I played Dark souls 1 and Dark souls 3 before Ds2:SotFS, and even with that ds2 is my favorite. Its challenging but never really gets really frustrating like the others, the game performs beautifully, and I love the freedom offered by things like the soul vessels.
I also like how you get some choices on where to go first at some points, mainly in the beginning and at the memory sequence part.
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I agree w the op on many of his points. However, grinding for the different covenant items is murder (took me forever to get enough sunlight medallions for sunlight spear- damn hawk-throwing stingy-ass enemies)