I love DS2 but acknowledge its problems. Namely, a lot of the fights are just ganks, and that's bad design. Plenty of people don't understand that part of why Dark Souls games are great is that they are challenging, but fair, with very clear feedback so you can always tell what you did wrong and use that info to improve if you pay attention and keep a clear head. Some of these encounters break that rule. Also, failure to follow that design principle is responsible for nearly every failure in a "souls-like" game.
Dark Souls 3 though -- now there's a game. Extremely polished, extremely satisfying, everything about it. I do especially love the sound design and magic effects looking pretty -- extremely important for someone who always does spell casting. The weapon art system or whatever it was called was really fun, I loved my flexible MLGS melee hybrid sorcerer since between sword beams and stuff like Farron Flashsword I had so many kinds of unexpected bullshit I could trip people up on in PVP. I remember my time playing it fondly. But I think I remember them making offensive miracles into completely worthless garbage for some reason so I don't like that part so much.
I haven't played DS1.
I love DS2 but acknowledge its problems. Namely, a lot of the fights are just ganks, and that's bad design. Plenty of people don't understand that part of why Dark Souls games are great is that they are challenging, but fair, with very clear feedback so you can always tell what you did wrong and use that info to improve if you pay attention and keep a clear head. Some of these encounters break that rule. Also, failure to follow that design principle is responsible for nearly every failure in a "souls-like" game.
Dark Souls 3 though -- now there's a game. Extremely polished, extremely satisfying, everything about it. I do especially love the sound design and magic effects looking pretty -- extremely important for someone who always does spell casting. The weapon art system or whatever it was called was really fun, I loved my flexible MLGS melee hybrid sorcerer since between sword beams and stuff like Farron Flashsword I had so many kinds of unexpected bullshit I could trip people up on in PVP. I remember my time playing it fondly. But I think I remember them making offensive miracles into completely worthless garbage for some reason so I don't like that part so much.