u/Beginning-Stop6594

I played completely blind with the exception of the knowledge to hit Curse Rotted Greatwood in his balls and to hit High Lord Wolnir in his bracelets. I used the same playstyle as my DS 1 and 2 playthroughs, which is two-handing a straight sword and only sprinting and rolling. The only exceptions were Pontiff and Yhorm. I used a shield to parry Pontiff because he was starting to make me angry. For Yhorm, I realized I was doing very little damage and immediately thought that there must be some sort of trick for him. I then looked it up and I was right, so I used the sword they give you and used its ability.

I enjoyed DS 3 the most out of the three games. I think it has the best boss fights. I found Dark Souls 2 bosses to be way too easy. I also enjoyed the faster-paced combat of DS 3 more.

DS 3 also has much easier non-boss areas. DS 3 is very streamlined and was also the fastest game to beat for me. DS 1 play time = 37.4 hours. DS 2 play time = 33.7 hours (according to Steam), but DS 3 was only around 25 hours (I'll need to look at the exact number later [Edit: Just checked. It's 23.7 hours]).

I also think DS 3 has some of the ugliest and most beautiful areas. The beginning areas were so bland that it made me question to even continue playing, but they later became much better.

Just the base games (no DLC). Bosses in this game were much easier for me. I played with the same playstyle (no armor and two-handing a straight sword) for both games. I played "blind" (without help) for both games besides when I was lost. I think I got lost more in Dark Souls 2.

The non-boss areas definitely felt way more tedious in this game and were actually more challenging than the bosses of this game. This game has very easy bosses.

I was having a harder time with The Rotten because he kept knocking me into the fire and the run to him is very annoying with all the poison shooters and hand monsters. I like to run straight to the boss and it doesn't work very well for The Rotten. The poison shooters combined with his big blobular body and knocking me into the fire repeatedly turned out to be a perfect recipe for me becoming quite angry and wanting to shove my sword deep inside of him. I felt quite relieved when I delivered the final blow. The other bosses were all cleared quite quickly.

[Edit: DS 1 play time = 37.4 hours. DS 2 play time = 33.7 hours (according to Steam. Total game running times. I often left the game running when going to the bathroom, eating, etc. I think I will be more liberal with looking up where to go with DS 3 because I don't think trying to do it all on my own enhances the experience very much. It just takes a lot longer and feels like a waste of time to be honest. Maybe DS 3 will be easier with navigation. I'm not sure. I don't know anything about the game. I will start it tomorrow.)]

I measured by running (not sprinting) around the outer perimeter of the maps while using the highest mobility weapons in each game. Did not use perks that affected movement speed. Averaged 5 laps for each map. Was as consistent as possible with how I maneuvered around obstacles, eliminating "coast effect", etc. The standard deviation is quite interesting with how it's much higher for cod4, waw, and mw2. The maps definitely do feel a lot more varied for those games. Maybe that has something to do with why they are favorited by a lot of people. Pretty interesting information. Just thought I'd share.