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 like dark souls because there's no game like it. To me they are almost their own sub genre. However, I can't help but separate dark souls 2 from that group. I will defend drangleic to the end but it doesn't hold a candle to the other two for me. Still a great game though! If your gonna get into dark souls I still say that's the best to start with since it's story is it's own thing and it's bastardizingly easy at points