i haven't played vanilla in a very long time but everytime i play through sotfs there are so many areas which exist just to piss me off, gank fests of loads of high agro range enemies which leaves me just clearing the area out permanently to get through it properly.
Thing is in my vague memory of vanilla I don't remember any such area causing me much aggravation. I actually remember the game being pretty easy.
Ended up buying vanilla just so I can see if sotfs is actually just designed by a crazy person because the game just feels like a slog to play between eathen peak and iron keep. I'm struggling to think what part of sotfs is actually an improvement.
I feel like sotfs is mostly way harder until the shrine of amana. It was probably done to give people who already bought the original a gameplay challenge incentive to buy the game again. Sotfs feels more like a new ng+ mode for the original than a proper game of it's own, which is sad because it has the better engine.
I wish these games were more mod friendly and you could just swap out the enemy/item positionings you want in the new engine.