldn't lure them out one by one. Despite the Cleric's starting robe having good defense, on the Company of Champions covenant I still got killed in a couple of hits, after which the Hollowing system from Dark Souls II kicked in, which, as a reminder, reduces your maximum HP, and pretty soon I had so little left that I died literally in one missed hit. A 100% physical block shield, like the one lying around at the start in casual Dark Souls I, wasn't lying at my feet here, and CIRCUMVENTING ENEMIES FROM THE SIDE no longer works here either, because either the enemies swing too wide, or they can properly complete their thrust (not 360 degrees, but 90+). Rolls on the Company of Champions covenant with starting stamina and i-frames, the mace, and improved enemy tracking and enemy density, were also not viable. In short, to my surprise (and pleasure), I had to sweat quite a bit. In casual Dark Souls I, you could start with ten Estus, and a few hours in, with twenty, plus it healed instantly, and Humanity as an item healed your entire HP bar instantly. In Dark Souls II, you start with one Estus Flask, it heals over time, and Humanity just patches up your broken Hollowed rear end. However, I didn't have problems with a lack of healing, because I got one-shot anyway.))

Many people criticize Dark Souls II for "bad graphics," but they should try playing as I did — Dark Souls I first, then Dark Souls II. I remembered it as relatively pleasant, and that was confirmed here. I criticized the first game for empty boxes with dead textures, sometimes hidden by some fog effects, and here I was actually glad to see a quality leap not only in graphics, but also in the visual design of the locations themselves — it's much more enjoyable to traverse them, they have many more pleasant details, in short, it's perfectly clear that the second part is the SECOND part. Additionally, some of the locations are surprisingly beautiful, both themselves and in combination with the backdrops. Majula, all the castles, Dragon Aerie, Heide's Tower of Flame, the forests (I don't mean the Fog Forest or the Undead Crypt, but the regular ones), almost all the locations from the DLCs. As a reminder, in Dark Souls I, the only truly pleasant locations for me were Undead Burg and Anor Londo. Unlike Dark Souls I, in Dark Souls II, I actually ENJOYED being on most of the maps.

One cannot help but compare the level design either. I criticized the first game for having too many dungeons and gameplay focused on cheap tricks like fights on a narrow ledge over a pit, some 10 IQ traps, or the other extreme — running through huge, wide, dead, empty areas like Darkroot Garden, Ash Lake, Lost Izalith. I went into Dark Souls II's locations with caution and was prepared for my memory to play tricks on me, and for my memories to turn out to be false. But no. The level design in Dark Souls II is ten orders of magnitude better than the first game. Open spaces lead into halls, which transition into corridors, leading to rooftops and courtyards, smoothly flowing into new corridors, branching off into small rooms. Almost nowhere do the developers overdo it with design elements; almost all locations are designed to entertain you with DIFFERENT situations and challenges while still looking believable; almost all locations are genuinely interesting to explore and master from a gameplay perspective. The situations you are forced into are sometimes difficult, but not bullshit; rather, they are like solving a puzzle. Of course, there are some rather poorly designed encounters there too, rivaling the best moments of Dark Souls I, or a couple of types of annoying enemies, but they are quite rare.
Let me be blunt — on the Company of Champions covenant, with my build as a glass cannon caster in rags with base HP and stamina, even with a 100% physical Drangleic Shield, I died many times, and often quite unpleasantly; however, almost always I felt it was my fault, not a feature of that specific encounter's design. More precisely, they were indeed designed that way sometimes, but almost never did this design cause frustration aimed at myself, because there was no feeling that it was designed specifically to be insurmountably nasty.
Overall, in this playthrough, my favorite maps were: Iron Keep (top-1) and the preceding mines with the Poison Palace, the Wharf, the Bastille, Shulva, the Sanctum City, and Brume Tower — both from the DLCs — these are simply the most interestingly and beautifully made locations. Shrine of Amana is very beautiful, but in this playthrough I wanted to drop an atomic bomb on it; Frigid Outskirts from the Ivory King DLC is objectively garbage. Everything else is more or less solid.
By the way, some people worship the interconnectivity of locations in Dark Souls I. Like, you can go from one Undead Burg to Blighttown, and the Parish, and the Garden, and somewhere else, what a well-thought-out world, unlike Dark Souls II, where the world map is just a regular tree with several branches. I checked and analyzed this aspect very thoroughly when I played Dark Souls I and Dark Souls II recently, and I came to the conclusion that the world in Dark Souls II feels much more cohesive. The difference in biomes in Dark Souls I is too jarring, and this interconnectivity has almost no gameplay purpose and is only there to keep the player from getting too sad until they find the Lordvessel, which allows teleporting between bonfires. In Dark Souls II, there are simply many more locations, and most of them transition into each other very organically, and their existence carries the right meaning in terms of world design as a whole.
I'll also add that the melancholic atmosphere of Dark Souls II >>>>> the drug trip of Dark Souls I.

Even though I started as a Cleric, it turned out that they were heavily nerfed since vanilla. I thought I'd be throwing lightning like Perun, but I found out you get 3-4 casts per slot, which are weaker than one mace swing. So I decided to go all-in on my first caster experience in Souls and ended up leveling into a Hexer through both Faith and Intelligence. So I started off running around with the mace, then leveled up Intelligence and Attunement and ran around shooting Soul Arrows, and then finally Dark Orbs out-damaged Soul Arrows, and I switched completely to them. Here I saw that since vanilla, the developers had also heavily nerfed the other spells, and despite the abundance of spells, almost none of them are playable. So I ran through the whole game with Dark Orbs. I definitely didn't like this in the caster paradigm, but on the other hand... What are Souls games but two buttons when you play as a melee character? Should casting really be that different?

As a result, I ran through the whole game in this look (angle chosen to capture all details). The helm from the Fog Forest for Intelligence and +souls, the robe from the Creighton the Wanderer in the Undead Purgatory for +souls, the Jester's Gloves from Iron Keep for +souls, and legs with maximum defense for under 60% equip load for a mid-roll. I also had the Silver Serpent Ring for +souls, so with ascetics I was getting more than double the usual souls from enemies. As soon as I unlocked Iron Keep, I could enter from the first bonfire, clear the inner courtyard, and level up 2-3 times at once. The result was quite awesome — both visually and thematically — a villainous dark mage, reaping the harvest and greedily absorbing souls, feeding him to incredible power. The shield, by the way, I almost never used, even though I always carried it. Most often I sniped regular enemies from a distance, and bosses, unlike the casual first Souls game, are not abusable with a shield with such ease here. Many of them have elemental damage on their attacks, or they would drain my build's entire stamina in one hit, and flanking them from the side rarely works in this game. And when I got to the DLCs, there was no point in blocking at all anymore, and I just rolled around like a typical Souls-player noob.

And this is how I specifically geared up for some fire-based bosses from the vanilla game. The Creighton's Mask and Manacles (of the Sinner), the Hexer's Boots and robe for fire resistance. I couldn't wield a 100% physical and fire block shield, so I two-handed it to block some fire if needed, and switched back to one-hand to fire a Dark Orb. And so on every time.
Overall, the equipment is made much more interesting and better than in the first game. I couldn't just put on Havel's set anymore, because in the next-gen version of Dark Souls II it had a Strength requirement, as did some other armors. And in general, their variety, visual aesthetics, and diversity of bonuses — all of this was a pleasant surprise after Dark Souls I, which was full of (and even that not fully) random, uninteresting rags.
Towards the very end, when I maxed out Faith and Attunement, acquired an excellent chime and plenty of attunement slots, I finally started throwing Lightning Spears, and they dealt slightly more damage than Dark Orb. However, against all bosses, for some reason, they still worked worse...
I also ran around for a while after the mace, in the first half of the game, with the Craftsman's Hammer, enchanted with lightning. At the very end, in the first DLC, I decided to pick up and upgrade the not-infamous Rapier, and in the third DLC, I took the Ice Rapier, because going through the DLCs with only Dark Orbs or the Craftsman's Hammer was way too sweaty. I also tried Pyromancy, upgraded both Pyromancy Flames to max, but with my build, it seemed useless to me; Dark Orbs had more utility, quantity, and damage output than any fire.

Regarding bosses, I will say this — the early ones seemed quite weak to me, very entry-level, but then they started to pack a punch. And unlike 90% of Dark Souls I bosses, where interesting fights are replaced by gimmick upon gimmick (let's ignore for a second that almost all bosses there are beaten by circling to the side or abusing a 100% physical shield like a chump), here I expected the worst but was pleasantly surprised that the bosses have more varied movesets, use them more actively, and you absolutely cannot face-tank them like I did in Dark Souls I. Of course, some of them are gimmicky too and quite crappy in that regard, but there are far fewer of them. And in the DLCs, almost all the bosses are excellent (only the paths from the bonfire to some of them are not excellent); the vanilla ones are certainly rather weak in comparison.



= YES, DON'T BE SURPRISED =
Company of Champions covenant, +Dark Orb glass cannon with base HP and stamina. 97% of deaths — on maps against regular encounters... 50% — first half of the game with mace and full hollowing, another 40% — the DLCs... I left the covenant only for about an hour to join the Pilgrims of Dark covenant to farm the rewards from there, after which I rejoined.
Meanwhile, in casual Dark Souls I, I died maybe 30-50 times at most, yawning and playing one-handed.




It took me 130 hours, as can be seen in the screenshot. That's 100 more than it took for Dark Souls I with its DLC and full exploration of all maps with all secrets. I have to thank the Company of Champions covenant, the glass cannon build, and furthermore — a much more content-rich world. I always ranked Dark Souls II first among other Souls games in my mind, and I really wanted to test if it would still feel that way now in comparison. Yes, it does. And this is not a false memory or nostalgia for my first Souls games; I was very biased but genuinely observed, with the naked eye, a quality increase of ten orders of magnitude. Completely surprising.
Elden Ring is still better, that's an obvious next-gen leap, but it's not as much of a no-brainer as comparing Elden Ring to Dark Souls I or Dark Souls III. Dark Souls II turned out to have such a pleasant world and interesting level design.