I am overall a fan of the From Software games but this one can literally be wiped off the face of the earth. It is plagued with terrible issues, overall feels clunky to play and the story compared to the others isnt that great either. The game feels more hard for the sake of being hard as the other games are great games that are hard. Every chest you open you will get ambushed which removes the hole point in an ambush. And the scholar of the 1st sin it's like they went over the original game and thought, how can we make this harder rather then focusing on the issues like why you stand still for a second after swinging your weapon? It's just sad that the core levels actually look nice and have a half decent layout. But it's just plagued with annoying stuff like locking on breaks the combat and the game plays better completely not using it. Even the estus flask has been made redundant by the use of life gems. And if you can make it through the hole game without being hit with an explosive barrel then you would get a DNA check with Jesus. It's almost like someone went over the levels had glue holding down ctrl + v placing barrels all over the place. But the best part is if you or an enemy hit them they explode. You can be walking round then out of nowhere you'll explode loosing all your health cos an enemy jumped into a barrel. And AI in this game is broken aswell. I've had enemies attack me then just stand still for ages wondering whats gonna happen next almost like they are trying to say sorry. The enemies glitch out constantly. Like how do you go from Dark Souls 1 which is mostly a solid experience with a few smaller issues to Ds2 which was a complete mess to Ds2 sotfs which overall made the game even worse.
If I was you I would skip this game unless you completed every other soulsborne game and you just wanna complete this 1 just to say you have completed all of them. But being honest I don't think anyone would actually care if you just said that you skipped this one cos its terrible. They will likely understand why. The only memorable things are it are a couple of things. The cringe opening cutscene or the clunky combat mechanics.
If you wanna cheese the hole game. Use life gems and level up agility as much as you can. Use life gems instead of estus.
