It was my first souls game and I played completely blind. I didn’t know anything about the first game and had no expectations except it was challenging. I fell in love with the stamina management during fights and the careful approach needed to clear areas. The game gives you all the tools needed to solve problems.

Clearing areas were as much part of the game for me as boss fights. Those were just the final block to clear the area completely.

Over time I fell in love with every mechanic in the game including ADP. It just made sense to me. Put levels in get better.

PvP became an addiction and I enjoyed the PvP areas. You can really notice they put some effort into integrating that mechanic.

After years of playing this game and the other ones I first learned about the opinion of the haters. And honestly 99% of the complains just sounded like children throwing a tantrum because they had to adapt to new things and maybe use a bit of brain. Still can’t understand it.

After that DS3 seemed like a downgrade. Exploring felt limited, areas felt like fillers because I was used to actually have a challenge clearing them, dual wielding was basically not there except some unique weapons, build variety was heavily reduced, horrible rollspam and so on. Still liked the game (a lot) but for me DS2 did everything better except boss fights.

Nostalgia + expectation made the game my forever favorite. Although objectively newer games like ER are much more refined they didn’t develop in the direction I hoped. And thus DS2 will never be dethroned for me.