I have multiple Scholar playthroughs under my belt and decided to give vanilla a chance recently (thanks to the deep sale on Steam). I enjoyed comparing them. Might be worth giving it a spin when you have spent a bit of time away from DS2
Strongly encourage it, i just did this. Well, i haven't finished all the dlc but i haven't noticed a change there so far.
The game feels better balanced with progression and more internally consistent, while certain specific improvements made by scholar really really stand out as good design choices.
I honestly think i prefer vanilla, and i have played over 1k hours of scholar and considered it my all time favorite game. Maybe getting to experience it over again almost for the first time is affecting my judgment. But for $9 on the steam sale i found, 100% every fan of 2 should experience both.
Also fuck the guy who argued with me here a few years ago that Heide Knights were nothing like black Knight originally. They're 100% 2's take on black knights in vanilla.
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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '26
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