I picked up Scholar of the First Sin recently on PC (Steam sale). I played Dark Souls 2 twice through previously, and had fun with it, even though I didn't like it quite as much as the first Dark Souls. "Higher highs, lower lows" is a good way of putting it - some great stuff but also some rather empty and boring areas, or those that were just a bit overly linear.
Since I never tried the DLC and wanted something to tide me over until Dark Souls 3, I figured this would hit the spot... boy was I right. About 30 hours in and I'm having a blast. My progress through the game has been faster than the first time through, but only 'cause I know all the areas. Even so, I am finding a lot of changes really interesting.
1. Encounter design is better overall. It's more brutal in terms of raw challenge, but also more thoughtful, and makes you consider your approach a lot. Never have I been so cautious and actually found that using the bow was near-essential even as a melee character.
The greater mix of enemy types makes areas much less predictable and overall more enjoyable to go through. Certain parts of areas border on gimmicky, in terms of the strategies they encourage you to use, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it feels a bit like a combat puzzle at times.
Drangleic Castle is a real highlight for me now. It was a good area before and now they made it great, with all the stone enemies everywhere coming to life and sneaking up behind you, and other surprises here and there like the return of a certain boss.
2. Some of the progression has changed a lot. Putting the statues everywhere is a bit strange from a lore perspective (how are all these guys getting turned to stone?), but it's an interesting method of gating progression, making you balance off using your Fragrant Branches on secrets vs. forward progress.
The game seems to push you towards the Lost Bastille back entrance more than it did before, because the difficulty wall in No-man's Wharf and Heide's Tower feels a fair bit higher. In general, in the early game I found myself probing a lot more on where I could go and what I could get away with.
I also find that the item progression is much faster. The game gives you a lot more crafting resources and cool items earlier on to help make up for the higher difficulty. In fact, it might be a bit too much. You can get a +5 or +6 weapon pretty early on and use that to really ruin most enemies (you get the Large Ember in Lost Bastille now, I think, instead of Iron Keep). The flip-side is loot tends to be a lot more rewarding than I remember, though, so that's not necessarily a bad thing and I don't mind being overpowered for a bit if I put the effort in to find cool stuff.
3. Some areas feel like they have not changed for the better. Shaded Woods in particular is now really boring - removing the giant basilisk, and replacing almost all the enemies with ghosts (which you can see really easily outside of the fog) did not help at all, for example.
Others didn't get enough improvements either. Huntsman's Copse and Doors of Pharros barely changed, if at all, and the PvP-oriented areas feel borderline identical too. I would have liked to see more tweaks to make them a bit more interesting. They're still decent areas, I just expected more.
4. The extra summons everywhere are a bit much. I know they are optional, but they *really* trivialize bosses. As boss difficulty didn't go up much if at all (another missed opportunity), it's disappointing that you can make them a complete joke simply by bringing in a couple of NPC phantoms. On the other hand, it does give offline players a bit more of the "co-op experience".
Similarly, the extra NPC invaders are fun but kind of lack context. It feels like sometimes they just threw them in because they couldn't think of any cool enemies to put there, so replaced them with black phantoms instead.
5. The DLC areas I am just beginning to get into are really cool. The Sunken King stuff is well designed, atmospheric as hell, and returns to a lot of the great level design in Dark Souls 1 in terms of providing alternate routes and secrets to find. Apparently I have a lot more to look forward to.
All that said - it's like 90% of the way there towards being my ideal Souls game. It's still very good, and an improvement over Dark Souls 2, but I still wish they had done just a little more here and there to spice things up.